Chapter Twenty-Eight
Agnes. It was a simple name, but it ran on a loop tape in Evelyn’s head as she lay in her wind-rocked caravan that night. She barely slept as she repeated it to herself, trying to imagine who it might belong to.
In the morning, she dared to say the name out loud, quietly at first as if trying it on for size. ‘I’m looking for Agnes,’ she murmured as she made breakfast.
‘Hello, Agnes, I’m Evelyn,’ she whispered to herself as she faced down an easterly wind on her beachcomb.
Back in the museum, she tipped out the single item weighing down her tote bag, a sand-encrusted rubber doormat, and then reached deep into her satchel, which contained a hairgrip in the shape of a butterfly and a soggy shopping list. ‘Today’s everyday is tomorrow’s history’ had been one of her father’s sayings, but she doubted whether this list – Crisps, beer, pie (chicken?), verruca ointment – would enlighten the historians of the future.
It seemed that the WhatsApp group was fizzing and pinging with activity, but she could barely focus on it. The latest messages read:
Great news! – @Della
Fantastic progress! – @Jacob
Whoop! – @Sariah
Clearly, she had some catching up to do.
Scrolling back, she discovered that late yesterday afternoon, while she had been running around London, Mr Palmer had asked if Evelyn and ‘her committee’ could attend an interim meeting first thing on Monday morning.
The council needed more time to make ‘an informed decision’ about the boat sheds.
Good news she added to the chat, forgetting to add the now standard exclamation mark.
In her heart, she wasn’t sure it was, because didn’t the council have ample information already?
She was worried they planned to put her on the spot by demanding non-existent visitor satisfaction forms and business plans.
But in truth, the real reason she couldn’t summon any enthusiasm was because her mind was on other things.
All she could think about was the name Agnes.
Frances’s idea to talk to the older people in the town was a reasonable one. Someone would be able to remember when a young newlywed couple called the Silvers arrived in town and were soon joined by a newborn baby. But no one obvious sprang to mind.
The fact was, her parents had rarely socialised with the local people.
Her father only had useful acquaintances, while her mother seemed happiest when she was on her own, up on the clifftops.
Oh, she dutifully baked a cake for the school summer fair and bought raffle tickets, but Evelyn could not remember any other mothers crossing their threshold. Not even a neighbour.
Undeterred, she decided to make an initial list of the town’s elders who might remember the events of 1964. On it she put:
Mrs Moran (surely aged over eighty)
Arnold, landlord of The Lugger (only in his fifties, but knows everything)
The Three Wise Men: Leonard, Bob and Keith (indeterminate ages).
Naturally, there were plenty of other people that Evelyn knew by sight but had never exchanged more than a few words with, but broaching this delicate matter felt slightly easier if she started with people who had come to the exhibition.
She knew for a fact that Mrs Moran walked her three dachshunds on the beach each lunchtime, so Evelyn resolved to stretch her legs around then in the hope of bumping into her.
She loitered self-consciously at the top of the slipway from twelve midday until 1.
15 p.m., becoming increasingly disgruntled and cold.
She gave directions to a visiting couple from Chicago and returned a brown McDonald’s bag to a van driver who had parked up for lunch and ‘accidentally’ dropped it out of his side window.
Finally, she saw the solid figure of Mrs Moran ambling towards her.
‘Oh, hello!’ Evelyn called out, giving a little wave. Mrs Moran, who was busy depositing three bright pink dog poo bags in the bin, ignored her until she was good and ready.
‘Hello, Miss Silver,’ she said with a frown. ‘What brings you down here at this hour?’
‘Oh, just taking a walk.’
Mrs Moran, who was trying to untangle a spaghetti of dog leads, ignored her reply.
‘Yes, taking a walk. Ruminating. The way we all do,’ Evelyn added breezily.
One of the dogs stopped to dig a hole, forcing Mrs Moran to slow down.
‘Yes, ruminating,’ Evelyn continued, ignoring the shower of sand being kicked at her legs. ‘About the old days.’
‘I liked your exhibition,’ Mrs Moran said. ‘Shame some men can’t take their drink, though. I always thought better of Keith Blake.’ She tugged her green felt hat down, so her eyes were almost hidden and only the tip of her nose peeped out.
The dog stopped digging and Evelyn plucked up her courage. ‘Mrs Moran,’ she said. ‘Do you remember when I was a baby? Back in 1964.’
Mrs Moran tilted her chin up and eyed her warily.
‘I do,’ Mrs Moran conceded.
‘And what do you remember about me arriving? Like, who brought me and what did my parents tell people?’
‘It’s not my place to say,’ Mrs Moran said primly.
Evelyn tried again. ‘Well, my parents told me no more than the bare bones, you see. And now they are gone.’
‘Didn’t Elsbeth explain?’ Mrs Moran asked. She took off her hat, revealing a helmet of grey hair that was almost exactly the same shape as her cloche.
‘Not really. She just said cheery things like “And then we were three” and that my birth mother was unable to look after me. Nothing more specific.’
‘Well, I don’t like to talk out of turn,’ Mrs Moran stalled, but Evelyn was losing patience.
‘Naturally. But if you had to tell me, what would you say?’
‘I’d say that your mother told you all she could.’
‘Do you mean my father knew more?’
There was a fraction of a pause, then Mrs Moran pressed her lips together and set off down the beach, her heels kicking up small puffs of sand. Her parting words carried on the wind: ‘Don’t drag it all up, Evelyn. It’s too late.’
Frustration rushed in because Evelyn knew that Mrs Moran was never happier than when she had a tasty bit of information to pass on.
If you wanted to know if the nudists were back on the secret beach, or who had been given a parking ticket or if the sheep were on the farm lane again, Mrs Moran was your woman.
So why was she being so tight-lipped? Back in 1964, Mrs Moran would have been in her twenties, but Evelyn wagered that she knew all the gossip then too.
Back on the quay, Evelyn looked for her next targets.
An hour ago, all Three Wise Men had been on their bench, but now it was just Bob and Leonard.
She had the feeling that since Keith blundered out of the exhibition, he had been avoiding her.
Was he embarrassed by his drunkenness? She wished she could reassure him that she was the last person to be judgemental about inebriated blunderings.
Approaching the bench, she put on her jolliest voice. ‘Hello, gentlemen.’
Leonard’s eyes briefly flicked in her direction, then returned to the choppy sea. ‘Lumpy out there today.’
‘No good for fishing,’ agreed Bob, also staring straight ahead.
‘Thank you for coming to the exhibition,’ she said.
‘S’alright,’ Leonard replied.
Bob looked up and everything about his face looked shrunken from years of weather-watching, from his stubby nose to his scrunched eyes. ‘Did it do the job?’
‘No idea. The council’s dragging out their decision,’ Evelyn replied. ‘But I’ve discovered that when you start unravelling stories, there are inevitably loose threads.’
‘Threads, eh?’ Leonard said, tapping his walking stick on the ground.
‘Ah. Threads,’ Bob added gravely, as if he was well acquainted with such problems.
Evelyn ploughed on. ‘For me, for instance. The threads of my story,’ she tried.
The two men continued gazing out at the horizon, but Evelyn sensed that, swift as an undercurrent, the mood had shifted.
Leonard leaned to one side, so he could see around Evelyn: ‘Size of those waves.’
Bob nodded. ‘Wind’s getting up.’
‘So I thought I’d try asking around. See if anyone had any memories from when I was little. Or if anyone remembered a woman called Agnes.’
It was almost as if she was no longer there. Looking straight ahead, Leonard used his walking stick to point out to sea and nudged Bob. ‘You reckon those buoys fixed good enough?’
‘Have to see,’ Bob replied, stroking his chin.
Evelyn stared at them. ‘Seriously, is that all you have to say?’
‘Suppose time will tell. Let’s see if those buoys are still there in the morning.’ Leonard tapped his stick again. ‘Don’t let us keep you, Evelyn.’
She knew she had been dismissed, but she didn’t understand why.
Although she walked past The Lugger pub twice a day, Evelyn had not stepped over the threshold for a number of years and she preferred not to dwell on the reason why.
But once inside, she discovered it was unchanged: there was still that hoppy smell of beer, a slight tackiness underfoot and rock ballads playing on a loop.
The embers of a fire glowed in the grate and several old-timers were nursing lunchtime pints.
In a corner, the two tourists from Chicago she’d seen before were digging into sticky toffee puddings. At the bar, Jude greeted her.
‘We sent our emails to the council,’ she said. ‘Dad did too.’
‘Good, good, thank you,’ Evelyn said, all the while trying to peer into the gloomy doorway behind the bar.
‘What can I get you?’
‘Actually, it was your father I was hoping to catch.’
‘Dad? Sorry, he’s down the cash and carry.’ Jude nodded a welcome to someone behind Evelyn and began pulling a pint. ‘Want to wait? Or shall I give him a message?’
‘It’s not easy to put into words,’ Evelyn admitted, confidence in her mission waning.
An arm reached around her for their freshly pulled beer and a voice said, ‘Cheers.’ She turned to see George Rook and, as he took his first sip, his eyes didn’t move from her face.