Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery (32 page)

‘I’m slightly worried about that,’ said Polly, who had a faint idea that she should really be getting it resprayed in a proper vehicle way, rather than painted with boat paint, but wasn’t sure how she was going to pay for that or find the time to fit it in.

In any case, the boys looked so happy and willing to help, she had no choice really but to thank them, feed them with the lovely sugar buns that had somehow come out so light and fresh and fruity and delicious despite her sadness, and let them slap so much paint over the offending graffiti it felt like it was weighing down one side of the van.

‘There we go,’ said Archie. ‘How’s that, madam?’

‘Thank you kindly,’ said Polly. ‘Well, it is a lot better.’

In truth, it was very slightly better than a rude word, but quite a lot worse than her lovely original red and white van, but that didn’t matter for now. What mattered was that the graffiti was gone. What on earth would happen tonight, Polly had no idea. Would she have to sit in wait for him?

‘We’re just off to torch the bakery,’ said young Kendall.

‘Seriously, though,’ said Archie, leaning over, ‘why don’t we come with you when you go to confront him? Or are you going to call Paul out?’

Paul was the duty PC, who was very rarely needed in Polbearne.

Polly hadn’t considered doing either of these two things.

‘Well, I don’t know.’

‘Otherwise he’ll just do it again,’ said Archie. ‘We don’t mind coming. We’re not working tonight anyway.’

‘Why not?’ said Polly. ‘It’s not like you to take a day off.’

‘Forecast is right grim for later.’

‘Seriously?’

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Out on the blue water, white-sailed boats bobbed around as in a child’s drawing. It was beautiful; a picture-perfect English seaside day, with the bread sales to prove it.

‘Oh, aye. That storm that never broke yesterday, it ain’t gone anywhere. I reckon it’s just biding its time. Building up more, I would say.’

Polly looked at the blue sky.

‘I will never understand the weather.’

‘No one understands it,’ said Archie. ‘No one understands it but us fishermen, and nobody ever listens to us.’

Polly thought of something and twirled round.

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Did we take a picture of the graffiti before we painted over it?’

‘Why would you do that?’ said Kendall.

‘To show the police constable,’ said Polly.

‘Ah,’ said the boys. Alas, in their excitement at helping, nobody had thought to do that.

‘Not to worry,’ said Polly. ‘I just really hope this isn’t going to happen again.’

Archie frowned. ‘Hoping isn’t enough,’ he said. ‘You’re going to have to confront him, like. Has he been mean to you before?’

Polly nodded and, haltingly, described how Malcolm had bullied her. The fishermen were shocked. As she served the last of her customers and put up her ‘Sold Out’ sign, they debated amongst themselves and insisted that she come back to the island with them on the boat to talk to Malcolm – the tide was coming in and the causeway was under water.

‘Just a chat,’ said Archie. ‘Unless you’d rather we went ourselves.’

‘Nooo,’ said Polly. She sighed. She hated confronting things head on, and that seemed to be about all she was doing at the moment.

Her heart started beating faster as she cashed up the takings – up again, she couldn’t help noticing: the tourists were flooding in in force, and she had put the article up in the window of Nan the Van so people could read it for themselves. Even better, the
Western Morning News
had picked it up and were coming to interview the ‘local success story’ themselves, which would definitely help trade. So she should by rights be feeling happy. Instead, of course, she felt anything but. There was a snake in paradise.

It was still a perfect day as she locked up Nan the Van. She glanced worriedly round the car park but it seemed full of totally normal-looking families: tattooed dads, mums admonishing their children not to run towards the sea; people glancing at their watches and the tidal chart; a couple loitering by the van in case it suddenly burst into life again.

She was full of nerves. Normally she would always sit down in a boat, but today, slightly self-consciously, she stood up in the prow.

‘What are you doing up there?’ said Archie.

‘Giving myself courage,’ said Polly, adjusting her balance. There was a slight swell, more noticeable than the beautiful day would suggest. ‘I’m pretending I’m Napoleon.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Archie. ‘Well I thought that, obviously, but I didn’t like to say.’

‘Who’s Napoleon?’ said Kendall. ‘Did he burn a lot of stuff?’

Polly stared straight ahead at the shadow of Mount Polbearne looming huge and forbidding against the sky. Normally she saw it as the loveliest and friendliest of places, bathed in freshness and light, but today it appeared as a rocky outcrop with a sinister shadow.

Still, she set her chin towards the horizon as the little boat puttered on, attempting to hold on to her courage, trying to rehearse what she was going to say.

‘Just be calm and dignified,’ said Archie behind her. ‘Tell him you’ve got photographs you’re turning over to the police.’

‘Um,’ said Polly. ‘Yeah, we should totally have taken those.’

‘And that you have a witness.’

‘A witness with a grudge,’ said Polly.

‘I’m an upstanding member of the community,’ said Jayden. ‘Although I am a bit deranged by heartbroken grief. Just at the moment, you know.’

‘And that if he doesn’t stop his campaign of harassment and intimidation, he’s going to be in serious trouble.’

‘And THEN we’re going to burn his shop down!’ piped up Kendall.

They moored up opposite the Little Beach Street Bakery. It needed its paintwork touched up, Polly noticed sadly. Her own name of course had been painted out already, but the salt tides were harsh on the cornices, and the grey was streaking and fading. The windows were dirty, and a few dusty Empire biscuits were laid out here and there. To Polly’s fury, ‘as mentioned in the
Bugle on Sunday
’ was taped in the window with peeling sellotape.

She could cry to see what had happened to her once beloved little bakery. There were lots of cheery people walking up and down the winding cobbled streets, eating ice creams from Muriel’s, fish and chips from Andy’s – his beer garden was absolutely full to the brim of people enjoying the fabulous weather. Over the other side of the rocks, the beach was teeming with children picking hermit crabs out of rock pools with shrimping nets, and teenage girls giggling and fiddling with their signal-less phones and pulling down the sides of their fifties-style bikinis. Picnics were unpacked, including several of her own loaves; suncream was slathered on unimpressed toddlers; waves were run into with shrieks, then equally quickly reversed out of.

But the Little Beach Street Bakery was completely deserted.

Archie looked at her.

‘Do you want us to come in with you?’

‘No,’ said Polly, more bravely than she felt. ‘But could you hang about outside? Just in case he starts throwing rock-hard buns at me?’

The fishermen nodded.

‘You’ve done a lot for us,’ said Jayden, softly, behind her. ‘You can do this. We’re here for you.’

‘With matches,’ added Kendall.

Polly nodded and stepped out of the boat. In a town absolutely thronged with people, she couldn’t have felt more alone.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s do this.’

She creaked open the door of the Little Beach Street Bakery; its hinges needed oiling, she thought. She left the door slightly open, then realised she was expecting Neil to hop in behind her. The fact that he didn’t made her want to sob, but she managed to restrain herself.

Flora was slouching behind a very tired display of sliced white bread and a few hard-looking buns. There were more of the cheap and cheerful Empire biscuits – Polly had nothing against Empire biscuits per se, but these ones were wrapped in plastic and had clearly been bought in in a batch simply because they had a long shelf life. The rest of the shelves were empty. It made her so sad to see it.

Flora stiffened awkwardly, straightening up her long body so you could see it for the model shape it was.

‘Uh, hello, Miss Waterford.’

Polly did her best to smile.

‘Sold out already, then?’

‘Not really,’ said Flora.

‘Who’s minding the old bakery?’

Flora shrugged. ‘Malc says it’s more profitable to… uh… rashunalise,’ she said, going pink.

‘Really,’ said Polly. It gave her absolutely no satisfaction at all to see the business being run into the ground, and she didn’t feel in the least bit guilty either. You gave people rubbish or a good alternative; they’d hopefully go for the good alternative and it was nothing to be ashamed of.

‘So is he around?’ she asked, feeling her voice getting tight in her throat. ‘I need a word with him.’

For a moment she hoped he might not be there, then she remembered seeing that loathsome BMW in the car park. Anyway, putting this off wasn’t in the least bit helpful to anyone.

Flora shrugged again. ‘Reckon.’

She leant over and lowered her voice.

‘You know, I thought he was different, but he’s just the same as all the others.’

Polly bit her tongue at that as Flora disappeared into the now idle kitchen.

‘Malc! Miss Waterford’s here to see you.’

There was some muffled swearing. Flora re-emerged.

‘He says you’ll need to wait,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘Sorry.’

‘That’s fine,’ said Polly. ‘I’ve sold all
my
stock.’

As she stood waiting, she noticed that there was a musty, unpleasant smell in the air, a little sour. She wondered if they’d remembered to throw away her lovely yeast culture in the fridge before it took over everything. She suspected not. That would be the smell. They were in for one hell of a shock next time they opened that fridge.

Eventually, making a big show of doing up his shirt buttons, as if he’d been through in the kitchen completely naked – which he might have been; Polly would no longer put anything past him – Malcolm emerged looking impatiently at his watch.

Polly was completely enraged by this. If he had put some genuine time and effort into this place instead of wasting it on a campaign of ongoing harassment against her, then the bakery – her bakery, she couldn’t help but feel, still – would still be a bustling, happy going concern, full of customers and staff and children and puffins, rather than this yeasty morgue.

‘Help you?’ he asked sourly.

‘Yes,’ said Polly. ‘I’m here to tell you that your little campaign stops now. NOW.’

‘What campaign?’

‘The shouting, the bullying and the you-know-what,’ said Polly, her voice trembling. ‘Have you heard of hate speech? Apparently the police take it very seriously these days.’

‘Eh?’ said Malcolm.

‘You heard,’ said Polly. ‘Not to mention destruction of property – my property. Not to mention defacement and graffiti and general YOU BEING DISGUSTING.’

She couldn’t help it, she was shouting.

‘Now you wait a minute,’ shouted Malcolm straight back, going brick red in the face. ‘It’s a free country last time I looked and I can do whatever the hell I damn well please without asking you, you bird lover. And this is NOT your property, you fantasist, we’ve told you a million times.’

‘Well you stay away from what’s mine!’ said Polly. ‘And if you lay a finger on her…’

‘Her?’ sneered Malcolm. ‘Who the hell do you mean? Flora likes it, don’t you, darling?’

‘Um,’ said Flora, staring at the floor.

‘Not
her
. My van! Nan the Van!’ shouted Polly at the top of her lungs. ‘Stay away from her!’

‘What about your blooming van?’

‘Stay away from it!’

‘Come on, love, that’s just friendly banter!’

‘It fricking isn’t!’

There was a clang as the door opened and in walked a very sleepy-looking Selina. She smelled of booze and she had heavy bags under her eyes.

‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but could you stop making all that ruddy noise? Some of us are trying to sleep upstairs.’

‘Uh, Selina, it’s eleven o’clock in the morning,’ said Polly. ‘You’re just not used to hearing anyone because he’s lost all the bloody customers.’

Selina stared at Polly as if she didn’t recognise her at all. Malcolm was still shouting.

‘And it’s your bloody fault, you thieving minx!’

Polly backed out.

‘I’m not going to get into this,’ she said. ‘You come near us again… anywhere near, I’m calling the police.’

Malcolm shook his head in disbelief.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘They can cart your old rust bucket away.’

 

 

The brightness of the day made her blink as she emerged from the dingy shop. A little boy ran into her legs.

‘SORRY,’ he bawled cheerfully.

‘Hello there,’ Polly said sadly, looking down.

‘Is that the bread shop?’ he asked excitedly.

‘Well, kind of,’ she said, standing aside to let him pass.

‘Mummy said I can have cake in the cake shop! She said it’s a very famous cake shop.’

His mother came up behind her, a cheery-looking sort in a polka-dot skirt and white blouse.

‘Well it used to be,’ she said, peering at it unoptimistically. ‘I remember it from last year, it was just amazing.’

‘Things change,’ said Polly in a dull voice.

‘Don’t they.’

‘Also they have a BIRD in the cake shop!’ confided the little boy.

‘I don’t think he’s there any more,’ mumbled Polly. The boy’s face fell.

‘Don’t worry, Josephus,’ said his mother, inspecting the dusty window display with a disappointed look. ‘Shall we just have an ice cream instead?’

‘ICE CREAM! ICE CREAM!’ shouted the little boy with the strange name, delighted, and skipped off past the bakery and up the hill with his mother. Polly sighed.

 

 

Polly sat out on the other side of the harbour wall, tears running down her face. Her place, the place she had defended, that she loved; her home, where she had thought she belonged: it was as if a toad had crept in, a big poisonous wart at the middle of everything.

Selina came by and looked like she was going to walk straight past. Polly called her over.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I need a friendly face.’

Selina looked at her strangely. Polly thought she was being paranoid. Suddenly she felt like the world was against her. It wasn’t helpful.

‘Oh Selina,’ she said, sadly.

‘What’s up?’

Polly shook her head.

‘I can’t… Everything’s gone wrong,’ she said. ‘Everything.’

Selina sniffed and didn’t say anything.

‘Why are you so hungover?’ said Polly.

Selina bit her lip and her face stiffened.

‘Sometimes my coping mechanisms run out,’ she said. She looked at Polly. ‘Jayden came to the pub with me.’

‘He seemed all right this morning,’ said Polly.

‘He must still have been drunk, then,’ said Selina.

Polly rubbed her back.

‘It’s okay. We’ve all been there. In fact, next time, call me. I know where Andy keeps the last of Kerensa’s stock of drinkable wine.’

Selina shrugged Polly’s hand away.

‘Yeah, whatever,’ she said, and headed off.

Even though it was only the middle of the afternoon and the sun was still warm, the clouds were massing again: the same heaviness in the air, the odd yellow tinge to everything. Polly wandered back towards the town and caught up with Jayden.

‘Everyone is AWFUL today, Jayden,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I feel sick.’

He looked up at the sky.

‘That’s not a good colour,’ he said. ‘I’m going to tell the boys not to go out.’

‘They aren’t. Archie’s got very cautious with the weather. Anyway, what’s up with you?’

‘I went drinking with Selina,’ he said.

‘Just drinking?’

‘Yes,’ said Jayden, although he flushed pink. ‘I won’t do that again.’

‘Did you both get mortalled? She’s being really weird today.’

Jayden didn’t say anything.

‘Also, if you were drinking all night with Selina, how did you get up at five a.m.?’

‘Did I?’ said Jayden. ‘Oh yes. Cor, I didn’t even remember that.’

‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ said Polly. ‘I am going to have a word with Andy. Selling drinks that make you forget things
on an island
is the most lunatic thing I ever heard. You could both have wandered off the causeway and killed yourselves. Right, away with you. Go to bed. Tomorrow we work.’

Her face turned grim. ‘Malcolm has declared war. And we’re going to win it.’