The Glass Painter's Daughter Page 12

  He smiled at her, then in a flowing movement, flipped up his coat-tails and sat down in the front pew. He was left-handed, she noticed, his fingers curved like a crab’s claw as he drew. A quick flourish and he was done. ‘I like to use this.’ He passed her the book.

  Laura studied the intricate knot pattern he’d drawn. She swivelled the drawing round. ‘It’s the same from all sides,’ she said, marvelling.

  ‘And I can draw it without lifting my pencil from the paper,’ he said. ‘You’ll find them on ancient Celtic crosses, though this one’s of my own invention. I like the idea of the eternal line.’

  Lose not the things eternal…Her father’s reading of the old prayer, his voice deep and pure, resounded in her mind.

  ‘I like it too,’ she told Mr Russell gravely. ‘It makes me think of the important things of this life, the good things that we’ve lost, running on beyond this world into eternity.’

  They were both silent for a moment, Laura imagining her brother Ned, a little boy running for ever, laughing, across a sward of green. She wondered of what Mr Russell was thinking. His face wore a tense expression and a fast pulse throbbed in his throat. She glanced away, afraid that he’d notice her looking.

  ‘I have in my mind’s eye a vision for the Virgin and Child window,’ he said finally. ‘But the angel design–I gather the window is in memory of your sister.’

  ‘Caroline, yes.’

  ‘Can you tell me a little about her? If…that’s not too hard for you, of course.’

  ‘I like to talk about her. It feels as though she’s still with us then. Caroline was four years younger than me, nearly seventeen when she died. There was something about her, I can’t explain. She had a sweetness, a goodness.’

  Russell, who was drawing something swiftly on a corner of his page as he listened, nodded encouragingly.

  She continued, ‘We were never jealous of her. We always loved her. That’s surprising, isn’t it, for brothers and sisters? It was Harriet I sometimes quarrelled with–she’s the sister between Caroline and me. And there’s Tom, the eldest. He’s at Oxford learning to be a priest like Papa. We had another brother, too. Ned was the youngest, but we lost him to a fever of the brain.’

  Mr Russell’s expression was full of tender sympathy. Her breath caught in her throat.

  ‘Mama says you wouldn’t know it now because he’s so grey, but Papa once had hair of pale gold. Caroline’s was like that, too, before it all began to fall out. Her illness left her so thin, you know, her skin was transparent. You could see the blood moving in her veins.’

  ‘Is there a photograph, or a painting of her I might see?’

  ‘There were photographs, but my mother has hidden them away. She cannot bear to look at them. I will ask her, if you like.’

  ‘Do you think she would like the angel to recall the image of your sister?’ He seemed anxious now. ‘Or maybe…it would be too painful.’

  Laura didn’t know what her mother would want. What did she herself think? The face of Caroline in the window would be too strange. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you should visit and ask her yourself.’

  ‘I will do that,’ he said. He closed his sketchbook.

  Laura stood up to go, drawing her shawl around her. He stood, too, and when she grasped the pew end for balance, caught her arm to steady her. For a moment he was so close she felt dizzy.

  ‘You’ll come soon?’ she asked him.

  ‘Of course. Tuesday morning, perhaps, if that’s convenient.’ Bowing slightly, he stepped back to let her pass.

  ‘Oh, Baby has the hiccoughs again. Look!’

  Harriet was stretched out on a sofa, where Nurse Stephens had left her to rest with pillows under her feet and head. Laura stared with fascination at the mound of her sister’s great belly, clearly visible beneath her voluminous skirts. After a moment the mound twitched slightly and they both laughed.

  ‘Oh Laura, it’s so tedious lying here. I see hardly anyone. And George’s mother sends advice by every post. If she writes me once more about what a marvellous baby George was because she refused rich food or took fresh air or…I don’t know, fed him nothing but blancmange, I swear I’ll scream. Oh, help me up, will you? I’ve pain, just here, down my back. I’ve had it all day. So odd. Oh, that’s better, Baby’s moved. Put your hand here, dear, you’ll feel his little foot.’

  Laura tentatively laid her fingers on Harriet’s stomach. It’s so hard, she thought in wonder. ‘Oh!’ The baby kicked under her hand. ‘Harriet!’

  They pressed each other’s hands in excitement.

  ‘Do you think it will hurt very much? When the baby comes, I mean?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Nurse Stephens says it will, but that it is woman’s lot and I must be brave. I don’t feel very brave, Laura.’ Harriet’s once-pretty complexion, lately as blotchy as porridge, now turned the colour of whey.

  ‘I don’t think I could ever do it,’ whispered Laura, more to herself than to her sister. ‘But if Mama is there, perhaps it will be all right.’

  ‘I hope she can be, but Nurse says the doctor may not allow it. Laura, I’m so scared.’

  ‘You must send for Mama as soon as you need her. It’ll help you to know she’s near, at least.’

  ‘I think it will be soon. I feel so strange today. My nerves twitch like you wouldn’t believe.’

  ‘Poor you. I’ll sit and talk then, to take your mind off the strangeness.’

  ‘Thank you, dear, I’d like that. Laura, I’ve been longing to ask. Mama said Mr Bond proposed again. What did you say to him?’

  ‘I haven’t given him my answer yet. I think my head tells me yes, but my heart says no.’

  ‘I wish you would say yes. Then I could help you with your wedding clothes and arrange your house and you would live nearby and, oh, we’d have such fun.’

  ‘But I live nearby already, and I don’t think I want to have fun, Harriet. Not the kind you mean–going to people’s houses and having them come to yours. I want time to myself, to read and write and to think. Anyway, I don’t love Mr Bond. I don’t think I even like him much. I couldn’t call him “my dear heart”, like you do George, and share his bed.’

  Harriet laughed. ‘I didn’t love George when he asked me, but I do now.’ She smiled a secret smile, then winced and put her hand to her belly.

  George was pompous and too sure he was right, but Laura had seen a spark between him and Harriet from the start. Harriet managed to play him skilfully, Laura always thought, bewitching him with her teasing but never flouting him, at least, not in public. The spark between them had caught, and now the sudden fire of their love had settled to a warm steady flame.

  There was no spark between her and Mr Bond, decided Laura, none at all. She was simply not interested in drawing him to her. But nobody seemed to think this mattered, except her.

  ‘You might stay at home for ever then,’ said Harriet, pouting. ‘Soothing Mama’s headaches and arguing with Mrs Jorkins about how best to cook veal, and visiting all the Coopers of the parish.’

  ‘Mr Bond or the Coopers,’ she said lightly now. ‘Mmm, that’s no choice at all.’ But she felt uncomfortable as she said this. The Coopers of this world needed people like the Brownlows. Papa was right. To do God’s work one must be selfless.

  But she’d had enough of being selfless. She wanted to live.

  And so, suddenly, did her sister’s child, for Harriet let out a sharp gasp of pain.

  ‘Is it happening? Shall I send for Mama?’ asked Laura, helping her sister to sit up more comfortably as Nurse Stephens bustled in tut-tutting.

  The little boy was born as first light touched the morning sky. After the doctor left, Laura and Mama were admitted to the room to find Harriet lying exhausted but demanding bread-and-milk. Portly George hovered anxiously, staring into the cradle, hands in pockets. Laura gazed at tiny Arthur (named for George’s dead father), sweetly swaddled, asleep, and felt her world turn on its axis. In one stroke her sister had become a mo
ther, her mother a grandmother, she herself an aunt. The Brownlow family had taken a step into the future.

  ‘Five minutes, that’s all,’ snapped Nurse Stephens, standing sentinel by the bed. ‘Mother needs to rest.’

  I read Laura’s journal until the neat italics began to swim before my eyes. It was rich material, anyway; I was glad to stop and contemplate everything I’d read. I could still hear her voice in my head, almost feel her presence in the gloomy room.

  How lonely Laura must have been, shut up in a house with two grieving parents, her daily task to assist in their work. Perhaps the only activity through which she could escape was her writing.

  She had a natural writer’s style, Laura, an ability to make a scene come alive with emotive observations and touches of humour. All this, and yet her account was imbued with deep sadness; hers was a family in mourning, divided not only by death but by other natural processes of life–the surviving children leaving home, marrying, pursuing careers–and by silence. And Laura had been left behind, perhaps destined to look after her parents–though it seemed she had had at least one chance at marriage.

  As I laid the journal on the desk, by the Day Books, I wondered again what it was doing here in Minster Glass. And whether Dad knew about it; that was an important question. Its position in the drawer suggested no, as did his scribbled note Who was Laura Brownlow? Yet all the files in the cabinet had been neatly labelled in his black script, making it difficult to believe that he hadn’t come across it. Perhaps he had, but didn’t realise its significance to his account.

  Chapter 11

  ‘Every time you hear a bell ring, it means that some angel’s just got his wings.’

  It’s a Wonderful Life

  On Friday morning I was exasperated to find I was to be left alone in the shop again for most of the day. At eight-thirty Zac arrived, only to go straight out again in the van to take some sketches he’d done over to a house in Clapham. Later, he said, he would head further south to install Dad’s Celtic window. Jo’s idea of employing Amber was beginning to seem more and more attractive.

  My mind still on Laura’s extraordinary journal, I found the letter Jeremy Quentin had sent Dad and rang the vicarage number. There was only an answerphone message delivered in a gentle female voice. As I left my name and number, I noticed the address at the top of the letter. It was 44 Vincent Street. How puzzling. I was sure Laura had described the Victorian rectory as being in Greycoat Square.

  It was a busy morning. I longed for a moment to fetch the diary from upstairs and read some more, but evening classes must have been starting in earnest because hobbyists kept arriving in a steady trickle with printed lists, wanting tools and glass and advice. It was while I was serving that our wholesaler left a large order that, when I found a moment to check it, proved to be wrong.

  I was sitting in an unflattering position, legs splayed on the shop floor, surrounded by open boxes and polystyrene packaging, and talking on the phone, when a shadow fell across the window. I looked up to see Ben. I clambered to my feet and motioned to him to come in, while still trying to explain to the idiot of a boy at the other end of the telephone line that they’d given us the wrong opalescent glass, and that a Tiffany-style wisteria lampshade was not by any stretch of the imagination the same as a poppy one.

  Ben walked around the shop, looking at everything before pulling up an old wooden chair and sitting astride it, watching me with a slight smile playing on his lips. I found it hard to concentrate on what I was saying.

  ‘So I’ll see you back here first thing Tuesday without fail,’ I said sternly down the receiver, and ended the call.

  ‘Wouldn’t want to get the wrong side of you on a bad day,’ Ben said with a grin.

  ‘They’re usually very good.’ I shrugged, starting to pack up the boxes. ‘Seems there’s someone new getting it all wrong. Lovely to see you. Have you come for a reason or is this a social call?’

  ‘Half and half,’ Ben said, his gaze sliding to the workshop door. ‘I wondered if I could see the famous exploding window.’

  ‘Didn’t the vicar show you?’ I said.

  ‘Only the box it was in. The whole thing looked a mess, frankly.’

  ‘It still is,’ I said bleakly.

  The bits of angel were carefully laid out on the lining paper where we’d left them. Ben regarded them critically, one finger hooking his cord jacket over his shoulder. He was wearing a linen shirt today of a soft pale blue. I kept glancing out of the corner of my eye to see the effect of it against his hair. Like ripe corn against a summer sky.

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ he said, bringing me back to earth, ‘but it does look like a lost cause. I mean, it’s not just a matter of sticking all the bits together, is it? For a start, how do you know where everything goes and what’s missing?’

  ‘I know it seems like that,’ I explained, defensive. ‘But if we can get hold of a photograph or find the original drawing, we could have a good try…’

  ‘And there’s a perfectly decent stained-glass scene already in the window. Has anyone thought of what would happen to that?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s for your council to decide, isn’t it?’ I imagined that he was annoyed because of wanting the organ repaired, but I wished he wouldn’t take it out on me.

  ‘The PCC? I suppose.’

  I watched him wander round the workshop, pulling open the doors of the kiln to look inside, prodding little tins of paint and bags of cement, asking what things were. I held one of Zac’s kaleidoscopes up to the light and he muttered his amazement as he squinted through it, turning the marble.

  A man came into the shop to pick up a screen I’d mended for his wife, and when I returned to the workshop, Ben was studying a row of beautiful little lozenges of multicoloured glass Zac had left on a shelf. This fusing glass was very popular with people who made their own jewellery, and it was fun to make up pieces and to fire them in a little microwave kiln, though tricky to get the temperatures and firing times exactly right.

  Ben was particularly taken with a piece that glinted blue-green, as iridescent as a butterfly’s wing, and, on an impulse, I gave it to him.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘Thanks ever so much.’ He tucked it safely in his jacket and turned on one of his soul-searching looks. I was getting used to these by now.

  I followed him out to the door, half-expecting him to mention dinner again. Instead he merely said, ‘Thank you,’ adding, ‘see you at choir.’ And he was gone. I was puzzled as to why he’d really come.

  I watched him cross the road, but when he reached the path across the garden he turned to see me still watching and gave me a little wave.

  When Zac returned, mid-afternoon, I showed him Laura Brownlow’s journal and told him about the artist being Philip Russell.

  ‘I haven’t heard of him,’ he said, frowning. He took the book from me and tried to make sense of the handwriting, but soon gave up and passed it back.

  ‘You must tell me anything else you discover about the windows,’ he said.

  ‘I will, and I really must let the vicar look at it.’ I rang the vicarage again, but this time the line was engaged. Since someone was in, perhaps I’d call round. After all, I’d been cooped up here all day. Zac agreed to keep an eye on the shop while I walked over to the vicarage, carrying the journal in a bag. Number 44 Vincent Street turned out to be a smallish Edwardian-style terraced house in red brick. Definitely not Laura’s father’s rectory then.

  Jeremy was out, but Sarah Quentin invited me in, assuring me she was expecting him back any moment.

  ‘He was using the photocopier in the parish office,’ she said. She was a small round woman in her fifties who had a kind of stillness about her.

  The moment stretched to twenty minutes. I drank tea at the big table in her messy kitchen and when I commented on a pile of paperwork she was sorting, she told me about the parish appeal for expanding facilities for the homeless.

  ‘We’re waiting for a dec
ision about our government grant application,’ she said. ‘The paperwork is endless. Jeremy’s at meetings about it the whole time.’

  Her eyes occasionally rested on me curiously. Suddenly she said something that almost made me choke on my tea.

  ‘You know, you are very like your mother.’

  ‘My mother!’ I cried. ‘You knew my…?’

  ‘No,’ she said hastily. ‘I never met her. But your father showed us a photograph of her once.’

  ‘A photograph?’ I repeated. Of course, my father might have photographs somewhere that he’d never shown me. But he had shown these…strangers.

  Mrs Quentin saw immediately that she’d upset me and said gently, ‘Perhaps you didn’t know that Jeremy and your father have become quite close. I’ve no idea what they talked about, of course, because Jeremy rarely shares anything very confidential, even with me. But one day when your father came, he brought a picture of your mother, and I saw it on the desk when I took the men tea. I noticed it immediately, because she looked so striking–dark hair and eyes like yours, very lovely and vital. You are like her, you know. The shape of your face–and there’s something about your expression. Oh, I don’t know. I’ve always admired beauty. I’ve never been much to look at myself. And now, well, nothing to lose, growing old.’ She laughed as she touched her creased, unmade-up face. No, she wasn’t beautiful in the classical sense, but she had an inner beauty, a soft humility that would draw people to her more surely than looks.

  ‘Beauty can be a curse as well, can’t it?’ I murmured, still wrestling with the idea that my father had probably confided in a stranger things that I, his daughter, needed to know. Especially about my mother. It comforted me that I looked like her and I remembered that my father once said that, too. Yet, despite this, I couldn’t claim to have the startling beauty Sarah talked of. My hair might be dark but it was fine and flyaway, and I hated my mouth, though full lips were great for playing the tuba.