Page 7 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museu
‘I’m sorry?’ He puts a hand behind his ear like he needs to hear the sentence again. ‘Did you just use the term “magical wishing well that really grants wishes” and keep a straight face?’
‘It’s real. Come on, I’ll show you.’ I beckon him to follow me along the paving stone walkway that skirts around the building and leads through a decorative wooden gate that feels like entering a secret garden, and into the museum’s outside space.
There are beds of daylilies at the entrance, and he stops to crouch down and read the plaque explaining what they are. ‘A real-life version of the Sundrop flower fromTangled… I don’t know what that is, but these are looking very sorry for themselves. Are they weather-damaged or have people nicked them?’
I look at the once-bursting beds of lilies, but the leaves are a bit on the slug-eaten side, and most of the stems are bare where people have, indeed, helped themselves. ‘You can’t stop people picking flowers, and itisautumn, the summer flowers are starting to have seen better days.’
‘If you cultivate these as an exhibition then they should be in cages to protect them from wandering hands. Better to have no exhibit at all than one that looks as faded as this.’
‘Do you know how excited children get to see a real-life version of a flower from a Disney film? Most people don’t even realise that the Sundrop flower was based on a real lily. It’s a bit annoying, but there are worse things people could do than take a flower as a reminder of their time here.’
‘If people are going to take anything from here then they need to pay for the privilege.’
‘You can’t charge someone to pick a flower!’
‘No,youcan’t. I, however, have no qualms. If you’ve put time and effort into growing them, they are not free to take, and thatmustbe made clear.’ He stands back up and looks around the garden. ‘There aren’t any “don’t pick the flowers” signs up. Not even an arbitrary attempt to stop people taking them.’
‘There was, once, but people ignored it, and when it fell down, I didn’t replace it because it wasn’t doing any good.’ I’m reluctant to agree with anything he says, but there’s an energy in his voice that makes me feel quite reassured by the value he places on my exhibits. Idoget annoyed at the thought of people picking them and I’ve never known what the solution is, but charging people isn’t it. What next, oxygen at 50p per microgram if you’re inclined tobreathewhile visiting?
‘They’re one of the exhibits, no different to any other. I’ve got all the incomings and outgoings paperwork that you have to submit to the council, along with incident reports, so believe me, Iknowyou have issues with people stealing the exhibits, but we’ll get onto that later because I need to see them to understand what the reports are telling me. I’m not well-versed in this Disney nonsense.’
‘And that, sir, is why you have no place in this museum and I don’t see how you can help with something you don’t understand.’
‘Sir? An improvement on what you called me earlier.’ He raises a dark eyebrow and one corner of his mouth twitches. ‘And I’d venture that precisely the point of you giving me a tour is tohelpme understand what’s going on here.’
‘What’s going on here is that you can’t monetise something as simple as picking flowers, and if that’s what you’re trying to do, you may as well leave now. If you’re going to add a fee toeverything, then the integrity of the museum will be lost. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’d rather bow out now than watch this place become something unrecognisable.’
My voice wobbles as I say it, but the flowers have given me a biting flash-forward to what the next few months are going to be like. How are we ever going to agree on anything? And even if we do agree onsomethings, we’re never going to agree on a solution to them, are we? I have a sudden sense that we’re delaying the painful inevitability of me losing this place anyway. Would I be better off spending the next few months preparing for the unavoidable ending rather than trying to fight a battle I can’t win?
I have no idea what I’d do without the museum. I can’t picture a future without it, and the thought is enough to send me into a panic spiral as I imagine bleak, endless days, and my life feeling as empty as it felt before I found this place. An art gallery at the time, overseen by an old chap who was about to retire, and the idea for Colours of the Wind came into my head and it gave me something to focus on, and brought the friendship of the other Ever After Street shopkeepers into my life, who rallied behind my idea and filled my days with joy and enthusiasm. I don’t know what I’d do without the community and companionship of this little street.
‘I’m open to anything, Lissa. I’m just trying to get a handle on this place and what’s going on here.’ I must be terrible at hiding my emotions because he sounds slightly contrite. ‘I’ve heard a little about you while dealing with the local council to get our plans approved. You’re not one to step down from a fight.’
‘Neither are you, I’m guessing.’
The smile that spreads across his face is the first one that’s looked real all morning and it’s a thing of beauty. ‘And that’s what makes it interesting.’
I shake myself and take a few steps to put more distance between us, and he follows me from the entrance and into the wider part of the garden.
‘Wow. It’s like someone dropped a library out here.’ He goes to poke one of the books. ‘A wooden library. Why are all these books made of wood?’
‘We’re in England. It tends to rain occasionally. Real books and rain don’t fare well together?’
‘Oh, ha ha, you know what I meant. Why are all the…’ He looks above us. ‘Wait, are those book pagesgrowingon trees?’
‘Those are laminated book pages tied onto the tree branches, yes.’
His fingers are rubbing over the wooden book he’s picked up, which is one of the many bookish sculptures made by my friend Franca. ‘I have so many questions…’
‘It was originally going to be a reading nook of a garden. Somewhere people could come and bring a book and a hot flask of tea, with all these little nooks to sit in amongst the tree trunks and roots, maybe an outdoor library to borrow books from – somewhere to escape from the world and spend time enjoying the sunshine and looking at the view of the treetops and the castle.’ I wave towards the truly spectacular view, unique from this angle of the street, where I can see out towards the Full Moon Forest and the castle in the hills, surrounded by browning leaves as the trees get into the swing of their autumn colour change.
He glances in the direction I point and, for just a moment, I see his face change to something like awe and he takes a step backwards like he needs more space to take it in. It’s the first time he’s really looked up from his tablet, and he shakes his head like he isn’t taking in what he’s seeing. ‘I don’t believe in fairytales, butthatis a view from a fairytale.’
Itisa spectacular view. It’s always been my favourite area of the building. Standing down here and looking up, the highest turrets and spires of the castle peeking through the treetops on the hill above us, it’s like you’ve come across the venue for Cinderella’s ball or the Beast’s enchanted castle hidden in the woods, right here in front of you.
He’s clutching the wooden book he’s picked up and looking upwards, at the castle, but he also seems taken with the book pages in the branches above his head, and the twisted and gnarled tree trunks that have got wooden book sculptures pushed into every cranny, and the fallen logs that have been structurally stabilised, varnished, and turned into benches. Eventually he comes back to himself and consults his Tablet of Gloom again. ‘Why do you have an outside space like this but my reports show that the garden is underutilised?’
‘Because my friend Marnie has the Tale As Old As Time bookshop, and she has a beautiful garden there now. She and her other half have combined their gardens into one so it’s all books and roses, and people can go to sit and read and while away the hours, and it’s not right for me to tempt customers away from her bookish garden. She and Cleo from The Wonderland Teapot run a “books and afternoon tea” experience together in her garden. They’ve worked really hard to make it perfect and I didn’t want to encroach on that or try to muscle in on their customer base, so I just made my garden into somewhere Belle would like to be.’
