The Briny Café (16 page)

Ettie reaches out to take his hand. “How old were you?” she asks.

“I was nine.”

“Oh you poor, poor boy,” she says, as though he's now standing before her in his school shorts, rat-tailed shirt and scuffed leather lace-ups.

Sam is the first to break a long, charged silence. “Best fish I've ever tasted, mate. Cooked to perfection. You're nearly up there with Ettie.”

“How's Jimmy doing?” Kate asks Sam, to give the chef time to pull himself together.

“Good as gold. And mate, you wouldn't believe it, but his room's as clean and tidy as an operating theatre.”

“Doesn't his mother feel kind of weird, knowing her son's living with you?”

“Nah. She's thrilled to think someone's keeping an eye on him.”

Kate looks at him in amazement. “That's
her
job, surely?”

“Bit hard to manage when you're in the clink.”

“She's in jail? His mother's a criminal?” Kate puts down
her knife and fork, turns her shocked gaze on Sam.

“Wouldn't put it quite like that. A case of mistaken identities. All of them registered for the dole.”

“Ah. Fraud.” She returns to her plate. Spears a piece of potato.

“You journos have a nasty habit of leaping to conclusions before all the facts are assembled. She did it to find the money to send Jimmy to a special school.”

Kate snaps back: “Doesn't make it right.”

“No. Just desperate, I s'pose.” He nods towards the wine, asking Kate to pass the bottle. Knows he's hit a nerve when she ignores him.

 

After a dessert that Marcus describes as an old-fashioned lemon pudding to which he's added fresh blueberries and lemon butter, Sam apologises for having to skip coffee and make an early dash from a
splendid evening
, but he has a dawn cargo pick-up. Kate says she is exhausted and, if Marcus doesn't mind, she too will take her leave.

Ettie, relaxed and sleepy, volunteers to help clean up. Marcus suggests she slips off her shoes, gets comfortable on the sofa and he'll bring her a very decent cognac instead.

“Lovely,” she murmurs.

 

“Jeez,” Sam blurts when he and Kate are out of earshot. “What a night. Next time I'll dig out me Sunday best.”

“Stop it. It was wonderful. Beautiful food. Excellent wine.”

“I reckon he's got the hots for Ettie. What d'you think?”

Kate looks at him like he needs a lobotomy. “Very observant of you, Sam.” They reach the end of the jetty. “Haven't you always said that Ettie is the answer to every man's dreams?” She smacks her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Oh God, Sam. You sound like you're jealous. Well, what did you expect? That she would wait until you were ready to throw down your anchor?”

“Throw-down-my-an-chor?” He repeats the words, syllable by syllable, like he can't believe what he's heard. “Even for a journo that's a shocker line.” He swallows a belly laugh so he doesn't wake the good Kingfish Bay residents out of their peaceful sleep, shakes his head one last time and leaps into his dinghy. Chugs off without saying goodnight.

His piddly fifteen-horsepower motor sounds tinnier than a spoon banging inside an empty can. Kate, he thinks, has the insight of a mosquito.
Throw down his anchor?
Jeez. If there's a wrong way to read a situation she goes for it like a cat after a rat. And for a second there, he'd thought she was showing signs of settling into Cook's Basin like a native. He'd even been tempted, on a mysterious impulse he couldn't quite pin down, to invite her on a stroll to a lush green wonderland of rainforest lying under a lazy little waterfall hidden high on the escarpment. He'd found the tiny slice of paradise as a kid and knew, even then, to keep it a secret for its own sake. Magic, it was. Moss three inches thick on boulders tumbling like an emerald ocean swell. A canopy of rippling cabbage palms singing a whispery chorus. Thick, damp air ballooning with fecundity, while shafts of lemon light landed softly on chocolate earth. And the mist. Wisps of it rising like the spirits of ancient generations. Damned poetic, the land and water.

But
throw-down-his-anchor
? Nah, he decides. He'll give showing her that beauty spot a miss. She'll see the details plain enough, but with the cold, disengaged and judgemental eye she gets when she thinks you're trying to put one over on her. Maybe suspicion is all part of a journo's job. If it is, it sure as hell must take the spontaneity out of life.

He gazes up at the star-splattered sky – the Pointers, the Southern Cross, the Saucepan, the Milky Way. The certainties of his physical world. So what if he doesn't rate a rave review in a restaurant guide, or an interview in a newspaper? He's a bloke who never shirks the hard yards. And that has to stand for something.

He thinks of Marcus. Dig deep enough and you'll find everyone has a cross to bear. He's a good man. Perfect for Ettie. A stayer, if he's read all the signs right. With a bit of luck, they'll make a go of it.

On the spur of the moment, he makes up his mind he'll return the chef's hospitality with a Cook's Basin-style get-together. Prawns on ice in tin buckets on the pontoon, their shells thrown straight back to the sea. Freshly caught fish, pan-fried in butter over a fire in a washing machine drum at the water's edge. Served on enamel plates with a waxy spud cooked in hot coals. Some quartered lemons for zing and not a single fancy sauce in sight. Bread maybe, to mop up the juices in the frying pan. A few frigidly cold ales to wash it all down. Kings used to live like that.

Jimmy better be asleep in bed, he thinks as he heads home. Kids should come with a warning attached.
Proceed at your own risk.
Who knew one boy could manage twenty Weet-Bix at a go?

Halfway there, Sam nears the Weasel's pontoon. Feeling reckless and more than slightly drunk, he decides to stop off and perform a little maritime surgery. Despite the warnings, the Weasel is showing no signs of curbing his activities.

No time like the present to crank up the pressure, Sam thinks. While he searches in the bottom of his tinny for tools, a boat surfs in on a massive bow wave and almost crumples his boat.

“Need a hand, mate?” asks a knockabout Islander with a legendary thirst. He holds a stubby like he was born with one attached to his hand. Even in the dark, his face glows ruddily.

“Got a shifter on you, mate?”

Not caring that it's too early in the night for criminal deeds, they brazenly loosen a heap of new nuts and bolts. The Islander pockets them, knowing they'll come in handy one day. There is no sign of life from the house. They give the pontoon a shove then the Islander raises his beer in a toast and roars off, leaving Sam to tow it to a bank of mangroves. He ties it securely so there's no possibility a boat will bang into it in the dark. He heads home, giving the night sky a last look of appreciation.

A moment before the Weasel's house disappears from sight, he checks if any lights have come on. It's blacker than tar. All good.

 

Ettie reclines in softness with a blood temperature cognac held in the bowl of her hand. Fumes rise in dizzying spirals, tickling her nose, heightening her senses. She hears Marcus's footfalls as he approaches and swings her feet to the floor. He
lowers himself beside her, placing his liqueur on a small side table.

“No, no,” she says, resisting his attempt to lift her feet back to the sofa, afraid that he will find them unattractive.

“Chefs' hoofs wear scars like a map of their career,” he says. And he begins to rub her battle-worn toes. Ettie smiles inwardly. If anyone had told her that she'd be seduced by a simple foot massage, she would have laughed out loud. If only all men realised how utterly erotic kindness could be. If he asks her to sleep with him, she thinks she will say yes. At fifty-five, there's no point in wasting time. Coyness, anyway, can be mistaken for lack of interest. She'd hate to risk him thinking that.

In a while, he leads her by the hand to a bedroom that is mostly white. There are books stacked in mountains and, to Ettie's immense relief, no sign of a woman anywhere. Only feathery pillows and cool linen sheets that snap under the weight of their naked bodies.

“Your skin is like butter,” he says, his hand stroking her thighs.

She turns towards him, and without any rush they find ways to move together that allow each their small vanities and the frailties of their years.

 

Ettie is woken by the smell of baking when the sun is high enough for her to realise morning is well underway. She wraps herself in a sheet and stumbles into the kitchen, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Marcus greets her with a strong coffee, a plate of warm, sweet pastries and a kiss that makes her knees buckle.

“Kate has already opened the café,” he tells her. “I baked and delivered enough pastries for the breakfast rush. I have never needed much sleep. I hope that is acceptable to you.”

“I am never,
ever
, going to let you out of my sight,” she says. To her horror, she bursts into tears and blubs into his wide chest like a baby. He licks the tears off her face, takes her hand and leads her back to bed.

 

Two hours later, Ettie wanders along the ramp from the café pontoon wearing last night's dress, trailing a long red scarf, her face flushed and dreamy. Instead of the dull ache of aging (which she is so accustomed to she barely notices any more), she feels lush, ripe. Immortal. Everything around her suddenly looks deeply erotic, when yesterday it was just seagrass, oysters, the lapping sea.

“Slept in,” she says sheepishly. She looks down at her bare feet. “Sorry.”

Kate smiles. “Let's have a cuppa.”

The Weasel flies into a spitting rage when he finds his pontoon missing. He paces up and down his jetty, ranting, screaming, cursing. He is heard so clearly at the top of the Island that mums slam shut their windows to prevent their young children picking up any new and inappropriate words.

Passing by on the barge, Sam casually drops in to inform him that he's seen a pontoon washed up on a beach in a forest of mangroves east of Wineglass Bay.

“Stuck good and proper,” he says, shaking his head, like it is a fairdinkum tragedy. “Must've rammed in there on a high tide. You might want me to get rid of it for you before you cop a littering fine. Prefer payment in cash, if you don't mind.”

The Weasel throws a punch.

“Mate,” Sam says, blocking the move and twisting the Weasel's arm behind his back, “if you wanted someone else to tow it away, all you had to do was say so.” He lets go, turns on his heels, strides along the jetty and leaps onto the
Mary
Kay
which he'd left idling. “Full throttle. We're outta here.” The barge powers away. He orders the mutt to the bow, tells Jimmy to stay in the cabin.

The Weasel takes a minute to react, then he roars down the jetty like a feral pig.

Sam checks the distance between them. Eight feet and growing. Unless he's an Olympic long jumper (doubtful given his stumpy legs and egg-shaped gut) the Weasel is all bluff.

Sam relishes the feel of the smooth timber under his hands as he swings the helm and points the duckbill nose of the
Mary Kay
into the glittering open sea. A top day and it's only just begun.

 

Fast Freddy skips along the jetty, dodging through the early morning white-collar crowd and a few rheumy-eyed, Coke-clutching chippies still waiting to be ferried to their offshore jobs. Ettie sees him and waves from the door of The Briny, miming drinking a cup of coffee. He nods.

With summer hanging back like it is waiting for a deckle-edged invitation, Ettie reckons Freddy has a couple of merciful weeks left before the full-on party palaver begins. There are seasonal signs on the way, though. Pollen on the wind. Bleached skies. The racket of magpies with squawking babies. It won't be long, she thinks, before Freddy's chirp gets worn out by recalcitrant drunks on nights when the heat refuses to fade and the bays are furnace-hot along with everyone's tempers. On an impulse, she yanks down the plastic ribbons hanging from the doorway.

Fast Freddy pops up like an apparition on the other side. “Glad to see the last of them. Risked permanent blindness every time I walked in.”

“Useless things,” she says, crumpling them up and tossing them in the bin. “Meant to keep out the flies – except nobody told the bloody flies that. Coming off work, then?”

“One more pick-up and then I'm heading home. Just had a call – it's a doozy. A bloke spewing his guts on a yacht on the western shore of Cat Island needs rescuing. He's offered two hundred bucks if I deliver him from purgatory. A gift. And a good deed if I can find the boat. All I need is a double-shot espresso to carry me over the finish line.”

“Coming right up.”

“You're looking good, Ettie,” Freddy says, sensing a difference but unwilling to speculate what's caused it. Although like everyone else he's heard the rumour of a new romance in Ettie's life.

“We're nearly there with the café, Freddy. Kate and I have got the scars to prove it.” She holds up red and chapped hands, the fingernails ripped and ragged. Kate stands next to her, hands also raised for inspection.

“Honest work never hurt a soul, ladies. Some say it nourishes it.”

 

Five minutes after Freddy departs, the two Misses Skettle descend on the café in a head-spinning wave of Yardley's April Violets talcum powder. Their summer dresses are held tightly at the waist by wide red patent-leather belts. They step through the doorway and automatically reach
up sparrow hands to tweak their lilac hair into place. They pause, mid-stream, puzzled.

“Ah,” one says, approvingly, when they note the missing strips over the doorway. “Another of Bertie's health hazards hits the dust.”

“Aside from his coffee, of course,” says the other. “Good work!”

They place three antique biscuit tins in pristine condition on the counter. “We thought these might look pretty in the café.” Then they take off again like two pink flamingos on a mission, slap-banging into a portly Kingfish Bay sailor. His Coke-bottle glasses fly off his sunburned nose. His mate, a tow-haired Island photographer, is flung sideways into the wall.

“Step aside, young men,” says one Miss Skettle.

“Where are your manners?” admonishes the other.

And off they tootle, their rosy skirts afroth. Straight to the supermarket for the best-value red wine sturdy enough to hold up their much-loved, life-affirming spices, and stay fragrant during the application of a moderate amount of heat.

While his mate fossicks on the ground for his specs, the photographer sticks his head inside the café. “Any chance of strong, hot coffee? Feeling a bit dusty this morning.”

“Good sail last night?” Ettie asks, reaching for a large container of milk and filling a jug. It is the morning after the Stony Point twilight sail.

“No wind. Boring as batshit. Missed the start by three and a half minutes. My comrade,” he nods towards his mate outside, “was bent over the stern trying to count the legs on a jellyfish. He insists ten. It's definitely eight. Although
technically a jellyfish can have up to two hundred legs. Which are, technically again, tentacles not legs.”

“Hard one to check out,” Ettie says.

“Nah. It's all on the net. The real issue is how many
our
jellyfish has.” He waves Ettie forward. “Follow me.”

Without pausing to help the sailor still fumbling on the ground for his glasses, they pick their way through a few late commuters and early shoppers to a plain white car. The photographer pings open the boot, revealing a large, bulbous orange jellyfish floating in a tub of water.

“I'm taking it to my studio to photograph so that even he” – with a flick of his head towards his friend who is wiping clean his glasses on the bottom of his shirt – “will be satisfied.”

“What about an impartial opinion? I'd be happy to have a close look.”

“Won't do. I need irrefutable evidence or that stubborn, myopic layabout will never admit he's wrong.”

“Ah, cold hard facts,” Ettie says, realising it's a bet and money is at stake. She peers intently into the tub. “Do jellyfish have eyes? It's so weird, looking at a creature without being able to find its eyes.”

The photographer sighs. “How come everyone around here is a budding naturalist?”

“Have you got a lid for the tub? One sharp turn and your boot's going to flood.”

“Nothing important is ever gained without great sacrifice,” he says, with mock pomposity. “Don't mention it to my wife, though. It's her car.”

By late morning, while Ettie is off doing some personal shopping, the muffins are sold out and the number of notes in the till is increasingly heartening.

Kate mulls over whether it would be appropriate to ask Marcus if he would like a permanent space to sell his luscious pastries. Suitably signed, of course, and in a prominent position. She was a journalist and understands that linking his famous name to the café will bring in business. In the end, she decides it is a call that only Ettie can make.

A shadow falls across the scratched timber floorboards and she looks up.

“Freddy!” she says, pushing back her chair. “Didn't hear you come in. Those plastic strips were good for something, eh? Ettie's not here right now.”

Freddy, white-faced, trembling violently, stares silently at her.

“What's wrong?” Kate asks, gently taking his arm and leading him to her chair. “Are you sick? Or hurt?”

He waggles his head and opens his mouth. But whatever he is trying to say stays strangled in his throat.

“I'll call Sam, okay? Whatever it is, it will all be fine, Freddy. Give me a minute to call him. Hang in there.”

His shaggy head falls on his chest and stays there. Tears spill from his eyes and roll down his cheeks, catching on the grey stubble like pearls. He sucks in a breath and drags a hanky out of his pocket. He holds it under his nose, more to hide his face than to mop up.

Kate dials Sam, bringing Freddy a glass of water with the phone glued to her ear. Outside, the hum of traffic carries on the wind, waves smack against the pylons under the
floorboards. A car door slams. There's laughter. A shout. A baby bawls.

Freddy lifts his sad, crumpled face and blows his nose with a sound like a foghorn, just as Sam answers the phone.

 

Ettie returns on a wave of floating fabric, wearing a new flowery fuschia dress the Misses Skettle would definitely approve. She pirouettes in front of Kate, showing off, laughing. Feeling gorgeous.

She stops mid-circle, her skirts catching up a second later.

“Freddy?” she says, then looks towards Kate for a hint.

“I've called Sam,” she explains.

Freddy looks towards Ettie pathetically. She swiftly crosses to him. Wrapping her arms around his narrow shoulders, she leans her cheek against his, engulfing him in her softness, hoping the strong and steady beat of her heart will reassure him.

“What's happened, love? What's the matter?”

He swallows a gulp of air like it is solid. “Boag's dead,” he whispers, trembling hands clenched in his lap. “Nailed to that lone mangrove in Kingfish Bay. Like a … sacrifice.” The words come out in sharp little jerks and end with a whimper.

“Are you sure, Freddy? No mistake?” Kate asks.

He shakes his head.

“Oh Freddy,” Ettie says softly, rocking him like a child.

They hear the thrum of the
Mary Kay
then and feel the building shudder as the barge nudges against the deck. Kate pulls open the screen door and steps out as Sam walks towards her. “Where's Freddy? Any idea what's up?”

“It's not good, Sam. Where's Jimmy?”

“Gone off to find Boag. He disappeared after breakfast.”

“Oh my God.”

Inside the café Sam listens, his face expressionless. He leaves without a word, fists at his sides, his jaw bunched hard. Kate offers to go with him but he shakes his head and she backs away.

Meanwhile Ettie puts a mug of hot chocolate in front of Freddy. “Drink up, love. It'll do you good.” She takes his hand and wraps it around the handle.

“What if it's one of us that's done it?” he asks.

“Not a chance. We both know that for sure, my friend. Now drink, Freddy,” she says again and helps him to raise the steaming brew to his lips.

“Can't, Ettie. Sorry. It'll make me sick.”

“Sure, love.” She passes Kate the mug. “I'll take you home to tuck you in. You need to rest, and tonight I'll come back with some of my famous chicken soup that works better than penicillin. We'll all take care of you. You're a good man, Freddy.”

“Wish you'd all stop saying that,” he mumbles. “Once and for all, I wish you'd all stop saying that.”

“Okay, my friend. Sorry.”

“Gives me the shivers. Like I'm tempting fate.”

“Sure, Freddy.”

 

On the barge, Sam makes his way across a mirror-flat sea, hoping he'll find Freddy was suffering from an hallucination brought on by overtiredness at the end of a long nightshift.
Maybe he saw a branch snapped halfway and hanging like a dead thing. Or a shirt blown into the branches by the wind. It's easy to read things wrong if you're knackered.

When the single mangrove at the mouth of Kingfish Bay is close on portside, he sees a swarm of flies. A dirty black cloud of them. And another flying in. The frenzied whine is the kind that sends people mad. He wipes his face with the back of his hand, pretending the dampness is sweat. He slips into neutral and walks to the bow to drop the anchor. Then searches the deck for the shovel. Finds it buried in the dog's old blankets, like a kid's favourite toy. He yanks off his boots and socks and slides over the gunnel to wade ashore.

He'd expected retribution. He'd looked forward to it, if he was honest. But his big mistake – his freakin'
gargantuan
mistake – was to give the creepy little shit more credit than he deserved. He should have known the slimeball wouldn't have the decency or courage to go after someone his own size. But what kind of spineless low-life picks on a harmless mutt without a mean bone in his body?

He keeps his eyes focused on the clean, clear shallows all the way to the outer spread of the branches. The excited hum of feeding flies grows louder. He bends over and dry-retches. When he feels he can, he raises his eyes.

Before him, the dog is impaled with a plain old garden stake. Blunt-tipped and clumsy. It must have been an excruciating death. He charges forward with a roar, grabs the stake and hurls it aside to catch the stiff little body before it falls to the ground. He gently wraps Boag in his blankets and sits on the beach cradling the bundle in his lap. My fault, he thinks. My fault.