Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 23

‘Well, you can’t have everything,’ said Kerensa.
‘He was going back and forth between here and Looe back then,’ said Selina, taking on a slightly dreamy look. ‘Oh my, he was so handsome. It was before the beard. I was very against the beard. I think he only did it to annoy me.’
‘Oh I quite liked it,’ said Polly without thinking, earning herself a warning kick under the table from Kerensa. ‘What? Oh.’
But Selina went on, lost in her reverie.
‘He was gorgeous. Every other idiot I’d met was such a prannet, going on and on about the City, or oil speculating, or what their daddy did or whatever.’
‘Whilst requiring insertion,’ added Kerensa.
‘Quite,’ said Selina, lighting up a cigarette and waving it around. Polly and Kerensa didn’t mind, but Flora looked horrified.
‘Get used to smoking if you want a posh boy,’ said Selina. ‘Their parents abandoned them to boarding school. They all have to smoke to stop themselves from crying.’
‘Maybe I shouldn’t marry a posh boy,’ said Flora. She glanced over at Jayden, who hadn’t taken his eyes off her, and who waved furiously.
‘I sure am learning a lot tonight,’ said Dubose.
‘And he was real,’ Selina went on. ‘He didn’t speak unless he had something he needed to say. He didn’t turn on the charm… I hate charm. Such a bloody overindulged characteristic. As if it means anything. Charm is just a way of fuckers getting you to do what they wanted you to do all along. They might as well hold a gun to your head. They’re both short cuts.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Kerensa. Reuben was so abrasive and uncharming that Polly found it came all the way round the back and ended up charming again.
‘He just said it like it was… of course at first I found that really attractive. Later on it made me want to kill him every time I attempted to start a conversation about our relationship.’
The girls nodded.
‘And he was just… he was just so different from all the nobbers that I’d known before. So straight. So honest.’
Polly gazed at the table, her ears burning.
‘So,’ said Selina, ‘I gave up everything. Oh my lord, my parents went mental. I felt like one of those sixteen-year-olds in the newspapers every summer who goes on holiday to Turkey and accidentally marries a waiter. Seriously, you’d think that’s what I’d done. My stepmum was the worst. She’s a vicious character to begin with, but she’d fought her way up from nothing to marry my dad, who had a bit, and she was all like “You don’t know what it’s like being poor, Selina. You think it’s romantic, but it’s not the least bit romantic when the boiler breaks down in the middle of the winter, and he’s off on the high seas.”’ She mimicked a high-pitched estuary voice. ‘“Also, you know, all sailors have venereal disease.”’
There was a silence.
‘Of course the worst of it is, she was right.’
‘About the venereal disease?’ Polly had suddenly sat up straighter.
‘No, for God’s sake. You knew him. You know what a brilliant bloke he was. No, about the having no money. It sucked. I couldn’t get a teaching job anywhere. All there was on offer was hotel cleaning or bar work. Both of which I tried, by the way.’
She shook her head. Andy had silently come over and left another bottle with them, and Kerensa refilled their glasses. Selina was less animated now.
‘That’s why… that’s why going back to town was so awful. It was full of people who never knew him. Didn’t know how decent and kind and right he was, who only saw my off-brand fucking trainers and us fighting all the time. After he died I tried somewhere new, and that was awful too. I always ended up having two glasses of wine too many and ruining everyone else’s night out.’
‘Is that why you came back here?’
‘That,’ said Selina, heavily. ‘And because I didn’t know where else to go.’
The boys, Polly noticed, had started dancing a hornpipe, and she pretended to watch them, all the while hugging her knees to her chest, her heart going out to Selina, who had finally announced, ‘Let’s change the subject! I can’t do the miserable widow act for very long. PLEASE. I really can’t.’
And they had chatted of other things, but carefully. Dubose took on the job of trying to make Selina laugh, and was reasonably successful, and Polly chatted to Archie who had just come in, who had stopped by the table, double-took massively at Flora, then smiled, tiredly.
‘How’s she doing?’ he asked Polly quietly, a little away from the group, nodding at Selina.
‘I think… I think she’s making some progress,’ said Polly, then looked at him more closely. The lines were still deep around his eyes, and Polly remembered how close he and Tarnie had been, sailing together for so many years. A lot of people were worried about Selina, but Archie had been right there and was trying to carry on without him, and the pain showed on his face. The ripples from the sinking, Polly thought, had spread out, like a stone cast in a pond, and made their presence felt in all directions.
‘How are you?’ she asked.
Archie shrugged. ‘Nights like tonight,’ he said, looking round at half the town out under the fairy lights, drinking, talking, laughing, ‘I really miss him. And sometimes I’ll be throwing a line and I half think to look round for him, but he’s gone. And I keep thinking, am I doing it how he would have done it? Would he have been happy with me?’
‘Of course he would,’ said Polly encouragingly.
‘I hope so,’ said Archie. ‘I really, really do.’
Polly patted his hand. ‘Get more rest,’ she said. ‘The job is knackering enough on its own without you having to worry all the time about everyone else. You’re doing well. You really are. The lads are happy and the fish are coming in.’
The boys finally stopped dancing and bowed to a scattering of applause, then, out of breath and pinker than ever, Jayden came over to their table and stood in front of Flora.
‘Did you like me dancing?’ he asked.
‘You were dancing?’ said Flora, in an uninterested voice.
Polly stood up.
‘Come on, let’s go home.’
‘Flora is coming with me!’ yelled Jayden loudly to the rest of the bar, who raised their heads only briefly. Flora rolled her eyes.