Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery (26 page)

‘Can I interest you in a bun?’ asked Polly cheerfully.

Jim looked at her.

‘My mum makes my sandwiches,’ he said mournfully. ‘On my fishing days, like.’

‘You wouldn’t like to try something different?’

Jim shook his head emphatically.

‘My mum knows how I like my sandwiches, you see,’ he said. ‘Cheese and pickle, with the cheese not touching the pickle.’

‘Okay,’ said Polly. ‘I don’t have any like that. I have buns, though.’

Jim shook his head again.

‘Naw, you don’t want a bun after a sandwich. You want a Kit Kat.’

He sloshed on through the heavy rain, his oilskins well worn and a cheery yellow sou’wester on his grizzled head.

‘Bye then!’ said Polly. ‘Good luck with the fish!’

She got the canopy up; it wasn’t easy, and she wasn’t entirely sure it looked brilliant, but she got there in the end. Then she went back into the van – which was at least cosy from the oven. A little too cosy, in fact: she had to open the back door as the oven really heated up, which had the annoying result of letting in all the rain – and looked at her two hundred buns and wondered if perhaps she’d been a little bit optimistic for her first day.

She’d mentioned it a little bit around town, but not too much, given that she didn’t really want word to get out that she was starting up some kind of alternative service. She didn’t entirely trust Malcolm not to find a way to stop her, his loathing for her seemed so strong.

‘That’s your marketing plan?’ Kerensa had asked her. ‘Adventurous.’

And now she sat all alone in the cheery red van, wishing she’d brought a book, feeling like the only person for miles and miles around, the only person in Cornwall. She looked at the neat lines of buns, and told herself not to eat them all.

At 9 a.m., a seagull marched right up the steps into the van – they had been getting bolder for a while – and Polly told him where to go, with a swearword. The seagull was totally unfazed by this, and cawed at her, fixing its beady eyes on the buns.

‘I never kick birds,’ Polly told it, seriously. ‘Never. Not in a million years. But what I am going to do here is
pretend
to kick you, and see if that works.’

She threw her leg out in front of her. The seagull totally ignored it. She yelled at it again. It gave her a disdainful glance. Then she made a big lion roar. That worked, and it scuttered backwards and flapped down the stairs, but she didn’t know if she could do that all day.

She sighed and glanced at her phone.

How’s it going?
Kerensa had texted. That was a bit early, Polly reckoned.

Brilliant
, she typed back.
The Duchess of Cambridge just came in and ordered 190 cakes for Prince George
.

Then she thought better of that, and deleted it, and worked out what time it was in Savannah (3 a.m.), and sighed.

She was gazing out at the rain and telling herself not to worry, she’d got through worse than this, then crossly wondering precisely how many days she would have to say to herself, ‘not to worry, you’ve got through worse than this’, because as life philosophies went, it wasn’t the one she’d have chosen, when a car drew up; some kind of aggressive-looking BMW that was a little tatty round the edges. Polly put her hairnet back on in case it was the council, and also pasted on a cheery smile in case it was someone from the authorities. It was neither.

‘WHAT THE BLOODY HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?’

Malcolm danced out of the car like he was Rumpelstiltskin, puce with fury.

‘What the hell is THIS?’

Polly flushed bright red. She knew she probably had to expect this at some point, but confrontation was so far away from how she usually engaged with people, and now it was here, it was torture.

She glanced to the side, wishing that Reuben was here. Reuben loved this kind of thing. He’d have got into a fight straight away. And he’d have enjoyed it. Kerensa too, she’d have got stuck in. Even Huckle could probably have calmly defused the situation.

Instead, Polly felt absolutely horrible inside, frightened and panicky at the idea of dealing with somebody who was cross with her. Then she felt ridiculous for feeling that way; why must she take everything so personally? She was a grown-up, wasn’t she? She ought to be able to handle it; how on earth could she call herself a businesswoman otherwise?

‘It’s just a van,’ she squeaked.

‘It’s not! It’s a filthy plan to ruin my livelihood!’ screamed Malcolm, even though it was ten o’clock in the morning, and his livelihood really ought to have been up and running for five hours.

‘Are you trying to make my mother starve, is that your plan? Are you trying to ruin everything? Are you really such a bitch you would do that?’

Polly shook her head.

‘No,’ she started. ‘Not at all. It’s just…’ She told herself not to cry. Huckle wouldn’t cry. ‘It’s just… this is the only thing I know how to do.’

Malcolm stared at her.

‘So you’d take food out of the mouth of its rightful owner?’

‘What? No. Not on purpose! Well…’

He marched towards her, his red pimply face clashing unpleasantly with his mustard-coloured mackintosh.

‘You know,’ he spat, his eyes fierce, ‘I wanted to be a professional.’

‘What kind of professional?’ Polly asked in a shaky voice.

‘Trumpeter,’ replied Malcolm, as if it were patently obvious. ‘And when I couldn’t get a job – because the industry is totally stitched up, by the way, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know – when they locked me out of that, well I didn’t let it get me down, did I?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Polly, staring at the ground, realising she wasn’t really handling this very well and trying to remember all those assertiveness tips Kerensa had given her.

‘I picked myself up and never looked back, and look at me now.’

Jumping about in a wet car park at ten o’clock in the morning, Polly thought.

‘Stupid bloody trumpet.’

‘Do you miss playing the trumpet?’ Polly asked timidly.

Malcolm sighed for a moment, then looked cross again. His lips, Polly now noticed, did look about right for playing the trumpet: slightly splayed, and with a free run of spittle when he was exasperated, which he undoubtedly was now.

‘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.’

Polly’s face lit up. Here it was! The locals! This would save her! She knew the good people of Mount Polbearne wouldn’t let her down. She could have kissed Muriel.

‘Yay!’ she said. ‘That is fantastic news! Great! What would you like! And I can drive you back over too!’

Muriel looked at the van doubtfully.

‘I think I’d rather have the walk, to be honest.’

‘It’s pissing down!’

‘Yes, well, you know. Just till you get the hang of it.’

Polly smiled. ‘All right. What are you after?’

Muriel took out a piece of paper.