Chapter Ten
She closed her hand around the little blue book. ‘It’s a name I don’t use,’ she snapped. ‘I’m Honor. I’ve always been Honor. It’s not that unusual, in the States, for well-meaning parents to give offbeat names or to have the kid known by the name that appears second or third on their birth certificate.’ She ushered him through the front door and locked it behind him.
‘Sorry.’ His gaze was curious. ‘Didn’t mean to touch a nerve.’
She tucked keys and her passports into her bag. ‘It’s not that. It’s just that people knowing always gives me a squirmy feeling because I’m kind of embarrassed. When I was young, other kids would poke fun when I got a new teacher and she called out for “Freedom Lefevre” instead of Honor Lefevre. Then there was the movie, Cry Freedom , and whenever that came around on cable it made all the other kids laugh.’ She set off down the steps. ‘I’m a little sensitive because it was the name that my mother gave to me then took her own freedom by leaving me. Ironic, huh? Dad hated it and it was him who picked Honor. He says that the names they chose indicated what each of them valued most. He and Grandma called me Honor and the Freedom part became just an irritating entry on my birth certificate.’
‘And your passports,’ he included, helpfully.
She frowned. ‘I don’t use the name at all . I just never got around to changing it legally.’
He fell into step beside her. ‘But Freedom’s a fantastic name. Freedom Lefevre. You sound like a porn star.’
She flicked him a glance. ‘Gee, that changes everything.’
He laughed. ‘OK, that didn’t come out right. I meant to say that Freedom Lefevre sounds very hot.’
She breathed out, slowly. ‘I’d still appreciate it if you’d just forget it. I’m already the odd one out around here, and I want to integrate, rather than to stand out with a stupid hippy name.’
‘OK.’ He shrugged.
‘And I haven’t used Lefevre since I got married — I’m Honor Sontag. OK?’
‘OK,’ he said, again, without inflection.
They turned the corner into The Butts and he halted at the end of the block. ‘This is where I peel off.’ He indicated a set of stairs like a fire escape up the side of a building.
She looked up at the door above, in the wall. ‘Is this your place? It must be kind of fun to live over a shop.’
‘I like it.’
Saying her goodbyes, she turned towards the Eastingdean Teapot but she knew her face was burning and wished he hadn’t brought all the Freedom stuff to the surface. It had made her feel stirred up about her mom. Churning. Irritated. Angry.
How had she forgotten about Freedom being on her passport? She definitely wanted to be known as Honor. She pushed the passports right to the bottom of her bag.
* * *
‘Hell oo ,’ sang Sophie, from the white-tiled kitchen, as Honor pushed through the dark green door of the tearoom. ‘Here’s our latest helper.’
‘Hi,’ answered Honor, shortly, glad to have the opportunity to feel irritated with Sophie instead of with her mother.
Robina called from the other side of the kitchen’s central island. ‘I’m just going to run up to the butcher’s for some fresh sausage meat for the sausage rolls. Back in five minutes.’
Sophie’s pink shiny face grew pinker. It couldn’t get any shinier. Her default expression was a grin and she sprinkled her conversation with giggles. ‘I’ll look after you, Honor. Come through. We’ve just got lots of lovely local ladies in for their elevenses, at the moment, and we won’t get busy for another half hour. I’ve got you an apron ready and, look, all the cleaning things are over here — and gloves because some of these cleaners would strip your skin. Robina’s actually very save-the-planet but the kitchen has to be cleaned properly.’ She giggled. ‘Anyway, the job’s easy, especially if you’ve worked as a waitress already. Menus are on the table and when the customers look ready, you take a pad and a pen and you go and ask them what they want — and then you come back to the counter and tell us!’ She gave a tiny snort, like a giggly piglet.
Honor smiled, cautiously. ‘What are “elevenses”?’
Another giggle. ‘Morning snack. Second breakfast. Whatever you want it to be. Anyway,’ said Sophie, suddenly becoming brisk, ‘Kirsty says you have to fill out a form.’ She led Honor out of the kitchen and into an office the size of a cupboard and selected a tatty blue folder from a pile, sorting through until she located a particular form. ‘This is for people who haven’t got a P45, I think.’ She paused, doubtfully, form extended. ‘I’ve never employed a foreigner before. Kirsty usually does all the admin stuff — she’s brilliant at it.’
Honor pushed the form right back, seeing the opportunity to avoid revealing her stupid first name to Sophie and Robina. ‘But I will have this P45 thing you need. I called Lawrence last night and he said that he’d send me my P45 and it would be straightforward for you. I’m not a foreigner because I have a UK passport, which he has already seen, so you don’t have to,’ she added, firmly.
‘So that’s OK then?’ asked Sophie, vaguely. ‘I could ask Kirsty when she comes home from hospital but she’s been so poorly. So . . .’
‘So we’re all set. I’ll tie on my apron.’
‘Brilliant!’ beamed Sophie. Her interests obviously lay outside of the cupboard/office. Robina returned with her bag of sausage meat, Sophie became busy in the hot little kitchen and Honor was free to wait on the eighteen small tables, six inside and twelve out, where the customers proved to be friendly, probably because it’s difficult to be miserable if you’re eating cake to die for.
The cakes were legendary. Even customers who ordered a sandwich or homemade soup, jacket potatoes or a toastie, almost all succumbed to the sweet stuff as well.
Cakes were Robina’s thing. The business model at the Teapot soon became clear as Robina serenely mixed, iced, filled and baked, and Sophie and Honor darted around her. Pinging sandwich toasters, hissing coffee frothers and bricks of cheese to be grated were not for her.
Luckily, Sophie was an octopus, turning things on, off or over, stirring, chopping, heating and beating, ever pinker and usually beaming.
Honor began to like her.
* * *
The coffee shop opened at ten in the morning and closed whenever Robina decided to shut it. Honor was meant to cover the busy time of eleven until four-thirty, five days a week, where most needed. She was getting ready to wind down her first shift when she checked her outside tables and saw that one had been taken over by three teenagers wearing ball caps and hooded sweatshirts.
She had no trouble recognising Frog and his Tadpoles. Snatching up pad and pen, she bustled outside.
‘Hey, you guys,’ she cried, as if she’d never been so delighted to see anyone in her life. ‘And what can I get for you today?’
Frog narrowed his eyes. ‘Hey, Yankee Doodle. We’re waiting.’
‘Uh-huh.’ She nodded. ‘And what can I get for you whilst you’re waiting?’ Then, because he looked puzzled, ‘These seats are for customers. If you’re not buying, you’re not customers.’ She smiled her widest, falsest smile.
Frog did not smile back. ‘Where is he?’
She clicked her pen. ‘Who?’
‘The freak.’
Honor put on an owlish expression.
‘Ru Gordon,’ enunciated slowly.
‘Rufus?’ She cast a furtive glance behind her, lowering her voice. ‘He’s not here, today.’
The Tadpoles looked at Frog. Frog stuffed his hands into his pockets. Grey clouds were gathering out to sea. ‘We came to see what happened last night,’ he said.
Honor shrugged, plain stupid on the outside, boiling fury inside. ‘You lost me.’
‘With the freak and the cops.’
‘Why do you call him the freak? Oh.’ She looked around again. ‘Oh, I get it! That’s what happened, with that tourist, right? He just freaked out? Wow.’ She shook her head gravely, noting, with satisfaction, the grins on the faces of Frog and the Tadpoles fading to frowns. Hamming it up, she hissed, ‘You didn’t hear it from me but he’s still at the police station. Rufus said it was self-defence but, y’know .’
A pause for effect, then she hurried back into the tearoom and watched through the window as the three boys gazed at each other and made what the fuck? faces.
Content with her first foray into reinventing Ru as a badass, she danced into the kitchen and reached around to untie her apron. Robina looked up from sliding a heavy fruitcake into a green-and-white tin. ‘We’re stopping serving, now, so I thought that, as you’re working out so well you could stay another hour and help us with the clean down.’ She made it sound like a treat that Honor had earned by merit.
It turned out that ‘help us with the clean down’ actually meant ‘help Sophie with the clean down’, while Robina slid sponge cakes destined to become tomorrow’s gateaux out of the oven and on to cooling racks, carrying them tenderly off to spend the night on a marble shelf in an adjoining pantry, safe from blasting bleach sprays.
Honor helped wash counters and polish stainless steel so that it didn’t dry streaky, joining in when Sophie sang James Taylor songs as she worked. Her dad had just about every track that James Taylor had recorded.
‘Time for a treat for the workers!’ Robina sailed back into the kitchen and frothed up three mugs of coffee, then sandwiched together coffee cake with leftover chocolate frosting, spread some over the top, sprinkled the frosting with chopped nuts — blithely undoing much of the clean down — and led Sophie and Honor outside to one of the as-yet-to-be-sanitised green-painted tables.
Sophie seemed quite unfazed by having her kitchen mucked up in pursuit of a jolly calorific break. Robina obviously wasn’t a routine kind of woman. At this rate, Honor would finish at nearer six than four-thirty. But, anyway. Having served delectable cake to other people for most of the day, she really did feel that she deserved a piece. Her waistline would forgive her, especially when she re-established her planned routine of running and dancing.
Following their lead, she propped her feet on the rungs of the table and tipped her chair just enough to relieve the pressure from the base of the spine, as the last few customers finished up at other tables, people strolled the street and the traffic built up.
‘There he is!’ Robina burst out, just as Honor took her first bite of the beautifully moist coffee cake, the chocolate frosting melting like music on her tongue.
Sophie snorted. ‘Oh, Ro bina !’ Her brows curled crossly. ‘You’re really sad, sometimes, Robbie. A sad old bat.’
Honor paused mid-bite, astounded that Sophie could, apparently, be something other than sycophantically approving of Robina.
Robina’s expression was tragic, her eyes welling real tears. ‘Isn’t he gorgeous? Look at those eyes. Look at that body! Isn’t it knicker-wetting? I love him, I love him, I love him.’
Bewildered, Honor followed Robina’s gaze. It was fixed on one of the cream-and-red buses that rolled down The Butts several times a day in the direction of Marine Drive. On the bus side was an advertisement for men’s cologne from le Dur, a two-deck-high black-and-white image of a man whose dark stubble defined a cleft chin and hollow cheeks, his naked torso sculpted and spare, his stretchy, sketchy cotton trunks clinging.
‘I love him,’ Robina whispered.