Page 24 of Summer at Harbour View House
‘In my day, we’d be out two hour before school to fish for our dinner.’
The crowd, expectant, oohed and aahed. A little boy standing with his grandmother, clapped his hands together before diving back out of sight behind his grandmother’s legs.
‘Say something witty back!’ Hannah hissed.
‘I can’t think of anything!’
‘Try!’
‘Ah … well, if it takes you two hours to catch a fish, you probably should be going to a different kind of school.’
The crowd cheered. Natasha glanced at Hannah who nodded and patted her on the arm. The old woman watched them, but a small smile had appeared on her flushed, sundried face.
‘In my day, we didn’t have the luxury of shops. Made all our clothes ourselves.’
The crowd clapped and cheered. The old woman put her hands on her hips as though waiting for a comeback.
‘Well, it doesn’t look like much as changed,’ Natasha said. ‘You clearly haven’t learned much over the last … hundred and fifty years.’
The crowd burst into spontaneous laughter and cheering. Hannah patted Natasha on the shoulder. ‘Nice, nice. You’ve nearly got her.’
‘In my day,’ the old woman began, ‘us didn’t ‘ave no fancy plastic cases for our stuff. We had to make do with old lobster pots.’
Natasha flapped her hands, trying to summon the wittiness god for one last comedown. The truth was, she didn’t really know what a lobster pot was, not what one looked like. She opened her mouth, hoping something interesting would fall inside like raindrops, but the sound of a tractor coming up the valley made everyone turn.
It bumped up the road, then came to a stop by the harbour wall. The door opened and Jago jumped down.
‘He’s come to save us!’ Hannah cried, but Natasha shushed her with a finger to her lips.
‘Get on,’ Jago said, doffing his cap to the crowd. ‘Pete, Reg, Cole, Mary. What’s ‘e got going on up yers?’
‘Lizzie found some loot,’ one of the old men said.
‘Wreckers come home in the night,’ the old woman—Lizzie—said. ‘Got us five cases of imported garments.’
‘I’ll give ‘e fifty for the lot, plus a side of beef,’ Jago said.
Lizzie clapped her hands together. ‘Done.’ To Natasha’s surprise, Lizzie pulled an electronic card reader out of a pocket in her skirt. ‘You want to pay now?’
‘I’ll drop ‘e round later,’ Jago said.
‘Got it. I’ll ‘ave the kettle on,’ Lizzie replied, then turned on her heels, bunched up her skirts, and marched off along the harbour, turning into the second of the harbourside houses, the door closing behind her with an imposing thud.
With the excitement over, the crowd quickly dispersed, most people heading back into the village, the old woman and the boy down to the thin strip of grey sand in the harbour, where the boy began looking for whatever the sea might have washed up.
‘I was wondering where you’s had got to,’ Jago said to the two women. ‘Thought I’d better check you’s ‘adn’t got lost again.’
‘Sorry we … left so early,’ Natasha said.
‘I saw ‘e’s note,’ Jago said. ‘I’d ‘ave given ‘e a lift if ‘e’d asked.’
Natasha ignored a quizzical look from Hannah. ‘We just thought that we’d burdened you enough already,’ she said.
Jago pointed at their cases. Lizzie had left one case open, and as Natasha watched, a breeze got up, caught a pair of Hannah’s lace knickers and sent them tumbling over the harbour wall.
‘Better not leave those lying around,’ he said. ‘’Specially not with old Lizzie Hawkins about. Went to school with the lass. She was flogging anything she could get her hands on before she learned to talk.’
‘Did she really have to walk ten miles there and back?’ Hannah asked.
