Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 6

‘Well go to the meeting then,’ said Jayden.
‘No way!’ said Polly, for whom the idea of giving up a winter’s evening wrapped round the fire and Huckle before falling asleep at 8.30 was sacrilege.
‘You should,’ said Jayden. ‘You’ll be having babies one day. One day soon, I reckon.’
Polly glanced down at the fourth finger of her left hand – it was still awaiting the ring Huckle was having made for her, the seaweed engagement ring he had put there the previous summer not having proved as long-lasting as they hoped their union was going to be.
‘Hmm,’ she said, feeling a slightly familiar wobble of panic that came over her whenever she thought about the future.
It was true, she wasn’t getting any younger. But she was so crazy busy holding both the businesses together, and she couldn’t possibly afford to employ someone else and take maternity leave. And that ridiculous lighthouse they’d thought was such a hilarious idea at the time… How on earth could she look after a child? How on earth did anybody do it? She had absolutely no idea. And Huckle would probably want to get married first, and truly, she had enough on her plate…
Even though it was still almost pitch dark outside, the first customers were lining up expectantly. The older people still started work early, after lifetimes of toil at the very edge of the British Isles, and the fishing boats came in to hit the fish markets so that the restaurants and chippies could get the very best and freshest from the cold, salty water. In the summer, Polly would head out and watch the sun coming up and sit out in the dawn in a jumper, chatting with the fishermen. In deepest, darkest winter, they all simply had to charge in at the speed of light, closing the door behind them as quickly as possible.
The old ladies bustled in with their dogs, and Archie, captain of the fishing boat Trochilus, turned up looking utterly freezing. There was a local saying that there was no such thing as bad weather, simply bad clothes, but all the fishermen had the best high-quality gear there was and even then it was a tough old life out there, particularly when sometimes you needed to use your stiff, freezing fingers to untie knots, or gut fish, or open the freezer compartment. Archie’s were mottled red and white and took a while to unfurl as Polly handed him his incredibly strong tea in the special mug she kept for him in the back kitchen.
‘Good catch?’ said Jayden, who used to work with Archie and had never got over how grateful he was not to have to do it any more.
‘Aye, not so bad,’ said Archie, head down, inhaling the steam from the tea. That, from Archie, meant things were definitely looking up.
Old Mrs Corning, one of Polly’s regulars, marched up to the counter.
‘Where’s your calendar?’ she said, pointing with her walking stick. Brandy, her tiny dog, yapped as if to back her up.
‘My what?’ said Polly, confused.
‘Your Advent calendar! Advent starts today. Or weren’t you raised in a Christian society?’
‘I haven’t seen her at church,’ said another of the old ladies, who was busy chatting to Jayden.
Polly rolled her eyes. She’d slightly hoped that everyone’s opinion on her comings and goings and what she did and didn’t do might have died down since she’d got engaged to Huckle, but if anything it appeared to have got worse. Polly had grown up in Exeter, quite a large city, and had found village living agreeable but certainly different.
‘Mattie and I get along very well,’ she pointed out. Mattie was the vicar who came over from the mainland every couple of weeks to hold a service. Polly tended to skip the service – in season she was working; out of season she was fast asleep – but Mattie often popped down for a coffee, since she and Polly were roughly the same age and had quite similar outlooks on things.
Polly paused, and froze. No wonder she’d been so funny with Huckle this morning. No wonder.
‘Is it really the first of December today?’ she said.
‘Yes. First day of Advent. You know. To celebrate the birth of Our Lord, Christ the King. That’s what Christmas is supposed to be about.’ Mrs Corning, who was a kind old stick really but rather felt the world was running away from her – even in rural Cornwall – peered at Polly through her thick glasses. ‘Are you all right there, me lover?’
Polly blinked. ‘Sorry. I didn’t realise the date. November was so grey and endless, it all felt as if it were sliding into one another… all the days…’ She wrung out her tea towel. ‘I’m not making sense. Sorry, Mrs Corning. Well. Anyway. It’s… it’s my dad’s birthday.’
It didn’t feel right calling him that. He wasn’t her dad; dads were people who turned up.
‘Ah,’ said Mrs Corning, who lived in a world where almost all the men had died, and she and her small battalion of ladies, with their thin permed hair and their sensible beige BHS anoraks bought on irregular trips to Looe, stuck close to one another and looked out for each other and spent far longer discussing the ailments of their small dogs than they did looking back on the past, and their handsome sixties Teddy boys, back from their National Service, grinning over their John Players. ‘Has he been gone long?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Polly.
Even then she didn’t want to tell the truth: that he’d never been there to leave in the first place. The only reason she knew his date of birth was because she’d written it on her passport application form. That had been literally all she’d ever had from him, according to her mother, apart from some basic maintenance. A ne’er-do-well. Someone whose presence wasn’t missed. You couldn’t miss what you’d never had, after all, her mother had pointed out to her.
Polly wasn’t sure about that, not at all.
The cold of the day brought punters in in shedloads, relieved to get out of the wind and pick up some warm pecan and cinnamon buns. The hot chocolate stayed simmering in its pot, getting richer and thicker with every new cup that was poured, and the till dinged satisfyingly all morning.
Huckle wandered down about three o’clock, as Polly swept up the mail ready to take back to the lighthouse. She would do her paperwork by the Aga as she tested out a new Christmas cake recipe, even though the idea that she was making different types of Christmas cakes had raised eyebrows throughout the village.
‘Hey,’ she said, pleased to see him.
Huckle looked at her, still a little concerned after what she’d said that morning.