Just Another One

(Another Friday piece from Port Brokeferry.)

CALLUM KNOCKING ON DOORS

There was no-one to mind the bakery, so it was later than he’d planned when he shut the shop long enough he could call on Susan Downs with a bag of rolls and some ring doughnuts.

She did not answer the door to his first knock, and though the house was quiet he knew she was in. Some small movement in the house and a smaller noise told him she was there and that she had heard. He knocked again and called her name, loud enough that it was noticed by others in the street.

Callum could almost hear her behind the door, hesitating, her held breath and her hope that he would go away. Weighing up the ‘should she’ or ‘shouldn’t she’, he could hear that, too. He called her name again, without knocking this time. ‘It’s Callum,’ he said.

Susan opened the door. Not wide, but enough that he could see he had woken her from sleep and that she was dressed the same as she had been when he had looked through her window early.

Callum held out the two paper bags. ‘Just a little something,’ he said. ‘Left overs really. Margaret says I’ve not to be bringing home any more doughnuts or she’ll not be fitting through the front door without I’d have to widen it.’

Susan tried a smile. It did not really fit.

‘And so I thought of you, and of Corinne. Just a little something to cheer you both, you know.’

And Susan Downs did know. She said that was kind of Callum. She said it was really kind, and they both understood all that was not said between them.

He knocked on Lillian’s door, too, on his way back to the bakery. But she was still at old Tom’s, so when he knocked again and then a third time, there was no answer.

Then, before returning to the shop, he called on Sinnie. She had not been in that day and Callum wondered why that was. Wasn’t she in the shop every day, mornings mostly, for scones or cakes, and a granary loaf every second day?

‘I was just worried at not having seen you today, Sinnie,’ he said when she opened the front window and stuck her head out to see who it was. ‘Just wanted to make sure everything was alright with you.’

Sinnie nodded. ‘Fine,’ she said. And she looked across at the Victoria Hotel as if she was expecting to see someone there. Callum waited for her to say something more. She didn’t. She stayed at the window, her gaze fixed on the entrance to the hotel.

‘Only you seem away in a dream today, Sinnie.’

Sinnie looked at Callum, and it was as though she did not immediately recognise him.

‘I said you seem as though you are away in a dream today, Sinnie.’

She nodded. ‘Dreaming about owls again, and flying on the back of a giant owl, and I was without my clothes. I have written it all down. And the owl is maybe Struan Courtald. Wears a waistcoat the same and the silver buttons all done up. And he said something to me. The owl in the dream.’

Then she was quiet again.

Callum looked away along the street. He could see someone looking in at the bakery shop window.

‘Would you be after a granary loaf, Sinnie? I could drop one in on my way home at the end of the day, if you like.’

Sinnie looked across to the Victoria Hotel again.

Callum edged backwards along the path. He said he would do that, he'd pop in with a granary loaf for her. She did not answer. He shut the garden gate behind him and waved over his shoulder in case she was looking, and hurried back to the bakery and a customer who wanted doughnuts but settled for a slice of carrot cake and a jam tart in a silver foil case.