Chapter Forty-Eight
In the following days, Evelyn tried to dredge her memory for an image of a woman sitting on that windswept bench with her son.
They had come every three months, so logically Evelyn would have seen them or passed them by.
But try as she might, she couldn’t remember them and this made her feel an inexplicable shame.
Instead, other imagined images filled her head: a young woman pinning a scrap of lace to her baby’s blanket as she said goodbye; Elsbeth Silver reaching out for that swaddled baby, peeling the blanket back for a first look.
Had Elsbeth known Evelyn’s story, or had she been lied to as well?
Evelyn barely slept, but one thing helped her through her confusion and pain.
Unlike other occasions when the rug of life had been pulled out from under her, this time Evelyn had people she could turn to.
The first person she called was Sariah and they sat in the hotel bar and talked long into the night about lost chances and absent mothers.
‘What I don’t understand,’ Evelyn said, ‘is why she didn’t come and speak to me. She could have saved me so much wondering and waiting.’
‘But could she?’ Sariah looked sceptical.
‘She was a widow with a grieving son, living in a tied estate cottage. She’d already spent most of her life under the watchful eye of the Warburns.
Also, she probably had the good sense to keep her distance from your dad, Edwin. She was in a vulnerable position.’
Evelyn mulled this over.
‘I know you wish you hadn’t come back to Portheast, but imagine if things had been different.
’ Sariah picked the cocktail umbrella from her glass.
‘If you’d stayed in London, Cora-May wouldn’t have had those precious glimpses of you.
And if your museum had never existed, Bob wouldn’t have seen your lace and my mum wouldn’t have seen the teacup.
None of the good things from the past few months would have happened. ’
Evelyn hadn’t thought of it like that.
‘Besides.’ Sariah signalled to the barman for another round. ‘I know you weren’t exactly thriving in your shed for all those years, but Cora-May didn’t know that, did she? From her bench, all she saw was a bright young woman with a degree who was running a museum.’
Evelyn shrugged and weighed up the tricky issue of ordering another drink.
‘Look, taking you away from Cora-May was beyond immoral and she suffered, no doubt about it. But when she caught those glimpses of you, maybe she felt proud?’
Her glass still empty, Evelyn considered this and decided, yes, she could live with that. For all its faults, the museum had been a way for her birth mother to reconnect with her child, albeit in a one-sided way. Which brought her thoughts back to Sariah’s situation.
‘Any plans to see Rose again?’ she asked.
‘Nothing definite. It’s hard to know where to start.’
‘How about meeting again on neutral ground? You could invite her to the art exhibition?’
‘I’ll ask, but I don’t know if she’ll come. It was quite . . . hard last time.’ Sariah stood, picked up their glasses. ‘Anyway, another drink? Service here is terrible.’
Evelyn smiled wanly. ‘Please.’
‘What was yours, porn star martini?’
Evelyn pursed her lips. ‘No. The other one. The beach one.’
‘Say all the words, or no drink.’ Sariah grinned.
‘Sex on the beach,’ Evelyn whispered and covered a smile with her hand.
Thanks to Sariah and her smuttily named cocktails, Evelyn woke up the next morning with a thumping hangover.
It was a good job she had no plans to go into the museum, because she’d set aside the morning to do some research.
At the back of her wardrobe was a box file that contained anything remotely official and she opened it up.
After sifting through piles of yellowed receipts, old bills and bank statements, Evelyn found what she was looking for: the original tenancy agreement on her late parents’ home.
She saw that it had been drawn up by the local solicitor, Mr Treffrey Senior, and towards the end of several pages of long-winded legalese, she found a small subclause that made for interesting reading.
It stated that the tenancy would remain in force ‘until such time as Edwin Silver and Elsbeth Silver are both deceased, or their daughter (unnamed as yet, born 1964) leaves home or marries, whichever occurs first.’
She refolded the thick pages. That subclause meant that for all the years that Evelyn remained living at home, declining university offers for the Open University and curtailing her future at the British Museum, Edwin and Elsbeth could happily remain in their four-bedroom house with sea views for a peppercorn rent.
Presumably, they had explained away Evelyn’s traineeship as a temporary arrangement, which, in the end, had turned out to be true.
Evelyn suspected that Mr Treffrey Senior had also drawn up a similar tenancy for Cora-May, who had lived in her remote estate cottage until she died. How many other people’s silence, she wondered, had the Warburns bought? Certainly someone at the mother and baby home.
And yet Evelyn herself, the cause of this unfortunate hiccup in the family history, had ended up living in a run-down static caravan. Her thoughts turned to Jacob Warburn and she wondered what, if anything, he knew of his grandfather’s philandering past.
In the end, her hangover forced Evelyn out in search of fresh air and, like a homing pigeon, she found herself walking down towards the beach.
There was a strong easterly wind, but she kept her head down and her eyes squeezed almost shut to avoid the blasts of sand.
As she neared the end of the beach, she realised she was no longer alone: there was a hunched figure sitting on the big rock and she was about to turn back when the person raised their hand.
She peered harder and saw that it was Bob.
She braced herself. Hangover or not, they needed to talk. She saw him stand, then pick something up from the shoreline and slip it into the pocket of his donkey jacket.
‘Bob,’ she greeted him. ‘We meet again.’
‘Looks that way,’ he said, keeping his gaze fixed on a ribbon of bladderwrack on the sand.
‘What did you find?’ she asked. ‘I saw you pocket something.’
‘It’s not your beach, you know, Evelyn Silver. You don’t own everything that washes up,’ he said tersely.
‘No, I know. I was just making conversation.’
This was going to be harder than she’d imagined.
She was carrying her own pain, but she saw that Bob was hurting too: he’d lost his father when he was eighteen and his mother two years ago.
And then, a few months ago, he’d joined the dots and worked out that his mother had given birth to an illegitimate child – who now seemed to think she owned the whole beach.
Relenting, Bob reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of blue fishing rope, twisted with shreds of sea fern. It was the sort of thing she found there most mornings.
‘Only this,’ he said. ‘Just doing my bit, tidying the beach. Like you do.’
‘There’s so much plastic,’ she said with a sigh. ‘And the tiny bits are the worst – just the right size for fish to hoover up, thinking it’s food.’
‘Terrible,’ Bob replied.
In this way, they walked back along the beach, talking about sea pollution and fishing responsibilities and people who didn’t take their rubbish home. ‘We can only hope the next generation sees sense,’ Bob said.
Evelyn paused, hoping she wasn’t speaking out of turn. ‘I wondered,’ she began. ‘Do you have photos of her?’
‘Mother? Of course. Shall I bring them in?’
‘Thank you. I would appreciate that.’
The wind was getting stronger, but she had more to say. ‘And perhaps we can talk more when you’re ready, because I know this is hard for you, too.’
Bob nodded. ‘Sorry if I’m a disappointment. Sure I’m not the family you hoped to find.’ He gave an embarrassed cough.
‘Oh, Bob, it’s not that at all. It’s just a lot to take in.’
‘I came to nothing,’ he said. ‘Never followed my father into fishing and never did much else.’
‘What did you do?’ she asked. ‘Before you became a Wise Man.’
‘Ha.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Never claimed to be that. Well, I was a postman, that was OK for a bit. Then I worked in a warehouse, which was less good. The job I liked best was when I was a caretaker up at the primary school.’
‘Well, there’s a coincidence,’ she said, thinking on her feet.
‘How’s that?’
‘We’re holding another exhibition soon,’ Evelyn said.
‘More Lost Chances or whatever you called it?’
‘No, it’s mostly to show off a modern painting. But I want to include things that will appeal to everyone. Including children.’
‘OK,’ said Bob, warily.
‘My problem is, after tidying up the museum I’ve got lots of plastic to recycle and it’s all stuff I found on the beach.’
Bob looked unsure. ‘OK,’ he repeated.
‘I was thinking of getting the kids at the primary school to work it into some kind of display. To show the effects of sea pollution, raise awareness, I suppose.’
‘Sounds good,’ Bob said.
‘Would you consider helping? You know, directing the kids a bit? And while it’s taking shape you could talk to them about how fishing used to be done and the damage plastic nets and ropes do now.’
‘The ghost nets, you mean?’ said Bob. ‘They’re cut free of boats and left to drift in the sea. But of course, they carry on trapping fish.’
‘See, you already know more than me.’
He rubbed his chin and said gruffly, ‘I’ll have a word with Mrs Charles, the headteacher. She’ll remember me.’
They had reached the quay and came to a halt outside the museum.
‘There’s something else I’d like to suggest. About the Cora-May.’
Bob shoved his hands in his pockets and looked wary.
‘I wasn’t living in Portheast when she went down, but it strikes me as wrong that there’s no commemorative plaque in the town,’ Evelyn said.
‘There was talk, but it came to nothing.’
‘Well, I’d like to remedy that. How about the museum makes a tribute? Maybe rebuild the boat name, or mount the remaining piece in some way . . . I’m not sure.’ She wondered if she’d gone too far, if Bob would think she was interfering.
She waited, felt a gust of sea spray. Finally, Bob spoke. ‘I’ll talk to Leonard, see if he can help.’
‘Good, I’m glad. But why Leonard?’
‘He used to be a signwriter, same as his father. They did all the boat names, so one of them would have done the Cora-May’s in the first place. They did shop signs too. Not that there are many left now, all replaced with plastic. Potters Newsagents’ is one of the last.’
Evelyn could picture the beautiful red lettering above the shopfront and realised it had indeed remained unchanged, if slightly faded, since Mrs P weighed out pear drops for her on Sunday mornings.
Then it struck her that The Cake Shed would soon be in need of a new sign, as would she – the old museum signage painted in her father’s florid hand was long overdue an update.
‘While you’re at it, can you ask him if he’s up for some other jobs too?’
‘Will do,’ Bob said. As he turned to go, he added, ‘I’ll put some photos aside.’
‘Thank you. I’d love to see them,’ she said firmly. ‘Come by tomorrow? I’ll dig out a few photos of me when I was little, too. That’s if you’re interested?’
Bob nodded.
They parted and Evelyn watched him go, trying to spot some familiarity in his short stature, his sloping shoulders and round face, but she found none. And yet, that man was her half-brother.
Then her thoughts turned to another living relative and, resisting the urge to hide within the safety of her museum, she set off towards the high street for her next difficult conversation.