Bethan Roberts - My Policeman

Location: Brighton Museum Transcript: I’m sure you knew it was my first time in the place. I’d never found cause to step into Brighton Art Gallery and Museum before. Looking back, I’m astonished at myself. I’d just become a teacher at St Luke’s Infants’ School, and I’d never been to an art gallery. When Tom and I pushed through the heavy glass-panelled doors, I thought how the place looked like nothing so much as a butcher’s shop. It was all the green tiles, not that Brighton swimming-pool green that’s almost turquoise and makes you feel sunny and light just looking at it, but a mossy, dense green. And the fancy mosaic floor, too, and the polished mahogany staircase, and the glinting cabinets of stuffed things. It was a secret world, all right. A man’s world, I thought, just like butchers’ shops. Women can visit, but behind the curtain, in the back where they do the chopping and sorting, it’s all men. Not that I minded that, at the time. But I wished I hadn’t worn that dress with the full skirt and kitten-heeled shoes – it was mid-December and the pavements were frosty, for one thing, and for another, I noticed that people didn’t dress for a museum. Most of the others were in brown serge or navy-blue wool, and the whole place was dark and serious and quiet. And there were my kitten heels, tapping inappropriately on the mosaic, echoing around the walls like scattered coins.