Weathering (9 page)

‘The squid ink?’

‘It was a guest, didn’t think much to the establishment apparently. But listen. We’re short on people to work today. The girl I normally use seems to have gone down with some sort of sickness or other. Weak immune system. I tell her to drink orange juice, eat soup with chicken in it, but no one around here listens to me. And I thought you could step in.’

‘At the pub?’ Ada spoke slowly.

‘Tonight. Five o’clock. Cash in hand. You know the ropes – you used to work here sometimes didn’t you. Nothing’s changed except maybe the waitresses. Got a new chef a few years ago. Oh and the dishwasher packed up. But you’ll pick it up.’

The money would be good, pay off at least one of those bills. Or get someone in to repair the leak. ‘But where would they have got squid ink from?’ Ada said. ‘Did they bring it especially, just in case?’

At half past four she strapped Pepper into the front seat and drove to the pub.        

Val hadn’t said if she was waitressing or prepping food, so she had no idea what to wear. She had clothes from some of her old jobs: a striped T-shirt from a shoe shop, a green fleece from a garden centre. An overall she probably should have given back, from packing up boxes of Christmas lights one summer. None of the jobs had lasted – couldn’t abide touching people’s feet, didn’t know the difference between mulch and compost. On reception at a hotel, she would unlock rooms for people that had locked themselves out, then an hour later would be called to unlock the same room again – the guest blaming the door. They always blamed the door.

‘Why are we going?’ Pepper asked. ‘Are you going to drink whisky and fall asleep?’

Once. That had happened once. ‘Are you going to drink something fizzy and run around the room?’ Ada said.

Pepper scowled. ‘I don’t do that any more.’

Ada squinted against headlights. ‘I’m just covering someone’s shift,’ she said.

‘But I fought you said we weren’t living here,’ Pepper said.

‘Thought,’ Ada told her. ‘I
thought
you said we weren’t living here.’ Where was the pub anyway? Usually you could hear music blaring and engines revving in the car park by now. A teeming, sweaty bar, raucous laughter, more often than not someone outside pissing against a wall.

The road narrowed and the hedge scraped against the windows. There was the pub up ahead, low and whitewashed. No sign or name. And hardly any cars. A statue of an angel looking down at a bilgy pond.

‘Stay close to me in there,’ Ada told Pepper. She pushed the door open. A blast of hot air hit her face. A radio bawling old jazz. The room was almost empty; just a man in a checked shirt and cap standing at the bar. Guns, antlers and copper pans hanging on the wall. A plastic holly wreath with faded berries.

‘Ada.’ Val came out from the kitchen, both hands stretched out as if she were about to embrace her. But she dropped her arms as soon as she got close. She was doused in perfume, and her pale hair was held back by a pink fabric rose. She was wearing a sweatshirt and jogging trousers. ‘Look at you,’ she said.

She stared at Ada’s face until Ada put her hand up to her cheek. ‘What?’ she said. ‘What is it?’

But Val was already looking down at Pepper. ‘You look a lot like your grandmother,’ Val said.

‘We put her in the river,’ Pepper told her.

Ada settled Pepper at a table in the corner. ‘Stay here,’ she said. She laid out paper and a pencil and straightened Pepper’s jumper. Then followed Val into the kitchen, which was small and smoky and stank of oil. There were dirty pans stacked in teetering piles next to the sink, a man in a stained apron hunched over them, cleaning out a bowl like he was beating eggs.

‘Howard. This is Ada. I told you about her. She’s working tonight. Howard.’

The man beat the pan a few more times before he turned round. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Could you pass that scourer?’ He looked about fifty, with threadbare hair and deep rings slung like hammocks under his eyes. He was wearing yellow trainers and a necklace of wooden beads. There were purple scars and burns on his hands and wrists.

Ada passed him the scourer, which had crumbs and milk skin stuck in it.

‘I saw your brother yesterday,’ Howard said to Val. ‘He was asking about you.’

‘Don’t talk about that crook to me,’ Val said. She picked up a handful of potato skins and threw them at the bin. Most of them went on the floor. ‘Right.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ And she went out of the kitchen.

The radio buzzed out static. Ada turned the dial to clear it.

‘Don’t touch that,’ Howard said. ‘It’s the best you can get in here.’ He swiped a cloth over one of the pans.

After a while, Ada cleared her throat and asked if there was anything she could do. Howard gestured towards a pot of something that was bubbling too fast and a chopping board with garlic heaped on it. The knife was blunt and Ada hacked at the ends of the cloves, then peeled them. There wasn’t a garlic press anywhere so she started cutting them up into the smallest bits that she could.

‘Wait.’ Howard rushed over and shielded the chopping board with his body. ‘These are going in whole. I don’t want bits all mixed up in there.’

Ada’s face felt hot. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said. But who wanted a whole boiled clove in amongst a thin stew? Probably tried it herself at one time or another – she’d started cooking whenever her mother forgot, or when she couldn’t stand the thought of more instant rice. She’d used whatever was lying around, learning what would taste good and what wouldn’t. Not pasta cooked with vinegar – one of her earliest disasters.

Howard tsked and ripped up tough spinach leaves, which creaked in his hands. ‘How many tables have we got?’ he said.

There were four people at a table by the door. No one else for food, except for Pepper in the corner. Ada felt a small shock – the last time she’d stepped out of the pub kitchen she’d been twenty-one, serving a rowdy table. Now there was her daughter, swinging her legs. She had a glass of orange juice in front of her and a newspaper, which she was ripping a hole out of with her teeth.

‘More than usual,’ Howard grunted when Ada told him.

She found a notebook and pen and went over to the table to take the group’s orders. ‘My grandad said the whole valley was cut off for two weeks in January,’ one of them was saying. When he paused, Ada said: ‘Can I get you anything? To eat?’ She realised they didn’t have menus and she went to look for them by the till, where they used to be. The man standing at the bar leered at her. He looked familiar, maybe someone she’d been to school with.

‘We don’t have menus any more,’ Val said. ‘It’s just the usual stuff with chips. Some kind of special that Howard puts on. Maybe a couple of lasagnes in the freezer.’

Ada recited the list to the group. ‘And the special’s a garlic and spinach stew. You can have that with rice.’ She took their orders back to Howard.

‘We don’t have any fish,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to go back and tell them. No fish.’

‘You said anything with chips,’ the man at the table said. ‘You hear chips, you say fish.’ He looked around at his group and they all nodded agreement.

‘I know,’ Ada told him. ‘But maybe you hear chicken too. Is chicken OK?’

When Howard was sorting out their orders, Ada took a bowl of stew over to Pepper.

‘What is it?’ Pepper asked. She poked around with her fork, then ate some. The fork clattered back down. ‘It’s horrible,’ she said, pushing the bowl away.

Ada hushed her and took a forkful herself. The overall flavour was sulphur and scorching. ‘It’s nice,’ she said. She worked something gristly around in her mouth.

‘You eat it,’ Pepper said. ‘I will be fine.’ It was her old trick, to sit looking sorrowful and resigned when something hadn’t turned out as she wanted it to. A long-suffering expression on her face.

‘I’ll get you something else,’ Ada said. Back in the kitchen there was smoke and cursing. She took out heaped plates to the group. Didn’t hang around to ask if it was OK.

Again, she saw the man at the bar looking at her. Jake, that was his name. At eleven, she had planned their whole future together. Something about his long eyelashes, or the marble collection he had. There was no way of avoiding him, so she went up and asked how he was.

‘Can’t complain,’ he said. His front tooth was broken. ‘How about yourself?’

‘Just trying to sell the house at the moment,’ she said.        

Jake flexed his hands against his high stomach. ‘I’ve got a new truck, out there,’ he said. He inclined his head at the door, swayed slightly.

‘Good,’ Ada said. ‘It’s good to have a truck.’ She nodded for a long time.

Jake stared with red-rimmed eyes. ‘You’re a beaut, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Why don’t we go out there? You can see it if you want.’

‘God no,’ Ada said. She took a step back. ‘I mean, I think I saw it already. The new truck in the car park, right?’ She examined an empty pint glass like a detective searching for prints. Halfway back to the kitchen she heard him ask Val who she was.        

Howard was leaning against the worktop, massaging his heart. ‘It’s not good for me,’ he said. He gestured around him. ‘A stressful environment.’

In Greenland they would bury seabirds and dig them up when putrefied. A way of preserving food for winter. Travellers had written about trying to eat it and Ada imagined them looking exactly as Howard did now: harrowed. When he wasn’t looking, she reached over and turned down the roaring burner on the stew.

‘It’s all these customers,’ Howard went on. He opened a packet of crisps and slipped two into his mouth. ‘They’re not from round here generally. You get a lot of people buying up houses, staying a couple of weeks every year. They expect certain things.’ He breathed noisily. ‘I heard you were going to sell your place. I know someone who’s interested. Yeah. Likes the look of the place. By the water. Reckon he’d take it off your hands quickly enough. I’ll put him in touch with you if you want.’

‘Have my phone number,’ Ada said, writing it down quickly. The estate agent had reported no interest whatsoever.

Pepper came into the kitchen, scuffing the floor. ‘Who likes the look of what?’ She peered into the chest freezer.

‘The house,’ Howard told her.

Pepper jabbed at feathery ice. ‘Those people want you to go out there,’ she said. ‘They’re not very happy.’

When Ada went out to the bar, the group were stern. No, they didn’t want anything else. No, they just wanted the bill.

‘All OK?’ Howard asked. He rubbed his heart.

‘All fine,’ Ada said. ‘They just wanted to pay.’ Shook her head at Pepper, who went back to picking at the ice.

No one else came in for the rest of the evening. Ada washed the dishes and swept onion skin off the floor. Rearranged the fridge so there wasn’t raw meat next to cheese. Howard was at the bar drinking. Val barking advice on everything from his health to his haircut.

Ada fixed herself and Pepper a plate of sandwiches and they both pulled the crusts off and left them at the side. A clock chimed the half-hour, then the hour. Wind rattled the windows. Uncanny how quiet the pub was – like an abandoned fairground – whorled stains on the floor, broken chairs. Ada touched one of the old guns on the wall, thought of all the times it must have been pulled off and aimed with beery intent.

‘When did it get like this?’ she asked Val. ‘So quiet?’

‘Quiet?’ Val said. ‘It’s no different than it always was.’ As if the change had been so incremental she’d hardly even noticed. She sipped a cup of tea. ‘Pearl came in,’ she said. ‘About a year ago. I gave her a drink and dropped her back in the car. Walked all the way up here. I think she wanted some company.’

‘Company?’ Ada said. Her mother had never wanted company in her life.

Val shrugged and opened the till. ‘Here’s your money sweetie. I’ll give you a bell whenever we need you again, OK?’

Ada was so relieved to be going she found herself nodding. It was only when she was back in the car that she realised what she’d agreed to. The heavy feeling of getting embroiled.

Chapter 11

The diagrams were like mazes. Pepper knelt on the floor in the study and squinted down at them. At first they’d made no sense, but slowly she was working things out. How to fit on a bigger lens. Which lever to move round after she took each picture. How to adjust what Luke had called the focus. Everything fitted together and then the satisfying click when she pressed the button.

It had been raining forever. Sallow days, like something woollen left on the line too long, its colours rinsed out. The trees smeared into wet air. There was no going out but the woods and river looked different every day and she kept watching them from the window, not wanting to miss anything.

She turned the page. It was late afternoon: just on the cusp between light and dark. What her mother called
dimpsy
even though Pepper had never heard anyone else call it that. It was hard to see the next picture and when she looked up it had suddenly gone very dark, the sky turning the same green as boggy water. The wind knocked against the house. Lightning lit the sky like an X-ray, showing the pale bones of the trees. Pepper stood in the window and watched, remembering her own bones showing up on a screen when she’d swallowed that bit of metal which was stuck in her chest.