The Keeper

New Man

Dishwashing didn't pay well, but it was enough. Dean worked five nights a week, which meant five big staff meals. That wasn't the only food he ate from the pub. When customers sent back an overcooked steak, or they left a sausage or a chop uneaten, he put them in a bag to take home instead of putting them in the pig bin. The first time Gavin saw him, Dean said it was for the dog. An almost truth. If he had a dog, he'd feed it nothing but the scraps from the kitchen; there was so much wasted. Gavin nodded and Dean smiled to himself; one day he'd get a dog.

With no rent to pay and expensive food covered, the wage packet went a long way. He bought staples from the Mevacombe shop – porridge oats for breakfast, bread, and a few vegetables to have with any meat he had for lunch. Perhaps a hunk of cheddar and crackers with some fruit. He looked at a rack of seed packets and realised it would be cheaper to grow his own fruit and vegetables. They would be fresher, too. It was satisfying work to pull the weeds from the garden beds, plant rows of lettuce, beetroot and carrot seeds, and water them in, keeping them weeded – and thrilling to the small success as they germinated.

The birds uprooted what the slugs didn't eat. He tried again, this time starting the seeds in potting mix stuffed into the piles of cardboard toilet roll tubes he'd found in the outhouse. Then he rescued plastic bottles from the pub's overflowing bins and cut them to make mini cloches to protect the young seedlings.

It was impossible not to think about Martha as he was gardening. He had steered her away from horticulture to study art. Now here he was, fingers in the dirt, his art teacher career forgotten. Would she laugh to see him becoming excited watching plants grow from tiny little seeds? He hoped she would; he remembered how she laughed, throwing her head back and unselfconsciously snorting when she found something particularly funny. He smiled as he transplanted seedlings to the prepared ground, hoping she would laugh a lot in college, that she would find a group of friends like he'd had. And that most of them wouldn't drift away when times were hard.

It was full summer by the time he ate his first homegrown salad, and it tasted significantly better than the limp offerings that came out of the pub kitchen. When he wasn't working at the pub, he spent all afternoon and much of the evening gardening before he downed tools, made himself mint tea to pour over ice, and fixed a salad to have with leftover food from the pub. Now that the garden was presentable, Dean used the phone at the pub to call Robert, who contacted Sheila, who advertised the cottage for holiday lets. Visitors could call Demelza at the shop to arrange to stay, but they rarely did. Most holidaymakers didn't want to holiday somewhere so far from the coast or from local amenities. Those who wanted to come weren't the types to pester a caretaker. Dean did any maintenance that was needed during their stay: fixing leaky taps, replacing burnt-out light bulbs, sanding down windows that refused to close. Then he cleaned the cottage after the guests left and freshened it up before new ones arrived, opening windows, making up the beds with fresh linen, and sweeping the flagstone and wooden floors. He gave everything a wipe down with vinegar and lemon juice and started up the fridge. He didn't use it for himself, preferring to take ice from the chest freezer in the back room. There wasn't much in there apart from some questionable old meat, but he pushed it to the side and used the rest of the space for whatever he needed frozen, which was mostly trays and bottles of ice. It was easy to use these bottles in a cooler he'd found in the barn as his own little fridge.

* * *

The presence of a young, good-looking man on his own didn't go unnoticed in the village. Women lingered in the shop when Dean bought his groceries, or popped back for things they had 'forgotten'. Demelza had filled them in on what he was doing here as she packed their bags, and Stan told their brothers and husbands what he knew when he pulled their pints. Which was not much. The mystery only made the men speculate more and heightened the women's desire.

The shopkeeper handed Dean an unwanted receipt as he packed his bicycle panniers. "I'm getting a lot of questions about you."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "About whether I'm a murderer or on the run for some other heinous crime?"

Demelza chuckled. "Yes, and whether you're married. Or looking for an accomplice, perhaps?"

Dean clipped the panniers shut. "Ah. No, and no."

Demelza opened her mouth to ask another question, but Dean was out of the door and on his bike before she could.