The Briny Café (19 page)

“Might have left me run too late for the Pearly Gates.”

“Never, Bertie.”

“So what do you say? Are we on?”

“Suits me, love,” she says, with a small hiccup.

Content, Bertie sips his coffee. Then looks down at his cup and grimaces. “Girly stuff.”

Ettie pulls up a chair next to the old man and lays her hand on a thigh as thin as a wooden spoon. “Better pass on the secret recipe, then,” she teases.

“I mean it, Ettie. About the wedding. Can I leave it to you? A dying man's wishes.”

Ettie nods.

“I'd expect a good discount. Seein' as how I gave you the
place for a song.” The old glint is back in his eye. He sits up a little straighter.

Kate jumps in. “For you, Bertie? Double the normal rate, okay?” she says with a smile.

“Hard to get good help, isn't it, Ettie? Always has been.” He sounds breathless. He takes a moment to steady himself, his hand on his chest like he's holding his heart in place. “Business all done for the day?” His eyes seek out Big Julie, who appears from behind the counter, her cheeks wet.

“Sure, Bertie. All done. Let's go home, shall we?”

“Yeah. Got a few weddin' invitations to send out.”

“Leave it to us, Bertie,” Ettie says, her arm through his to stop him tipping off his chair. “We'll get Julie in for a meeting. Sort the lot.”

The old man shuffles outside, a woman holding each arm. In the sunlight he looks transparent. Light enough to be carried off in a single puff of wind.

When Ettie comes back, she gives Kate a strange look. “Why'd you make a joke of the price? I would have done the wedding for nothing.”

“He was testing you, Ettie. Making sure you kept your heart out of the business.”

“Not sure about that, Kate.”

“Trust me on this. Okay?”

 

Half an hour later, the storm hits. The bay is churning, yachts strain on their moorings, and halyards clang like church bells. The roar of the wind in the trees is like a stampede. Sporadic rain clatters on the tin roof of the café
like stilettos on a tile floor. The first flash of lightning is a long, serrated wire that explodes like a cracker. The sky goes black. A couple of tinnies, outboards whining, their drivers hunkered low, are lifted high on the waves and crash down hard on a volatile sea. The women rush to secure the café.

Out of the gloom the
Mary Kay
appears. Sam nurses the barge alongside. Jimmy, in faithful attendance, expertly ties up.

The four of them dash to stack tables, chairs and umbrellas out of the way of a wind that Sam says is tipped to gust up to forty knots. He tells Kate he's going to swing her tinny around, nose to the wind.

“Why?”

“So the waves crash over the bow and not the engine. Try trusting me for a moment, why don't you? You might learn a trick or two.”

“I'll do it. You stay here.”

He strides across the deck and yanks her arm, pulling her back from the ramp. “I am not going to risk the
Mary Kay
to rescue you this time. Either let me do it, or kiss goodbye to your boat. Your freaking call.”

“Fine. You do it then. I'd hate to get in your way.”

Jeez. He unlashes the ropes, reverses at speed, keeping away from the rocks. One day, he'll learn to keep his trap shut and let her see how she manages with less know-how on the water than Jimmy's got in his little finger. He swings the boat in a wide circle, surfs a wave to the dock, ties up and kills the engine. He marches up the ramp as a gust knocks him sideways.

Kate waits for him at the top. “Thanks,” she says, ungraciously.

“You're welcome,” he responds, not meaning it.

When the furniture is tied down, they take shelter inside the café. Lightning strobes. Thunder rumbles, full of promise. They wait for a deluge that will soak the ground and raise the drooping heads of trees that have struggled through an almost bone-dry spring. The drops are big but they fall from the sky like a handful of marbles, not enough to wet the ground. They check the horizon for the orange glow of bushfires. One lightning strike and the tinder-dry National Park will explode.

“This'll get everyone off their backsides to check their water pumps and fire hoses instead of waiting till the flames are close enough to barbecue their sausages,” Sam says.

“That's a bit unkind,” Kate snaps, still angry.

“I've lived through four big blazes, mate, and there's nothing uglier if you're unprepared.”

“Oh of course. I forgot. You're a man of vast experience. Always the expert.”

He bites his tongue as they troop upstairs single-file to watch the progress of the storm from Ettie's apartment. Sam, who hasn't seen it since the furniture arrived, glances around and whistles. “Nice work. You've made it look great, Ettie. And Jimmy, you did a good paint job. Proud of you.”

“Kate unpacked and arranged the furniture,” Ettie says. “It's all her doing.”

“So, you finally found something she's good at, eh?” Sam marches past Kate to the deck and checks the horizon.

Kate glares after him. He doesn't flinch.

“I'll make a cuppa while the storm wears itself out,” Ettie says, hurrying off. Ego and pride, she thinks. Thrilled that she and Marcus are beyond caring about either.

 

Friday – the day before the official reopening of The Briny Café
–
is bedlam. The rush is on to finesse every last detail. Sam makes good an early promise and turns up not long after dawn with a new pontoon on permanent loan from Frankie. For a rental fee of one (large) chocolate cake a week.

Kate arrives with a tub of beeswax to polish shelves that are filling with preserves, jams and fiery curry pastes made by the best local cooks. Ettie has five pots on the go, as well as three mixing bowls, and the oven is chockers with the sweet little pick-me-ups she is so fond of. The café fridges fill with deliveries of fresh ingredients for Ettie to conjure her culinary magic.

Out of the blue, Ettie announces she's terrified that if a customer's first experience is ordinary, it will hurtle them towards bankruptcy. There are no second chances in the hospitality industry where word-of-mouth makes or breaks, she says. They must get it right first time or they will go under. Kate has never seen her so flustered.

 

Around nine o'clock, Jimmy arrives at the café at a pace so sedate Sam is prompted to slap him on the back in praise. The kid blushes and his skin clashes violently with his carrot hair.

Ettie wanders onto the deck to tell them that while her cakes are baking, she'll cook a good healthy breakfast that will keep them going all day.

“A few mushies on toast'll do, love. That'd be tops,” Sam insists.

Ten minutes later two plates, piled high with eggs, bacon, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms topped with spinach and drizzled with a homemade tomato sauce spiked with the flavour of grilled capsicum, are ready. Kate grabs them and pushes open the flywire door with her foot. “Come and get it,” she calls.

Sam's eyes light up. “A couple of slices of toast would have done. Ettie can't help herself,” he says, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. Eggs just how he likes them, firm at the edges, runny yolks. The tomato is cooked through and looks sweet as a watermelon. The bacon is crisp but not burnt. And the mushrooms? Pan-fried so hot they didn't get a chance to turn soft and wet.

“You complaining?” Kate asks.

“She's the only woman in the world who could get me to eat spinach.” He pats Kate's backside absently and pulls a list of jobs for the day from his pocket.

Kate pauses at the door, which no longer squeaks. “Sam,” she says sweetly. “If you ever pat my backside again without a personal invitation, I'll knock your head off. Do I make myself clear?”

“Eh?”

The door slams behind her.

 

Mid-morning, the chef arrives with a massive bouquet of pink Oriental lilies, trimmed of their lower leaves and messy gold stamens, and arranged in exactly the right size vase to fit
at the far end of the cake display fridge. He puts them in place without consulting Ettie and she feels a niggle of uncertainty. Perhaps she's not the main attraction after all. Maybe he harbours desires to muscle in on her territory.

“I was unable to personally deliver them to your home, Ettie, because I have no idea where you live,” Marcus explains. “Please forgive.”

“Ah,” she says with relief. “I'm about to have a coffee. Like one? I've made a little biscuity ginger cake. Almonds on top. We can take it upstairs. That's where I live. Just moved in.”

His face lights up. Ettie goes ahead, her hips swaying in a way she hopes lifts his spirits. In the privacy of her apartment, he reaches for her with a hunger that a small piece of ginger cake could never appease. She falls into his arms with a sigh.

Later, she asks if he would like her to set aside a space in the café where he could sell his chocolates, or pastries, or whatever. She would have to discuss it with Kate, of course.

The chef takes a long time to answer. “Why are you inviting me?” he says, his velvety voice unusually tight.

“Well, we are asking the best local cooks and it would be rude not to include you.”

“Ah. So you are being diplomatic, only. You do not want my name?”

Ettie is appalled. “Good God, no! This is
our
café,
our
triumph or disaster, whatever it turns out to be.”

The chef's brow clears. “I was so afraid. The fame. If that was all that attracted you.”

“And I wondered, I must admit, if it was the café that really tempted you.”

“So we are both uncertain, then, in our different ways.”

“It's just … I am hardly a trophy,” Ettie says, softly.

“No,” he replies.

Ettie's heart almost stops.

“You are a gift,” he says, finding the right word at last. Unaware she has just died a small death at his hands.

“Oh! Your coffee, the ginger cake,” she says, making a slight move to go and get them.

“I am finished with being a professional chef, Ettie,” Marcus says. “Cooking for a fundraiser, yes. Creating small delicacies for us to share in bed, yes. Running a café, no. My ambitions now are selfish. I must tell you all this because it is the truth.” He speaks the words gently but passionately. “I wish to read books that take me on journeys of the mind and spirit. To go fishing in the light of dawn. To wake in the morning and make buttery pastries for a beautiful woman. To seize not just each day but each moment, because I have reached the age when there is far more time behind than ahead. But I must tell you this, too, because it is true and I am a man of my word. If you ever need my help, you have only to ask and I will don my toque and stand beside you. For you, I will go into battle once more. But Ettie, most of all, I wish to love and to be loved in return.” There are two deep furrows between his brows. A query in his soft brown eyes. “Is this acceptable to you?” he asks, deeply serious.

“Oh my dear,” she whispers.

“I was prepared to find my way alone. But you were a strike from lightning. With you, I am more alive.”

“Chemistry,” she murmurs, her mouth close to his. “It's all about chemistry.”

The grand reopening to celebrate the fact that The Briny is back in full business takes place on a balmy, cloudless day with a lightly perfumed breeze wafting south from the tropics.

Ettie is calm and splendid in full chef regalia: checked trousers, white double-breasted jacket, black apron to her knees, a cloth over one shoulder. Her hair is tied back and tucked under a flaming orange bandana with tiny round mirrors sewn on. She pipes passionfruit cream into the scooped out hollows of lemon cupcakes. When she replaces their lids they look like wedding-day millinery.

Kate, with a navy-and-white butcher's apron over her blue jeans, goes outside with a cloth to wipe the night dew from deck rails, seats and tables. She straightens furniture, fills salt and pepper shakers, sweeps the deck and checks the opening balance on the till for the third time.

“Ready, set, go,” says Ettie, without looking up from her cakes.

Kate flicks the sign from
Closed
to
Open
at 6.30 a.m. on the dot. The repaired door folds against the weathered timber wall, although flecks of paint still flake and puddle at the base. She hooks it in place with a shiny new latch and drags a blackboard outside that announces the café is open for business.
Free coffee, today only
, she adds in red chalk, to lure customers and give the day a sense of festivity.

They have agreed that Kate makes a fine pot of tea and Ettie is the queen of coffee. Kate will serve pre-prepared food. Ettie will do the cooking. Kate is the toast chef – Turkish, raisin, sourdough or ciabatta. Banana bread also falls into the toast category but involves a different process. It must be seared on a flat hotplate until it forms a crisp skin and is warm, but not red-hot, all the way through. Banana bread, Kate learns, is harder to get right than it appears.

Ettie has repeatedly told Kate that there is no time for mistakes, which, in any case, are expensive and wasteful. If she is unsure, she must ask questions. There can be no winging it with fingers crossed. Consumers are quick to judge and slow to forgive.

“Tourists, I mean. Offshorers will let us know if we've stuffed up and order us to have another go.” Ettie wipes down her workplace and checks the clock on the wall. “Time to make the sandwiches, Kate.”

At 6.45, their first (official) customer, a middle-aged bloke on his morning walk, strolls through the door. Kate steps up to the counter and takes his order for poached eggs, bacon (soft not crisp), sourdough toast, butter on the side. Coffee with a double shot. She clips the list to a rack above the grill. Ettie is already cracking two eggs into ramekins with a small
amount of water in the bottom, ready for the microwave. She watches the seconds ticking down, no longer equating them – as she once did – with her future drizzling away in tiny electronic increments. He selects a newspaper.

“Twelve dollars and fifty cents,” Kate says at the till. “The coffee is free. Today only, our opening special.” She hands back his fifty-cents change and he drops it in a jar for community good works. She smiles a thank you, passes him a knife and fork wrapped in a napkin and tells him she will bring his food to him when it is ready.

He takes his newspaper outside on the deck where terracotta plant pots are lush with healthy young lemon trees. Old tin buckets, set out on a bench in a sunny, sheltered corner, are planted with fresh herbs: parsley, basil, thyme, oregano, chives, coriander. The fringes of strawberry-red umbrellas, donated by a coffee supplier hoping his beans will win favour, ripple like fingers over a keyboard.

Fifteen minutes later, the crowd from the
Seagull
's first morning run swarms inside. “Like the banner outside, lovelies. Very creative!”

Ettie and Kate look at each other blankly. What banner? Ettie flicks her head towards the door and Kate dashes outside. And there it is, strung between two casuarinas, big, red and bold, written in a spidery hand:

 

Opin! Fri cofee. 2day

 

Sam and Jimmy sit at a picnic table under the sign.

“You, Jimmy?” Kate asks, pointing upwards.

“Yep!” Jimmy's head wobbles like a jack-in-the-box. “I did it all, didn't I, Sam?”

“You're a genius, mate.”

Kate laughs. The Square is a parade of offshorers off to do the grocery shopping and take the kids to cricket practice. Early joggers. Mums wearing leotards and loose T-shirts, pushing prams. No chippies – not on a weekend. Plenty of dog walkers. All shapes and sizes – owners as well as dogs. Kate fills the water bowl under the outside tap, pushing aside the image of a snouty tan mutt with a white blaze who never harmed a flea.

A chunky, dark-headed figure lurks at the end of the wharf. Pacing impatiently, a mobile to his ear, his bark carries towards them.

“Is that the Weasel?” Kate asks in disbelief. As though she's conjured him by thinking about Boag.

Sam squints. “Yeah. Skin of a freaking rhinoceros.”

The Weasel saunters towards them, his hands deep in the pockets of loose linen pants. His aftershave arrives ahead of him. He indicates the café with a casual roll of a shoulder. “Tell Ettie that timber like that wouldn't even need a match on the right day,” he says in an oily voice.

“Insured to the hilt. You'd be doing us a favour,” Kate shoots back.

“Should we tell him about the bad lemonade he gave me, Sam?” Jimmy is anxious.

“He knows, mate. He knows.”

The Weasel makes his way back to the end of the wharf. Locals wrinkle their noses and step around him like he's rotten meat.

Fast Freddy cruises in on his last run after a nightshift made even longer because his newly married offsider overslept.
The Weasel jumps aboard the water taxi, giving the finger to everyone in general.

“Wondered why we hadn't heard a squeal from his jetty before now. Looks like he's been gone a couple days. Reckon he'll go for a spin in his boat first off,” Sam says. “Roar past the Spit, trying for the biggest wake he can manage, just to make a point. There's time to pick up a couple of coffees and then watch the show.” He slaps Jimmy on the back.

“Can I drink coffee too, Sam?”

“How about a fruit juice?”

“What show?” Kate asks.

Sam grins.

 

The pace is steady all morning. Kate and Ettie establish a rhythm to avoid crashing behind the counter or double-filling orders. When the breakfast rush ends, Ettie's cakes sell well but the sandwiches remain untouched.

“Do they look weird or something?” Kate asks, worried she's made a mess of them.

“Of course not. Wait till lunchtime. Then they'll move.”

The two women finally manage to take a break on the deck in a short lull between morning tea and lunch. They see a boat – it looks like the Weasel's – stalled on the water, drifting east towards the ocean. They sip their coffees while a tide that's fat and full sings loudly under their feet.

A tinny glides alongside the seawall and a couple of Island musos disembark. “Think that boat out there needs a hand,” Ettie says, pointing.

Phil, six and a half feet tall, says with a knowing smile:
“Not that boat.” He has a red polka-dot bandana tied on his shaved head. His offsider, Rex, bare-chested under greasy overalls and wearing fancy cowboy boots with red leather flames, follows him with a guitar in his hand.

“Thought a little concert might help to kick off the opening,” Phil explains.

Rex squints through the smoke of the cigarette hanging from his bottom lip. “Cost you a coupla burgers. Full works. Even the blinkin' beetroot, if you must. Suit you both?”

The two women nod, lost for words.

Phil rocks back on his heels and scans the crowd, like a cormorant looking for fish. “Good opportunity to show the mob on this side of the water how life should be lived. Poor pissants think a garage is the meaning of life.”

“Not all of them, surely,” Kate says, defensive. It wasn't so long ago that she hungered for a garage. And to be truthful, would still like one if it meant bypassing the frequently vandalised car park.

“Yeah. But it makes us feel good to think we're ahead occasionally.” Phil grins.

Soon, there's a riffle of chords, a half-tune from a keyboard and they kick off with a full-bodied roar that stalls the joggers and sends the dogs cowering under the picnic tables, where they lie with their paws over their ears, emitting low, pathetic whines.

All afternoon, the music rocks on, bringing business from the bays, the Island and mainland. At one point, Kate goes onto the deck to clear the tables.

She stops dead when she sees her mother wandering the Square. Dressed in a flouncy red-and-green summer dress,
set off with chunky costume jewellery that catches the light as she moves. Her face is painted into a ruddy clownishness – green eyelids, pink cheeks, red lips. Tiny black holes for eyes.

Kate takes a deep breath, slings a tea towel over her shoulder and marches up to her.

“Emily. You should have rung to let me know you were coming. I would have saved you a prime table.”

“Is it true?” Emily asks. “You've bought into this … this … revolting disaster!”

“Around here we call it character. How'd you find out?”

“How do you think? I rang the magazine asking for you and some total stranger said you were in the café business. I laughed and she hung up on me. Me! I'm your mother, Kate, and you couldn't even be bothered giving me a call. I felt like a fool.”

“Yeah. Well. Never mind. Listen, we're flat out. Opening day. If you want to eat, have a coffee, fine. Otherwise, I'll call you next week.”

“Eat?” Emily shouts red-faced, waving her arm to take in the wharf, the café, the Square. “Here? Are you completely mad? I'm not sure why you've done this, Kate. All that time, money and effort spent educating you for something better and here you are, a waitress in a stinking rat-hole. Now call me a taxi. I can't bear to watch this … this horror show any more.”

“There's a pay phone on the main road. You can't miss it.” Kate's voice is hard, her blue-green eyes granite.

Emily's voice goes soft, which makes it all the more lethal. “You'll ruin this like you ruin everything, Kate. You're a loser. Have been from the start. If this is meant to hurt me,
well, congratulations, it's worked. I'm appalled. Disgusted if you want the truth. Did you never consider for a moment how I might feel about this … this step into the gutter? Of course not. You've never shown the slightest interest in my wellbeing.”

Kate looks at her mother, standing there like an over-decorated Christmas tree. “Don't come back, Emily,” she says, softly. She reaches out a hand, almost touches her mother's shoulder, lets it drop. Emily's arms are folded tightly across her chest in the constant barricade of Kate's childhood.

As her mother backs off her heel catches in the sand and she almost falls. Before Kate can reach out, Sam appears out of nowhere and rescues the old girl. Emily is instantly flirtatious.

“There you go,” he says, dropping her arm like it's on fire. “If you don't mind me saying so, mate, you're a bit on the wrong side of seventy for heels like that.”

Her face hardens. Lips are pulled into a tight thin line. “Seventy!” she hisses, already on her way. “Seventy!”

Sam slings an arm around Kate's shoulder. “What was that?”

“My mother.”

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

“Jeez.” He kisses the side of her head. “You know the saying
Like mother, like daughter
? Well, I can guarantee, Kate, you need never worry you're going to turn into a woman like that.” He stares at the receding figure of Emily Jackson with a mixture of pity and disbelief. “Has it always been about her?”

“Yep.”

“Well then, that makes you another in a long line of Cook's Basin miracles. You got out while there was still hope and we're all here to save you.” He wraps his beefy arms around her and pulls her against his chest in a hug that knocks the wind out of her.

Kate looks into his eyes and gives him a smile that for some unfathomable reason shoots him straight to the moon.

 

On the deck, in the Square, it is a kaleidoscopic muddle – shorts and singlets, swirling skirts and sarongs, tail-wagging dogs dropping balls at bare feet, hats swatting sticky flies. The breeze is no more than a warm tickle. Phil's molten voice floats above Rex's tapping Cuban heels.

Ettie and Kate lose control of the kitchen. Jimmy leaps to the rescue.

“I'm gonna help, Kate, is that okay? I'll be great. You'll see.” He hip-hops from one foot to the other and plunges his hands into boiling water without a yelp. Suds skyrocket and dishes fly. Fast Freddy grabs a tea towel while he waits for his cheese, tomato and herb omelette.

“You're a genius, Jimmy. No scungy bits at all.” Fast Freddy, accustomed to fireshed clean-ups when the helpers' attention to detail fails dismally after a few glasses of red, is full of praise.

With the sink clear Kate sends Jimmy on a round-up of empty plates. Then has second thoughts. She watches and listens for crashes. One. A fork. Through the deck slats and into the water with a splash. No problems. She keeps him
away from full plates of food, there is no point in pushing your luck.

The dishes pile up again. Jenny and the other two Js waltz in with smiley faces, rocking to the beat. They bump Kate out of the way. “This is a day for pros,” they say with big smiles. “Watch and learn!” They help Ettie regain control of the orders, the kitchen, the cleaning up, before wafting off back into the sunshine. When the pressure builds again, Marcus quietly slips behind the counter. “Today, I am your sous chef,” he announces to Ettie with a happy grin. “It is good to feel humbleness. But of course, only occasionally.”

They battle on till the sun dips below the hills in an explosion of red, gold, orange and purple. As a final gesture, Ettie asks the chef to deep-fry three huge baskets of salt and pepper squid. She drops the crispy white slivers into little paper bags, stacks them on trays, then wanders through the crowd. Every dog in the square follows in a conga line, noses raised to the scent, hoping for some charity on a day that feels historic.