Nell: A Reasonable Amount of Rain

Our rainy-day plan had a problem, which was that I had written it on a day when the sun was shining.

On paper, the museum was a six-minute walk from the library. In practice, when rain came off the sea horizontally, six minutes was enough time to reconsider every decision that had brought you to this point, including being born in a country with weather.

Kit stood under the library awning, holding an umbrella that looked as though it had recently lost an argument.

“Does that work?” I asked.

“Mostly.”

“In what sense?”

“The handle remains attached.”

We had agreed to test the route in actual rain. This had seemed rigorous when the forecast described showers. Now the drain beside us was producing a noise usually associated with someone drinking the last of a milkshake.

“We could wait,” Kit said.

“For?”

“Less rain.”

I checked the sky. There was no obvious spare patch from which less rain might arrive. “Let's do it.”

We lasted ninety seconds under the umbrella. At the corner by the bakery, the wind turned it inside out with a decisive clap. Kit shut it before either of us lost an eye, and we ran the rest of the way.

I arrived at the museum with one wet sock and the deep conviction that the building ought to be grateful. The building, which had been a customs house before becoming a place to display nineteenth-century things found in other buildings, declined to acknowledge my effort.

Mum looked up from the gift-shop counter.

“No running,” she said.

“Is that your professional greeting?”

“It was either that or ask why you hadn't brought a coat.”

“I brought a coat.”

“An effective coat.”

Kit was trying not to smile. Her hair had fallen across one eye in a way that was doing considerable damage to my ability to construct ordinary sentences.

“Hello, Mrs Bishop.”

“Jodie, please. You're not here because Nell's stolen another ammonite.”

“I was six,” I said.

“And you were very clear that it had chosen you.”

Kit took a leaflet. “Did you give it back?”

“I negotiated a supervised relationship.”

Mum handed us paper towels and pointed out that the cloakroom was free, the café wasn't, and the museum's front step had a portable ramp available from reception. Kit wrote those details down. I had known this place for most of my life and still hadn't thought to check all three.

Upstairs, the maritime gallery smelled of polish and damp wool. A school group had just left, abandoning a worksheet under a bench. Its last question asked what you would miss most if you went to sea for two years. Someone had written my bed, crossed it out, and substituted chips.

“An honest scholar,” Kit said.

The museum was small enough to visit without treating enjoyment as an endurance event. There were model boats, a reconstruction of a sailmaker's room, and a case containing things Victorian visitors had believed would improve their health. One was seawater in a bottle. I felt the museum could have been clearer about the commercial possibilities of selling people something they were standing beside.

We tried the leaflet's suggested activity: choose an object and invent the person who had owned it.

Kit selected a brass button with an anchor on it.

“Practical,” I said.

“Small. Easy to lose.”

“That's your whole person?”

“No. He wrote letters home describing beautiful sunsets, but he actually hated being on the ship. Couldn't get comfortable in the hammock. Didn't understand card games. Really wanted to open a bakery.”

“What happened?”

“He did.”

“That's it?”

“He made excellent bread. Not every sailor has to die at sea.”

I chose an enormous embroidered slipper that had belonged to a retired captain. My captain claimed a shark had bitten off his toe. In fact, he had injured himself moving a piano he had been specifically asked not to move. Kit pointed out that this sounded like my father. I said no further questions would be taken.

By the window, the wet pavement gleamed around the market stalls. A woman in a transparent poncho was carrying flowers upside down. I watched her stop, realise, and turn them over with immense dignity.

“That's going in,” I said.

“The woman?”

“No. The activity. Choose the object, invent somebody, argue about their pension arrangements. It's good.”

“Not the museum's official wording.”

“I'll give them a credit.”

The words landed strangely after I said them. Kit turned the leaflet over in her hands.

“I wasn't making a point,” she said.

“I know.”

We were still learning which ordinary sentences might catch on the old damage.

A recorded voice began explaining a shipwreck from a speaker behind us. We moved into the sailmaker's room, where the only sound was rain ticking against the window. A wooden hand held a needle above a length of canvas. The mannequin's face suggested that working in a museum for twenty-three years had affected his outlook.

Kit stepped close to read the label over my shoulder.

I forgot the first half of the sentence I was reading.

There was no useful explanation for it. We had shared a pair of earbuds. We had eaten from the same bag of popcorn. At fourteen we had sat in each other's bedrooms without my nervous system treating it as a developing situation. Now I could feel the warmth of her through the damp sleeve of her shirt.

“That's interesting,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Did you read it?”

“Some.”

“It says the smaller needles were kept in a hollow bone.”

“Very interesting.”

She looked at me. “Are you all right?”

“Excellent. Enthusiastic about needles.”

Her eyes went down to my mouth. Only briefly. If I'd wanted to dismiss it, I could have.

The recorded shipwreck reached a particularly bleak development.

“Do you ever—” I began.

A door opened behind us.

Mum appeared with a trolley of souvenir mugs. “Don't mind me.”

We sprang apart with the calm, understated grace of people who absolutely should be minded.

Mum stopped.

I stared at a coil of historic rope.

Kit said, “We were looking at the needles.”

“Of course,” Mum said. “They're very interesting.”

I was going to move abroad. Not for journalism. Just to get out of this room.

Downstairs, Mum let us use the staff kettle because I was her daughter, not because it was part of the public museum offer. We made that distinction in our notes. Kit bought a biscuit from the shop and broke it unevenly, then gave me the bigger piece without comment.

The rain eased while we drank our tea. Somewhere behind the counter, Mum was pretending that rearranging a display of pencils required her full attention.

“What were you going to ask?” Kit said.

I had a clear chance to tell the truth. It stood in front of me with its coat on, waiting to be let in.

“Whether you ever miss drawing,” I said.

Kit's expression changed so slightly that I couldn't have described the movement.

“Sometimes.”

“You were good.”

“I still draw.”

“Right. I meant—”

“I know.” She stood and took her cup to the sink. “We should get back before it starts again.”

On the way out, Mum handed me my forgotten bag.

“Your notebook's in there,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“And your coat has a hood.”

I pulled it over my wet hair. Kit was waiting on the steps, the broken umbrella tucked under her arm.

For the route notes, I wrote: Allow more than six minutes in bad weather. You are allowed to arrive damp.

I did not include the other thing I had learned, which was that an ordinary question could be much more frightening than a shipwreck, provided you cared about the answer.