The Old Ship pub is quiet enough right now in the lull between lunchtime and evening sessions. Most punters are in the garden, including two young families shoving vegan pizza and sweet potato chips down their kids’ gullets. The little ones drink organic pop (same sugar content, higher smugness quotient than the normal stuff) while the parents unwind with very large G&Ts, because (hurrah!) the sun has long passed the yardarm. They are probably regretting their choice to come here rather than holidaying at an all-inclusive with a children’s club somewhere in the Algarve, which would have worked out far cheaper, even if they’d bathed in asses’ milk.
Bar manager Alison Smith is bracing for a deluge of customers later. Along with the regulars, there’ll be a few birthday-party oldies and their handlers from the community centre bash, plus a slew of wedding guests. Some will stay back at Hawk post wedding reception – not that they’ll help clear up, 41they have people for that – and of course there are drinks at Hawk, but the truly dedicated will troop down to the bar to achieve a more professional state of inebriation.
Alison checks her optics and calculates if she’ll need more spirits. All in order. Good.
The single new thing that catches her eye is Bill Thatcher’s urn up on the shelf alongside the tankards. Bill’s wife, Phyllis, only plucked up the courage to bring it over to the pub last week. It was a highly emotional and somewhat disturbing moment for punters, friends and family alike, not least Bill Thatcher himself, who was sitting in the snug nursing a pint of Betty Stogs (queen of Cornish ales), minding his own business at the time.
This grand gesture was accompanied by Phyllis yawping for all the pub to hear, ‘You touch that bloody cleaner over at the Mermaid one more time, mister, and you’ll be in that, you dirty bugger. Think on!’
Phyllis is northern.
Hannah brings a tray of cups through from the garden. A large group of happy hikers are sitting out there, still ordering cappuccinos, which Alison considers very bad form. This is the cocktail hour, happy hour – the magical, pivotal moment when it is socially acceptable to commence the process towards messy.
Alison doesn’t mind the ice-cream and coffee mob – good profit margins – but that clientele is not her forte. The whiskers and furry-knee brigade, as she thinks of the hikers (and that’s just the women), are too health conscious to spend an entire week’s wages in a single night, which is a regular occurrence on the island. Alison thrives on those epic events of profligate 42inebriation; nights when she’s required to break up fights between rival gig crews, flinging out irascible builders, knowing when to say yes and when to refuse a lock-in, and forging her fearsome reputation as a successful woman in a man’s game by sheer bolshiness and brute strength honed by a lifetime of humping barrels up and down cellar steps.
Given that one of the barmen is currently down with ‘flu’ – a summer cold, but youngsters these days have no stamina – Alison’s delighted that Hannah’s holiday has been cancelled and her best barmaid has since volunteered to work for a couple of hours early doors.
‘Do you want to take a break now before it all hits the fan?’ she asks Hannah.
‘I’m fine. Got a couple of hours’ kip earlier,’ replies the barmaid, coming round to the business side of the bar.
‘Good,’ says Alison, stacking the clean pint glasses she’s polished.
They are now both a little antsy, bracing for the wash of human plankton that will soon fill the place with laughter, sweat and midweek marauding. People always behave foolishly in large groups – behaviour they would never consider when alone becomes the accepted norm whenever they’re in a gang, whenever they’re on holiday, and whenever alcohol is involved.
The great leveller, alcohol. Booze! Helping ugly people have sex since 3000 BC! as one of Hannah’s off-duty T-shirts proclaims. What a gift to the gene pool.
Alison admires the barmaid. Hannah’s a hard grafter. But she does not approve of her florid love life, which can cause complications and resentments. The flirting might make her popular with punters and nets her fabulous tips – on top of the 43fifteen percent service charge, shared equally by the team – but it isn’t great for business when things go further. Alison herself used to get away with stuff like that back in the day – too long in the tooth now. She wonders if she might be a little jealous.
People like to gossip about Hannah – and not only about her relationships. Weird rumours swirled around the darker recesses of the pub last year, spread initially by one of the housekeepers:
‘Saw her dancing up there at Cromwell’s Castle, buck naked under the full moon…’
‘You reckon she’s a witch?’
‘Devil worship, probably…’
She’s not usually one to spread gossip, but Alison couldn’t help but pass that extraordinary nugget along. Hannah had read the tarot at last year’s Summer Fayre, so the tittle-tattle got plenty of traction.
Three of the housekeeping team are cackling together on Table 3 right now, sitting in descending order of size as you look from the bar, like a nest of tables, trashing someone else’s reputation by the looks of it.
Hannah goes to gather the last of the afternoon glasses as Alison sets about sorting the till. Thor from the shop comes up to the bar and Alison gives him her professional smile. Super polite, nice enough bloke, moderate drinker. The bad skin is a pity. He wears a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to show off the new godawful tattoo he recently acquired in Penzance – the face of some bald bloke who looks like a pincushion. Ted the boatman calls him Hammer Boy, although Thor has to be mid-twenties. This is not on account of his chosen name of Thor, but because, ‘He’s a right tool, that one.’ 44
For want of something better to comment upon, Alison says, ‘Those biceps are coming along nicely.’
‘Thank you,’ he mumbles.
‘You’ll be breaking a few hearts this summer.’
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ he replies, without making eye contact. He blushes, thanks her again, pays for his pint and scuttles away to stand alongside a group of gardeners, at a slight distance yet near enough to be included in the conversation if they so wish. They do not wish.
Poor bugger, thinks Alison.
The couple from Razorbill turn up with a group of teenagers in tow. One of the pretty girls is only wearing a bikini top and her jeans are more hole than material. It’s hard not to stare. Alison notices Thor looking with an expression of pure longing. Not even if you won the lottery, mate, she thinks.
She’s finishing Razorbill’s order when Maisie Willis and her mother arrive from Sanderling, which takes some doing. Maisie huffs and puffs as she attempts to manoeuvre her mother’s wheelchair inside, so Hannah goes round to give her a hand.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ flutters Maisie. ‘You okay, Mum?’
Maisie’s mother, Edith Willis, has been coming to Tresco for donkey’s years, initially along with the dearly departed Mr Willis. He didn’t die or anything, just shacked up with a dental hygienist and moved to Launceston, which some might think amounts to pretty much the same thing.
‘Arrived this afternoon?’ asks Alison when Maisie comes up to the bar, flustered and sweating.
‘This morning,’ says Maisie, pushing damp hair out of her eyes. ‘But we’ve not even unpacked everything yet, have we, Mum?’ 45
Her mother is already studying the menu. Alison guesses it’ll be cheesy chips for Edith and is proved right.
The women have matching pink waterproofs, Edith’s hung across the back of the chair – Alison assumes for draping purposes because it’d not do up across the expanse of Edith Willis’s chest – and matching pink headbands. Maisie fusses over her mother, continually asking if she’s comfortable, if she needs anything. That would scare the hell out of Alison, constantly having to care for someone. She doesn’t even own a pot plant.
A flurry of activity follows. Islanders finishing work pop in before heading home for tea, while the blow-ins from the time-shares and rentals commence their holiday evenings early.
There’s a brief moment of respite while Alison slices more lemon, then the first of the wedding guests arrives. The son from Falcon as memory serves her … Kit. She’s good with names is Alison – part of the job. The bride and groom must have just departed for the Hell Bay Hotel over on Bryher. Alison’s worked here three seasons, but she’s only visited it once as she’s been so busy. The hotel is hailed for its dramatic views, although pretty much everywhere you look round here there’s a dramatic view.
As Kit approaches Alison chirps, ‘What can I get for you, my lover?’ (She’s not Cornish, but she occasionally gives it her best Doc Martin for the punters.) The young man sports a strained look on his face which is easily and accurately interpreted as get me drunker right now!
‘A large vodka and a new life,’ says Kit, leaning on the bar and gracing her with a lovely smile as he adds a heartfelt, ‘please.’
A handsome young man with nice manners. Alison catches Hannah giving him the eye, and thinks, here we go again.