‘They’re stuck,’ she says.
‘It just needs a yank,’ I whisper, not sure I want my voice on camera. ‘It’s swelled with the damp.’ I tug the door for her and the handle comes off in my hand. ‘Oh!’
No amount of jiggling fixes it back in place, so I lay it on the ticket table – another job to add to the growing list of repairs that the council should really be addressing – and I decide it’s time to face the music.
Putting my shoulder firmly to the door, it swings open, and I take everyone through into the main hall, and that’s when Fern nearly bursts into flames with excitement.
‘Oh my days!’ she cries, gliding past me, her phone aloft, capturing it all.
‘She didn’t know about the mural, then?’ says Lucy.
We wait while she shows her viewers the wall covered in painted scenery. I wonder if they’re getting bored yet and are turning back to scrolling pet stories.
‘I had no idea this stuff was in here,’ she’s saying. ‘Look at this. It’s a huge painting. The whole wall’s painted. The colours! Whatisthis?’ she says, looking to me. I hang back, letting Izz answer.
‘They were painted in fifty-one,’ says Izz, ‘the year after the hall was opened by the King.’
‘The King came here?’ echoes Fern, still pointing her camera at the mural.
‘And the Queen – well, the Queen Mum, you’d know her as.’ Izz falls suddenly unsure, considering Fern’s young age. ‘Would you?’
I can see from her screen Fern’s followers are being treated to close-ups of the summer scene of Wheaton village sitting in its green and yellow landscape of undulating fields against a blue sky with wispy white clouds. An orchard of apples (long since dug up and built over with Scrimengor’s bakery) stands by the familiar churchyard and takes up much of the left side of the jaunty scene. A red-ribboned kite flies over this two-dimensional depiction of Wheaton, and there’s a total of one car, a sporty thing in blue, on the broad high street (captured just before we were tarmacked and double yellow lined). A picnic is taking place in the schoolyard, and there are passers-by on the street. None of their faces can be seen, and there’s no attempt at exact realism, but still, every time I see this mural I can’t help smiling, thinking of my younger self gazing up at the Wheaton mural and taking in all the little details.
‘It was painted by a bunch of local artists, not trained or anything, just enthusiasts, and it’s been here ever since,’ Izz concludes, before Lucy steps forward, clutching her coffee cup in one hand, her arms folded.
‘Looks like it was painted straight onto the plaster,’ she says.
‘That’s right,’ says Izz. ‘The other walls, they painted the murals onto stretched linen. That’s why they’re long gone, sadly. They faded terrible, and then the damp got to them.’
Fern pans her phone to show her viewers the three white emulsioned walls. ‘I know, it is a shame,’ she says, I expect in response to the sudden burst of comments appearing over her live stream.
My niece isn’t done yet. Inspecting the brushwork more closely, she says, ‘It looks like oil paint, maybe diluted with paraffin wax or turps. You know, so the paint works more like watercolours or pastels.’
We all observe her. There’s that shine in her eyes that’s been missing lately. That’s my Lucy. The art college graduate. The expert. Not the pale, tear-stained girl who turned up at my door in the middle of the night.
Fern ends her broadcast promising more from the ‘little village hall that’s about to get a big transformation’, and we all roll up our sleeves and muck in.
The hot water isn’t working, it turns out, and neither is the electricity, so we fill our buckets with cold water and disinfectant.
I mop while Fern and Izz wipe down the panelling. The folding tables all need doing too, but we’re a man down, so I’ll have to come back for those.
Izz takes the lobby where, out of sight, she wipes down the tiles and the woodwork. By three, we’re losing light and feeling decidedly grubby.
My back’s getting twingey by the time I announce we’re calling it a day.
When we pile through the doors into the lobby, Izz is standing by the cloakroom looking at one of the pictures in a frame. I know exactly which one it is too.
‘Ready?’ I prompt her, but she doesn’t break off her gaze.
Fern’s already on the move to stand beside her – she has a serious case of what Lucy calls ‘FOMO’: fear of missing out – and she’s already asking Izz what she’s looking at.
‘Oh, I was miles away,’ Izz tells her, her eyes still glazed.
‘Where were you?’ Fern asks breathily, looking between Izz and the little gallery.
‘There.’ Izz lifts a finger to one of the pictures, singling out a girl behind the glass, dainty and alive with motion even in the still monochrome that captured her all those years ago.
‘Is that you?’ Fern asks, though we all know the answer already.
