Cast Ashore – Chapter 2
Stormy Weather
I plonk my blue-and-white trophy down under my favourite bench and go to order my coffee.
Kaja isn’t chatty this morning: her wide-eyed Slavic face wears a frown under its cloud of blonde curls. She takes my order with a curt nod, barely acknowledges my prepared pleasantries with an absent ‘Won’t be long, Les.’
There’s a storm brewing here too, it seems. In the eighteen months since she took over the café and store, I’ve developed a feel for the meteorology of Kaja.
I return to my bench disappointed. That snub nose, with its saddle of freckles, those blue-grey eyes under their long, pale lashes, that dimpled grin she flashes me from time to time – they brighten this solitary man’s day. The fact that she’s twenty years my junior and married means that my pleasure in her company is innocent, platonic. More or less.
I just can’t warm to her husband. Ben’s a big man with a booming laugh, perennial designer stubble around his square jaw, cleft chin. He’s something or other high up in banking. Despite the blokey, jokey act, he manages to give the impression that he’s ‘up himself’ and looks down on everyone else. We’ve an instinct for a wanker around here.
It has to be said, though: with his tan, gym-toned muscles and thick, dark hair, he makes a handsome partner to slight, intensely blonde, pale-skinned Kaja. That doesn’t make me like him any more, mind. Rather the opposite.
He’s very touchy-feely with her, in what seems a smug, proprietorial way. His arm is always around her shoulder or her waist, or his big hand on her arse, when I see them up at the pub or at the lifesaving club bar. Is it my imagination or is there a tension to her smile, when he does that?
Jealous, Les? The ache for a woman’s touch – it warps a man’s character in the end, you know. Watch out …
Fortunately he’s not around much. His Very Important Job keeps him in Melbourne or interstate a lot. Mostly during the week, but sometimes weekends too. I’m glad when the black BMW convertible is absent from the driveway: Kaja is more relaxed, friendly.
Not today, though.
I haven’t seen Ben for weeks, come to think of it.
I’m pondering these matters when Helmut shuffles up with chipper little Bella, his dachshund. Like me, Helmut is a habitual early riser. He’s wearing that daggy blue tracksuit as usual. New sneakers clash: a vile, fluorescent green. They’re ridiculously sporty for feet that never move at more than three ks an hour.
‘G’day, Les. How goes it?’
‘Can’t grumble, mate. How about you?’
‘Ach, ja …’ I’m sure he puts on the whole German thing: he’s been in Australia for fifty bloody years.
I invite him to join me. He nods, hollers his order through the open door, then sits down, which involves a lot of shuffling, huffing and puffing. Helmut turned eighty-three in January and he isn’t as mobile as he used to be. His mind’s bright, though, and there’s usually a cheeky sparkle in those rheumy pale blue eyes, a mischievous grin beneath that spreading snowy beard.
Bella hops up on the bench next to me for her usual pat and scratch behind the ears.
Helmut’s up for a yarn or three, and we’re soon engrossed in tales of his convoluted life. He’s been a French Foreign Legionnaire, a merchant seaman, an opal miner, a deckhand on the cray boats … who knows what else? Most of his stories are probably even true.
Kaja’s helper, Josh, brings the coffees out. A lanky, spotty, shy lad with hair that flops over his eyes, he’ll be off to uni soon. He’s willing enough, but clumsy. His feet and hands seem too big for him and he has a tendency to drop and spill things. This time he manages to slop a little of Helmut’s flat white into the saucer.
Helmut watches Josh disappear back into the café, shakes his head, tips the coffee back into the cup, repositions his faded blue skipper’s cap at a jauntier angle. Then, apropos of nothing, for probably the fiftieth time in our long acquaintance, he informs me conspiratorially that Bella’s name is a play on words, bellen being German for ‘bark’. It gets worse: her full name is Belledonna von Kläffenbach – ‘Barking Lady of Yapping Brook, aha ha ha!’
What is he like? I chuckle along with my old pal, as always. Bless him.
A youngish woman emerges from the store, milk carton and a packet of cigarettes in hand, a folded newspaper clamped under a spongy, sunburnt arm. Her dark hair is pulled up tight into a ponytail, giving her face a permanent look of surprise. Or is it disapproval?
Bella, sensing a chance to live up to her name, yips at the stranger.
Helmut scolds his little pooch gleefully, while I shrug at the tourist. She blanks the three of us, stomps off down the track to the holiday park, thongs slapping against her feet. Helmut and I grin at each other like naughty little boys.
At home, an hour later, I realise that I left that bloody fender under the bench. If it’s still there, I’ll pick it up this arvo: I wouldn’t want Kaja to grump at me for littering her place up.
As it turns out, the weather has other plans for my afternoon: just after lunchtime the storm arrives. I find a jazz programme on the radio, hunker down with a good book, Billie, Ella and a mug of chocolate. For the next twenty-four hours, I don’t leave the shack. Wind and heavy rain thrash the Victorian coast.
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Next week in Cast Ashore:
Chapter 3: Skeleton Creek
As the storm rages, Les introduces us to the odd little community of Skeleton Creek …
