Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 59

‘No,’ he said crossly. ‘A bit. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that YOU have to get wise to some life lessons now.’
‘It’s perfectly legal for me to be here,’ said Polly, trembling. ‘I have a licence.’
‘Yes,’ snarled Malcolm. ‘And that means it’s perfectly legal for ME to be here too.’
A car slowed down in the rain, windscreen wipers sloshing vehemently. Malcolm marched up and tapped on the window.
‘I hope you weren’t going to buy bread from here, mate,’ he said, unpleasantly chummy. ‘Because it’s bloody awful.’
Polly’s hand flew to her mouth.
‘But…’ she said.
‘You ruin my business,’ he said, standing upright and shouting through the rain, ‘and I’ll ruin yours. And I reckon I’ll hold out the longer.’
Polly wanted to cry.
‘Why don’t you just go somewhere else?’ he said. ‘I don’t care where. Go away. Go back to where you came from.’
‘Plymouth?’
‘Yeah,’ said Malcolm. ‘I’m from an old Mount Polbearne family. We were here first.’
But she had never even seen him here.
‘Go take this rust bucket and try it out elsewhere.’
Another car looked like it was slowing down in the filthy driving rain, then saw Malcolm waving his arms like they were a couple having a massive domestic, and quickly thought better of it.
‘You can’t win here. You can’t do it. You should just give up now. You failed in the bakery, you’re failing here. It’s all over.’
Polly hiccupped a kind of snorting sob, then did the only thing she could think of: she brought down the little shutter in the van and slammed it hard, and the door too.
It was, she realised, absolutely no solution. On the other hand, she was now inside and warm and cosy, and Malcolm was still outside, pacing about in the rain. Which was a small mercy, after all. Plus now she could weep in peace.
Malcolm shouted a few more things, but thankfully above the wind and the rain outside, and the generator inside, she couldn’t hear what they were. She waited for a while, until she had stopped crying, and tried to tell herself that he was just a horrible pathetic trumpet-playing moron, even though a bit of her knew deep down that it was a bit sneaky to open the van.
But it wasn’t, she told herself. She was standing up against mediocrity; against lazy, horrible food sold to people who didn’t know things could be better, that food could be better, and if food was better, life was better. Stood to reason. Yes.
She had to tell herself that what she was doing was worthwhile; that she wasn’t providing just industrial mulch churned out by a factory that didn’t care if something was good and nutritious and made of the very best stuff; that would fill everything with long-life chemicals, and spongifiers and E-numbers and salt and wood shavings, for all she knew, to bulk out something that was cheap and filling and easy, but wasn’t good. What she did was good, and it was important, and she was going to tell the world a thing or two… just as soon as she could bear to unlock herself from this van.
She heard, faintly, over the rattle of the generator, the sound of Malcolm’s car driving away. She pulled up the shutter to deliver her sermon, but the car park was once more windswept, damp and completely empty. And she did not feel as if she had scored a victory.
By 4 p.m., Polly was ready to drive the van into the sea and was giving considerably more weight to the concept that it was indeed cursed.
The rain had barely let up. A family with three squalling children in the back of their car had driven up, cheerfully hoping for fish and chips, talking about how the weather had ruined their holiday, so thank God they’d seen a fish and chip van, it was the only thing just about holding the kids together; never again, this would teach them to holiday at home; they’d wanted to go visit Mount Polbearne, but they couldn’t risk it in this weather. The mother looked on the verge of tears.
‘I’ve… I’ve got some cheesy ciabatta loaf,’ offered Polly.
‘You’ve got what, love?’ said the mother, glancing nervously back at the car and pulling her cagoule closer around her shoulders. The car windows were all steamed up, with the occasional ominous thud hitting the windows, like something out of World War Z.
‘Just chips will be fine, you know. Absolutely fine.’
‘I don’t do chips,’ said Polly, apologetically. ‘This is a bread van.’
The woman really did look like she was going to burst into tears.
‘A bread van?’ she said. ‘At the seaside?’ Her pink-lipsticked mouth sagged. ‘What… what on earth were you thinking?’
There was a cry coming from the dirty car that might have been ‘Chips! Chips! Chips!’
‘A bread van?’ said the woman again, as if Polly might suddenly pull back a curtain and say ‘Only kidding! Haddock or cod!’
‘’Fraid so,’ said Polly. The woman shook her head.
‘Well, do you know if we can get fish and chips near here?’
‘There’s a great chippy on Mount Polbearne,’ said Polly.
The two of them turned together and looked out at the great rocky outcrop, half hidden in the grey mist, its causeway completely obliterated by furious-looking grey waves; never more an island than today.
The woman took a step backwards.
‘Never again,’ she said. She glanced at the car, as if dreading stepping inside it once more. She glanced again at Mount Polbearne. Then she retreated, and Polly felt absolutely awful.
At 5 p.m., as the causeway slowly uncovered, and just as she was wearily packing up, she spotted Muriel charging towards her. The relief of seeing a friendly face was enormous, and Polly waved expansively. Muriel waved back and made it over in double-quick time.
‘What a day,’ she said. ‘Filthy. I hope it picks up soon, I haven’t sold a single bucket and spade in four days.’
‘You’ve sold other stuff though, right?’ said Polly.
‘Oh lord, yes. Hot chocolate mostly. Hot chocolate and the Puzzler.’
‘I haven’t sold anything,’ said Polly glumly, even though she hated to sound self-pitying.
‘Well that’s because you started trading in the middle of a storm,’ said Muriel, sensibly. ‘You can’t expect everything to come together at once. Anyway, I am here to save you, because I have the secret village orders.’