The Boat House

EIGHT

Down at the one-time pavilion that was now the Venetz sisters's lakeside restaurant, Angelica Venetz had decided that it was time for the big old mallard's appointment in duck heaven.

She'd watched him at his breakfast out by the terrace, and he could barely feed himself. She'd wondered briefly about trying to pass the job along to Adele, but knew right away that it wouldn't work out; she was supposed to be the unsentimental one, after all, the hard business head and the scourge of the tradesmen. The two sisters were both in their fifties, both ex-nurses, neither ever married; they'd taken on the restaurant as a late life decision when their father had died and left them a shared inheritance. They'd hesitated for almost a year before they'd made the move, finally spurred along by the fact that they'd grown sick of talking about it. The first two years had been the hardest — there was hardly a piece of equipment in the kitchen that didn't have a hospital property stamp on it somewhere — but things had grown steadily better since.

You'll be doing him a favour, she'd thought, and so as he wandered past the kitchen on a mid-afternoon stroll she crept up behind him and grabbed him by the neck.

His name was Donald. He squawked and he struggled, but she was stronger. The road accident that had left him lame had also worn him down. He fought and he flapped and made little gurgling noises, but Angelica hung on.

And realised that she wasn't quite sure what she was supposed to do next.

She was hurting Donald, but he wasn't actually dying… there was some knack to this, and she didn't have it. So much for mercy killing. Her grip began to slacken and he kicked a little harder, perhaps sensing a reprieve, and he managed to turn his head around so that he could look at her. Why? his small beady eyes seemed to be saying, What did I do?

"You're holding it wrong," a younger woman's voice said.

Angelica looked up, feeling faintly ridiculous. She hadn't planned for a witness, but it seemed that she had one; the woman was over on the iron steps, watching her across the restaurant deck. Donald flapped and fought and struggled, damaged but not done for, and Angelica — not unaware of the absurdity of trying to maintain some kind of formality under such circumstances — said, "Can I help you?"

"Perhaps I can help you," the young woman said, and she stepped forward onto the terrace planking. "You're holding it wrong."

"Have you done this kind of thing before?"

The woman gave a brief smile to show that it was no big deal.

"I was raised on a farm," she said, and she took the duck from Angelica and efficiently flipped it upside down and twisted its neck. The bird's flapping became as frantic as a wind-up toy's for a few seconds, but this quickly petered out and its body became limp.

She held it out to Angelica, and said, "For the kitchen?"

"For the dustbin," Angelica corrected. The lake birds appeared to be healthy enough, but they were always scrounging food from the tourists and picking over the debris that washed up on the lakeshore. A menu featuring Canard aux Parasites wouldn't be much of a crowd-puller for the coming season. The woman handed her what was left of Donald, and Angelica said, "People feed them and they wander into the road… it's not surprising they get hurt. I know it has to be done, but it seems I'm no good at it. Would you care for a coffee?"

"I brought no money with me," the woman said.

"Restaurant's closed anyway. This is on the house."

The woman shrugged, smiled, inclined her head — a gesture of polite acceptance in the continental manner, none of the foot-shuffling embarrassment of the local stock at all. Angelica loved the valley people — some of them, anyway — but at times she could find them… well, basic more or less summarised the idea. Had it not been for seasonal visitors, the list of locally popular dishes would have been depressingly brief; burned steaks, fried fish, and barbecued chicken. Preferred background music; anything classical that could be recognised from TV. Major fashion influence; the Kays catalogue.

This woman was clearly different.

Compared to some, she was almost a china doll. She seemed dressed for colder weather, in several layers of woollens and a heavy shawl; dull colours, nothing gaudy, and her hair was pulled back and had been pinned in a clasp. She followed as Angelica led the way toward the kitchen, careful not to hold the dead duck too close. The main part of the building faced the lake, and the half-glassed partition of the western wall could be rolled back in decent weather to allow a dozen or more tables to be set in the open air, right out over the water.

As they were stepping inside, the visitor said, "This is a lovely place."

Angelica, trying to place her accent but not managing it, said, "You should see it when the season gets going, it's madness. Let me take a guess. You're not on holiday."

"No. I live here."

"Since when? I'd better warn you, they've a bush telegraph around here that works faster than the speed of light."

"I haven't been here for very long. I only just arrived."

"That would explain it," Angelica said, pushing open the service door that led through into the kitchen. "So, what do you think of the valley?"

The visitor smiled.

"I plan to stay," she said.

They were hit by the scents of baking and spices, the results of the afternoon's work put in by Adele Venetz. Adele, the younger of the two sisters although some privately reckoned that she looked a little drawn-in and slightly older than Angelica, was wiping down the flour from the big kitchen table as they came through the door.

She fixed a baleful eye on Angelica, and said, "If ever they bring back hanging, I wouldn't advise you to apply for the job."

"You were watching?"

"I was listening. Couldn't help it, the racket you were making. Thank God you got some expert help or we'd have been hearing duck screams in our nightmares forever."

"Just get a move on," Angelica said, "so we can use the table. And say hello to one of our neighbours." She pulled out the kitchen trash hopper, a laundry basket kind of affair on squeaky castors, and set Donald on his journey to duck heaven by dropping him into the grey plastic liner. "I'm Angelica, this is my sister Adele. All this is our place."

"Ours, and the bank's," Adele put in.

"My name's Alina Peterson," the young woman said.

Angelica switched on the Cona machine and Adele brought an extra chair. They sat around one end of the work table, which now seemed vast and empty, and Alina Peterson explained how she'd walked down to the village to look around and, where it seemed appropriate, to introduce herself. Angelica said that such a gesture would certainly catch the local people off-guard; a new policeman had been appointed to the area about two years before, and everybody still referred to him as 'that newcomer'.

"You don't think it's such a good idea?" Alina said.

"Well," Angelica said, "I wouldn't want to discourage you. But I wouldn't say it was necessary, either."

The oven timer buzzed, and Adele moved over to attend to it; Alina dug around inside her layers and brought out what looked like a colour postcard. "Well, what do you think of this?" she said, and slid it across for Angelica to see. "Is that a good idea, or is that not how they do things, either?"

Angelica took the card and looked at it. The picture side featured some green and white palace, all columns and arched windows and with a couple of tourist buses parked off to the side. She turned it over, and read the situation wanted ad that Alina had drafted on the back.

"I didn't make it up," Alina said. "I copied it out, mostly. I know they show cards like this in one of the stores, I saw it on the way over here."

Angelica briefly held the card up so that her sister could see it. She didn't have to say anything more. Adele looked back over her shoulder, read it through, and then gave a brief shrug as if to say no objection.

Angelica laid the card down, and looked at their visitor.

She said, "Where are you living right now?"

"On the headland to the north, the place I think they call the Step. I've a temporary room in a house there."

"Anywhere near Pete McCarthy's place?"

"Not too far from him," Alina said.

"I'm not trying to pry, I'm only wondering how far you'd have to travel," Angelica explained. "You see, we usually take on a couple of girls locally for when the season picks up. I don't think we've anything fixed yet. Have you ever done restaurant work?"

"You mean like a cook, or like a waitress?"

"Waiting on, mostly, although you can get all sorts thrown at you. Of course, it's not the kind of thing that everyone would want to get involved in…"

"Try me for a week," Alina said. "Two weeks, I'll take no money. You'll see how fast I can learn."

"You want to be careful what you say," Angelica warned her. "You don't know how much we can throw."

Alina stayed for about twenty minutes longer. They talked mostly about Three Oaks Bay, its people, its peculiarities. Angelica reckoned that she was a reasonable judge of people — one could hardly be a nurse for twenty years without picking up one hell of a lot of insight — and it hadn't taken her long to decided that Alina Peterson was either dead straight or very plausible. Given that she'd nothing in particular to gain, the chances seemed to favour the first of these options. She was bright and she was presentable, which meant that she already scored on two counts over the help that they'd hired last year. Her clothes were neat enough but her shoes were a giveaway, so old and worn under their polish that they almost telegraphed her need; there was a story to be told here, Angelica thought, and Angelica was a sucker for an interesting story.

But Alina hardly talked about herself at all, not at this first meeting. They talked about hours to be worked, they quickly fixed a rate. She said that she was waiting for some of her belongings to be sent on, but she'd supply all her tax and National Insurance details as soon as they came. She said that she could start whenever they needed her; tomorrow, if they wanted.

When they'd covered more or less everything and it was time for her to go, Angelica walked with her to the main doors. The empty restaurant lay in linen-and-silver silence behind them as she undid the bolts and opened up to the daylight.

Alina said, "What time should I be here?"

"Say eleven. It doesn't much matter what you wear during the day, but we'll find you something for the evenings."

"You mean a uniform?"

"No, just something plain."

As they moved out onto the entrance steps, they saw a breakdown wagon thundering by and raising up dust in the square. Without warning, it suddenly let out a blast of the first line of Dixie on a five tone airhorn, so loud and so unexpected that it made Alina take a startled step back.

"Ten to one that's young Wayne Hammond," Angelica said. "You'll probably get to meet him. He's a regular."

Alina looked out to where the wagon was already disappearing from sight; and she nodded, barely perceptibly.

"I'll get to know them all," she said.