Chapter 7 Kate
KATE
Nothing will come of nothing.
Kate is waiting to pay. It feels like the café is becoming a second home.
Does she keep popping in because she hopes to bump into .
. . ? Before she gets any further, Mr. Shakespeare rushes in and she feels caught out.
As if, somehow, he must realize she was looking out for him.
Her hand instinctively moves to her chemo hair, before she stuffs it into her pocket with a self-conscious jerk.
She knows from his email that his name is Jon, but she still finds herself thinking of him as “Mr. Shakespeare,” and this makes her feel at a double disadvantage.
She glances at him. Is she imagining things, or is he looking frazzled, too?
He nods distractedly at her. “Hi, Mrs. Oli . . . Kate . . . sorry, d’you mind if I push in and have a word with Tay?”
“If you can,” she replies cryptically.
The couple in front of her has been there for some time.
“Now do you make the tea in a pot?” the elderly man is asking.
“I’ll make it any way you like,” Tay responds.
“Well, my wife will have her coffee as she explained, you remember that? Half the water you’d normally add, and only half a shot of coffee . . .”
Kate wonders how this would be different from just drinking half an Americano.
“. . . and for me, loose-leaf tea, made in a pot, but only half a spoonful of tea . . .”
“D’you think they’re glass half full or half empty?” Mr. Shakespeare murmurs beside her.
Kate stifles a laugh.
“And the milk . . .” the elderly man begins.
“Would that be semi-skimmed?” Tay asks blandly.
“No! Oat milk! You do have oat milk?” the man demands, flustered.
“Of course. I’ll bring it all over.”
As they turn toward their table, the elderly woman leans toward Tay. “I’m sorry to be so fussy, dear.” She drops her voice to a whisper. “It’s my bowels.”
Kate wonders what her husband’s excuse is.
Bardy leaps in, “Tay, did you check if the community hall was free when you came up with that timetable?”
Tay looks at him blankly, “Nice to see you too, Bardy.”
What did she call him?
“Yeah, yeah, but have you booked it? It shows online it’s bridge club.”
Ah, that’s why he’s hassled. Kate can’t help feeling foolish.
Tay studies him, “What’s with the trauma dump, Bardy? I can’t do everything. I did the rest.” She turns away to start on the order of half drinks. “Get a shift on,” she says without looking at him. Then, when he doesn’t immediately move, adds, “Best crack on, Bardy.”
He throws Tay a look of frustration and heads for the door, calling to Kate, “I’ll be in touch. We won’t be meeting tonight in the community hall, but leave it with me, I’ll find somewhere.”
“What did you call him?” Kate asks.
“Oh, Bardy. You know, as in the Bard . . . Shakespeare. I think Hana came up with that one. Luigi calls him Jon, but he’s the only one.
” Tay offers Kate the card machine with one hand while loading a tray with the other.
“Unless it’s ‘Mr. Shakespeare,’ or if he catches someone messing about, then it’s, ‘sir.’”
Kate would like to ask who Hana is but feels it would be too obvious. “Did he teach you?” she asks instead.
Tay considers her for a moment, an inscrutable look on her face, “Yeah, you could say that.”
Kate cycles along the short road that connects the town with the beach.
The bank rising to her right has a path on the top of it that looks out over the channel leading to the harbor.
She often takes this path when she goes running.
To her left is an expanse of heath and pine woodland.
In the beach parking lot, there are a few cars—but not many, considering it is the school holidays.
Mainly walkers making the most of the lighter evenings.
Ahead of her, beyond the beach café, is a large modern building of wood and glass, the rounded roof reminiscent of the lazy swell of the ocean.
This is the lifeboat station, and this is where she is heading.
The local crew are already out on the water for their weekly exercise, and the large lower door is gaping open like a cavernous mouth.
In a town where most people know someone you know, it seems Bardy has persuaded a connection in the RNLI to let him use their training room for their first meeting.
Kate opens the double doors at the top of the stairs and is met by a panoramic view over the beach.
The whole end of the room is glass. She has never seen the beach from this height before.
Lemon, cream, and blue beach huts alternate in a long arc, set against a backdrop of pine trees—licorice black in the shadow cast by the low-slung sun.
It is approaching high tide, and the water washing the wide expanse of sand appears glazed—palest peach and dusky blue, striped with ripples of dark gray.
A reflection of the sky above. The steep ladders leading to the beach huts gleam white, and on the shoreline, people and dogs come and go, dragging long shadows.
Oh, to be able to paint this.
It is then that she notices the figures silhouetted against the scene. Four people are standing at the far side of the window. Bardy turns and smiles, beckoning to her.
“Come in, Kate. We’ve just been admiring the view.”
“It rather takes your breath away,” another person adds, and Kate realizes it is the woman from the café who dreams of hitting her husband with a frying pan.
It seems Leonard is still in one piece.
“Wish I’d brought my bins,” he frets, casting a covetous look at the telescope set up on the other side of the room. “I’m sure I saw a pallid harrier a moment ago. Almost certain.”
Bardy nods toward the telescope. “Leonard, you can have a look later.”
It seems Bardy and Leonard already know each other.
“Bins?” Pia queries as she walks toward the long table in the center of the room.
Kate acknowledges her with a smile and a half wave.
“Binoculars,” the older woman informs Pia, joining her at the table, “Leonard’s a twitcher.”
This does make her husband twitch.
“Not a twitcher, a birder. I do keep telling you, Linda. There is a world of difference.”
“Oh, is there, dear,” Linda says, vaguely. But from the shadow of a smile, Kate is quite sure Linda already knows this.
“Anyway,” Linda continues, smiling, “we’re Leonard and Linda Cowland.” She pauses as she looks at Kate. “Now, I’m sure we’ve met before.”
“We chatted briefly in Luigi’s,” Kate responds, mouthing “frying pan” silently.
Linda laughs. “Ah, that will be it.”
But for some reason, Kate doesn’t think that is it. She’s sure Linda was thinking of something else.
Kate then introduces herself, and Pia follows suit.
Bardy looks up from the table where he has been leafing through some papers. “Great, you’re all getting to know each other. I’m Jon, but most people call me Bardy. Please call me whatever you like, except Mr. Shakespeare”—he grins—“or ‘sir.’”
Kate can feel the three people beside her relax. So, she wasn’t the only one feeling nervous about coming tonight.
Bardy gestures to the table. “Shall we all take a seat?”
They settle, Pia drawing up a chair next to Kate’s.
Pia glances toward the door. “Is this all of us?” She sounds anxious, and Kate hopes she doesn’t feel she has been badgered into attending.
Bardy replies, looking more at Kate than Pia as he speaks—which she can’t decide is nice or slightly odd.
“Don’t worry, Pia, more may come once they know about it.
But I think this is a good start.” He continues in the same friendly tone, addressing all of them this time, “I know I asked you to bring in something that gives a hint of what you would like to do for your entry for the MACKL competition. But we will come to that.” He holds up a hand.
“And please don’t worry if you haven’t landed on something yet or feel like people will judge you.
It won’t be like that. This is about giving each other encouragement and being somewhere we can chat about ideas or problems. I can also organize to get some experts in if you think it will help you.
Much better than struggling on all alone and then giving up.
I entered the first of these competitions during lockdown.
Never got anywhere, which didn’t surprise me.
” He laughs. “Or anyone else.” He continues more seriously, “But the hardest bit was doing it on my own . . .”
What about the art teacher wife?
“. . . and that’s how I came to start this group. First online, and later when we could, meeting up.” He smiles, and Kate thinks not only is Mr. Shakespeare probably a very good teacher, but that she would have had the most enormous crush on him.
What does she mean, would have had?
“So this group is for my benefit as much as yours, and in the past, it’s turned out to be fun. One of our group, Sam, even got placed for a piece he composed for the guitar.”
He looks at their faces and seems to sense their unease.
“Look, I’m not suggesting you have to be a ‘Sam’—you may be, who knows.
But I can tell you one thing. Life without creativity can feel a lot like just getting by.
You know you’re doing all the stuff you should, but something’s missing.
Start to draw or write or make something, and things feel more in balance.
” He laughs self-consciously. “Sorry, it’s a bit of a bandwagon of mine.
And don’t get me started on what we teach in schools and how we underestimate creativity.
We judge ourselves by how much work we achieve in a day .
. . in our lives. And we measure this on a scale that is getting laid down in the classroom.
Anything else is often seen as ‘wasting time.’ We don’t seem to realize that the act of creating is a wonderful and essential end in itself.
And that without creativity, mankind wouldn’t be pushing forward and solving problems.” Bardy is blushing.
“Well, enough to say, I think we all need to embrace our creative side. Look after it, give it time. Let it out to play.”
Kate thinks she may be in love.
Then she wonders if he is thinking of his artist wife.
“And another thing—creativity can take so many forms . . . writing, music, and the arts, obviously, but also cooking, gardening, even conversation . . .”
Sex.
She’s got to get a grip.
“. . . so why not start here? You’ve got nothing to lose. I also think one of the benefits of this group is that we often do very different things, so we aren’t comparing what we produce with others.”
“Fifteen bunches of bananas,” Linda says, nodding at Bardy.
“Fifteen what?” Leonard demands, looking confused.
Linda carries on, “I once went to a local art group . . .” She pauses reflectively.
“Well, if I’m honest, over the years I’ve tried pretty much everything: sketching, painting, pottery.
I once tried to decoupage the whole of our downstairs loo.
Thank goodness I knew a good decorator. Anyway, the still life group I tried, well, it made me realize something. ”
They all wait expectantly.
“As I was drawing, I was looking at my neighbor’s bunch of bananas. I mean, they were so much better than mine.” She chortles, “Frankly, mine looked like a severed hand.”
Kate and Bardy laugh.
“But at the end, when I looked at the fifteen drawings, I was amazed how different they all were.”
“So comparison could be a good thing?” Pia suggests.
“I suppose in the broader sense, it was,” Linda says, thoughtfully.
Pia continues, tentatively, “I didn’t mean to interrupt you, Linda. I can see that the direct comparison with another can certainly make you feel inadequate . . .”
Is this how Pia feels?
“. . . but if you stand back, you might realize there are many ways to see your . . .” She looks hesitant. “Your bananas.”
Kate is pretty sure she’s not thinking about fruit.
“I don’t really see what bananas have got to do with it all. You did say bananas?” Leonard queries loudly.
Bardy jumps in, “I don’t know if that was art or philosophy, but you’re right, Pia, everyone sees and appreciates things in their own unique way.”
Bardy is looking directly at Pia now.
Aah.
Bardy looks away, and Kate isn’t sure what she saw—or even what she thinks—but she finds she is now comparing herself to her very beautiful neighbor.
Bardy stands up. “Look, before we get into what we might have a go at, why don’t we get ourselves some coffee?
” He nods toward the kitchen, which leads to the training room.
“They’ve got tea and coffee in there, and I brought some milk.
” He adds, a little doubtfully, “There’s a packet of biscuits on the side.
If I’m honest, I don’t know how old they are. Garibaldis.”
“Oh, I think we can do better than some soggy Garibaldis,” Linda says, reaching into the large canvas bag resting by her chair. She draws out a cake tin. “Lemon drizzle.”
At this point, the double doors at the end of the room swing open. Tay is first through the doors, followed shortly by Luigi.
It may be Kate’s imagination, but Luigi seems to be dragging his feet. On the other hand, he has put on a nice cerise sweater for the occasion.