The Briny Café Read Free Page B

Freddy shakes his head. “Just havin’ a breather before going home for a zizz. I’ve got to square up for a twelve-hour shift later this afternoon.”
    â€œWeekend. Mugs everywhere.”
    â€œYeah. Nothing changes …”
    â€œMy imagination, Freddy, or are there more about than usual?”
    â€œA few ning-nongs showing off on the water. Not enough to spoil a beautiful day.”
    â€œNever seen you lose your temper. Not once.”
    Freddy shrugs. “No point. Shouting never achieves anything. Compassion takes you a lot further.”
    â€œYou’re a good man, Freddy.”
    Freddy swills the last of his coffee. “Filthy brew,” he pronounces through puckered lips, squeezing the paper cup into a ball.
    â€œThat bloke who’s moved next to Triangle, he’s got some suss late-night habits. I reckon he’s worth keeping an eye on when you’re out and about.”
    Freddy nods and points towards Sam’s newspaper. “Reckon I could read my stars before I take off?”
    Sam looks confused at first. “Oh mate. Gotcha.” He flicksto the back pages, rips out the astrology column. “This stuff really tell you what’s ahead?”
    â€œGood a guess as any.” And with a slightly bow-legged hobble, Freddy heads towards his apple-green water taxi with its powerful 150-horsepower engine, turquoise bimini, lime padded seats and bright pink carpet. Colour, Freddy explains to every astonished first-time passenger, lifts the spirits, you see.
    Running thick fingers through his salt-stiff hair Sam looks around for someone else to entertain him. A group of dishevelled Islanders with south-facing houses sits in the sunniest corner of the Square, soaking in the warmth. They’re in tight conversation, eating hot chips out of a bucket with a look of guilty pleasure on their pale, mildly hungover faces.
    The Seagull – a scarred old timber ferry with a turned up snout – swings into the wharf, her shabby blue and red hull cutting through the green water. The magnificently raj rear deck is solidly packed with Saturday morning memsahibs, kids carrying cricket bats, and a few tail-wagging mutts travelling free as usual. The two Misses Skettle, twins who were born and bred offshore more than eighty-five years ago, alight last. Both have a single strand of pearls hanging to the exact level of their second buttons and, thrown over their narrow shoulders, sit purple cardigans that tone with their mauve hair. They pound down the gangway chirruping, and blow Sam a kiss like he’s still five years old and hanging behind his mother’s skirt. For old girls, he thinks fondly, they move like pink and purple rockets.
    Sam checks his watch, pats his pocket, searching for his tobacco. Jeez. A month away from turning forty and hismemory is on the blink already. Once and for all, mate, he tells himself emphatically, you have given up the freaking fags!
    He feels a sudden pinch in his gut, then another that blossoms into a full-on cramp. He stomps inside the café, aiming to launch an enquiry into the freshness of the bacon. But pulls up short. A woman in blue jeans with straight black hair and a pancake-flat backside beats him to the counter. She puts her shoulder bag between sweets, peanuts, chocolates, cans of baked beans and some furry and green-tinted loaves of bread, all flung haphazardly like the flotsam and jetsam of a shipwreck. He watches her grab a newspaper and slip it under a paddle-pop arm, like she’s in a city café where they’re part of the furnishings. He winces and waits for Bertie, the cantankerous owner of The Briny Café, to erupt.
    â€œPaper’s not free, luv. Two-fifty on a Saturday unless you’re planning to pinch it. Which I wouldn’t advise,” Bertie says in a killer voice. The old man stares at her boldly with dark brown eyes out of a bald, acorn head.
    â€œSorry,” she says, without