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Chapter Three
The Siren’s Tail
‘The usual?’ enquired Finan from behind the bar, where the ancient sound system was belting out some festive Mariah Carey and drowning out the swirling, icy winds outside.
The nautical knick-knackery that decorated the walls all year round had been draped with tinsel and plastic holly garlands. A fire blazed in the wide hearth and the lights on the pub’s plastic tree flashed gaudily. Jude Crawley, who loved Christmas, thought it was gorgeous.
‘Please,’ she replied and the landlord, a true silver fox, set about making her Coke with ice and lemon.
Elliot was with Jude, as always. The pair were basically inseparable now that Elliot had put a tricky few months and a tangled, unhappy stretch of unemployment behind him, establishing himself at the veterinary surgery over the headland as the authority on domestic animals.
Jude was permanently to be seen lugging around a tote bag full of books for her postgrad course on book history and conservation. She was also never seen without a Tupperware carry-case of cakes and biscuits – the product of her small business which supplemented her studies and allowed her to follow in her Scottish baking family’s footsteps. She’d drunk for free at the Siren ever since she started providing their weekly drop of almond biscotti and sultana scones.
Most of the tables were occupied with festive holiday-makers forced off the beach and cliff walks by the rising wind. Their chatter lifted the volume in the bar room to Christmas party levels.
‘Fully booked for Christmas?’ Elliot asked Finan as the landlord placed a long glass of milk in front of him. Elliot had decided not so long ago that if he was going to maintain the abs he’d worked so hard to attain while still helping Jude taste-test her new baking repertoire he’d have to switch something out, so it was goodbye Finan’s draught IPAs and hello semi-skimmed for him.
‘Yep,’ Finan told him as his wife Bella joined him at the pumps. ‘No room at the inn and two services for Christmas day lunch; noon and three o’clock. It’s going to be a busy one.’
‘Thank goodness,’ Bella added in a tone that made Jude wonder if the Siren’s Tail was still struggling after a sluggish autumn. She didn’t say anything, only smiled and ordered some of the scampi bar snacks Finan had introduced for winter.
‘One scampi tapas,’ Bella called through to the kitchens.
‘Aye aye, captain,’ called back Monty Bickleigh, the pub’s new chef. He’d been forced off the fishing boat he shared with his brother and into cooking for pub patrons by the financial impossibility of making enough money to get through another year. His brother, Tom, was out there on the water now in their late father’s boat trying to make ends meet while Monty tipped the bag of frozen scampi, trawled from the north-east Atlantic on some lucky beggar’s massive money-making boat, no doubt, into the fryer.
Just as Elliot was telling the bar about the recent rise in cases of kennel cough amongst his furry patients the pub door opened and Jowan and Aldous were almost blown inside. Jowan struggled a little to latch the door against the wind – nothing unusual for this time of year.
The pub was well used to having seafoam and salt hurled at it, having stood in its exposed position right out on the harbour wall for near on two hundred and fifty years, its stony shoulders huddled against the blast while its front door faced the calmer harbour shielded by the long concrete cobb that stretched its arms around the moored boats and stony beach in a big protective hug.
Bella was already pouring Jowan’s half pint by the time he’d hung his coat by the door and Aldous had claimed his spot in front of the fire, since today there were no outsider dogs daring to make themselves at home on what he very much considered to behishearth rug.
‘New Borrowers arrived, then?’ Finan never failed to be amused by his name for the bookshop holidaymakers. He smiled as he took Jowan’s coins.
‘That he has.’ Jowan scratched at his grizzled chops with a tattooed hand (a faded blue anchor had stretched from his thumb to his wrist since he was a wayward teen), before taking a drink and declaring the latest guest ale, ‘Not bad at all.’
‘He’s travelling by himself, isn’t he?’ Jude asked. ‘I remember him emailing a while back to say he wouldn’t be bringing someone with him after all.’
Jude and Elliot had recently helped update the shop’s booking system from a paper ledger scrawled with Jowan’s pencil marks to a spreadsheet. Now it was Jude’s job to handle the email enquiries and any changes to the waiting list.
‘S’right,’ said Jowan. ‘Magnús, his name is. His girlfriend was comin’ with him once upon a time; now he’s alone. And I’m not surprised, judging by the scowl he’s got on ’im. You’d think he’d been sent to a prison island, not my pretty bookshop.’
Elliot and Jude’s eyes met. Each knew what the other was thinking. Only Elliot said it aloud. ‘Better not tell Mrs Crocombe he’s single. She’ll have him paired off with one of the local girls by lunchtime tomorrow.’
‘What local girls?’ put in Monty, emerging from the kitchen and setting down a bowl of golden scampi between Elliot and Jude. Two forks, two lemon wedges. He knew this pair and their cutesy ways. They shared everything. ‘Last time I looked there weren’t any.’
‘You’ll meet someone, Monty,’ Jude told him, scanning the room. ‘There’s loads of people staying at the pub over Christmas.’
She adored a love story almost as much as Mrs Crocombe. Although the village matchmaker had ulterior motives, everyone knew. Mrs C.’s daughter was the head teacher at the local school and with their roll dwindling she wanted to encourage as many breeding pairs into Clove Lore captivity as possible in order to keep her daughter in a job. Local Authority cuts were always looming and the councillors would think nothing of bussing the few local kids off to schools forty minutes inland if it meant closing a half empty school and saving money.
‘Christmas is for families, and couples,’ Monty said, morosely, nodding at the inn guests swigging their coffees and ciders. ‘Not singles’ holidays by the sea. I’ll have to wait for spring season to bring the hen dos and wedding parties back in.’
He seemed to get lost in memories of how well he and his charming brother did for long romantic summer nights with out-of-town women in bridesmaid dresses, until Bella reminded him that Jowan would be needing to be fed too, and he sloped back to the kitchen with his order – a prawn sandwich on granary bread with the inn’s homemade pink mayo. Well worth the eight pounds eighty and delicious with a local beer.
Aldous only lifted an eyebrow at hearing his master ordering food, possibly wistfully remembering the days, pre doggie health kick, when he’d lived off the pub’s cheese butties and chicken soup.
Elliot always seemed to understand the mutt and threw Aldous one of the biscuit bones from the jar by the pumps. It landed only an inch from Aldous’s nose but he turned his head away from it, sulking. Nothing could replace his love of red Leicester on white bread.
The vet only nodded in acceptance and turned back to the group whose attentions had been taken by the news on the radio of the worsening weather.
