Chapter 5 An Afternoon at the Museum
The next morning brought replies to my emails from Amaya and Kyle.
I’d just sat down to resume writing about the wretched holiday cottages and opened Amaya’s message with dread.
I’d been right to be anxious. ‘There’s not enough of a story here,’ she’d written.
‘The house itself sounds interesting, but our readers will want to feel some connection to the people who lived in the house. Can you find an angle here, please?’ She was right, of course, and it was what I’d told Kyle was wrong with his guidebook.
However, agreeing with her didn’t make me feel better.
I thought for a moment, then wrote back. ‘Have you consulted the online catalogues of the local museum or library? It’s the obvious place to start looking for archives. And if John Rutherfurd was Mayor of Farthington, they might have some information about him.’
I didn’t hear anything back immediately so closed my inbox and absorbed myself in my work, but when I checked an hour later there was an email from him.
‘Good call!’ he’d written. ‘Nothing much online, I’m afraid, but there may be something useful on display.
The museum is part of the library building and I’ve checked the opening times and plan to go this afternoon.
You wouldn’t like to meet me there, would you?
There’s a very swish café next door… We could maybe grab tea there afterwards. ’
I smiled at the final sentence. I didn’t really have time to have fun but Farthington House had got under my skin. In addition, I was surprised to realize that tea with Kyle might be quite… nice.
The town’s museum and library must have been built around the same time as Farthington House. But its high pointed roof and patterned Victorian brick were prettier, I thought, as I walked inside.
I’d agreed to meet Kyle here at two-thirty and eventually found him by the music books, leafing through a new biography of the Beatles. ‘Retro tastes?’ I joked.
He looked up cagily. ‘Yeah. What about you?’
‘Bit of a Swiftie myself.’
‘Fair enough.’ He slotted the book back on the shelf. ‘Ready?’ he said with a smile. He was dressed more informally today in jeans and a zip-up jacket and seemed more relaxed.
The museum was accessed from the library by way of an arch in the rear wall.
The cheerful young woman who sat behind the museum desk glanced up from her computer screen at our approach and when Kyle told her what we were looking for, spun her wheelchair and raced away to a tall glass display case at the far side the room.
‘This one’s dedicated to the brewery,’ she said, when we joined her. ‘It was a significant employer in Farthington in its day.’
‘This is where I tell you that I’m the new owner of Farthington House,’ Kyle said, looking bashful.
‘Oh, so you’d know all about it!’
‘Well, no, that’s why we’re here, you see.’
‘Ah!’ She smiled, then turned her chair and glided off to a case by the window. ‘Over here,’ she called as we caught up, ‘we keep the old chain the mayors wore.’ We stared at it politely, then Kyle bent to examine some of the photographs displayed round it.
‘I think that’s John Rutherfurd,’ he said, pointing to a stern-looking individual wearing the chain and apparently reading aloud from a scroll. ‘The date on the label’s about right, 1936. He’d have been in his fifties then.’
He asked the young woman, ‘We’re wondering if there are any Rutherfurd family papers in your archives. I tried looking at your online catalogue, but I couldn’t see anything.’
‘I’m afraid the answer’s no,’ she said gravely. ‘We have a collection of papers about the brewery before it became part of United Ales, though. Ledgers, accounts, that sort of thing.’
‘I see. Maybe not what we want. We’ll have a look round here first.’ He thanked her and she returned to her desk.
I wandered back to the first display case and studied the photographs taken of the old brewery.
Yet another Victorian building, it sported a long wooden sign with ‘Rutherfurd Beers’ painted on it.
There were pictures of men in aprons rolling barrels up a ramp onto a cart, while the horse, wearing blinkers, stood patiently between the shafts.
One photograph labelled ‘King George V’s Silver Jubilee, 1935’ showed several dozen employees in suits and polished boots lined up in rows beneath a special banner.
I noticed John Rutherfurd standing in the centre in his mayor’s chain.
I bet he never missed an opportunity to show off his position, I thought.
‘What are you smiling at?’ Kyle had appeared next to me.
I pointed. ‘I think John Rutherfurd enjoyed being mayor,’ I said.
He studied the photograph and laughed. ‘He looks very self-important,’ he agreed. ‘Some things don’t change. Honestly, some of our modern politicians! They think they’re so great, then there’s some scandal and they’re suddenly brought down.’
‘John wasn’t involved in a scandal though, was he?’
‘Not that I know of.’
I began to look more closely at the men in the brewery photographs, wondering if my great-grandfather Eric was one of them.
There were smooth, young faces amongst their number, but you could see what they’d become after years of labour, for the oldest workers looked weathered and craggy.
There were only two women, standing together at one end of a row.
One looked very young, with a fresh, open expression, the other, next to her, a bit older, tired and sad-looking.
I wondered at the cause of her unhappiness.
For some reason, she tugged at my heartstrings.
‘Things looked a bit different for the brewery in wartime.’ Kyle’s voice pulled me from my thoughts.
He’d bent to study a photograph dated 1941.
It had been taken to mark a successful scrap metal collection for the war effort.
There were no young men in it. The workers standing proudly by a handcart filled with pots and pans were mostly brawny women in overalls, their hair tied up in scarves.
I looked closely, but didn’t recognize any as the women from the Silver Jubilee picture.
One of the men was familiar from the previous photo.
Six or seven years on, he was now middle-aged and had obviously risen up the ranks, for he held a clipboard and though shortish, stood straight-backed with feet planted apart.
The foreman, I guessed with a frisson of excitement.
Maybe he was Eric. There was no sign of John Rutherfurd.
‘What did the Rutherfurd men do in the war?’ I asked Kyle.
‘I did look into that,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘There are a couple of library books that were useful. Are we finished here?’
I nodded.
We said goodbye to the young woman on the desk, then passed back through the arch to the library.
Kyle guided me to the local history section where we thumbed through some of the books.
He flicked through a large illustrated book about the world wars and showed me a photograph of the Farthington Home Guard.
John Rutherfurd glared from his place in the back row, next to a willowy young man, rather sickly looking.
‘Andrew Rutherfurd,’ I saw from the caption.
John’s son, then. Later in the book I spotted a ‘Mrs John Rutherfurd’ in a caption to a photograph featuring ladies from the Women’s Institute.
Socks and balaclavas they’d knitted lay displayed on a table.
John’s wife was a thin and nervy-looking individual with a look of her son.
‘Do you think she enjoyed being Lady Mayoress?’ I whispered to Kyle.
‘She wasn’t by that point,’ he said, bending to pick out another book. ‘I don’t think John was mayor any more by the war years. Perhaps it was another councillor’s turn.’
The book Kyle had just selected was a short memoir by a woman called Margaret Jary, but the smallness of the type and the lack of an index made it challenging to read on the spot, so Kyle borrowed it.
I was glad to step out into the fresh air and bustle of the high street, away from the clutches of Rutherfurds past who seemed to me, apart from Bird and Kyle, to be an unattractive lot.
The café next door was as swish as Kyle had described it, its Art Deco design bright with decorative mirrors and 1930s railway posters.
We picked a table with comfortable padded benches, and a girl with pink hair and piercings brought us cappuccinos and almond slices, which we fell upon hungrily.
Kyle watched with amusement when I scraped up milk foam with a teaspoon. His eyes lit up when he smiled.
We were back to talking about publicity.
‘I’m on your side,’ I explained, dabbing up the last crumbs of my almond slice, ‘but my boss needs me to find a good story about the house and the family before she’ll commission a piece.
It’s got to be more than “Man restores Victorian house and opens it to the public”. ’
He sighed.
I hurried on, trying to give him hope. ‘If you do something like… invite some celebrity artist to mount an exhibition that might help, but it’s stories about the people who’ve lived and died in the house that our readers want.
We’ve found out a little more about your family this morning for the guidebook, but it’s been mostly about the men, and John Rutherfurd in particular.
’ I thought for a moment then said, ‘You’re descended from John’s younger brother Stephen, aren’t you? Did the brothers get on?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ Kyle raked his fingers through his hair. ‘The most exciting thing my great-great-grandfather did was to be killed in the First World War.’
The solemnity of his tone stopped me in my tracks. After a moment I said, ‘I think it’s the women in the family I’m most curious about. It’s interesting how little you’ve found out about them. John’s wife – do we even know her name?’
‘Ann without an “e”.’
‘Ann,’ I echoed, thinking it a modest name. ‘And his daughters, Diana and Bird, the girl in the picture. Oh, Kyle, there’s something I must tell you.’ I fumbled in my handbag, brought out the bluebird on its chain and laid it out on the table between us.
He looked at it uncertainly, not making the connection.
‘It’s identical to the one in the picture, isn’t it?’ I prompted and his eyes widened.
‘So it is. Where did you find it?’ He picked up the little bird and studied it.
I told him about the wedding album and Gran’s box. He agreed that bluebird jewellery must have been common.
I glanced at my watch. ‘I ought to go.’ I pulled on my coat as we squabbled over the bill. He won.
Outside, he said, ‘How should we leave things?’
‘I’m not sure.’ I pointed to the library book sticking out of his jacket pocket. ‘Maybe there’ll be something useful in that.’
‘I’ll have a read and let you know,’ were his last words before we parted.
My phone pinged with a message from him after supper when I was tapping away on my laptop. I paused to look. ‘Remember the book I borrowed? It’s fantastic. Can we meet tomorrow?’
Tomorrow was Friday. I was two-thirds of the way through the holiday cottage article and Amaya had emailed me some other tasks.
Perhaps she’d give me until Monday. After all, she knew I was helping Dad.
She was always going on about the importance of the work–life balance.
Now was the time to test her. I phoned her quickly and she gave her assent, though I heard reluctance in her voice.
‘On my desk by Monday,’ she concluded, then reeled off a further list of things she wanted me to do later the following week while she took a city break to Venice.
I sighed, closed my laptop and texted back to Kyle, ‘3 p.m. at yours OK?’ to which he quickly agreed.