Twenty Minutes of Weather
The heat had been sitting over the town since breakfast.
Not the clean sort that makes everything brighter, but the heavy kind that seemed to collect between buildings and stay there. By ten the upstairs rooms had already gone warm. Murphy had given up following the sun around the house and was stretched on the coolest strip of hallway floor he could find.
I’d just come off the phone to Tommo.
He’d rung ostensibly about the grant paperwork, though there wasn’t much to say. Something had moved at the county end. A phone call, apparently. Nothing confirmed.
He had the cautious tone of a man who’d had promising news but wasn’t ready to say so.
“Sounds good,” I said.
“Might be.”
“Which means it does.”
“Means they rang.”
He was away for the Bank Holiday weekend, spending a couple of days with his daughter, and said he’d know more when he got back. I told him to forget about it until then.
“Aye,” he said, in the manner of someone with no intention of doing so.
Emma messaged almost immediately afterwards.
Can you bring that spare card reader down?
Then:
And cold drinks.
The shop had been busy since opening. One of the terminals had apparently decided that a Bank Holiday Saturday was an appropriate time to stop charging, and the bottle of water she’d taken with her that morning had already gone.
I found the spare unit in a kitchen drawer, filled another bottle from the fridge and put both into a canvas bag.
Murphy lifted his head when I picked up his lead, then lowered it again.
“Fair.”
He came anyway.
The town had filled while I wasn’t looking.
Cars moved through it in short, resentful increments. Every available piece of pavement seemed to contain somebody standing still for a reason known only to themselves. Families moved in loose formations carrying towels, bags, inflatable things and children already pink around the shoulders. The smell of sun cream drifted in and out with the hot air.
A taxi had parked badly enough outside the chemist to affect traffic in both directions.
Nobody seemed surprised.
Murphy kept close to the wall where there was shade. I carried the bag in one hand and his lead in the other, feeling the cold bottle knock pleasantly against my leg.
The sky over the sea was almost white.
At Salt & Sail the door was propped open, though it wasn’t helping much. Emma stood behind the counter with her hair tied up and the expression she gets when she has been speaking pleasantly to strangers for too long.
“You’re alive.”
“Just.”
I handed her the water.
She took several long swigs before looking at the card machine.
“And that?”
“Also alive.”
“Useful household.”
A customer appeared beside us holding two dresses and asking whether one came in another size. Emma gave me a look that meant thank you, goodbye and please move, all at once.
I took the hint.
Outside, the heat seemed worse.
The Anchor had every table occupied. Kate was moving between the bar and the beer garden carrying glasses three at a time, her face set into the particular expression of someone who had stopped expecting anybody to make her job easier.
Ronnie was sitting under one of the umbrellas with John, both of them looking offensively comfortable.
Ronnie raised a hand.
“Warm enough for you?” he said, grinning.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Good weather.”
I glanced up at the white sky. “It’s horrible.”
Ronnie settled back in his chair.
“Same thing at your age.”
I stopped long enough for Murphy to drink from the bowl by the door.
Malcolm was standing at the bar just inside, explaining something to Kate about parking enforcement. I could only hear fragments.
“—revenue mechanism—”
“No,” Kate said.
“—public space being monetised—”
“No.”
She saw me looking.
“Take him with you.”
Malcolm raised his glass.
I was about to move on when I noticed a change in the wind.
There hadn’t been any all morning. Then, across the little square beyond the Anchor, every loose thing moved at once.
A menu lifted from a table.
Napkins skittered along the pavement.
The leaves of the plane trees turned their pale undersides towards the sea.
Murphy went still.
People looked up.
There was a low sound somewhere beyond the roofs, too long to be traffic.
The light changed.
Not darker exactly. Flatter.
The first drop hit the paving slabs in front of me hard enough to leave a mark the size of a coin.
Then another.
I ducked under the pub awning before it began raining properly.
Outside, people crowded under shop blinds and into doorways. Someone ran past carrying a beach umbrella horizontally over their head. A family abandoned a pushchair beneath a restaurant canopy and squeezed themselves around it.
A gust sent rain sideways halfway into the bar.
At the entrance to the beer garden, water had started running along the gutter in a brown-grey stream, gathering crisp packets, leaves and one bright yellow plastic spade.
Kate wrestled with one of the umbrellas.
It turned inside out.
Ronnie emerged from beneath the other one and caught it before it could go.
John dragged chairs.
Malcolm appeared with a broom.
For several minutes everyone simply did whatever was nearest.
I helped Kate move a table under cover. Rain was forcing its way under the front door, so we began lining the threshold with bar towels.
The drain out in the street had stopped taking water altogether.
Malcolm went out and prodded at it with the broom handle, then retreated under cover.
“Blocked,” he announced.
“Yes,” Kate said.
“Years of underinvestment.”
Kate glared at him.
“Just get back out there. You can nationalise it once it's cleared.”
A man sheltering beside him offered advice.
Malcolm ignored him with considerable discipline.
Then Ronnie appeared carrying a length of metal rod from somewhere.
Nobody asked why he had it.
Between them they lifted a compacted mass of leaves, paper and something that might once have been a chip tray from the grate.
The water disappeared with a sudden gulp.
They returned triumphant, just as the thunder arrived directly overhead.
Every conversation stopped for half a second.
Murphy barked once, not frightened so much as offended.
Rain hammered against the old sash windows. The road outside had become silver, gutters running fast on both sides. People stood shoulder to shoulder beneath whatever cover they had found, temporarily stripped of whatever plans they’d had ten minutes earlier.
Then, almost as abruptly as it had started, it weakened.
The hammering became rain.
The rain became dripping.
Somewhere beyond the roofs the sky had already begun to brighten.
People stepped cautiously back onto the pavement.
A woman retrieved the abandoned pushchair.
Someone dragged a chair back outside the Anchor and wiped the seat with a sleeve.
The yellow spade had lodged against the kerb by the pub gate.
Within five minutes the street was reorganising itself.
I headed back to Salt & Sail to check on Emma, who was standing in the shop doorway with a towel in one hand.
“You’re soaked.”
“So are you.”
“I work here.”
“That doesn’t make you waterproof.”
On the way home I passed the Anchor again. Ronnie and John had resumed their seats as though the interruption had been administrative. Malcolm was looking at the drain with the satisfaction of a man whose political analysis had briefly required practical application.
Kate was already returning glasses to the tables.
The sun came out.
Not gradually. It simply appeared between the remaining cloud and struck the wet road hard enough to turn it white.
Steam began to lift from the pavement.
A child passed holding an ice cream.
Murphy stopped to shake himself directly beside me.
“Thank you.”
The town was still busy. Perhaps busier. People had emerged from everywhere at once, rearranging towels, reopening bags, resuming conversations from whatever point the rain had interrupted them.
Nothing had ended.
Near the house I stopped to let Murphy sniff something beneath a hedge.
The wind came in from the sea.
My shirt was wet through, and for the first time in months the air against it felt cold.
I stood there for a moment longer than necessary.
Then Murphy moved on, and I followed.