Ruth

I flipped the sign on the door of Rosie’s Cafe from closed to open and caught a glimpse of my tired self reflected in the glass. It was eight o’clock Tuesday morning. Again. Where had the past week gone? There were tentative signs of life on the main street and the visible line of sky was an uninspiring gunmetal grey. Parked along the kerb opposite the cafe stood the usual line-up of tradies’ vehicles; the hardware opened at seven thirty. So did the bakery, with their menu of iced coffees, meat pies and sticky buns. I yawned and polished away a smudge of fingerprints with the corner of my apron. A delivery truck lumbered past. Litter skittered in its wake. Good morning, Cutlers Bay.

Rosie’s Cafe was closed Sundays, Mondays and public holidays. Over the years, I’d lost count of how many well-meaning customers had advised me that I was crazy for not opening every day, but Mondays and public holidays were non-negotiable. Not even during the summer break, when folk flocked to the seaside towns on the Yorke Peninsula. But the Sundays? I’d reluctantly put aside my own needs and bowed to local pressure to open the cafe, but only over the holiday season. Rosie’s only opened from nine until two on the weekends, but the summer days were long and the cafe was at its busiest. I needed my Mondays off, because when was I supposed to go to the dentist or the doctor, do my own shopping, visit a friend and have them make me a coffee, or heaven forbid, leave town for a few hours?

Now, with December a mere month away, an insidious dread curled its way into my stomach every time I thought about giving up one of my precious days off. My days off didn’t come around quickly enough, or last long enough as it was. Often there’d be baking to do, tea towels and aprons to wash and supplies to be ordered for the coming week. And the banking and any extraneous paperwork. But at least I could lie in; get up at eight not six, or five, depending on how much catching up there was to do. I could sit down and eat a leisurely lunch, instead of quick bites grabbed on the run.

On the way back to the counter, I straightened chairs and tidied condiment sets on the tables, my actions rote. Once upon a time these simple tasks had filled me with joy and pride. My own cafe. I was the boss. What an achievement.

Taking a deep breath, I squared my shoulders and mentally ran through the daily checklist: coffee machine on and seasoned; grill heating; fryer ready; chairs down and tables clean; dishwasher on; drinks fridge and undercounter milk fridge restocked … a quick double-check of the cake cabinet and muffin basket—loaded and ready to go. With a pang of something akin to disappointment, I realised that less than half of the cakes and slices on display were homemade. At the beginning of this venture, I had prepared and baked everything on the premises. Homemade food with healthy choices available, all served in a homely environment, had been my vision for the cafe. I’d firmly resisted commercially produced fare. I’d worked around the clock to avoid it. But the years had taken their toll on my energy and enthusiasm and if I thought I could get away with it, the current menu would shrink and even more of the choices on display would be commercially produced.

The front door squealed and, regular as clockwork, Audrey Franco came in clutching her pink to-go mug. Audrey was a volunteer at the op shop around the corner and my first customer every Tuesday morning.

‘Good heavens, Ruth, why on earth don’t you put a few drops of oil on those hinges. The door wouldn’t make such a dreadful racket.’

‘Good morning, Audrey! With luck we might see some sunshine this afternoon. The usual?’

‘Yes, please.’ She handed over the insulated cup, her gaze firmly fixed on the basket of muffins under the mesh cover. ‘Are they chocolate-chip muffins?’

‘Blueberry, with fresh blueberries.’

‘Oh, lovely. I can convince myself I’m being halfway healthy if it’s fruit rather than chocolate. Have you heard the news?’

‘I hear a lot of news, Audrey. What specifically?’

‘Cutlers Bay Financial Services is closing its doors. Graham Wurst is retiring at the end of the year,’ she said with a self-satisfied smirk.

‘Is that so? I hadn’t heard. I wouldn’t have thought he was old enough to retire. He’s not sick, is he?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’ She sniffed. ‘Besides, how old is old enough to retire? My Reggie was seventy-two when he eventually downed tools. Now look at him—all he does is sit in front of the telly and watch Netflix and that Tube thing.’

Seventy-two. The thought of doing what I was doing for another decade was enough to make my skin prickle. With the lid firmly fixed onto Audrey’s flat white with one, I bagged up a blueberry muffin, still warm from the oven. ‘There you go. Do you think Graham and Marcia will stay put in Cutlers Bay?’

‘Unlikely,’ Audrey said with confidence. ‘Marcia’s never made a secret of the fact she thinks we’re all a bit rural. And their children and grandchildren live in Adelaide.’

‘What about Graham’s clients? What will they do?’

‘Apparently,’ Audrey said, leaning in and giving me a close-up of what you did with lipstick when you had no lips, ‘his son has a similar business in the city and he’ll take on the clients, those who choose not to move elsewhere.’

‘I see. Just how old do you reckon Graham is?’ I’d always put him at around my age: early sixties. Too young to retire.

‘He’s fifty-seven. But in my opinion, he looks older. And before you ask, Marcia’s sixty. Or so Peg says.’

‘Really,’ I said and tried not to sound as disgruntled as I felt because Graham was half a decade younger than me and he was retiring. ‘Peg would know.’

Peg and her husband owned the fish and chip shop and Peg’s vast and real-time knowledge of local goings-on was legend. Basically, if it’d happened in Cutlers Bay or surrounds, Peg knew about it. But I’d never thought of her as a gossip. She dispensed information prudently, without elaboration or exaggeration, and by all accounts, if the situation required, she could be stubbornly tight-lipped.

‘I’d better be on my way,’ Audrey said after I’d passed over her change and initialled her loyalty card. ‘I’m opening up this morning and Tuesdays are always frantic.’

She held the door for the next customers: two women who worked in the hospital’s administration office. They walked to work and stopped in for coffee on their way.

‘What’ll it be this morning?’ I said and accompanied it with as genuine a smile as I could muster. Only fifty-seven and retiring … How dare he?

And so went my morning. The same routine as every other. Mostly takeaway coffees and snacks until mid-morning when the ‘have heres’ out for coffee and a chat trickled in, along with the usual regulars. Theo Adams was one such regular: Tuesday and Thursday mornings on the dot of nine thirty he shuffled in for a milky cappuccino and two thickly buttered slices of toasted raisin bread. Another menu choice I used to bake myself. Now it came pre-sliced in a plastic bag.

‘You’re looking bright and chipper, Theo, for an overcast Tuesday morning.’

‘Ruth,’ he replied, nodding and doffing an imaginary hat. He moved across to his usual table by the window—table three. I watched and wondered briefly if his gait had worsened. For a moment I thought he might topple over. Then his face relaxed into a rare smile when he spied today’s Advertiser waiting on the table. I dropped two slices of raisin bread into the toaster and made his coffee. Theo was well into his eighties and had been a regular at the cafe since his wife had died several years ago. It was plain to see that his health was failing. How much longer he’d be able to navigate his way to the cafe two mornings a week was anyone’s guess.

While I frothed milk, I contemplated how easy it was to identify the day of the week just by who sat at which table. Tuesday and Thursday were Theo’s; Wednesday mornings brought the Cutlers Bay version of the yummy mummies, with their designer pushers and destructive toddlers, and occasionally a group of women golfers red-cheeked and gloating. Or the bowlers out for a bite of lunch. Third Thursday of the month brought the book club ladies. They’d laugh and talk loudly; every now and then they’d discuss books. Their appetite for cake and coffee was vast so I did nothing to discourage them. And on it went.

Allie Thomas breezed in at ten, blonde ponytail bouncing, all set to go in navy blue polo shirt with Rosie’s Cafe embroidered in gold above the pocket. Allie worked Tuesday to Friday from ten until two thirty; later if needed, but only ever until school was out. She was a single mum and adamant her children, now teenagers, wouldn’t come home to an empty house. I valued her intelligence and quick wittedness and that she was not afraid of work. I didn’t know what I’d do without her. After three years, we worked together like a well-oiled machine and my only regret was that she hadn’t been with me since I’d first opened.

Over the course of time, I’d learned that Allie’s husband and the father of her children had made a hasty and unexpected exit only weeks after their second child was born. ‘Brett decided he didn’t want to be tied down with a family after all,’ was how Allie had put it. She’d never elaborated and I would never ask. What role Allie’s ex played in the ongoing parenting of their children was unknown to me. Except for that one time, she’d never mentioned him again. Or his parents, Mia and Cody’s other set of grandparents. The split had happened long before we’d met and from what I’d observed, she’d done an amazing job as a single parent. Cody, her youngest, had recently turned thirteen and Mia was seventeen. I’d had little to do with Cody or Mia until about six months ago when Mia started working at Rosie’s on Saturday mornings. She’d picked up the routine in no time and was proving to be a quick and efficient worker. She didn’t have much to say, unlike Suzie, another of the young casuals who never shut up, but Mia didn’t miss much of what went on around her.

‘Are you okay, Ruth?’ Allie said in a brief lull between the morning crowd and lunch. ‘You seem a bit flat today.’

‘Graham Wurst is retiring,’ I said as I stacked clean cups and mugs onto the top of the espresso machine. ‘He’s five years younger than I am.’

‘Ruth! You sound as if you’re jealous.’

I paused for a moment and stared into space. ‘You know, I think I might be,’ I said, as much to my own amazement as hers. ‘But goodness knows what I’d do to fill in the time without the cafe. I’ve always worked at one job or another.’

‘Ha! Mum said that until she retired a couple of years ago. Dad grumbles because he sees less of her now than he did when she worked full time. She volunteers, belongs to a quilting group, plays mahjong—’ Allie raised her eyebrows, ‘—and has no time for an extended visit to give me a break from the kids. But good luck to her, I say. She’s already raised one family.’

The cafe started to fill with the lunchtime crowd, about average for a Tuesday, and any conversation with Allie was limited to clarifying orders and brief instructions. Another pair of hands would have been helpful at this time of the day, but the busy spurt only lasted a couple of hours at the most and Tuesday afternoons were traditionally dead, so we managed. If there were groups booked on a Tuesday or Wednesday, I’d call in an extra casual to cover the rush and the cleanup afterwards. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays were busier and there was always three of us.

By two thirty, only two tables remained occupied. I was at the kitchen sink, washing up dishes that didn’t fit into the dishwasher. The kitchen was partitioned off from the main counter and cafe proper by a wall with a servery window. With the ovens, grill, fryer, fridge and freezer, it was hot and the hissing and gurgling dishwasher added to the mugginess.

‘You go home,’ I said when Allie bustled in carrying several stray pieces of crockery and cutlery.

‘Table seven want more drinks,’ she said, scraping food scraps into the bin. ‘I can stay a bit longer if you like.’

I shook my head. ‘Go. I’ll be fine, thanks.’ I washed and dried my hands. ‘Laurie’ll be here later to put up the chairs and do the floors.’

Laurie Randall was a gentle giant of a man, a retired farmer and another, more recent, widower. Unlike Theo Adams, I’d never thought of Laurie as a regular—he’d appear every now and then for scones with jam and cream and a pot of tea. Then one afternoon several months ago, we’d started chatting

while he’d lingered over his second cup of English Breakfast. He’d been the only customer in the cafe and was telling me how much he missed his wife; that he had no idea how to fill in his days.

‘The house is so empty,’ he’d said. ‘And although he’d never say it to my face, the lad doesn’t want me out at the farm poking my nose into whatever he’s up to.’

‘What about the men’s shed? I’ve heard they do all manner of things there. Audrey Franco said they made a bookshelf for the op shop.’

He’d scoffed. ‘A team of horses couldn’t drag me there, nothing but a mob of old gossips.’

Closing time had come and I’d begun stacking the chairs onto the tables ready to sweep before I mopped the floor. Wordlessly, Laurie had pushed himself to his feet, taken his empty cup and teapot to the counter and then helped me lift chairs. The following afternoon he’d reappeared minutes before four and the moment I’d spun the sign on the front door he’d started lifting chairs onto the tables. By the end of the week we’d come to an arrangement: for a few home-cooked meals and the occasional fruit cake, he’d do the chairs and the floors and any other jobs I asked him to do from Tuesday to Friday. So far he’d only missed one afternoon—he’d had a doctor’s appointment. He did a more thorough job of the floor than I did.

‘I’ll be off then,’ Allie said and collected her belongings from the cupboard shelf set aside for that purpose. With a wave and a flip of her ponytail, she let herself out the kitchen door. It opened into a narrow service lane where the gas bottles stood and the rubbish bins were stowed. The mop and bucket lived beside the tap and outdoor sink. I washed my hands and went to make more coffee for table seven.

Three hours later, I was still at it. Motivated by my earlier self-reproach, an orange and poppyseed cake cooled on a rack and two trays of muesli slice were turning golden brown in the oven. The slice was a favourite, another recipe of Mum’s. All the recipes I used were Mum’s, rejigged to suit the circumstances. Many of her recipes worked just as well if you doubled or even tripled the ingredients. Others, I’d discovered, required tweaking.

While the cake and then the slices were in the oven I’d restocked the fridges and finished unpacking and putting away the morning’s wholesale order. In the early days of the business, I’d sourced as much local produce and groceries as I could. But then the fruit and veg shop had gone bust during Covid and I’d been forced to procure fresh produce from a supplier out of Adelaide. Then it became easier to get everything from the one place. Deliveries came twice a week. On the odd occasion I ran out of an item or I missed it on the order, I’d shoot up the street to the IGA supermarket. Bread and bread rolls were the only items I bought locally.

Laurie had been and gone, and the floors were squeaky clean and the bins out on the kerb for collection the following morning. He’d left with a spring in his step and a green supermarket bag weighed down with six frozen single-serve meals and a sultana cake. While I waited for the muesli slices to cool enough to store, I shredded lettuce and sliced tomatoes and cucumbers ready for the next day’s sandwiches.

On a positive note, when it finally came time to go home, I didn’t have far to go, because I lived in the residence at the rear of the cafe. About twenty steps took me through the office, past the storeroom door and into the compact and comfortable living space. Home. A two-bedroomed flat. It hadn’t taken me long to discover what a mixed blessing those twenty steps were. Even after I’d closed the doors between the cafe and the office and then the office and my living room, some days I felt as if I’d never actually left work…