Saturday at The Bobbing Boat Cafe

(Another piece for Saturday in Port Brokeferry)

PARDON GUTHRIE’S FRENCH

‘The Bobbing Boat’ café is awash with people. All spilled out onto the pavement and beyond the chairs and tables arranged there. And Guthrie and Eileen are rushed off their feet, scarcely a moment to look up from what they are about, and everywhere regulars rubbing shoulders with visitors, sharing tables and apologising for doing so.

Aidan is there with his tea-for-two-space and a single fruit slice on a small plate. It is as if he is expecting someone so nobody asks for the seat beside him, though there’s plenty that look at it, as if maybe they can see the someone Aidan is expecting, as if the person must be there sitting all quiet and not drinking the tea.

When Magnus turns up at ‘The Bobbing Boat’ Eileen is pleased and flustered both at the same time. ‘It’s Saturday,’ he says, ‘and this is as close as I can get to you for now.’ She calls him a daft bastard, but she says it under her breath so that Guthrie does not hear, and she kisses him quick as fizz and directs him to Aidan’s table.

‘He’ll tell you he might be waiting for someone, but no one ever comes,’ she says to Magnus and she hurries off to see to another order.

‘Is it Magnus?’ Guthrie says to Eileen. And what he means when he says it is as clear as glass and Eileen can see through to the thing that he means.

‘It is Magnus,’ she says. ‘And I won’t hear a bloody word about him from you Guthrie, if you’ll pardon my French.’

Aidan pours Magnus a cup of tea and offers him milk and sugar and a share of his fruit slice. ‘Is it Eileen you’re here for Magnus?’ he says, and he does not wait for an answer. ‘She’s all glitter and spit, she is. Nice as ninepence sometimes but cross as sharp sticks if you do her wrong. You’re a lucky man, Magnus from the bank. Been waiting for her to sit down and have a cup of tea with me for more than a month. I know, and you’re maybe right – thinking I’m old enough I could be her father, but I’m just talking tea, so you’ve no mind to worry.’

Magnus laughs and says Aidan is alright. Then he says that he wouldn’t mind a piece of the fruit slice after all, if it is still on offer.

‘That woman is here again,’ Eileen says when she reports back at the counter for two black coffees and two bacon rolls, back at the counter where Guthrie is running calculations in his head and ticking off the orders he has already serviced. ‘Out on the green bench across the road. Like before. Just sitting there looking to catch your eye.’

Guthrie stops then. Just long enough that he sees her. And she sees him, stopped and looking. She waves, not so that she is not seen, and her face lights up.

‘Is it Moira?’ Eileen says to Guthrie and her voice is all twitter and tease.

'It is,' says Guthrie. 'And not a bloody word,' he says, 'not a bloody word,' and he is blushing when he says it and can't hold back the smiles, and he has lost where he was in his calculations and the orders needing filled, and the coffee machine is making a noise again, a broken hissing noise, like it could be laughing and trying not to be.