The Daisy Picker (9 page)

In the stone church across the road, autumn-coloured stained-glass windows throw a mellow glow over the wooden seats. The post office is beside the church, and beyond that are the estate agent
and the doctor and the hairdresser, and a whitewashed restaurant called The Kitchen, with a caravan round the back where Lizzie O’Grady, future master baker, now lives; then a final
scattering of more red-roofed houses, the gardens getting bigger as they gradually peter out into the countryside.

Walking around this charming little place, Lizzie feels, more and more, that she could settle in Merway. She wanders into Dignam’s pub around lunchtime and orders a glass of Guinness
–
What would Mammy say?
– which she takes to a table at the bay window, not too far from the blazing fire.

The pub is quiet; there’s just one other customer – a scruffy-looking young man sitting at the bar reading a paper, a half-finished pint in front of him. He glances over at her as
she orders, then goes back to his paper.

There’s a holiday air about the place – or is that just Lizzie remembering the childhood weeks by the sea? Maybe – but life does seem to move a little more slowly here. A man
unloading boxes from a van outside the chemist’s stops to chat to a passerby. Three women amble past the pub window, one holding an open bag of wine gums, looking as if they have all the time
in the world. Even the businesspeople don’t seem in a rush. Two men in suits are deep in conversation outside the library, which she can just make out from where she sits, and it
doesn’t look like they’re talking shop – every so often they break into laughter. The butcher walks out of his shop and into the off-licence next door, still in his apron. Maybe
he’s getting
vin
for the
coq
. A man comes out of a bookshop carrying a large, flat, rectangular package; is it the elderly man from the restaurant last night – the one
who was last to leave? Most of his face is hidden under a thick scarf, so Lizzie’s not sure if it’s him. He carries the package – a sketch pad? a picture? – a little way
down the street and then turns left, towards the beach.

After the Guinness – she’s decided to skip lunch and save her appetite for dinner – Lizzie wanders down the street, peering in windows. When she comes to the library she goes
in, finds the cookery section and leafs through a couple of fairly new-looking books, wondering whether she’d get yeast to rise in the caravan. The library is deserted, except for a teenage
boy with two rings in his left ear behind the desk, who gives her a brief smile as she walks in, then goes back to his computer.

She checks out the noticeboard, which looks like it hasn’t been changed in quite a while. Some theatre group put on
Dancing at Lughnasa
in Seapoint’s community hall last
August. There was a table quiz in Doherty’s pub in November, to raise money for cancer research. Irish dancing classes for 7–12 year olds, phone Carmel for details – no date on
that one, but Lizzie is willing to bet that Carmel’s pupils have well and truly mastered the hornpipe by now. A missing kitten called Doobie, friendly, black with white paws, reward offered;
the notice looks like it was written by a child, or an adult who wasn’t great at spelling. She hopes Doobie turned up.

She stands outside Furlong’s Bakery and Delicatessen, sniffing. There’s a faint baking smell, but nothing like the heady fragrance of just-baked bread and cakes that she wants to
come wafting out of
her
bakery. She walks in; time for a bit of market research.

There are salads and cooked meats behind glass on one side, breads and cakes on the other; jars and tins and bottles stacked on shelves around the room; a couple of dishes of olives on top of
the counter. No tables for people to sit at.

A dark-haired woman, fiftyish, stands behind the counter. She smiles at Lizzie. ‘Hello. Can I help you?’

Lizzie looks at the meats and salads behind the glass. ‘Yes – could I get some cooked ham, please? Three or four slices.’ She needs something to keep the woman busy for a
couple of minutes – and, between Jones and herself, the ham won’t go to waste.

While it’s being sliced, she glances over at the bakery section. The usual assortment of bread and cakes: pan loaves, cottages, brown sliced; éclairs, doughnuts, cream sponges.
Nothing out of the ordinary. No cheese-and-onion bread, or pumpkin-oatmeal-nut loaf. No chocolate-and-poppyseed plait. No lime coconut layer cake.

Looking good so far.

The ham is sliced and wrapped in greaseproof paper. As Lizzie takes it, she nods towards the bakery section. ‘Can I ask if you make the bread and cakes yourself?’

The woman looks surprised. ‘God, no; we’ve no facilities here. We get them delivered from Fleming’s – it’s a big company just outside Seapoint.’

‘Oh, right.’
So you might just be interested in taking a few locally produced loaves and cakes – if the local supplier ever gets her act together
. She smiles at the
woman. ‘Well, thanks a lot.’

Four slices of ham, and plenty of food for thought.

As Lizzie stands outside the caravan door in the cold morning air, a little black-and-white dog trots towards her, tail wagging. He’s about the same size as Jones, a mix
of sheepdog and something smaller.

‘Hi there, Dumbledore; I’m still here. Have you come to tell me breakfast is ready?’ She bends down and pats his head, and his tongue darts up to her fingers. ‘I’ve
got a pal for you to meet later.’ Two nights in the caravan, and she still hasn’t come clean about Jones. She’ll have to confess this morning, and hope to God he’ll be
allowed to stay – and that he’ll get on with Dumbledore.

Lizzie straightens up and looks towards the house. Whitewashed walls, like in front, and red windowsills; three windows on the first floor and one long one underneath, looking into the big
kitchen where Angela serves breakfast.

She breathes in the salty air and glances around the garden. It could do with a bit of attention. Half a dozen overgrown shrubs down one side, a tangle of weeds pushing up in the narrow
flowerbed, some bedraggled plants that she can’t identify near the house . . .
Daddy would have a field day here.
The wooden tubs of snowdrops outside the back door are nice,
though.

Her stomach rumbles. She imagines the breakfast Angela is about to dish up and starts towards the house. Dumbledore races past her and waits at the back door, tail wagging. ‘I’m
coming, I’m coming.’

The door opens just as she reaches it. Angela is holding a tea towel and wearing an apron that says ‘Kiss the Cook’. Lizzie can smell bacon and coffee.

‘Good morning, Lizzie. Down, Dumbledore.’ She bends and scratches his head. ‘He’s spoilt rotten, aren’t you?’ Then she straightens up. ‘I hope you slept
OK – it was real cold again last night, wasn’t it?’

Lizzie follows her in. ‘I slept like a log; must be the sea air. And that duvet is fantastic – I was really cosy.’ Mammy doesn’t believe in duvets; far too light to have
any heat in them. ‘And I love that I can hear the sea from my bed.’ When she woke, she pushed open the little window above her head and lay listening to the rattle of the waves on the
pebbles till hunger forced her up.

Angela’s kitchen has sunny deep-yellow walls, units painted in washed-out blue, a cream-coloured giant cooker and washing machine and dishwasher. It has a bare wooden floor, like the
restaurant’s; a big oval table sits on a yellow rug in the middle of the room, surrounded by mismatched kitchen chairs with cushions on them. Against the far wall is a dark-blue couch, turned
slightly towards a worktop with a little portable TV sitting on it. The room is full of light from the big window looking out beyond the garden to the sea.

Something on the windowsill catches Lizzie’s eye; she didn’t spot it yesterday. ‘Hey, that’s like the clown in the restaurant.’ It’s a little wooden woman in
a cook’s hat and apron, holding a ladle in one hand and a saucepan in the other, and beaming.

Angela is nodding. ‘Yeah, both made by Joe – our very talented woodcarver. If you hang around Merway a while you’ll meet him; he has a shop down the street.’ She gestures
to the table. ‘Grab a chair. No cereal, right?’

‘Right.’ No more bowls of anything in the morning for Lizzie. The table is set for just one. ‘Have the Americans left already?’ They’d all eaten together the
morning before.

Angela puts a glass of juice in front of her, and Lizzie can see the remains of the grapefruit and orange halves on the worktop. ‘Yeah, they’re gone about half an hour –
heading up to Donegal. We can move you in later, if you’ve decided to stay on.’ Lizzie nods; she still hasn’t asked if she can stay in the caravan. ‘Here we go; mind the
plate – it’s hot.’

Two fat sausages, a rasher, a soft poached egg sitting on a chunky slice of toast, half a grilled tomato, and – Lizzie smiles – not a white pudding in sight. Yesterday the egg was
scrambled, but otherwise it’s the same.

‘That looks gorgeous. Thanks, Angela.’ She takes a sip of the juice; the tart, fruity taste fills her mouth. ‘Don’t mind me, if you’ve anything to do.’

Angela places a basket of thick brown toast on the table beside a plate of what look like freshly baked scones. ‘Ah no, you’re fine. Dee’s still in bed, making the most of the
holidays, so you’re not last up.’ She brings over a jug of coffee and fills Lizzie’s cup. ‘Shout if I’ve forgotten anything.’ A bowl of brown sugar sits in front
of Lizzie, and little dishes of blackcurrant jam and chunky marmalade.

Angela goes to the dishwasher and starts unloading it. ‘Mornings are fairly quiet here, especially at this time of year. I just tip around for the day, really, till it’s time to
start the evening meals.’

Lizzie spears a chunk of sausage. ‘You don’t open for lunch?’

Angela shakes her head. ‘Not in winter – just the evening meal, from about half five onwards. In summer I open for a couple of hours in the middle of the day for salads and
sandwiches. Merway’s on the tourist trail, so we can get quite busy at the height of the season.’ She takes a stack of plates over to a press.

Lizzie pours milk into her coffee. ‘You seem to have it well organised. It’s still a lot of work for yourself and Dee, though – I presume she’s still at
school.’

Angela goes back to the dishwasher and starts taking out cups. ‘Yeah, she’s doing her Junior Cert this year; she gets the bus to the Comprehensive in Seapoint every morning. We
manage between us in the winter, when it’s just the dinners, but I take on a local woman in the summer. Dee – she’s really Deirdre, I call her Dee – is fifteen next week;
she needs a bit of freedom in the holidays, to be off with her pals.’ She looks over at Lizzie. ‘Are you all right for everything there?’

Lizzie nods. ‘Fine, thanks.’ She splits a scone and spreads it with butter, pushing away the guilt; she’ll skip lunch again. ‘Have you had the business long?’
It’s the first time she’s been able to chat to Angela properly.

Angela pauses, hands full of cups. ‘Let’s see now, it’ll be two years in March – I started it when my husband left me.’

She says it so bluntly, Lizzie immediately feels as if she’s been prying. She puts down her fork. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean –’

Angela starts to stack the cups in the press. ‘Don’t worry; there’s no secret about it. He walked out one day, after telling me he’d been having an affair with a lassie
down the road for six months and now they wanted to move away together. I let him go – what else could I do? – and a couple of months later I was serving up my first meal.’

She turns and faces Lizzie, and her expression is perfectly calm. ‘We had this place already – we’d been running it together as a video shop, but it was always his baby,
really.’

She comes over to the table, fills a cup from the coffee jug and sits across from Lizzie. ‘So when he upped and moved, I sold the stock to the video shop in Seapoint and went back to doing
what I knew best – cooking. I trained as a chef before we got married; I always loved rustling up a meal for a crowd. And there was no restaurant here – except in the hotel, and that
one’s not great. People had to go to Seapoint for a decent meal out.’

Lizzie is struck by her openness – no pussyfooting around. She’s willing to bet that Angela doesn’t set too much store by what other people think. Remembering Mammy’s
dread of upsetting the neighbours, Lizzie smiles.

Angela adds milk to her coffee and stirs it. ‘My pals were great – I got loads of help with the decorating; everyone just pitched in. I went into a fair bit of debt for the new
appliances’ – she gestures round the kitchen, and then grins – ‘but the bank manager is married to a cousin of mine, so he gave me a year before I had to start repaying.
After I opened, everyone around here came in droves – they’re good like that.’

Lizzie is looking across at her in wonder.
‘
Your marriage broke up, and you turned around, with a teenage daughter to look after, and started a business from scratch.’ She
tries not to compare their achievements – or lack of them, in her case; tries not to think about how little she’s got to show.