She walked the tangled streets and looked at the harbour, breathing in the pungent smells of oil and paint and wet rope, and trying to imagine what the place would have been like between the wars. Not so chocolate-boxy for a start. No Spindrift Gift Shop or Surf Girls boutique with pop music blaring; rather, it must have been an ordinary working town with grocer’s shops and a baker and boarding-house ladies and fishermen’s nets drying in the sun. The parish church would be the same one and might have some memorials, but there wasn’t really a graveyard, and when she tried the oak door she found the building locked.
The small museum she came across in one of the back streets might be useful, but the notice on the door said it was closed between noon and 2 p.m., and she was a minute or two too late.
Eventually Lucy bought herself a bag of crisps and a flapjack for lunch and sat on the quay wall to eat, looking at her surroundings and absent-mindedly composing a few photographs. She felt at peace here, thinking how she was connected to the place yet was not of it. No one knew she was here – except Will, of course – and no one was making any demands of her. Her eye was drawn to the boats in the harbour. The tide was surging, and half a dozen small craft bobbed safely within the embracing walls. Along one jetty, a tanned, broad-shouldered young man was tying up his sailing boat – a particularly pretty craft, Lucy thought, with a white cabin and its hull painted the exact pale blue of a robin’s egg. A very suitable colour seeing that Early Bird was inscribed on its stern. She thought it the perfect foreground for a shot of the harbour.
When the boat was secure, she watched the man step down into it and set about tidying up. She didn’t know anything at all about boats but liked the idea of riding the wind and the waves, and being close to the elements. The man fixed a cover across the cabin roof, then slung a kitbag over his shoulder and strolled along the jetty towards her. As he passed they smiled at one another. He had short reddish-brown hair, blue eyes with fair lashes, and a strong, open face.
She finished the flapjack and dropped the wrapping into a bin. All right, so she didn’t know what she would do here, but something would turn up, she felt sure. The light was perfect. She began to take some pictures.
The St Florian museum opened again at two, and when Lucy pushed open the door, a man with a grizzled beard looked up from packing tourist brochures into a revolving stand and greeted her.
‘Hello,’ she replied. ‘Is it all right to look round?’
‘Of course,’ he said, looking at her over his spectacles. ‘That’s what we’re here for. There’s no entrance charge – we rely on donations.’ He indicated a collection box on the counter. ‘There’s just the two rooms. We used to be a sweet shop, by the way.’
Lucy fished out her purse and dropped some coins in the box. She could easily imagine the shelves in the bow window being full of jars of candy where now they displayed pretty stones and shells. There was also a small selection of Second World War memorabilia – a gas mask, a ration book, an evacuee’s teddy bear.
‘Was there anything in particular you wanted to see?’ the curator asked. ‘The war exhibition is in the back room, and we’ve Life of a Victorian Fisherman as the spring exhibition over there. People are always bringing things in, so we often have a change of focus.’
‘I was wondering, do you have anything about Carlyon?’ Lucy asked.
‘The old manor house?’ he said. ‘You know it’s just a ruin now?’
‘Yes, it’s so sad. What happened?’
‘The fire? I believe it was soon after the war. What’s your interest?’
‘My grandmother was brought up there. Her name was Angelina Wincanton before she married.’
‘She was a Wincanton, was she? Now that was a well-known local name. I thought they must have died out.’
‘They practically have,’ Lucy said, with a rueful smile. ‘Of my generation, there are some second cousins in New Zealand I’ve never met – and me. My name’s Lucy, by the way. Lucy Cardwell.’
‘I’m Simon Vine,’ he said. ‘I don’t really have much about the house, to be honest, though there might be something in the storeroom. What precisely were you looking for?’
‘Anything to do with the Wincantons, really.’
‘Let me see,’ Simon said. ‘I’m trying to think who I know who might help you, but there really isn’t anyone . . . ah. That lady who came in recently – what on earth was her name? Wait a moment and I’ll check.’
He went away into the back room where she heard a door open. She followed him to look at the war display. There was more of the kind of thing she’d seen in the window: old clothes coupons, a letter from a soldier to his girlfriend, a black and white photograph of a concrete look-out post, behind which a beach was littered with spirals of barbed wire.