‘Opening Today’ said the banner across the front of the shop.
Keith looked up at the banner proudly. Sixteen sheets of wrapping paper and two rolls of sticky tape and it was holding together perfectly.
He closed his eyes and made a wish.
I wish, he thought, that we get loads of customers and they all buy at least two bits of fish and none of them say anything about relatives who went for a paddle and never came back.
Then he went through the coloured plastic strips and stood behind the counter with Mum and Dad.
He could tell they were nervous too.
Mum was going over the potatoes he’d peeled earlier, checking each one for eyes and bits of missed skin before she cut it into chips.
Keith watched her remove an eye that was so tiny an ant wouldn’t have seen it without glasses.
Be fair, he thought, what do you expect for 4.13 cents a potato at the current rate of exchange?
Dad was battering fish more slowly and carefully than Keith had ever seen him do it.
Normally Dad floured and battered with short flicks of the wrist that made Keith wonder why Dad didn’t get a table tennis table and have a crack at the world championships. This morning though, as Dad dragged each piece of fish carefully through the batter, he looked like he was playing the violin.
Keith caught himself having another quick glance at the fish. The vision flashed into his head again. The vision of their customers taking a bite of fish, screwing up their faces and dropping dead in the middle of reaching for the vinegar.
Stop it, he told himself. You’re being silly. A fish co-op would not deliver stonefish or pufferfish for public consumption.
Then the plastic strips rattled and a man came into the shop.
Their first customer.
Keith gave him a big We-Don’t-Know-You-Yet-But-We-Hope-You’ll-Be-A-Regular-Customer smile.
Then Keith realised he did know him.
He felt the smile trickle off his face.
It was Mr Gambaso from the milk bar at the other end of the street.
And he was holding something behind his back.
Suddenly Keith had another vision. An argument with insults and shouting and hurtful comments about stealing customers and who was here first. Then Mr Gambaso brandishing the bread knife he was holding behind his back and running amok.
Keith prayed that Mr Gambaso wouldn’t say who he was. That he’d just look around and leave quietly.
‘Good morning,’ said Mr Gambaso. ‘I’m Joe Gambaso from the milk bar.’
That’s it, thought Keith, we’re goners.
‘Morning,’ said Dad, ‘Vin Shipley. What can we do for you?’
‘Just dropped in to wish you luck on your first day,’ said Mr Gambaso. From behind his back he produced a soggy brown paper bag. ‘I brought you a hamburger.’
He put it on the counter. They all looked at it.
‘You er . . . you don’t do hamburgers here, do you?’ asked Mr Gambaso.
‘No, we don’t,’ said Dad.
Mr Gambaso visibly relaxed.
‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Mum. ‘Vin, go on.’ She pointed to the fryer.
Dad served up a fish and chips for Mr Gambaso.
‘You er . . . you don’t do fish and chips down at your place, Joe?’ said Dad as he handed them over.
‘No,’ said Mr Gambaso.
Dad smiled and soon they were all munching away and chatting about cooking oils.
Phew, thought Keith as he watched them, that was a close one.
Their first real customer came in fifteen minutes later.
It was Doug from the petrol station.
‘Morning tea,’ he said with a big grin.
For a moment Keith thought Doug wanted a cup of tea and some biscuits. He could tell from their faces that Mum and Dad did too.
‘If I don’t have a decent feed for morning tea I’m cactus by lunch,’ said Doug with an even bigger grin. ‘Two bits of fish and a dollar’s worth of chips thanks.’
When the order was cooked Dad tipped it into the paper and put it on the counter like he always did so the customer could do their own salt and vinegar.
Doug grabbed the bottle of tomato sauce that Mr Gambaso had warned them they should have on the counter and shook big puddles of it all over his fish and chips.
Keith stared.
‘Vinegar?’ asked Dad weakly.
‘No ta,’ said Doug, ‘I’m on a diet.’
Their next customer was the woman who worked in the chemist’s. She introduced herself as Raylene and while her fish was in she told them about Mrs Newman in the post office’s daughter’s baby that could hum the theme to ‘James Bond’.
Outside the shop Raylene stopped and ate a couple of mouthfuls and stuck her head back in through the plastic strips.
‘Jeez,’ she said, ‘you Poms sure know how to make fish and chips.’
After that it seemed to Keith that most of Orchid Cove came in at some stage during the day. Even the hardware store assistant with the pimples and the thin moustache. He bought four lots of fish and chips, one with double salt, and gave Keith a motorbike magazine.
That evening Keith climbed slowly up the stepladder and took the ‘Opening Today’ banner down.
His legs were aching but inside he felt like doing several cartwheels and a couple of handstands.
Fifty-three customers, eighty-one pieces of fish and not one mention of a snake or a sea wasp.
‘G’day Keith.’
Keith spun round.
In the dusk Tracy’s skin looked browner than it had on the beach. Against all that brown her grin looked like a toothpaste advert, only crooked. At her feet was a small dog.
‘This is Buster,’ said Tracy. ‘You didn’t say you had a fish and chip shop.’
‘It only opened today,’ mumbled Keith. He couldn’t take his eyes off the dog, which only had three legs and half an ear.
It looked like something had tried to eat it and then spat it out. A crocodile? A jellyfish? A really big spider?
‘You should have told me,’ Tracy was saying. ‘Mum would have got some for our tea.’
Keith mumbled that they were about to close up anyway. He glanced in the window. Mum and Dad were watching them, smiling.
Tracy was hunting through her pockets.
Don’t go in and buy anything, please, thought Keith. If you go in they’ll ask you about the dog.
‘Skint,’ said Tracy. ‘Oh well.’
‘Bye,’ said Keith.
He started to go into the shop.
‘Keith,’ she said.
He stopped. Go home, he thought, please go home.
‘The other morning, when I was telling you about Uncle Wal’s cousin’s brother who got bitten by the snake in the phonebox, I didn’t mean to make you feel crook. Sorry.’
Crook?
Whatever it meant, he wasn’t going to admit to it.
‘You didn’t,’ he said.
‘Oh, good,’ she said. ‘It’s just that when I said that bit about him being sick through his nose, I thought you went sorta pale. Dad’s always saying I should leave that bit out, but I get carried away.’
‘I was fine,’ said Keith, feeling pale all over again.
He glanced in through the window and felt even paler.
Mum and Dad were coming out of the shop.
‘Keith,’ said Dad, ‘Mum and me have been having a chat. It’s been all work and no play since we got here so we’ve decided to go for a picnic on Saturday. Beach, rainforest, wherever you like.’
‘And we were wondering,’ said Mum, smiling at Tracy, ‘if your friend would like to come too?’
‘Yeah,’ said Tracy, grinning, ‘I’d like that.’