The Briny Café (11 page)

Ettie stares at the water glittering through the gaps in the decking. Presses her lips together. No more babbling, not this time. The sun beats down on the back of her neck. The hot sweat of disappointment trickles down her spine. Without realising what she's doing, she holds her work-red hands out in front of her to count the oven burns down her arms, knowing they will soon turn into thin white scars. Like rites of passage.

Well, she thinks realistically, resigned to the fact that Kate is going to turn her down, the café probably isn't everyone's idea of the Holy Grail. She surveys the rotting deck, junky tables and chairs. Inside there's the mouldy, defeated kitchen. Singed. Chipped. Buckled. Shadowy with the erosion of time, wear and neglect. When she stacks it up against a top job and international travel, it probably looks like a third-world rat-hole. But it's
her
rat-hole, and therefore
her
Taj Mahal.

She is so lost in her dreams that she gives a start when she hears Kate's voice.

“It's a big project. Massive. Do you have any idea how much money it's going to take to bring the café up to scratch?
Right now, it would only take one wrong move with the health department and you'd be shut down overnight.”

“I will not, I absolutely will not, let an opportunity like this pass by because I don't have the guts to have a go,” Ettie says vehemently. “Go home and think about it. If you feel the same way tomorrow, I'll look around for someone else. I thought of you first because I felt this was the answer to your prayers.” Her voice softens. “Your heart's here, Kate. I heard it in your voice the first time I met you. The volume's been turned down, you said. I've never forgotten it. It takes most people years to get what Cook's Basin is all about, and it hit you like an epiphany in ten seconds flat.”

Kate's face reddens. “It's a wonderful offer. I mean it.”

“The café's a way out, Kate. What's holding you back?”

“I understand words, facts. When people like me leap from mainstream journalism we go into public relations or some other media-related career. God, sometimes even politics.”

“Public relations? Politics? I'm not an expert, but if
the
spin was wearing you out before, you'd be headed for an even bigger wipe-out.”

“I suppose I think you'd do better with a gung-ho, cashed-up entrepreneur who understands the pitfalls of the restaurant business. I don't want to let you down, Ettie. I'm afraid that I will.”

Ettie puts her strong arms around Kate's shoulders. “If I thought there was a chance of that, I wouldn't have asked you. I'm not a fool. Or a martyr. You're good at planning, Kate. You did a treat with your own house. Handled the council, worked out the tides, kept the blokes on site when they usually bugger off to other jobs. You came in under-budget when
most offshore projects blow their budgets to smithereens. Don't look at me like that. You think we didn't talk about you when you first arrived? We didn't gossip about much else. Only eased up when Jack the Bookie creamed the pot. A month was the longest shot anyone gave you. We all thought you'd turn tail after the first bad storm.”

“Who gave me a month?” Kate asks, curious.

“Freddy. He's always had more faith in you than the rest of us.”

“God, I'm so sorry, Ettie. I'm really jet-lagged. Having trouble getting my head around so many changes so fast. It's all a bit much. Can you wait until tomorrow for an answer?”

“Sure,” Ettie says, flatly. Wondering how an offer that was meant to be magnificent, magnanimous and utterly perfect suddenly has the stench of defeat about it.

 

Out in the Square, Sam sees the two women walk away from the deck and he dashes inside the café. He stops short when he sees Ettie's expressionless face. He shakes his head, sadly. “Decided to hang around for the celebration,” he says. “Got that arse-up. See you, Ettie. I'll call you tonight. We can discuss a new plan of action.” He stomps out the door giving it an almighty slam.

Kate flies after him. “You want to explain that look?” she asks, grabbing his shoulder.

He removes her hand. “Didn't figure you for a woman with the heart of a soft-boiled egg. What's your problem? Café not fancy enough for you?”

“
Failure
,” she hisses. “That's the bloody problem. What if I
fail Ettie and we lose our shirts and we're back to square one? We'd have nothing but the gutter to look forward to.”

“Gutter! What d'ya mean gutter? No one's asking you to do it hard, mate. Bertie made a good living. With Ettie in control, it's a licence to print money. I thought you had a bit of guts the other day in the storm. Turns out you're custard through to the bone!”

Kate snatches hold of a corner of his shirt, then drops it, feeling foolish.

He stops and, unaware he's doing it, scratches under his shirt. “You know how I came to be on the barge? Took a risk, Kate. Took a risk because I was tired of some other bastard calling the shots when it was always my neck on the line.”

He leaves her and stomps along the unevenly planked jetty, slapping a greasy hat on his head. The barrel-chested mongrel follows at a full trot, on a mission, and marches to the bow where he sits with his nose pointed into the wind.

“What if it doesn't work?” she calls out.

Sam bends to untie the ropes. A man born with salt in his lungs, the sea under his feet. In tune with his barge. He steps into the cabin, as though he hasn't heard her. Then he leans his close-cropped head out the door, a hand on the helm. “It'll work, Kate. One step at a time. It's like any problem. You wear it away.”

She watches the beamy
Mary Kay
disappear into the distance, the crane cracked in the middle like an elbow.

“You got the account books here, Ettie?” she says furiously when she returns to the café. “I need to know exactly what this leaning pile of driftwood can do.”

Sam and the mutt set a sedate course on the
Mary Kay
to service two moorings on the eastern side of Kingfish Bay. They cross water where the sun plays tunes and high on the hills the new growth on the eucalypts is the colour of limes. Sam rips off his windcheater. It's gearing up to be a spectacular day. He hopes it's a good omen for Ettie. If ever a woman has earned a bit of luck, she has, he thinks. Although Freddy would call it karma. Do good and good comes back to you.

He looks down at the dog, no definable breed, sitting to attention at his feet: “You're on trial, you miserable mutt. Behave yourself or I'll tip you overboard and not even Ettie will be able to save you.” The dog's ratty tail thumps loudly on the timber deck. “And stop dribbling, it's indecent,” he adds, scratching under the dog's chin where the fur feels softer than silk.

Sam finds the moorings easily enough in a pool of timber boats. Putt-putts graceful as swans, homey cabin cruisers, elegant gentlemen's launches. Every plank gently hand-bent and whittled to fit as snugly on the ribs as feathers on a bird. Each one a work of art that peeling paint and rust stains fail to disguise. His own barge, a concerto of spotted gum, huon, jarrah and cypress pine takes more looking after than a new relationship. She's a lifetime commitment. But of the kind that never falters.

He gets down to business on the first mooring, chipping away cunjevoi from the rope. The mutt suddenly finds the shovel offensive and crawls forward, growling.

“We've had this conversation before, mate. Same as the broom. Off you go.”

The mutt locks jaws on the wood and shakes it like a dead rat.

“If that shovel goes overboard, you dumb mutt, so will you. Take my word for it.” The dog slinks off to a shady spot under the curved eave of the cabin to keep a watchful eye. “Dumb mutt,” Sam says out loud. Then figures it's time he has a name. Ponzer. Pouncer. Bowler. Bailer. Boag.

“Yeah,” he decides. “Boag. After my favourite frigid ale.” He scruffs the mutt. The dog snuffles his hand. “It doesn't mean you're on board for keeps, mate, so don't go getting any ideas like that. It's just until I find a proper home for you.”

On the bow, the newly christened Boag sits solidly, starting to look more like a bo's'n than a deckhand. Maybe there's a bit of class in him after all, Sam decides.

 

Kate sits at a small round table tucked away in a dark corner of the café, checking Bertie's figures. The Briny perches on a financial razor-edge from year to year, decade to decade. Never quite toppling into bankruptcy but close enough to seriously test the faint-hearted. There's a clear pattern of summer profit and winter loss.

“This the real balance sheet, Ettie? Or the cooked books Bertie sent to the tax department?”

“Bertie didn't have a high opinion of paying tax. Loathed banks even more. He told me so with a wink and a nudge. I'm sure there's a fair bit of give, all his way.”

“Phew. Because this wouldn't keep you and me in loo paper.”

Ettie places a hand on Kate's shoulder. “You don't have to do this now. You're tired. Think about it overnight. Or just say no. Walk away.”

Kate puts down her pencil and stacks the ledgers in a neat pile. “Hope I'm not being rude, Ettie, but where'd you get the money to buy The Briny? You've always lived so …”

“Hand to mouth?”

“Frugally.”

“My mother died when I was twelve and she left me a small amount that stayed in the bank, quietly growing. It was my emergency money. I never risked a cent. It's the only security I've ever had.”

“This is an all or nothing bet, Ettie. You must know that.”

“Yep. And just so you understand, it's taken every penny I've got. I'm fifty-five years old. Almost too old for risks. But it's now or never. The best I can hope for is fair recompense for hard work. That's the goal.”

“I'm curious … Why do you think Bertie let you have the place? The man seems to live for profit. He could have put it on the market and made a killing.”

Ettie smiles, like it's a no-brainer. “He loves every warped board, cracked window and leaning pylon and he doesn't want anyone to pull it down while he isn't looking. He also knows this stack of rotting timber means as much to me as it does to him. That it's integral to the Cook's Basin community. He doesn't need money any more. He needs to feel good about himself.”

Kate taps the end of a pencil against her mouth. “I might as well put every card on the table from the start. I have some money – I sold my city terrace for a good profit and bought
cheap in Cook's Basin – but I don't have nearly enough to turn The Briny into a swish café.”

Ettie laughs. “Swish? The Briny? The community would never let us strip away the character. There'd be a blockade before one plank was removed. Seriously, though, we'll go broke if we aim for swish. What I have in mind is a good clean-up, and a slow and gentle resurrection.”

Kate turns back to the dusty account books with curling pages and the faint whiff of mould. She finds a blank piece of paper and draws a line down the middle. At the top of one column she writes
Urgent
; on the other she pencils
Essential.

 

Late in the afternoon, Sam makes a cuppa and sips it on the deck of the barge. Boat traffic whizzes past and he wonders, not for the first time, what drives a woman like Kate. The café is the chance of a lifetime. If he weren't fully engaged with the lovely
Mary Kay
, he'd be beating down Ettie's door and begging to be involved.

Life is all about observation and then creating opportunities, he thinks. See a problem. Fix it. Hardly rocket science. The Misses Skettle, he reckons, have it sorted. Do your best, lend a hand, live and let live, they advised him when he was sixteen years old and faced with fending for himself. Simple as …

He straightens up, tosses the dregs over the side. Boag catches his uneasiness and jumps out of his basket. The Weasel roars past in his spiffy white boat, flat out, sunlight splintering off the chrome. He's dead meat, Sam thinks. Not literally, of course. There was a law against that, and rightly so. Otherwise
there'd be bodies floating all over the bays. But where the hell has the bloke materialised from? It beggars belief that he thinks he can swan into Cook's Basin and ride roughshod over local life. He sighs. Which he's aware he's been doing quite a lot of lately. He heads for the Spit. See a problem. Wear it away. His list of possible partners for Ettie burns a hole in his pocket. He'll deal with the Weasel problem later.

 

The fly-specked
Closed
sign is still firmly in place when Sam rocks up at the café in the early evening. He peers through the newly cleaned glass and can just make out Ettie wiping down a soft-drink fridge in the far corner. A beam of daylight shoots through a small hole in the wall and lands on her head. He knocks lightly.