Page 51 of The Wedding Dress Repair Shop
‘You already seem to have it all organized,’ I said admiringly. ‘Did you say the two ladies were volunteering?’
‘Yes, although I’m sure they will have perks. We’re negotiating those.’
‘I feel guilty now that I’m going to be paid for doing a lot less!’
‘But you are the expert and will be really busy behind the scenes – andinthe scenes, if there are any booked guided tours. I imagine we will get a lot more donated dresses once we’re open, so it won’t be a static display but an ever-expanding and changing one.’
‘Sounds great. Do you know what the opening times will be yet?’
‘Almost the same as Uncle Hugo’s museum: two till four on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons, and ten till one on Saturdays. Closed Thursdays – that’s market day – and Sundays. Your days off are Thursday, Saturday afternoon and Sunday.’
‘That’s half a day more than I got at Beng & Briggs,’ I said.
While we talked, I’d been conscious of hammering and other noises from behind a door beyond the wide wooden staircase that rose from the foyer.
‘Is that the plumbers you mentioned?’
‘Yes, they’re installing the toilet cubicle. We’re just having a single purpose one, with disabled and baby changing facilities. There’s a perfectly good public toilet just outside in the market square, so that seemed enough.’
‘Is that a lift I see next to it?’
‘Yes, neat, isn’t it? Big enough to take a wheelchair and one other person and also handy for transporting heavy things up and down, too,’ Honey added.
‘You seem to have all the bases covered!’
‘Not quite. There’s always something I haven’t thought of!’
She pulled a small notebook and pen out of her jeans pocket and scribbled something in it. I don’t suppose there was enough room up her arm for all the book ideasandmuseum ones, although there seemed to be some crossover because she said now: ‘You know, when I’ve finished writingArmed with Poison, I might just call the next oneHappy Never After, to tie in …’ Then she added, more briskly: ‘Come on, we’ll go upstairs next. Let’s try out the lift and pop up like twin pantomime demons.’
18
The Bloody Bride
I felt more as if I was popping up encased in an ice cube, but the lift worked smoothly and almost silently and we stepped out on to the dark polished parquet floor of the upper storey, where the rooms all opened out of each other, giving a long vista to the other end of the building.
The walls were painted the same very light dove grey as my workroom, and there was a sense of light and space.
‘There are blackout blinds on every window. George was insistent on those, and that they must be kept closed permanently once the displays are up.’
‘Absolutely,’ I agreed. ‘Light would damage some of the exhibits.’
Looking round, I saw that the work was still not entirely finished, for bundles of electrical wires emerged in odd places, like strange sea corals.
Honey led the way through the rooms, familiar to me from the many videos and photos she’d sent, with tape marking the eventual positions of display cabinets.
‘There’s going to be one big central glass case in the finalroom, lit so it will be visible from the lift and stairs, and sort of beckon you towards it.’
Now I was actually there, it was much easier to imagine the space furnished, the pale shapes of the wedding gowns glimmering in their lit cases.
We wandered around, discussing the displays and all the behind-the-scenes details that have to be considered, particularly for costume displays. It was all more George’s territory than mine, but I was learning.
‘There’s no access to Pelican House from this level?’
‘No, it’s only connected by a short passage from what will be the Rosa-May Garland Collection room, off the foyer. You’ll see that in a minute. We’ve had to turn the door to it into a fire door and install another from the passage directly into the garden.’
As we walked back to the stairs I said, ‘The dresses we have now will be well spread out in all this space, but I’m sure you’re right and we’ll get more donated to us later.’
‘If we open early, it will probably still be a work in progress anyway, with dresses added as they’re ready to put on view,’ said Honey. ‘Eventually, I thought this first room could house temporary exhibitions of dresses just on loan, or with a special theme.’
