Chapter Four #2
Evelyn’s morning beach scour was bleary-eyed and perfunctory, yielding one belt buckle, tarnished, one sock, black, and two pretty curlew feathers.
In truth, she had half an eye on the time, because she knew that Potters Newsagents opened at 8.
30 a.m. She remembered this shop from her childhood when it was piled high with comics, magazines and penny sweets.
It was run by Mrs P and, each Sunday morning, Evelyn was allowed a quarter pound of pear drops.
Mrs P would pour them onto the scales from a big glass jar in a cloud of icing sugar and, as the needle nudged the 4oz mark, she’d always toss in an extra one or two for Evelyn.
But Mrs P only did the odd afternoon shift these days and, as Evelyn looked around the shop, she was reminded of how much had changed.
Shelves of cheap biscuits and tins of beans had long since replaced the magazines and a cold cabinet of beers stood where the penny sweets used to live.
Only some slim piles of newspapers remained on the counter as a reminder of the shop’s past life.
But all Evelyn wanted was to use Potters’ whizzy photocopier.
‘I would like twenty copies of this poster please,’ she told the young man who was slumped half-asleep at the till.
He raised his head and blinked twice. Evelyn wondered if, like her, he’d been up all night or was simply a bit dim. She tapped her fingernail on the counter. ‘When you’re ready?’
Scratching his uncombed hair, the boy leaned forward and looked at the poster more closely. ‘Treasure, eh?’
‘Well, possibly. Because I believe one person’s rubbish is another’s treasure.’
There was a pause as the boy blinked again. ‘Colour or black and white?’ he asked eventually.
Evelyn fixed him with the stare she reserved for people who sneaked in to use the museum toilet. ‘Given that I stayed up half the night tinting each line drawing with watercolours, I would have thought that was obvious,’ she replied.
He held the piece of cartridge paper up to the light. ‘Seriously? You did these?’
She nodded and the boy scratched some more. Finally he said, ‘How about we make the copies a bit bigger, eh? No extra charge.’
Turning his back, he pressed a series of buttons.
Evelyn noticed that his sweater was on inside-out, the washing instructions label pointing upwards.
Then there was a whirring, a bright flash of light and she watched as the machine churned out pieces of A3 paper.
The boy patted them into a stack and laid them on the counter, still smelling of ink and warm to the touch.
He’d been right – the poster looked better in the bigger format. He’d done something to the colours too, made them slightly deeper, so they stood out more.
‘Where are you planning to put them up?’ he asked, as Evelyn looked for her purse.
She paused. ‘Actually, I haven’t really decided. I acted on a bit of an impulse. Noticeboards? Shop windows, I suppose?’
She felt a shadow of doubt, realising this would entail walking into the artsy gift shops, galleries and fancy bakeries that had sprung up in Portheast and having to explain her barmy idea to all those people.
She looked down at the neat pile of posters and felt her enthusiasm cooling along with the inky sheaves of paper.
‘I can help, if you like?’ the boy said. ‘I only work mornings. I know most of the other shopkeepers, see. And I can drive out to the library and the sports centre. The pub has a noticeboard too.’
Evelyn was about to say no, but then she imagined having to walk into the dark, beery fug of The Lugger and her mouth turned dry. It was not her favourite place. ‘Well, that would be a great help,’ she said, holding out her bank card.
‘I don’t suppose you remember me,’ the boy said with a shy smile.
Evelyn studied his slim face, took in his wispy moustache and his light brown hair, which was shorn at the sides but with a long hank hanging over his collar.
To all intents and purposes, this boy had a mullet.
Strange, she thought, how even the ugliest fashions came around again.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t believe I do,’ she confessed.
‘Guess I’ve changed a bit.’ He smiled, stroking his fledgling moustache, which seemed the source of some pride. ‘I used to come into your museum in the school holidays, when I visited my granddad. I was obsessed with those gold coins – you know, the pirate treasure.’
‘I do indeed. Eighteenth century. Presumed pillaged from a Spanish ship that sank in Cornish waters,’ Evelyn replied. Then, a faint memory began to take shape: a boy who asked lots of questions in a posh, confident voice, accompanied by a genteel man who she’d recognised as Sir Jasper Warburn.
‘Do you know, I think I might remember you.’
‘I would have been about seven or eight years old,’ the boy said. ‘Anyway.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m Jacob. And glad to help out.’
Outside the shop, seagulls shrieked and swooped and the sun broke through, making the damp flagstones on the quay glisten.
And then, the past seemed to rush back in and she could picture the schoolboy Jacob and his grandfather more clearly.
She saw a boy in shorts gazing into a cabinet.
The silver-haired man standing beside him was very upright and proper but, as the boy talked, his hand came to rest gently on his grandson’s shoulder.
Did that ever happen, or had she imagined it?
‘You are far too suggestible, Evelyn,’ her father had told her often enough. ‘You need to keep a grip on that imagination of yours.’
Evelyn shook her head. She was tired, overthinking things. She flipped up her hood and strode purposefully towards the museum.