Neil himself had vanished up onto the curtain pole, almost as if he was well aware that goodies took time to bake, and taking a small snooze accordingly. Marisa looked at him, looked at the prints, shook her head and burst out laughing again. Polly didn’t think it was quite that funny.
That was because she had absolutely no idea how long it had been since Marisa had laughed aloud in somebody else’s kitchen; had no idea how much Marisa had feared she would never do so again.
The Aga divided up neatly and they did pies, vegetable and cheese muffins, and kneaded up loaves for the day ahead.
‘Do you think you’ll be able to use the bakery?’ said Marisa. Polly shook her head very quickly.
‘I’ll worry about that tomorrow.’ She frowned. ‘Let’s just keep busy.’
And they drank Prosecco and kneaded bread and made muffins and scones – which got a little wonkier as time went on – and Marisa stayed in the kitchen while Polly ran out with tea as often as she could, and at four a.m. the tide, having hit its heights and done its worst, finally turned and started back down again. And as the storm finally began to die away there was nothing to do after that but to wait for the sun to rise as it always did, and survey what they had left.
On Polly’s instructions, all the helpers trooped back, utterly exhausted and muddy but delighted that their unstinting efforts had saved the causeway from being destroyed completely. She would need repairs – but she still stood.
They kicked off their boots – steam rose all around the kitchen till it looked like a laundry – and dried out in front of the fire, being stuffed full of coffee and fresh bread until they felt like bursting.
There was much jolly bravado – after all, nobody had been lost, although one Mini was currently floating off in the direction of France, and nobody had had to be rescued by a coastguard that already had enough on its hands last night to cope with a village that hadn’t helped itself. As well as that, half the RNLI volunteers were from the village anyway, and were already pretty busy, but they had managed to protect their population.
‘Did you really save the causeway?’ said Marisa, so amazed she found her voice to ask the friendly, tired-looking Archie.
‘Well, most of it,’ he said, eating a scone so fast Marisa wasn’t sure it had touched his throat. ‘We’ve got the stones. They’ll need to be put back.’
‘Did you not want to wait for the fire brigade? To make it safe?’
‘But this is us,’ said Archie, his lined face kind. ‘We are Mount Polbearne. We can’t lose a single brick. If a brick in the causeway is lost, it’s a piece of the chain. Every brick matters. Every brick is connected to every other brick. It’s a part of us. We all have to join up. That’s what community means.’
His voice was kind, but there was a reproof in it too, and Marisa realised that however much she felt she was hidden away, here in a tiny community like Polbearne she had been noticed – as, presumably, had her bussed-in groceries and distant deliveries. She had not played her part, even though these men and women had risked everything to save the causeway: for her and for everyone else here.
She nodded, then proffered up the plate again.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Did Polly make these?’
‘I did, actually.’
His pale blue eyes met hers then for the first time.
‘Well done,’ he said. ‘They’re very good.’
The furniture and floors of the population who lived nearest the water’s edge . . . well, that was a different matter. Those going up the hill vowed to take the fresh baking to the school house, where the evacuated residents were gathered, Mrs Brady telling once again the story about how she was a real-life evacuee (which indeed she was; she had been sent to Cornwall from London as a four-year-old. By the time the war had ended she was a strapping, dairy-fed nine-year-old with an accent thick as clotted cream who worked the fields with her kind adopted family – who still spoke a few Cornish words – and returned only rarely throughout her life to the East End slum, and the hardscrabble family of thirteen children she’d been born into).
Then those lucky enough to have been untouched would grab as much sleep as they could before the great clean-up would start in the morning and a reckoning could be made. Huckle and Polly didn’t mention the bakery, didn’t even look at each other. Andy was looking sombre, but his beer barrels were watertight so he’d probably be all right. Polly was hyped up on a combination of Prosecco and coffee and couldn’t stop baking, which Huckle noticed; it’s what she did when she was nervous.
Marisa had waved tentatively to Alexei as he came in, filling the door frame, but he hadn’t seen her at first. Then he’d given her a quick glance as if to say, well, of course here you are, in front of the fire surrounded by food, nice and cosy, I see you can get out when you want to go somewhere nice and, too tired and anxious to explain, she had simply offered him a plate of food, which he had not so much eaten as inhaled. He had sat on the window seat at the far side of the kitchen, while the chatter and gossip continued around them, and in the middle of the tumult had at some point fallen asleep. But it was not for long, because Daisy and Avery, up at dawn despite their disrupted night, had been only too delighted to wake up and find a party going on – with cakes too! – and, charging downstairs, had immediately clambered onto their favourite teacher and had awoken him by pulling hard on his beard.
‘Ach,’ he had said, abruptly jerked out of his dreaming state, but, Marisa couldn’t help noticing, his confusion turned instantaneously to sweetness.
‘Get away, you solnyshko,’ he said. ‘What is rule?’
‘No climbing on the piano teacher,’ said Daisy sensibly.
‘No climbing on piano teachers, thank you very much.’ He stretched and yawned, covering his mouth with his sleeve.
‘BUT!’ said Avery. ‘We is brought HONEY!’
He presented the tub. ‘Oh, I love honey,’ said Alexei, reaching for it. Daisy and Avery swapped a look that said, there we are, proven right yet again.
He is so lovely, Marisa found herself thinking. To everyone who isn’t me.
Chapter Forty-one
Polly left it as long as possible to go to the bakery. Huckle tried to get her to have a sleep but she wouldn’t, instead moving round the kitchen cleaning up and putting away tins and ingredients. Everyone had stumbled home to snatch some rest, but she’d need to alert Jayden, her colleague, and, frankly, she had to have a look herself first.
‘I’ll go and get out the insurance papers,’ said Huckle, even as he was falling asleep himself, the twins safely in front of the TV now the power was back on. ‘But, you know . . .’
Polly did know. It was simply impossible to properly insure a tidal island that got cut off at every high tide, and they had all seen the problems people had had over the West Country with the 2018 floods. Even if they were up for any money, it would be a long time coming.
Polly sighed and pulled on her wellies.
‘I’ll come,’ said Huckle, but his eyes were already closing and his voice was trailing off.
‘I’ll call you if I need you,’ said Polly. ‘Don’t let the twins eat the leftovers.’