Young girl
Yesterday evening, her Apple News app had, in that frankly scary, “I know you better than you know yourself” way that algorithms have, scrolled up a report of a new gallery — stocked with artist names she knew well, colleagues, friends — to open soon in Deal. Bookmarking that for later, then her eye caught on a sentence below that half-page spread, snagging on a short report of the results in some local fishing competition. It was one of the contestants’ name and age that had her almost mashing her finger through the tablet screen, to enlarge and expand the details. No doubt about the full name, Derek Sonderby Beckinsale, born, 1957. Him. Her Dad. Her dead dad.
She needed to leave the North today. Her Mum had always told her that her father, the man she’d never met, had been a soldier on a base near Deal and that’s where her mum had got pregnant with her. She didn’t know whyMum had told her that he’d died. Chrissy’s unable to ask that hurtful question now, Nora now also dead for 3 years, which left only him to explain. Aged 31 and only now finding out that he was apparently very much alive, marooned — no song-bird he, but aspic preserved maybe — in that ‘falling off edge of the world’, seaside town, shouted NOW to her.
Chrissy wasn’t expecting to find him at the actual place where sperm had caught egg, no, that would be just weird, but she admitted to more than a slight feeling of curiosity about the pier, the pebbled beach, the chocolate-box photo, town. demanded more details. The only physical reminder, a slightly faded colour photo of them both, taken probably in some Woolies photo booth, he tall, dark, swarthy, exotic, an impossibly wide, white — not NHS teeth — grin. Her Mum, holding tight to his arm, slighter, red hair, blue eyes, caught laughing upwards.
Express speed into London Euston, cleaner, brighter, less smelly but smaller than she remembered from her only London school-trip, then the slower, noisy, slam-door rattling train, out toward the Kent coast. Passing countryside, with less height, prettily embroidered smaller fields, the whole thing, tamed and manicured, in comparison with Kendal. Still, bucolic enough though, she thought.
Blinking her way out of the gloom of the station, positioning her sunglasses, hearing a teenage girl shout: “nice top!” at her — the “Will Trade Racists For Refugees”, red on white T-shirt she’d spent some time matching with jeans, roll-top boots and her companion messenger bag, left-shoulder hung — she glances at the map app and heads east.
It’s Sunday afternoon now, walking through narrowing, corner hiding streets, the town quiet, feeling parochial, stilled, almost abandoned. She could smell the sea long minutes before she saw it; almost as soon as she’d left the station, she caught the sharp seaweed & ozone tang, the promise of wind blown freshness.
Suddenly, the sea-thrown blinding shards of sunlight halo the top of a long street, one sloping upwards, perpendicular to the beach. And there, there, across the sea hugging road, was the pier, the view just as Mum had described it. Still flanked by an ice-cream parlour, a bait shop & some vaguely nautically themed, tatty, bric-a-brac place attempting — but failing badly — to masquerade as an antique shop, a shop where her mum had briefly worked. A little further along, a narrow, tall, gold & red painted pub. Fierce gull calls pierced her as she stepped through the pier’s sculpted metal gates (were those meant to be mermaids, fish, shells, Neptune?) onto its deck.
Looking down over the concrete edge, that liminal space apparent between sea, sky, land, pebbles, the hint of sand, waves. Then, the gaps between pier beams, showing white water surging far down between them, fishermen with their nets, hopeful of fish recovery, their bait boxes, bigger almost than tea-chests, crowding either side. Children running, screaming, being shushed but ignoring their parents, briefly companions alongside her.
Finally, the pier end, hammerhead-shark like shaped from the air, the café doors swinging towards her, then away, as the young couple pushed quickly through, no sight of her, eyeing only themselves.
Then inside, glancing up and seeing a beamed ceiling; it could be the spars of a wrecked ship or the rib-cage of a marine leviathan. Eyes adjusting now, she removes her sunglasses and looks around at a space surprisingly empty of others, just an old couple, at the far-end of the counter. The owner (she assumes he’s the owner, guessing he’s about her age, confident of his place here, calm, ready to feed you, not Saturday-job bored), looks over, laughs and calls out, slightly flirty — nothing bad, no offence necessary or taken — with a smiled conspiratorial glance towards the old couple, obviously cherished regulars, “see if you can find a free space & I’ll be with you as soon as I can”.
Chrissy choosing to take a metal chair (regret as she screeches it across the polished, hardwood floor) seat at a table, next to the wide, panoramic windows, view straight out over the impossibly cornflower blue Channel. The sky is everywhere, towering, pushing down on her, gravid somehow, much how she’s imagined the American mid-West to look, nothing like those splintered glimpses, all the sky you’d see in hilly, middle England.
He threaded his way to her table, smiling still, pad & pen in shirt-pocket, menu placed open, just so, a water jug and glass added to her left, finally depositing cutlery in front of her. “Welcome to The Pier Kitchen. Did you want to have something to eat or maybe just a cold drink? Or you’re welcome to sit here without buying; as you can see, we’re not slammed busy.
Asked like that, Chrissy realises she’s ravenous hungry; only lightly breakfasted, the proverbial butterflies brought on by how she saw the day going, havoc to her stomach, stifling her usual appetite, then lunch, an on-the-run snatched, over-heated, almost moisture-free, “must be day-old stock” pastie, gobbled whilst navigating through the station, to just make that earlier train. So, yes, now, now she was bloody hungry.
“A drink and some food would be great” she agreed.
“The menu has all our regular items; and there’s a daily specials board up by the bar, probably too far from here for you to read, so come on over and I’ll explain it, whilst you decide what you’d like to drink?”. Smiling again, he pirouetted his towel in a wave at the old couple and headed back towards them.
Grabbing her ‘phone, she followed to the counter. A friendly smile at the couple, whilst offering “what a gorgeous view, what a lovely oasis of a place
“Isn’t it just?” said the woman, “isn’t it just, my lovely?”. “We come here every week, doesn’t matter if it’s blowing an easterly gale or in drooping mid-summer heat, we’re here eating one of Jeff’s sandwiches. Always the same one mind, his roast special
“And you’re Jeff?” she asks the guy, now comfortably back behind the counter, Jeff nods, “aye, that’s me, for whatever sins I’ve been guilty of” in a light (is that Scottish?) lilt, before finishing grinding beans for the coffee machine, cutting lemons, then mixing up a Bloody Mary for a fisherman who dashes in, shouting “the usual, Jeff boy” from the door, gulps his drink straight down, almost inhaling it, before running back out with a muttered “ta!”, Jeff back to spilling ice out of the machine into the under-counter sink, polishing the gun-metal metal counter, scraping the large gas-grill, cubing deep-yellow butter into a bowl, all the while being busy, busy, busy, in the calmest way she’s ever seen.
“Did you want me to tell you the specials for today?”, he asks.
“No, nope, I don’t think so. I’m going to trust your two friends and go with what they’re having”.
“Good choice”, they both smile. “You’ll love it”.
Reaching into the chill cabinet, Jeff takes out a bowl of meat & gravy, drops a large spoonful of that into the stove-top pot, medium heat flames she can tell. She can smell the bread from the counter. Foccacia as it turns out. Good choice; she likes this chef already.
“You’re not from round here are you dear”, asks the woman. Not a judgemental tone, just a certainty that she knows and recognises everyone in the town.
“You’re right; I’m from the North, although my Mum used to live here”.
“What’s her name dearie”?
“Nora” replies Chrissy.
“No, silly, I meant her maiden name”.
“Ah, yes, sorry, she’s a Denton”.