The Tea Museum – Part 1: Below Deck

"It will take eight months," said Oscar.

"The board wants it in four."

"The board is not a ship."

Hannah laughed. She was thirty-six, a curator from Leeds, standing on the weathered deck of a tall old sailing ship in dry dock beside the Thames. The sun slanted gold through the rigging. Gulls cried over the river. The air smelled of tar, pine and old rope.

Oscar, thirty-nine, the restorer, was lean and brown-haired, with sawdust on his collar and a pencil behind his ear. He had worked on the ship for six years. He knew where every plank came from, and he touched the rail like a man greeting a friend. "She sailed to China and back in a hundred days," he said. "Imagine."

"I can't."

"Then come below."

The hold was dim and cool, with great curved ribs and the faint, sweet smell of old tea still clinging to the timbers. Hannah put her hand on the wood. "It's warm."

"It remembers."

She spent every day aboard. She catalogued fittings while he replaced planks. In the evenings, while the river turned pink, they ate sandwiches on the quarterdeck and talked about everything. By the third month, Hannah noticed she was reading the same label for ten minutes while watching Oscar's hands on a plane.

"You've missed a word," he said, without turning.

"I'm concentrating."

"On the label?"

She went pink. "Oscar, would you like to have supper? Ashore?"

"I would like that," he said. "And I would like to kiss you, if that is welcome."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Quarterdeck.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Quarterdeck.