Page 26 of Summer at Harbour View House
By the time Natasha had showered and changed, Hannah had managed to find a couple of packets of biscuits to go with their lemon water, and they sat together in the living room, looking out of the wide bay windows at the English Channel. The sky was a blanket of grey, the water a white-flecked mirror. On the horizon, two tankers passed each other.
‘Do you think you could swim all the way across to France?’ Hannah said.
Natasha laughed. ‘It’s about sixty miles here, isn’t it? Probably not.’
‘What if you had flippers on?’
‘I … doubt it.’
‘Wouldn’t that be something, though?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You know, I’ve been wondering if Brad wouldn’t have dumped me if I’d done something like that. You know, he’d be all like, “My girlfriend swam to France”. And he’d be … proud of me and stuff.’
Hannah was sitting up straight, staring out of the window. Natasha watched her in profile, unable not to admire how pretty Hannah looked, like she’d stepped out of an oil painting, or, perhaps, in this day and age, been made with computer A.I. software. And yet, despite outwardly having everything, she was lacking the one thing she most wanted. Natasha frowned, hoping Hannah wouldn’t start to cry.
‘I always like to think of the school holidays as a prelude to a new start,’ she said. ‘The actual new start is in September, when I have to go back to school. The summer is like a pre-game, where you get to do what you want and not really worry about it, because as long as you’ve got yourself in order by September, it’s all good.’
‘So … what you’re saying is that in the summer it’s okay to go a bit crazy and make a few mistakes?’
‘Ah … within reason.’
‘So, what do you think we should do first?’
Natasha smiled. ‘Go to the pub.’
The Rusty Anchor, which turned out to be the big white cottage on the corner, where St. Juliot Lane led up from the harbour, felt like a cave. They had to duck their heads just to get inside, beneath a solid granite lintel upon which someone had long ago taped a now-faded sign which read “Here be the blood of a thousand Cornishmen”, then traverse a narrow, gloomy corridor to a bar entrance at the end. Seemingly entering at the back, they then had to wind through a series of seating areas cramped with overhanging eaves and cluttered with memorabilia to get to the bar proper, which was around the front. At the end of the bar, a closed door would have opened out beside the main entrance, but was now blocked by an ancient jukebox.
A couple of old people sat in window seats, looking out through misty glass at the harbour below. Natasha, trying to shake off a sense of claustrophobia led Hannah up to the bar.
A bell stood on the battered wooden bar, on top of a sign which read, “Ring it for assistance if I ain’t here”. Natasha glanced around, then gave it a polite little tingle.
‘Gonna ‘ave to shake it a bit harder’n that,’ an old man by the window said, turning around. ‘Maid in there is ‘alf deaf.’
‘Okay, thanks,’ Natasha said, picking up the bell again and giving it a hard rattle.
‘Hold yer horses!’ yelled a woman’s voice from behind a door in the wall behind the bar. ‘I ain’t deaf you know!’
Natasha took a couple of steps back from the bar as the man by the window chuckled and leaned over his pint as the door slid open, bumping on uneven runners.
‘Oh, it’s her,’ Hannah said at Natasha’s shoulder, as Lizzie Hawkins stepped through the doorway and met them with an angry glare. She had changed out of her fishwife outfit, and now wore a checkered shirt over jeans. Her hair, that resembled a bundle of old fishing line, was tied back by a ribbon threaded through a drilled hole in a fist-sized conch shell.
‘Er, hello,’ Natasha said.
‘Ah, back to ruin another of me livelihoods?’ Lizzie said. ‘I don’t do nothin’ on the house, so don’t even ask.’
‘Two pints of local,’ Natasha said, feeling adventurous as she pointed at a beer pump labeled only with a cardboard sign that said “Local ale”.
‘I’m not sure I can drink a whole pint,’ Hannah said with a nervous titter.
‘I’ll fill ‘e three quarters, donate top third to Matt over there,’ Lizzie said with a thin smile.
‘Kindly,’ Matt said, lifting a hand.
Lizzie worked the ale pump hard, muscles standing out on her thick forearms, then put down a pint and three quarters on the bar, hard enough to make the liquid slosh.
‘Seven pound each,’ she said. ‘Fourteen.’
