The Briny Café (5 page)

In the middle of a chilly November, when spring's hot spell looks like all the warm weather they're going to get, Ettie's phone rings. She strips off her rubber gloves and wipes the sweat from her forehead, answering the call with a combative voice. “This better be good,” she says straight off, “because it's taken me a year to get around to cleaning the windows and I've just hauled myself off a ladder to pick up the phone!”

“It's Kate. From Oyster Bay. Is this a bad time?”

“Thought you might be telemarketing, love. I try to shame them into hanging up first.”

“Oh I see. Anyway … I now have a kitchen table, two chairs and a new hotplate. And I wondered, would you like to come to dinner this Friday?”

Ettie doesn't hesitate. “Sounds perfect. What are you cooking?” The moment she asks what is a ritual offshore question meant to indicate interest and appreciation, Ettie worries she's come across as impolite or, worse, critical. Kicking herself for being tactless, she rushes outside to shoo away a flock of white cockatoos that regularly swoops onto her deck, screaming abuse, tearing at the timber window frames and
sidestepping along the rail like linedancers. The noise is so horrendous she almost misses Kate's reply.

“I hadn't thought that far ahead. Maybe a chop. A sausage as well.”

Ettie's lusty foodie heart shrivels. She is certain she won't find echoes of garlic, lemon and rosemary on the chop and that the sausage will be a basic
butcher's special
pork banger presented with a bottle of tomato sauce on the side. Fair enough fodder if you're in a rush, but not the stuff of traditional Cook's Basin entertaining where home cooks do their utmost to dish up top nosh because no one wants to risk losing a car space by going to a restaurant. The genuinely hopeless cooks – and Ettie wonders if Kate might turn out to be one of them – get lumbered with the dishes.

“How will you cook the sausages?” Ettie says, once again without thinking before she opens her mouth. Since turning fifty, it's become a habit that she can't seem to break.

“Grilled, maybe, like the chop,” Kate says, uncertainly.

“And then sliced into inch-long pieces and folded through a slow-cooked pot of spicy homemade baked beans with plenty of capsicum, carrots and onions?”

“Er …”

“I'm joking, love. But seriously, living offshore, you might want to learn a few basic recipes that work for two or fifty-two.”

“I can assure you, Ettie, I will
never
invite fifty-two people to dinner.”

“Ah but that was before you fell down the rabbit hole and your world turned upside down. Who knows what's ahead?” And then, because she can't help herself, Ettie plunges in
again. “How about I work out a list of ingredients and come over late in the afternoon to give you your first cooking lesson? Got plenty of wood set aside? We could have a go at Granny's scones if you can get the oven hot enough to fire a brick kiln. I'm thinking … a lamb curry?”

With a massive effort of self-control, she closes her mouth and cuts off the nervous babble.

“Curry. My favourite. You're sure?” Kate says after a long pause.

“Got a pencil? I'll tell you what we need.”

Two minutes later, with the phone back on its cradle, Ettie pulls on her rubber gloves to finish the windows, already planning a medium-hot lamb curry served amongst a gaudy array of tempting side dishes. It takes her mind off the grind.

She is certainly curious to see what Kate's done with the house. Curious to know how a city girl, living alone, is coping with the bloodcurdling night-sounds of the bush. Powerful owls on the hunt. Sneezing bandicoots, so human-like it's impossible not to imagine a stalker lurking in the darkness. The rhythmic thump of wallabies bashing through the bush. The isolation, too. So intense that it vibrates in the over-wrought pre-dawn hours when every tiny rustle feels full of deadly threat.

The dark side of Oyster Bay, where Kate lives without a soul in shouting distance, is no place for the faint-hearted.

 

Outside The Briny Café, which he feels has an even stronger than usual lean to the east, Sam Scully finds himself with time on his hands. He sweeps up leaves dropped
by a straggly paper bark and a stringy casuarina, both of them struggling to survive against the constant battering of sand, salt and the icy westerlies that hung around until the end of September this year. A stray tan mutt, with a bowling ball torso, a flattened snout and an authoritative rear end, glares at the fuzz on the end of the broom, snuffles and pounces.

“You're not helpin', mate,” Sam tells the dog, using the broom head to fend off the attack. The mutt responds with a tackle and locks on with a deep-throated rumble, savage now. Sam gives a hard yank.

“Give up, you mongrel,” he orders. The dog instantly drops the broom head and slinks away.

“No hard feelings, but jeez, lighten up.” He goes over to a tap and fills a dog bowl with fresh water. The mutt falls on it thirstily, drool flying in all directions.

Sam finishes his sweeping and the rest of the day stretches emptily in front of him. There's no cargo to pick up until the next high tide, which is late in the afternoon. No bugger has even rung up to have his mooring serviced to fill the gap. He's free as a bird.

He scans the Square. A pack of helmeted cyclists wearing tight black lycra and swigging water from designer bottles rest on the seawall like crows. There are a few tourists about but even though it's sunny, the weather is too cool for crowds. He's about to give up and head home when he spots Ettie struggling with a load of shopping bags. He sprints over and grabs them.

“Thanks, Sam,” she says, flexing her fingers. “The trek from the car park seems to be getting longer every day.”

“You're still a spring chicken and the answer to every man's dreams. Never forget it.”

“In
my
dreams.”

Sam leans Ettie's groceries against the leg of a picnic table that has the initials of three generations scratched into the wood and scatter-shot with birdshit. The mutt wanders up and stretches his back leg in a crooked arabesque.

Ettie yelps and snatches her shopping out of range. “Who owns this mangy mongrel?”

“Dunno. But he's definitely on borrowed time. How about a coffee? My shout.”

“You going to send out a warning?”

“Eh?”

“Moth plague when you open your wallet.”

“Easy on, Ettie, just tryin' to show a bit of dash around a lovely young woman. And that joke's older than time. Yes or no?”

“Why not? I'm game.” She flicks a look at the bike riders. “Bet every single one of them would have bought a coffee if it was even halfway drinkable. Bertie's doing himself out of easy profit. Too pig-headed to admit his brew stinks.”

“Bertie's never gonna change. Flat white, right? No sugar.”

She nods. “It's such a waste, though.”

Sam's eyes narrow as a boat flies through the moorings at high speed. “That freakin' weasel.”

“The creep,” Ettie adds, vehemently.

“Know him?”

“Arrived a few weeks ago. Bought the house next to Triangle Wharf. He hasn't quite cottoned on to the meaning of community spirit yet.”

“Not sure he's the type that ever will. Any idea what he does?”

“Nope. Lot of kids hang out in that fancy boatshed, though, and the whole Island is keeping an eye on him. He's dead shonky, if you ask me. I'm just not sure exactly
how
shonky.”

The wake from the boat pounds into the seawall like surf. The cyclists fly off their perch and rub their soaked backsides, looking over their shoulders to find out who's to blame. The boat is long gone. They drift back to their bikes, grumbling loudly.

“Well, he's a load short on manners,” Sam says.

“He's a deadset slimeball.” Ettie's face turns red.

“He make a pass or somethin', Ettie?” Sam teases.

“Don't be ridiculous. There's something missing in him. A link to the compassion part in his brain. He's cruel, maybe even sadistic.”

“Has he hurt you in any way?”

She smiles. “Nah. He wouldn't be breathing. It's just a feeling, like looking into his eyes and finding no one at home.”

“Well, you're better off keeping your distance. You want a burger? A sandwich? I'm feeling particularly generous today.”

“No. Just the coffee. I'm on the way home. I've had a full week of scrubbing very dirty houses. I want to sit and watch the clean blue ocean from my deck and maybe rack up a few z's.”

“Book publishing in a bit of a downturn?”

“Could call it that. If it ever had an upturn.”

“You're the best there is, Ettie. Remember that. When you draw a seagull, it's a seagull. Plain as day. Even to a kid who's
never seen one. You're an unsung genius, love.”

Ettie smiles ruefully. “Yeah. That's the problem. Unsung.”

 

Inside the café, Big Julie takes Sam's order. Infamous for low-cut blouses known to occasionally wreck a bloke's concentration, she leans forward on the counter provocatively and gives him a wink. “Nice work with the broom,” she says. “Couple more years and you'll be an expert.”

“I'm surrounded by critics. Where's Bertie?” Sam gives the café a quick squiz as though he might find the old bloke lurking in a dark corner. But there's only Fast Freddy skimming the headlines before he decides whether it's worth forking out for the newspaper.

“That lung of his is still playing games.”

“Bad?” Sam asks.

“Well, bad enough for him to see a doctor for the first time in a hundred years.”

Freddy looks up. “Aw, bugger. That's not good.”

“Makes you wonder if he's at death's door,” Sam quips.

Big Julie's face turns white. She hands Fast Freddy his coffee, thick and sweet the way he likes it. Freddy raises a thumb and leans across the counter to wipe a tear off her cheek.

“Steam,” she says, dragging her wrist over her face. “From the stupid bloody espresso machine that's never really worked properly in its lousy bloody life.”

Fast Freddy pats Big Julie's shoulder, his head bowed. Sam stares down at his scruffy boots.

The next day, on an unseasonally cool Friday afternoon, Ettie packs her waterproof bags and sets off, leaving enough time to call in on Frankie at the Oyster Bay boatshed, a grizzly bear of a man, who has more luck with engines than women. She wants him to fix her navigation lights, and if he has time check out what's making her engine sound worse than a sick kookaburra. She scans the shoreline for any sign of the creep next door. All clear. She almost skips the last few yards.

She dumps her bags on the end of the ferry wharf and, feeling as lithe as a gazelle, makes her way across a row of rocking tinnies to reach her own. The engine starts on the first pull. She swoops in to scoop up her supplies without slowing in case the boat stalls. She feels like singing, like anything is possible if lady luck looks her way. The old black dog that visits if she lets down her guard for too long is back in his kennel. For the time being at least.

 

Ettie is puzzled by Kate's renovations. She'd expected to see walls knocked out, a state-of-the-art kitchen and one of those fabulous no-glass bathrooms with sloping floors so the water
slides off into the drain without leaving stains. The kind that turn up in the glossy pages of home design magazines and make her spirit soar when she steps in to clean them. But while the house is undeniably transformed, it is essentially unchanged. It is still a dimly lit, turn-of-the-century cottage that's been shoved slightly off-kilter by the passage of time and the pummelling of storms straight off the Antarctic.

She wonders if Kate's insistence on keeping the past intact shows a lack of confidence, a lack of imagination or a lack of funds. Or maybe she just wants to preserve a slice of Cook's Basin history.

She murmurs quiet approval after a tour and pats the young woman on the back in congratulation. It is charming, after all. And she gets a full score card for bringing the project in on time and on budget – a rare offshore feat. Must have picked up a few clues from interviewing all those tycoons.

“So, you're a minimalist,” she says, indicating the almost bare room.

“Not really. I don't want stuff to get ruined if the chippies have to come back with sanders and grinders or paint and varnish.”

“Ah.”

“Spills on sofas are expensive to remove,” Kate adds, sounding slightly defensive.

“Pays to be careful, huh?”

“Watch the pennies and the pounds take care of themselves.”

“So young and yet so wise. Have you met your neighbour up the hill yet?” Ettie asks, setting out her supplies on the newly sanded and varnished kitchen bench.

“I've caught a glimpse of him a couple of times. He has a
way of melting into the landscape. There one second, gone the next. He's definitely sad, not scary. Like he's been dealt some awful blow and never recovered.” Kate shrugs. “I'm guessing, though. We've never exchanged a word. One day I'll get him to talk to me about surviving in a tough environment. Maybe I'll write a story about him.”

Ettie can't think of a worse idea. She once tried to help the old codger haul his shopping all the way up to his shack on a day so hot even the cockatoos were slumped. He'd hissed at her so viciously she'd almost toppled backwards into the water in fright.

“Nobody knows much about him. Weird when you think about it, 'cause around here there are very few secrets.”

“He's just an old man who prefers his own company. When I was a kid growing up in a small country town, we called loners like him hermits, not nutters. In India, people believe they're deeply spiritual and look after them. It all depends on your culture.”

“Well, he's colourful, anyway.” Ettie takes a deep breath and rubs her hands together. “Okay, the curry is done and only has to be warmed. We'll make the side dishes together and cook the rice when we're ready to eat. You want to fire up that gorgeous old stove to make some scones?”

Kate shakes her head. “Sorry. Still got problems with the chimney. Maybe next time.”

They work side by side for the next hour. Ettie explains why a tomato is better diced instead of sliced for a relish. Why bananas should be cut as late as possible so they don't go brown – even when they're doused in lemon juice. She shows Kate how to pinch off parsley leaves. How to grind
spices in a pestle and mortar to bring out their flavours. How to use a light hand when you stir so the food doesn't bruise or break. She finds a collection of colourful little dishes in a cupboard and raises her eyebrows in a question.

“Mementoes,” Kate explains, “from assignments in different parts of the world.”

“I've always wanted to travel,” Ettie sighs, lining them up on the bench and asking for the origins of each one.

“Turkey,” Kate says, pointing. “Morocco, Paris, Peru, Italy, Spain and good old Australia.”

“The only travelling I've done was to Venice on my honeymoon,” Ettie confesses. “It was so exotic to a plain suburbanite like me. Gondoliers singing, a string quartet in a tucked away church. Water and boats everywhere. I sometimes wonder if that's why Cook's Basin lured me in so easily. It reminded me of the most glorious two weeks of my life.” Ettie's thoughts turn inward, stilling her hands as she remembers the glitter of the sun on the Grand Canal, the swoop of swifts chasing mosquitoes at sunset, the chiming of bells from churches all over the island. Mostly, though, she recalls the wild headiness, the sense of immortality and endless possibilities of being madly in love. The innocence of believing that vows were meant to last forever. She pulls herself back to the present abruptly, veering away from the memory of a miscarriage three months later that went so horribly wrong the possibility of children was wiped out forever. But she can't help wondering, as she has over and over, whether her marriage would have worked out differently if she'd been able to have a family. She shakes her head and picks up her knife again. “Tell me about your travels,”
she says, firmly closing the door on the past to tamp down self-pity.

Kate begins to open up a little then, talking about the giddy thrill of reinventing herself in cities that smelt of cumin; or spurted steam from sidewalks; or had stone angels toppling from rooftops. How she loved laying claim to a different personality to suit every new town.

Ettie understood that impulse. Hadn't she behaved the same way after her divorce? Playing the field, hunting for the excitement her husband said he couldn't live without. Only drawing the line when his friends turned up clutching bunches of service station flowers and bottles of cheap champagne like they were doing her a huge favour.
Thought you might be lonely
, they said, reading from the same script. It happened so often she stopped being polite.

Ettie grins. “So which Kate am I looking at now?”

Kate smiles shyly. “As close as it gets to the real one. As far as I know, anyway.”

 

The kitchen is unheated and the night is cold. So they sit on plain white cushions on polished floorboards, in an essentially bare sitting room. One on each side of the large stone fireplace where a good blaze takes the chill off the room.

They tuck into a rogan josh that's more fiery than Ettie intended. “Chilli is hard to judge,” she apologises. “The heat can sometimes depend on the time of year it is picked.” Within reaching distance, side dishes in rainbow colours cover a glass-topped coffee table. Mango chutney. Tomato and red onion splashed with paprika and white vinegar. Banana and
coconut drizzled with lemon juice. Yoghurt and cucumber spiked with mint. Eggplant and chilli fragrant with garlic. Peanuts stand alone. Pineapple teams with crystallised ginger.

“Traditional and untraditional accompaniments,” Ettie explains, pointing out which is which. “Restraint has never been my strongest suit.”

Over one of the smallest sound systems Ettie's ever seen, Chris Isaak sings smoothly about
tomorrow never coming
. Oldies' music, not the kind she expected to hear from a gung-ho reporter who must be at least twenty-five years her junior.

“Everyone wants to know how you managed to keep the chippies on site,” Ettie says, spooning more rice into her bowl.

Kate looks up from her curry, surprised. “What do you mean?”

“Well, love, one day on, two days off, that's how most jobs are done around here.”

“Really?”

“Word is you don't even feed and water them. There must be some secret.”

Kate puts her bowl on a scrubbed stone hearth. She reaches into a basket filled with discarded builder's timber and throws a piece on the fire. Hot spots reflect off the bare boards, shadows dance on the freshly whitewashed walls. “If there is, it escapes me. All I do is clean up after they leave and get things set up so there's no mucking about the next day.”

Ettie ladles curry sauce over her rice. “That must be it, then. They don't have to think hard first thing in the morning. Takes the sting out of their hangovers.”

“Oh and I paid them at the end of every day's work. Cash in hand.”

“Ah.” Ettie nods. No waiting until the end of the job for their money. A brilliant strategy? Or dumb luck? She eventually decides Kate has the instincts of a born entrepreneur.

The music comes to a stop. Outside, a bullet of cold air whips down the gully. It tweaks the surface of the bay but can't find its way past the newly applied mortar and the tightly puttied windows. The room stays cosy and warm. Ettie goes over and crouches in front of a basket filled with CDs. She finds Frank Sinatra, another surprise. What strange forces, beyond a shocker mother, have shaped this young woman?

“You ever feel afraid here?” she asks, handing Kate the CD.

“Should I?” Kate gets up to replace Isaak with Sinatra. She presses the play button and Frank's voice spills over them warmly.

“No, of course not. The previous owner, the one before you, it was ‘Old Timer's' that got him. His daughter went on with all that ghost mumbo jumbo to hide the fact that he was losing his mind.”

“The ghost didn't send him mad then?” Kate says with a wry smile.

Ettie shakes her head, wishing she hadn't mentioned it. She collects their empty plates but Kate immediately takes them out of her hands and carries them into the kitchen. Ettie hears a tap run. She follows, unable to sit idly when someone is working. She grabs a spotless ironed tea towel when she notices there's no dishwasher.

“By the way, my holidays are over and I'll be gone for a few days from Monday,” Kate says. “An assignment in New
York. I was hoping – if you're passing – that you could keep an eye on the house.”

“New York!” Ettie almost drops the bowl she's drying.

“Trust me, it's not as exciting as it sounds.”

“You mean nowhere near as exciting as a tinny ride to the Spit to clean a house trashed by three teenage boys who think shoving all their rotten food under the bed constitutes a tidy up? That's my day on Monday while you're sitting in business class sipping champagne.” She hears the bitterness, tinged with despair, and goes quiet.

“You want to know how it really works?” Kate blurts, rushing on without waiting for an answer. “Right. For a start, scrap business class. It's cattle car all the way. It will take thirty-six hours to make it from my front door to my appointment. I will get forty-five minutes to do an
in-depth
interview that should take a week. I will return to my hotel room and spend the next twenty-four hours hunched over a computer positioning key points in a stranger's life until they make some sense. I will then order food from room service, grab whatever sleep I can and make my way back to the airport the next day. No time for museums, art galleries, a Broadway show, or even a quick look in the windows at Tiffany's. By the time I pitch up back at the office, the story will be laid out, subbed and hitting the presses. Already yesterday's news.” Kate blushes and swallows whatever she is about to say with an apologetic smile. “Bit of a rant there. Sorry.”

Ettie finishes drying the second bowl and stacks it neatly inside the other one. “If you want the truth, Kate, it sounds pretty amazing from my side of the fence. All jobs are hard yakka. That's why you get paid to do them.”

“I'm not afraid of work. But I'm talking to a twenty-two-year-old brat who's just inherited a business empire without lifting a finger to earn it. He's famous for wild partying, fast cars and a very short attention span. I'm supposed to believe him when he tells me – as I know he will – that he's a changed man and looking forward to the hard work ahead of him to preserve the integrity of his father's legacy and the wellbeing of his employees. In fact, he and I both know he will sell to a corporate raider in the blink of an eye and float off to some hedonistic paradise without a second's thought for his father or the people who worked hard to help build the company.”

“Ah,” Ettie says, getting it at last. “It's the lies that are wearing you out.”

“All I get is spin,” Kate says, pulling the plug out of the sink. “One day, I'll hear the truth and I won't be able to recognise it and that's just plain scary.” She uses the bottom of Ettie's cloth to dry her hands as water glugs down the drain hole. “You know, when I was a young cadet on a daily newspaper I used to pity the subs who'd been there for years. I was told they'd been legends in their day. To me they just seemed like cynical old men hanging out for their lunchtime beers. But now I worry there's a very real possibility that I could turn into them.”

“So that's why you're in Cook's Basin. You're looking for a bit of sanity, which is a bit weird if you don't mind me saying so, 'cause most of the population thinks you've got to be nuts to live here.”

Kate laughs. “Maybe my mother is right, then, and I have lost the plot.”

“Or maybe you're just beginning to find it,” Ettie says gently.