Page 11 of On The Edge

7

Mrs Hughes pulled up outside the hotel early the following morning tooting the hooter briskly. Her rattling Skoda made uneasy noises as its engine struggled to stay running. Cat hurried to look out of her bedroom window and ran down the stairs to greet the old lady. Mrs Hughes was squeezed into the driver’s seat; a compact arrangement of short grey hair, a wide forehead, and thick glasses perched on top of a winkled nose. Cat noticed the car seats were covered in hair, and distributed an overpowering smell of wet dog.

“Hello, I’m Cat. You must be Mrs Hughes?” Cat asked timidly through the open passenger window.

“I am, I am, come in love, let’s get started! I have morning tea in an hour so we better begin pronto!” Mrs Hughes spoke in an authoritative, military tone, which made Cat snap to attention and quickly strap herself in for a ride.

“ON WE GO!” Mrs Hughes cried with vigour, and the clattering car accelerated up the cobbled incline. Cat thanked her lucky stars there wasn't a pedestrian in sight as the old woman swerved the car this way and that. “So are you from the islands?” Mrs Hughes enquired, glancing in her side mirror.

“No I’m not, I’m from Glasgow.”

“Very nice, very nice. Well lets stop here and let you take over!” The Skoda stopped abruptly in a lay-by next to the water. Cat began to panic almost immediately.

“But…but I don’t- ,” she began.

“Enough of that, you want to pass your test, eh?” Her companion examined Cat sternly from beneath her perched spectacles.

“Yes, but I’ve never been behind a wheel before…?” Cat clasped her now clammy hands and started to feel very nauseous. She’d only ever steered a bike before now, and even on that she had fallen off, and crashed it into her neighbour's garage door.

“Doesn’t matter, let’s get you started immediately and get you to pass. I have no patience for lesson after lesson, doing baby steps. I’m old and the only local instructor here, so let’s get going so I can have my morning tea on time”. Mrs Hughes wrestled with her seatbelt and struggled out of the driver's seat. Cat sighed, and resigned herself to the fact that she had no excuses now, and Mrs Hughes was clearly not the kind of person to allow her any either.

Cat stood behind the bar and felt her day had passed by in a whirlwind. Her driving lesson had not been as terrible as she had imagined. She hadn’t killed anyone, or crashed Mrs Hughes’ Skoda into the sea. All in all, not a bad beginning. But now she had to start learning how to be a barmaid! Fresh feelings of insecurity and shyness bubbled inside her as she waited on Jim to finish talking to a customer and start showing her how to pull a pint. Just as they were bidding farewell, a large group of customers came through the door. The men were all extremely broad-shouldered, and slightly terrifying-looking to Cat. A bald man with missing teeth mumbled a request in her general direction. Horrified, Cat had no idea what the man was saying, and looked over to Jim, who was bent down behind the bar reaching for the peanuts. The man grumbled the order again, but Cat was still none the wiser.

“I’m sorry, sir... is... is it a pint you want?” Cat gave a smile but felt her cheeks starting to burn.

“Yes, eighty!” the man persisted, clearly irritated at not getting his drink.

“You want 80 pints?” Cat asked baffled.

Finally Jim looked her way with a smile and pointed to the draft beside him. “Is it the usual pint of Eighty-Shilling, Terry?”

“Aye!” barked the bald man as Jim coaxed Cat to the pumps. Cat attempted to pull the pint while Jim kept close to her and with an encouraging nod to Cat; she felt that the end result was presentable to the client. After she had worked the till a couple of times, and served several other big men that looked like each other, she began to get into the swing of it; even when Jim went out for a cigarette break she was happy to hold the fort.

As it was during the week and fairly quiet, they closed the bar a bit earlier. Cat watched how Jim politely but firmly told the customers to drink up. Even against protests of the more tipsy drinkers who would remember an unmissable tale they had to tell him, he managed to clear the floor, saying at every turn “you tell me that story tomorrow, fella.”

Cat watched how he locked up, counted and ran up the till money for the night. “Think you’ll be here at the weekend?” Jim asked her when switching out the lights.

“I hope so!”

“You did really well tonight, you’re good with people - even Terry! I’ll see you Saturday night then!” Jim patted her gently on the arm as they both went their separate ways.

Cat walked up the stairs in an energised mood. She was not tired yet and in good spirits after a successful first night as a barmaid. She went into her room and opened her curtains to see the pale moon above and its rippling reflection on the dark waters below. Without a moment’s hesitation, she packed a bag with bits and pieces she had bought in the tiny art shop a few days earlier - paper, pencils, along with her little camera and her iPod - locked her room, and went down and out the back entrance of the hotel, her shadowy figure swallowed by the dark silky night.

Dim street lamps highlighting her route, she passed between old, white washed houses which lined both sides of the street. On one side behind the single line of dwellings the sea slapped and slopped close by. Cat found an opening between two houses that led down to the water. She followed the path to a pier where she stood and took in the twinkling lights of Stromness clustered around the rippling water.

Cat zipped up her thick fleece and crouched on a safe spot on the pier. Pulling out pencils and paper, she did what she hadn’t done in years, and sketched instinctively. The moon lit up the sky and her view of the horizon. The sky was incredible; she had never seen the same sweep of colours in the city, and she drank it all in, allowing her hand to do what it wanted. In a gentle frenzy she sketched the view before her, and took some photos of the lights with her camera. After a half hour or so, she sighed with pleasant relief, switched her iPod on, letting the music of Debussy swim around her. Leaning her back against thick iron bars of the pier, she sat in tranquility taking in the view.

The next day, Cat had her second driving lesson with Mrs Hughes. This time they were in the car much longer and drove to the next town over the way. At the end of the lesson, Cat had noticed her hands were not clutching the wheel as tightly as they had been at the beginning of the lesson.

“A lot better, lass,” Mrs Hughes concluded as Cat parked outside the hotel.

“Tomorrow?” Cat asked, surprising herself.

“I have two lessons in the morning, but I can manage the afternoon.” Mrs. Hughes raked in the glove box lifting out all manner of dog related items; but gave up and tapped her head. “I’ll store it in here!”

Cat giggled and was left in a cloud of exhaust fumes as Mrs Hughes screeched away along the cobbled street.

Back in her bedroom, Cat took out the sketches from the previous night and wedged them around her dresser table mirror. Standing looking at the drawings, she examined them and picked up her digital camera to browse at the photos she had taken. As she had guessed, the photos where very dark, and a little unclear, but some elements still stood out. The moon was blurry and bright shining out like a headlight from its dusky surroundings. Looking at the dim orb of white light, Cat made up her mind on the spot. Her next shift at the pub wasn’t until tomorrow night, so she packed her things, made a list, and caught the bus into Kirkwall.