Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 9

There went Anne of Green Gables. And What Katy Did at School. Vet in a Spin was flipping merrily over the cobbles, along with The Dark is Rising and Daddy-Long-Legs, and Marianne Dreams…
‘Noooo!’ yelled Polly, dropping her box and charging after them at full pelt. She couldn’t bear to lose them.
The books danced in the grey air as if taunting her, and headed straight for the harbour wall. Polly made a desperate lunge and managed to grab Good Wives, but Alice in Wonderland spun blithely over the wall and into the grey emptiness beyond.
‘Oh,’ said Polly, crushed beyond compare. ‘Oh.’
The other books thankfully landed before they reached the sea, and she grabbed them up and hugged them close to her, then sank down on the cold stones and, uncaring, feeling this the final straw after what had been really an awful bloody lot of straw, burst into tears.
Her father had given her that book. He had loved it when he was a child and had read it to her and explained the bits she didn’t understand, and even though it was cheap and old and easily replaceable, it wasn’t, because it had been his. When he had died of a heart attack when Polly was twenty, she had been furious; with him, and with the world, who broadly treated her as an adult who didn’t need as much support as if she’d been a child.
Polly felt snot coming out of her nose, and wiped it on her jacket, so upset and impervious did she feel. There was no one around for miles, nobody who gave a damn for at least forty, so she didn’t care who saw her or what she looked like. She was alone, she was miserable, she was freezing and a bit wet, and she had lost her dad’s book. And how could she be heard above the wind anyway?
Eventually her howling was interrupted by a noise she could barely hear above the waves and the weather. It sounded, oddly enough, like a cough. She stopped, swallowed unprettily and listened. The cough came again.
Polly sat bolt upright and peered around. Behind her, standing on the wall to the left, she spied, to her horror, five men. They were wearing sou’westers with bright yellow dungarees.
‘Er, excuse me,’ said the first one in a Cornish accent as thick as clotted cream. They were all shuffling and looking embarrassed. Polly jumped to her feet.
‘Yes?’ she said, as if she hadn’t just been caught sitting outside bawling her head off like a two-year-old.
‘Um, is this yours?’
The first man, who had a brown beard, red cheeks and creases round his blue eyes, held up her copy of Alice in Wonderland. He looked at her hands, which were still gripping her other books.
Polly gave a quick, sharp nod. ‘Yes… yes, thank you.’
He stepped forward to hand it to her. Polly put out her arms, realised immediately that she had a big snot stain on her sleeve and, in the embarrassment, dropped the rest of the books on the ground.
They all bent down together to pick them up.
‘Big reader, are you?’ said the man.
‘Er… kind of,’ Polly managed, her cheeks flushed bright scarlet. ‘Where…’
‘It came down on our boat, dinnit?’ said the man, and Polly turned her head to look at the line of fishing boats clanking in the harbour. They were brightly painted green and red, with nets piled high on their bows and a scrubbed, rough-and-ready look to them. The nearest one was called Trochilus.
‘We thought it were books from heaven, din’t we, lads? Like, a new library idea.’
The other men chuckled and shuffled.
‘It’s…’ Polly tried to pull herself together and not seem too weird and tearful. She just about had the rest of her books in a pile now. ‘It’s very good.’
The man squinted at it.
‘I mostly read… well, I like books about war.’
‘Any specific war? Or wars in general?’ asked Polly, genuinely interested. He was incredibly tall, but his face was gentle.
‘Well, I reckon… just about any war will do.’
‘Borrow it,’ said Polly suddenly. Something that had seemed so precious only moments before had become, by light of its extraordinary resurrection, something to be shared. ‘See if you like it. There isn’t any war. But there is some chess,’ she added doubtfully.
The man looked at it.
‘Well, I will then,’ he said. ‘Get pretty long, them nights.’ He nodded at the boat.
‘I didn’t know fishing boats went out at night,’ Polly said. The other men, still loitering and listening in, laughed.
‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ said the first man, straight-faced. ‘We like to catch the fish when they’re sleeping.’
‘Is that true?’ said Polly, forgetting to be miserable for a second.
The man smiled. ‘So you normally walk about our town throwing books?’ he asked.
‘Oh… no,’ said Polly, flustered again. ‘No. I’ve just moved here.’
‘Why would you move here?’ said youngest of the men, who had bright pink cheeks, but the tall man – who must have been the captain – shushed him.
‘Welcome to Mount Polbearne then,’ he said. His eyes followed hers up to the van and the pile of boxes. ‘You’re not… you’re not moving into Mrs Manse’s old place?’
‘Um, the one on the corner?’ said Polly.
‘Aye, that’ll be right.’ The captain looked at it.
‘It’s haunted, that place,’ said the young man with the pink cheeks.
‘Ssh,’ said the captain. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I don’t believe in that kind of thing,’ said Polly stiffly.
‘Well that’s lucky,’ said the captain. ‘For you, anyway. Ghosts never come if you pretend you don’t believe in them. Hello. I’m Tarnie.’
‘Polly,’ said Polly, wiping her face fiercely.
‘Well, thanks for the book,’ said Tarnie. He looked over at the van parked across the road, with the sofa clearly visible poking out of the back. ‘Can we do anything for you in return?’
‘No, no, I’m fine,’ said Polly quickly.
‘You lifting that sofa up by yourself?’
‘Oh, that,’ said Polly. ‘Um. I hadn’t quite… I hadn’t…’
‘Come on, lads,’ said Tarnie.
With a will, the men heaved the sofa out of the van, and, with some swearing and bother, managed to lug both it and the bed upstairs.