The Briny Café by Susan Duncan Page B

checked shirt and his khaki trousers are sharply creased, his shoes well-polished leather lace-ups. If he’d had a hat covering his glistening head, shewould never have recognised him. She’s about to make a glib remark but he turns towards her and gives her a look that knocks the wind out of her.
    He’s dying, she realises in an instant. Nothing else would shift the cynical smirk that was as much a part of Bertie as his grubby apron, his Beatles T-shirts and his stained white sneakers.
    She pulls out a chair and joins him at the wobbly table.
    â€œHow much money have you got in the bank, luv?” he asks.
    The question is so out of the blue Ettie hesitates, trying to figure out where he’s coming from. “I’m good for a loan, Bertie, if that’s what you’re after,” she says eventually. Because when a man is dying he shouldn’t have to worry about money. “Name the figure and if I’ve got it it’s yours for as long as you need it.”
    To her horror, a tear trickles down the old man’s yellow-stained cheek. He pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and mops his face with feigned casualness, like he’s dealing with a sudden sweat.
    â€œYou’d do that for a mean old bastard like me, would ya? No guarantees or nothin’?”
    She nods, not entirely sure she hasn’t lost her mind – and her nest egg – in one dangerously rash moment.
    Bertie sighs. “No need for a loan, luv, but I’ll take your money – in return for The Briny. It’s yours, lock, stock and barrel if you want it. Just so you know, it’s not a freehold. You’d been buying twelve years left on a twenty-five-year lease. What happens after that is up to you.” He makes a job of folding his hanky and shoving it back in his pocket, struggling to get his breath. “You’re sittin’ there stiller than astunned mullet. And I’m short of time in more ways than one. What’s your answer, girl?”
    He grins to soften the words and Ettie bursts into tears.
    Big Julie races outside with a glass of wine. “Here, love, get this into you. I’m already three ahead and I don’t drink.” She bends to kiss Bertie’s cheek in the first public show of affection Ettie has ever seen between them, pats his smooth head. Flies off again.
    â€œI have some money, Bertie, but not nearly enough,” Ettie manages at last. “So thank you, my friend, but you’ll do better by selling the business on the open market.” She swallows hard, pressing a wild surge of hopes and dreams back into a tight little box and slamming the lid.
    â€œIt’s yours, luv. For whatever you can afford. And that’s the end of it. Julie, darlin’,” he calls on the back of a dry cough, “bring the paperwork. Then let’s go home. Ettie, you start work tomorrow.”
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    For a long time, Ettie sits in the growing dark, afraid that if she moves she’ll wake up and find it was all a mad fantasy. Then she thinks of Bertie. How must it feel to look death in the face? To know that in a single, half-hour appointment with a specialist you’ve never met before, the door to the future has been slammed in your face? Forty years of The Briny relegated to history by a few horror-filled words.
    She picks up the key sitting on top of the documents Bertie has left lying on the table and goes inside to turn off the lights. Her lights. She slides home the bolt on the door and snaps the padlock. Her padlock. Her café. Thank you, Bertie,she thinks, for trusting me with The Briny. I will make you proud. She listens to lazy waves splash against the seawall, the distant cries of gulls. For her, it’s the equivalent of rocks singing.
    Her mood suddenly swings from euphoria to terror. She looks back at her track record in business which, even with a positive spin, is pretty lousy. Realistically, The Briny Café is a rat-infested,