Chapter Three
Although Della had run her ice cream parlour from the shed next door for almost six months, ordinarily the two women’s paths rarely crossed.
This was mostly down to Evelyn, who had become adept at ducking her head and doing a swift about-turn whenever she saw someone she had no desire to speak to.
Handily, Portheast was a warren of thin cobbled lanes and alleys, which provided plenty of getaway routes.
But at her desk, Evelyn was a sitting duck and even her fortress of stacked books could not hide her forever.
As she saw the colourful shape of Della ambling towards her for the second time that day, she couldn’t help feeling a little irked.
Her annoyance was swiftly replaced by alarm when she noticed that Della was not alone. Behind her, a figure lurked in the shadows and, for once, Evelyn regretted her rule of rarely turning on the electric lights.
‘Hiya,’ Della called, as if wandering in and out of Evelyn’s museum was a daily occurrence. ‘I’ve brought someone to see you.’
As Della stepped aside, Evelyn recognised Leonard, an elderly bachelor, who used to walk a stiff-legged spaniel along the quay every morning and evening.
But now she thought about it, she hadn’t seen him, or his dog, Jago, around for a while.
His dog had been old and slow and had spent more time sniffing than walking.
‘Come on, matey,’ Leonard used to say, jollying the dog along.
‘Hello, Leonard,’ Evelyn said, getting to her feet. ‘How are you keeping?’
The old man didn’t reply. Instead, he held out his hands and, to Evelyn’s horror, she saw he was holding the dog lead – the one with orange trim that she’d found that morning. Worse still, he was blinking back tears.
Had Evelyn inadvertently found the grim evidence that his beloved dog had drowned? Did he think she was somehow to blame? She cast a look of panic at Della.
But then Leonard spoke up. ‘Thank you,’ he managed. ‘He’s gone now, my Jago. Died a few months back and I scattered his ashes on the beach. Went down before anyone was up – even you,’ he added.
‘And that’s his lead?’ Evelyn asked, only half understanding.
‘Yes.’ Leonard ran his hands over the gnarly leather.
‘That was my mistake, see. I scattered his ashes and then, in a fit of I don’t know what, I threw his old collar and lead into the sea as well.
At the time, it felt like the right gesture – setting him free or something.
’ He brought out a grubby handkerchief and blew his nose loudly.
‘But as soon as I got home, I saw how stupid I’d been. I’d already got rid of his bed and blanket, given away my tins of dog food. And without his collar and lead, I had nothing to remember him by.’
He shook his head. ‘I mean, that’s nonsense because you never forget, do you? I still think he’s with me, like I could turn around and he’d be trotting behind.’
Evelyn gave a quick nod. She knew that feeling of turning a corner and expecting to see the one you missed the most, or spotting the back of a familiar head in a crowd – and the awful hollowness as you realised your mistake.
‘So, when young Della brought me Jago’s lead .
. .’ Leonard paused, because he’d started to tear up again.
‘It felt like a second chance. I know Jago’s gone and he had a good life.
But now, whenever I miss him, I can reach out for this.
’ Again, he ran his hands over the leather, which already seemed a little softer. ‘It’ll be a comfort.’
‘Yes, I can understand that,’ Evelyn said.
‘Well, thank you for finding it.’ Leonard began to shuffle off. ‘I won’t keep you.’ Then he paused and glanced around the shed. ‘Funny. Lived here all these years and I reckon this is the first time I’ve been in here.’
He paused at the cabinet labelled Seems Like Yesterday, in truth a place for all the things that didn’t count as Miscellanea and weren’t very nautical, like a wooden rolling pin, a battered tin miner’s mug and a McDougalls flour bin from the 1970s.
Shaking his head, he said, ‘All of human life, right here. Who would have thought?’
The two women watched him go and, when Evelyn looked over, she was surprised to see Della had a gormless smile on her face.
‘You did a good thing, Evelyn Silver,’ Della said.
‘Well, it was your doing, really.’
Della didn’t answer. Instead, she absent-mindedly picked up a small brass snuffbox from the desk, one Evelyn had found at a boot fair several years ago but had not yet got around to cataloguing.
Della turned the box over in her hands, as if weighing something up.
‘The thing is, reuniting Leonard with that lead, well it’s given me an idea for how we can save this museum. And my shed, while we’re at it.’
Already, Evelyn had had more conversations today than in the past three months and she wasn’t sure she could maintain her polite demeanour much longer. ‘Go on,’ she said with forced patience, dabbing at the tip of her long nose with a tissue.
‘It’s like Leonard said, “All of human life, right here.” And, as you’re always saying: “All it takes is the right person to come along.”’
Evelyn sighed. She didn’t need her raison d’être explained back to her. But it was like something had lit up inside Della and she was off, talking a mile a minute, gesticulating as she walked to the back of the museum and Evelyn’s Miscellanea cabinets.
‘All these bits in here, you found them locally, right?’
Evelyn nodded.
‘Well, just like that dog lead meant something to Leonard, all these lost things could be linked to people who live right here, in Portheast.’
‘Precisely,’ said Evelyn tightly.
Della was still smiling, and nodding like one of those plastic toy dogs people used to put on the back shelf of their cars.
Evelyn frowned. ‘And your point is?’
Della spoke slowly, as if to a child. ‘So if we can prove this museum is relevant to local history and the community, doesn’t that give us a better chance of saving it?’
There was a glimmer of logic in what Della was saying. But all that the men from the council had asked about was visitor numbers, which were embarrassingly low.
As if she could read Evelyn’s thoughts, Della was talking again.
‘You need to encourage people to come here, though. Because they can’t spot things if they’re too intimidated to set foot inside, can they?
’ Della looked around. ‘I mean, turning on a few lights would be a start.’ She reached for a cord and a fluorescent tube above them pinged and flickered into life.
‘Come on, Evelyn, you could make this place amazing so it’s actually a proper maritime museum, not just Evelyn’s Shed of Weird and Unwanted Stuff. ’
Evelyn bristled, and felt herself stand that little bit taller, as if to put a distance between herself and this enthusiastic antipodean.
But then she thought of those men in suits and their barely concealed sneers as they had looked around her museum, and the high hopes she and her father had had for this place.
‘It will be a fine enterprise,’ he’d told her, a proud smile playing around his whiskery mouth.
Once Della finally left, the day was almost over. With all the toing and froing, Evelyn hadn’t got far with her cataloguing. She’d only managed to classify and type up labels for:
Small painting of sailing ship, oil on wood. Circa 1930s, poss. attrib. A Wallis
and
Fishing bib, traditional. As worn for pilchard fishing, circa 1950
She congratulated herself on avoiding the errant E key for both labels, but gave up when it came to her next item, a framed print of an egret. It simply wasn’t possible.
Her final task of the day was sweeping out the blown-in sand and it was always a satisfying one as it took her to the deepest recesses of the museum, where her second most precious exhibit resided.
For a brief period in the summer of 1991, the diorama entitled Cornish Life in Bygone Days had been a popular draw.
It depicted a somewhat idealised scene, with two mannequins that had been donated by Debenhams in Truro that Evelyn had dressed in old-fashioned attire.
The man stood by a range cooker, resting one rigid elbow on the mantelpiece and holding a long-dead pipe, and the woman was frozen in the act of carrying a tray of Cornish pasties to the table.
Evelyn had made the pasties herself, using modelling clay and crimping the edges before adding several coats of varnish.
Assembling the kitchen items and dressing the mannequins in character had kept Evelyn busy in the aftermath of losing her mother, when Evelyn was twenty-eight.
Naturally, she had grieved, but in truth her mother Elsbeth Silver had always been a vaporous presence in her life, a person who had drifted in and out of the house, only occasionally remembering to rustle up a meal or ask after her daughter.
In contrast, her father had been much more solid: the rock to Elsbeth’s fluctuating tides of affection.
He’d encouraged Evelyn to make the diorama, praising her creativity, and seemed flattered when she came looking for props and costumes.
But that was decades ago. The display’s heyday was long gone and, in recent years, Evelyn had heard sniggers of derision from visitors.
Someone had stolen a pasty from the woman’s tray.
Another time, she discovered the man’s wig had been pulled to one side, covering his eye.
As she’d righted the stiff hairpiece and adjusted his metal-framed spectacles, Evelyn had whispered a quiet apology.
That day in February, as she swept her way past the diorama, she reached out and brushed her fingers against the hem of the woman’s dress, a Laura Ashley design she’d found in her mother’s wardrobe.
Leonard was right: sometimes it was nice to reach out and touch something familiar.
What would happen to Mr and Mrs Cornish Life and the rest of her collections if the museum closed? It didn’t bear thinking about.
At that moment, Della’s idea to get people through the doors seemed like a good one and perhaps her only chance to save her museum – and it might even bring Evelyn the answer to her own story she so craved.
She stopped sweeping and stood a while, listening to the wind stirring the net floats that hung from the rafters.
She should be filled with hope, excitement even.
So why did she feel the steady creep of fear?
It was as if someone unseen was starting to peel back the protective layers she’d folded around herself.
And Evelyn did not like this feeling, not one bit.