It took a good while for Benny Miller to settle on an outfit for her first shift at the Royal Tavern. She rummaged through the drawers in her new bedroom, pulling out various T-shirts, some button-downs she’d bought at the markets, a pair of maroon corduroy trousers. She tried on a black skirt and found it too formal. She tried a flannelette shirt and found it too casual. In the end, she settled on blue jeans, a navy T-shirt and her boots. She braided her hair in the pink-tiled bathroom, sitting on the edge of the bath.
Benny walked to town slowly via a different route. She turned right early and followed a long street where several houses had caravans parked in their driveways, and hydrangeas grew against weatherboard walls. Lost in thought about her morning discovery—why were Vivian’s books in the shed?—she temporarily lost her bearings when she got to Valley Road, at the south end, opposite a big petrol station and mechanical repair. Benny stood for a moment and oriented herself, then she headed north along the main street, stopping to look in the camping supply store and then going into Hargraves Books, where a man sat behind the counter reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
As always, there were people out front of Fran’s World Famous Pies and Benny stopped there too, to inspect it. A faded article taped in the front window spoke to the high quality of the traditional steak pie in particular, and commended the atmosphere of the store itself, which had ‘all the ambiance of a bygone era’. Benny peered in the big window and had to agree that it did. Dark wooden shelving went along one side, full of chutneys and sauces, and the counter area opposite—a long glass pie-warming cabinet illuminated with soft light—glowed with pies.
Across the road at the bakery, Benny decided on buying something to take with her later to Odette’s house for dessert, but it was difficult to choose. The cakes looked ridiculous, decorated with whipped cream and glazed fruits, and like nothing Odette would ever eat. Next to the lamingtons and tarts were some chocolate biscuits, and they seemed to Benny to be the most unassuming, and therefore best, option. She and Odette could have them with cups of tea. So she bought four, and then continued on—past Curios where a closed sign hung in the window—to the Royal Tavern.
When she entered, Tom Boyd was behind the bar, bent over a notebook, writing numbers in columns.
‘Good morning, Benny,’ he said, looking up, and she liked the way he emphasised her name in that sentence, as if he was particularly glad to see her. And it occurred to Benny properly then just how handsome this older man was.
‘Hello,’ she said, and then paused slightly, unsure of how to address him.
‘You can call me Tom,’ said Tom, who seemed to be a man blessed with natural intuition. ‘You could call me Thomas Henry Boyd, if you’d prefer, but it’d be lengthy.’
‘I’m sure I’ll be too busy pouring beers to use that many words,’ said Benny.
Tom Boyd had a laugh at that—a laconic laugh—and Benny settled down on a stool while Tom explained to her the type of pub this was.
The Royal Tavern was a community pub. It was the communication hub of the Valley, he said, where everyone found out everything important—or mostly unimportant, as it were—that was going on in the town. The pub had a steady flow of customers. Almost all the local groups used the bistro for their monthly meetings: the fishing club, the river swimming club, the Quilting Bees, the mixed singing group, the gardening club, two book clubs and Shop Night. Lots of tourists stopped in on their way north or south, and many stayed for a meal, but it was the locals who kept the pub alive, and the regulars, rusted-on and faithful, in particular.
‘Well there’s more, actually, but the golf club meets at the golf club and the tennis club meets at the tennis club and the CWA meets at the CWA. I think the bushwalking club just has a little sit down with their thermoses midway along the trail.’ Tom smiled.
Benny looked around the bar—this community pub—and noticed things she’d missed the day before. A pair of Dunlop Volleys nailed to the wall, a floral tea set, a framed photo of Jeff Fenech, an Aboriginal flag that looked hand-sewn.
‘You’ll want to talk to people here. Listen to people. We care for them. Right now I have Gary and Ern doing three shifts a week each and I need another for over the holidays. I haven’t had a girl work at the bar before, so this is a bit of an experiment. Try to ignore Ed. But if something feels not right you tell me about it quick smart.’
Benny nodded. ‘I’ll make conversation, and if I’m harassed I’ll express it,’ she said.
‘That’s the spirit,’ said Tom. ‘You look like you can handle yourself pretty well.’
Tom was an unruffled kind of person. Benny could see that his arms were strong and that his hands were working hands: they had nicks on them like he’d been applying tools to wood. Benny thought that if some calamity were to occur—a flood, a cyclone, a bushfire—Tom Boyd would be the kind of dependable person you’d want to have around.
Tom explained the general duties Benny was to perform. Pouring beers, cleaning the ashtrays, wiping down the spirits bottles when they got sticky, cutting the lemons for the mixed drinks, refilling the fridges and topping up the snacks selection—all things Benny knew how to do well already.
‘Come around,’ he said, and Benny got off her stool and went behind the bar. He lifted the trapdoor to the cellar, and she followed him down the steep steps.
‘Can you change a keg?’ he asked. ‘I can always do it if it you can’t.’
‘I can do it,’ said Benny.
Tom nodded. ‘Good,’ he said. He showed her the coolroom and the area where the spent kegs went and the storeroom with extra chips and nut packets and the red wines. He handed her a string bag of lemons to take back upstairs and said, ‘You got all that?’
‘I got it,’ said Benny, who was doing her best to commit everything he said to memory, so she would be a good worker, someone who listened and cared for her customers, someone who would remain in this man’s employ.
Then Tom went back up the steep steps and Benny followed, and he climbed up on a stool to switch on the fairy lights strung along the top of the bar.
‘Do I get a T-shirt?’ she asked him, holding the lemons.
‘Sure you do, Benny,’ he said, hopping down from the stool. ‘It’ll swim on you, but you can have one.’ And he left her there to cut lemon wedges on a small plastic board while he wandered around opening the side doors and the big windows that looked out onto Valley Road.