OK, so it was pretty in a weathered and well-salted kind of way, and it looked for all the world like a bucket and spade, sand between your toes kind of a holiday, but this really was just another job and she wasn’t going to be taken in by the village’s quirky charm.
It may well look different from their usual gigs. Borrow-A-Bookshop might evenfeelhidden away and safer than many of the spots they’d stopped at, but Joy had no intention of letting her guard down. She’d done that once before and learned a hard life lesson: she and Radia were far better off alone in their safe little bubble.
She lifted her clothes from the case, all anonymous black and grey, the kind of thing you wore if you didn’t want people noticing you, and nothing beachy at all. The holidaymakers they’d passed had all been in bright sundresses and shorts. At least Radia would be properly dressed, she consoled herself with a sigh.
The sea shimmer caught her dark eyes once more and, dropping the grey pile, she let herself clamber onto the cushioned window seat, her nose at the warm glass, where she watched as the boats glided across the calm horizon.
Downstairs, Radia sang the only two lines of ‘I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside’ that she knew, over and over again, throwing her fox into the air and catching him before he fell.
Hugging her arms around herself, gazing down at the deep sparkling blue, Joy couldn’t help allowing her lips to curl into a sleepy smile. No, she wasn’t going to let her guard down or draw attention to herself in any way, but it couldn’t hurt to admire the prettiness and let the sunshine in a little.
Chapter Two
Standing by the lantern at the end of the sea wall, Monty could just make out the family boat, thePeter’s Bounty, on the horizon, a white dot he’d recognise from any distance.
He pushed back his brown curls and brought his hand to his brow, shading his dark eyes from the fierce morning light. The hottest day of the summer so far. He knew the fish would be shoaling deeply and there’d be a good haul. A fisherman knows. Even if this fisherman was confined to the pub kitchens these days.
Sure enough, a message appeared on his phone to confirm his hunch.
Hi bro. Prep for a good lot of whitebait, 30 servings I’d say. Nuf mackerel to last you a week, and two good fat lobsters in the pots.
‘Got it. Cheers Tom,’ he typed back in reply, before fixing his eyes on the horizon once more. TheBountywas making for the harbour already and the little chamber in Monty’s heart that stood empty whenever his brother put to sea by himself began to fill with calm.
It was the same feeling he’d had as a boy, knowing his dad was out there in all weathers, risking his life daily to bring home the catch. No fisherman’s family is ever truly contented until the mooring ropes are tied and the boats are again bumping at the harbour wall.
Monty had a newfound respect for his mum, who’d lived with this worry all her life until the confusion came, the slow creep of dementia. Now she lived out at Barnstaple with his older empty-nester sister and her husband.
Monty would be willing to bet that even though she’d forgotten so much, his mum could still remember the feeling of watching for the boats coming in, like all those Clove Lore wives stretching back so far in history until nothing can be recollected.
Now Monty was like them, and his heart lifted and dipped with the waves as he watched his brother captainPeter’s Bountytowards the harbour mouth.
He checked the time on his phone. Half-nine. He’d have to get back to the kitchens. There were still ten pounds of spuds to prep, not to mention the beer batter he’d need to begin soon. But glancing back at the Siren’s Tail, he found he couldn’t move his feet quite yet.
Finan wouldn’t miss him for another few minutes, surely? He could tell him it was a two-cigarette kind of a break after the flat-out rush of breakfast service this morning. He’d understand.
Monty just needed to get away from the drone of the industrial dishwasher for ten minutes, to inhale the sea and feel the sunshine. Still, he had no right to complain about being tired or irritated. Not when Tom had been out there all by himself hauling in the nets.
The brothers often spent the weekend evenings repairing those nets down on the beach after Monty’s shifts at the Siren were over. The light summer nights had made that essential work easier, and they’d worked and joked and reminisced, passing the shuttle through the intricate web of old rope, patching holes and making good.
They’d learned the skill from their dad, who’d learned it from his dad, and so on, all the way back to a forgotten year in the eighteenth century when the family had settled in Clove Lore, attracted by the bountiful bass and mackerel at this time of year, and the winter abundance of cod, flounder and dab.
ThePeter’s Bountyhad passed to them when they lost their dad a few years ago and the brothers had sunk their nets every day since, until it became apparent that, although there were still plenty of fish in the Atlantic, the prices had fallen so much that one of the twins was going to have to do something else. That person, naturally, was Monty.
More like his resourceful, wily mother than his brother, who took after their dad, Monty threw himself into adapting. He’d presented the recipes his mum had taught him years ago to Bella and Finan at the Siren’s Tail when their old chef was retiring.
Within days last autumn, Monty had gone from being a fisherman of nobody-could-remember-how-many generations to a landlubber up to his elbows in peelings. It was a living. So what if this wasn’t quite what he wanted?
Tom, eight minutes his junior and so always considered the baby, needed the routine of fishing. Just like their dad, Tom was regulated by the tides. ‘Salt in his blood, that one,’ their dad used to say, and it was true. Without the sailings, Tom would grow agitated, lost even. One time, he’d fractured his wrist on the boat and was stuck on the quayside for days; he’d not known what to do with himself, pacing about by the harbour lantern until Monty brought theBountyin again.
Still, everyone had noticed how Tom was a lot calmer since meeting Lou, the local newspaper reporter, last Christmas. And yet, even with her warming his bed up at the cottage, he’d wake before his five o’clock alarm and trudge Down-along every day, as if not putting to sea on time was an impossibility.
No, Tom was the fisherman, Monty was the… well, what was he?
He looked down at his hands, clutching his phone. Where they’d been calloused and salt-rubbed like his brother’s, now they were soap-softened from the kitchens. How the last few months on dry land had transformed him.
He loved to cook, that’s for sure, but the Siren’s chips and steaks didn’t interest him. All those sausages and pies served up with gravy and the endless fried breakfasts didn’t do anything for him either. There was demand for his delicious seafood, but that made up only a third of his orders in a pub where the traditional favourites still dominated the menu.
As his heart sank lower, his eyes lifted to where theBountywas rounding the long protective arm of the harbour. Tom waved from the cockpit, a lit cigarette clinging to his smiling lips. Monty made for the mooring.
