The Glass Painter's Daughter Read online

  ‘What’s the choir?’ I asked.

  ‘St Martin’s Choral Society. It’s only the second year I’ve been, but I love it. We have two concerts a year in the church. The next one’s in December. Ben’s the new conductor–the old one had to retire. Listen, why don’t you join? We’re doing The Dream, and I know we need another soprano. You’re a soprano, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m not sure I can commit to something like that at the moment.’ It was tempting though. Although I’m an instrumentalist I’ve always loved singing. ‘Can I think about it? How long’s the rehearsal, anyway?’

  ‘Two hours. Starts at six-thirty and some of us go to the pub after. Why don’t you give it a try today? Everyone’s really friendly.’

  ‘Hi, Ben,’ someone called out. ‘Good summer?’

  A man had turned in at the gate and I looked at him with interest. He was youngish, with very fair skin, a mane of wheat-coloured hair and finely moulded features. His was a face I’d seen somewhere before–in Italian Renaissance paintings. Yes, he would be a perfect Botticelli angel. There was an air about him that drew people’s attention.

  ‘Ben, hello,’ Jo called out as he went by. He stopped, turned, looked enquiringly at her. She said a little breathlessly, ‘I’m Jo, you won’t know me. I’ve got another soprano for you here. This is Fran, an old schoolfriend of mine.’

  Ben studied her solemnly. ‘Jo,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘Of course I remember you.’ She reddened and I smiled to myself at his studied charm.

  Close up, I saw Ben was slightly older than I’d initially thought, more my own age, thirty. His skin had lost the glow of extreme youth and there were faint shadows under his eyes. But, if anything, that gave him a down-to-earth look that made him even more attractive.

  ‘Fran,’ he said, looking deep into my eyes for a second, and now it was my turn to be disconcerted.

  ‘I haven’t quite decided…’ I started to say, but he hurried on.

  ‘Great to see you. Do sing with us tonight. Speak afterwards maybe. The audition’s not at all scary, promise.’ And he swept on by. As though submitting to a higher presence, the throng parted to let him through. I felt disturbed and fascinated in equal part.

  ‘Well…’ I said to Jo, the decision apparently made for me.

  ‘So you’ll come?’ she said, her face eager. ‘There’ll be the audition, of course, but I can’t see you having any problems there, Fran. After all, I got through and Miss Logan once told me my voice was like bricks in a mincing machine.’

  I laughed, remembering the elderly aristocratic music teacher who ran our Junior Choir.

  Did I want to join a choir? It was quite a commitment. I thought of the alternative. Going home, another evening on my own. OK, why not? After all, I needn’t come back if I didn’t like it.

  I followed Jo back into the lobby.

  ‘Dominic, hi, how are you? This is a friend of mine from school–Fran,’ Jo said to a big, smiley, round-faced man with fair baby curls and a tailored suit, who was sitting behind a trestle table on which music scores were stacked. ‘I’ve just bumped into her after twelve years. Isn’t that amazing?’

  ‘Delighted to meet you, Fran,’ Dominic said, standing up politely to shake my hand, his blue-eyed gaze as direct and guileless as Jo’s. He wrote down my name and phone number, and handed me a copy of The Dream with a little flourish. Then he said to Jo with deliberate casualness, ‘Are you up for a drink afterwards?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘of course.’

  ‘And you as well, Fran?’ he added politely. I smiled and nodded non-committally.

  The small hall was three-quarters full of chairs. The rest of the space in front of the tiny curtained stage was occupied by a grand piano and a podium for the conductor. I guessed there were as many as sixty or seventy people in the room, divesting themselves of jackets and cardigans, stowing bottles of water under chairs, looking through their music or chatting to friends they hadn’t seen since the previous term. Jo and I found some free seats in the back row of the second soprano section and we talked about her work and news of old schoolfriends, until a woman in front turned round and attracted her attention. After Jo introduced me, I sat quietly as they swapped news, pretending to find my way around the familiar music, but all the time keeping an eye on the fascinating Ben, who had now climbed his podium and was adjusting his music stand.

  Ben seemed oblivious to the roomful of people as he flicked the pages of his score impatiently, tapping out different time beats to himself and scribbling little pencil marks here and there. He had removed his jacket and tie and, with his shirt open to the second button and the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, he appeared boyish once more. His wavy hair curling over the turned-up collar glinted golden against the white of the shirt.

  A quick exchange of words with the pianist, a slight, grey-haired man Jo referred to as Graham, then suddenly Ben was ready. He stood calmly, frowning at a couple of latecomers who were sneaking in stagily at the back. Then he began to speak, and I only half-listened to his words as the soft musical timbre of his voice, the precise rendition of consonants, charmed me. He was so poised, so elegant to watch.

  ‘Right, The Dream of Gerontius,’ he said, and everyone immediately quietened. ‘We’ve only what, twelve rehearsals, and a lot of material to get through. So if you’re tempted to miss a rehearsal for any reason, then the message is don’t. It’s a big concert for us and I can’t afford anything less than total commitment.’ He looked round the room, but instead of seeming offended at this forthright approach, many people were nodding in earnest agreement.

  ‘How many of you have sung this before?’ He surveyed the sprinkling of raised hands. ‘About a quarter. OK. For those who don’t know, it’s Elgar’s most famous choral piece. Indeed, together with the Messiah and Elijah, it’s one of the most popular pieces for choirs. However, that only means the audience will know it and will have high expectations of our performance.

  ‘Just to give you a bit of background, Gerontius was first performed in 1900. Elgar put his absolute all into the composition, and indeed famously wrote that it represented the best of him. Unfortunately, for several reasons, the first performance was a complete disaster, something I certainly don’t plan to repeat.’ I admired Ben’s timing. He didn’t wait for the laughter to die down but went on. ‘The Dream is a musical setting of Cardinal Newman’s famous poem about man’s passing through the unknown that lies beyond death, the greatest of heroic journeys.

  ‘We’ll start on page eleven with the “Kyrie”. Semi-chorus, put up your hands so I can see you, please. Good. Crispin here,’ he indicated a tall thin tenor with a long neck, ‘has kindly agreed to be Gerontius for us during rehearsals. I am delighted to say that, having severely twisted the arm of my friend Julian Wright, I have got him to agree to take the role at the concert for a fraction of his usual fee.’ There was a muttering of appreciation at this, as there should have been, for landing Julian, a fine tenor voice, was a real coup.

  ‘There are a number of leitmotifs Elgar introduces in the orchestral Prelude. It’ll be important to be aware of them, and I’ll ask Graham to play the Prelude through for you now…’

  Judgement, Fear, Prayer, Sleep and Despair. As Graham played through the themes, I remembered all the stages Gerontius experienced on his deathbed while we, the chorus, sang out to God to grant him mercy. Crispin led in the semi-chorus, uncertainly, with his first line, but quickly gained in confidence, and the beauty and power of the music rolled over me, caught me up. The two hours passed in a flash.

  During the break, Ben asked that any newcomers requiring an audition should stay afterwards. I and the other candidate, a middle-aged Jamaican woman, waited by the piano until Ben was ready to put us through our places. She sang first, with a rich contralto voice.

  ‘That’s lovely, Elizabeth,’ Ben told her. ‘You’re a natural.’

  She nodded delightedly, whispered, ‘Good luck,’ to me and left to catch her
train.

  ‘See you both in the Bishop?’ Dominic called out as he went out with Jo, lugging a box of music scores, and she waved at me and said, ‘You will come, won’t you, Fran?’

  All of a sudden, Ben and I were alone. He played a fanfare of chords on the piano and I warbled my way through a series of arpeggios.

  ‘Sorry, bit of a frog in my throat,’ I mumbled. ‘But I suppose everyone says that.’ Ben only smiled vaguely as he flicked through the book of sight-reading exercises.

  ‘Try this one,’ he said, passing over the book, and without waiting for him to give me a note on the piano I sang the tune he indicated without a mistake.

  ‘You’re a musician?’ he asked, looking intently up at me.

  ‘Brass player. Tuba’s my main instrument.’

  ‘Mmm, that’s an unusual choice.’ I was grateful that he stopped short of saying for a woman. I was all too used to people saying that, often adding, ‘Especially one as small as you,’ as though five feet two was freakish.

  ‘I started with the French horn,’ I told him. Then at college someone lent me their tuba to try and I found it much easier to play. The wider mouthpiece suits me better.’

  His eyes rested briefly on my mouth. I went on quickly, ‘I like its role in the orchestra too.’

  ‘The sound underpins everything, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Who d’you play for?’

  I came up with a few orchestras I had performed with.

  ‘Who will you use for the concert?’ I asked, and he named a rather good orchestra that specialised in accompanying amateur choral societies.

  ‘And you’ve a lovely voice. It would be great to have you here, no problem,’ Ben said, stowing his books into an ancient briefcase. His eyes met mine again and I had the weird sense that he was looking deep into my soul. ‘Coming for a drink? I’ve got to finish up here first, if you don’t mind waiting.’

  I hung about while he locked up.

  ‘I’m the new organist at St Martin’s,’ he said, in answer to my question about what else he did, as we walked the darkening streets towards the Bishop pub in Rochester Row. ‘Conducting the choir’s part of the job. Otherwise, I’m a pianist and take private pupils at a local school.’

  Stepping out of his conductor role he had a disarming way of speaking, quite different from the maestro act on the podium. There was still something there, an edge, a slight arrogance, and I was definitely wary of that searching way he had of looking at me, but I found myself warming to him more.

  ‘So how come you let Jo drag you along to the choir?’ he enquired, and I explained about recently coming home and that I’d only bumped into her by accident.

  ‘Dad owns the stained-glass shop in Greycoat Square,’ I concluded. ‘I came to look at the windows in the church this afternoon.’

  ‘Ah, so you’ll have met Jeremy Quentin,’ he said. ‘What d’you make of him?’

  ‘He seems…nice. Is he?’

  ‘He’s all right.’

  He didn’t sound enthusiastic, and I wondered if there was something else there behind his words. At that point we reached the pub.

  He held the door open for me and his arm accidentally brushed mine as I went through. Then we were swallowed up in a warm and welcoming crowd of choir members.

  I hardly saw Ben again that evening, though once I noticed him standing with two or three other men by the bar, a tall graceful figure deep in animated conversation.

  Somebody in the group round a big table moved up to allow me to squash into a corner next to Jo. Dominic got up to fetch me a glass of white wine.

  So there I was, in the middle of a throng of people again, friendly people, but all except Jo strangers who would no doubt forget my existence as soon as the evening ended. So many new people, all talking at once, asking me the same questions about how I knew Jo and what I thought of the choir. It was exhausting, bewildering. The wine tasted acidic and I felt panicky, wanting to be alone. Perhaps I’d been wrong to come in the first place. Maybe the choir wasn’t for me.

  I stood up to leave as soon as was polite, echoing everyone’s goodbyes, kissing Jo and arranging that I would ring her during the week. When I reached the door, someone touched my arm. It was Ben. I was surprised to see him and asked him if he was leaving too, but no, he had come over specially to say goodbye.

  ‘We’ll see you next week, won’t we?’ Again, that soul-searching look.

  ‘Of course,’ I managed to say. All my previous doubts about the choir mysteriously vanished. ‘You told us not to miss any rehearsals.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ he said warmly. ‘It’s lovely to have you. Take care now.’

  The few minutes’ walk home calmed me. Back in the safety of Minster Glass, I rejoiced in my own company. But the flat, as ever, was full of echoes. I lay on my bed thinking of Dad, probably asleep, an old man surrounded by other old men in the shiny white hospital sterility. I thought about the windows of St Martin’s Church, about seeing Jo again, about the noisy camaraderie I had briefly been a part of this evening. I’d done nothing–yet a new life was assembling itself around me. I was being swept along by it all. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.

  When I finally fell asleep I dreamed I was cradled in the arms of a great angel flying high over the city, with the flashing jewels of lights, the dark glistening snake of the river, the silver towers of churches, the glint of glass from high-rise offices, all laid out beneath me. So high were we that the only sound I could hear was the rhythmic beating of wings.

  Chapter 6

  Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

  Hebrews XIII. 2.

  During school holidays in my late teens, when I wasn’t practising my music or helping Dad in the shop, I used to walk down to the Tate Gallery–now known as Tate Britain–only a few streets south towards the river. My favourite rooms were where the pre-Raphaelite and late-nineteenth-century paintings hung, and the painting I loved above all others was, of course, a Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid. In it the beggar maid sits in a wooden boudoir staring out at the observer, her bearing, despite her rags, that of a Queen. Below her on the step, the handsome King, his crown doffed in his lap, gazes up at her adoringly. But she will not even look at him. Instead she holds a bunch of anemones, telling him through the flowers that she rejects his love.

  This dramatisation of unrequited passion stirred up such deep feelings in me that I read up all about the picture in the book on Burne-Jones that hid the photo of my mother.

  It was based on an old legend of a King who found his love for a beautiful beggar maid was greater than all his power and wealth. Burne-Jones probably learned of the legend by reading Tennyson’s poem, ‘The Beggar Maid’, and he cast it in a setting inspired by fifteenth-century Italian painting. He apparently created the picture after a time of considerable strain in his marriage, and some say the artist is the King and the beggar maid Georgiana, his wife, whom he betrayed by his affair with the stormy beauty Mary Zambaco. But others hold that the maid must be Frances Graham, a girl with whom Burne-Jones went on to conduct an intense romantic friendship and who, to his distress, got married in 1883, while he was working on the picture. Did the painting become an expression of his feelings about the loss of Frances?

  I bought a poster of Cophetua and hung it on my bedroom wall. By then my father, in respect for my womanhood, rarely entered my room, but once he did to give me a magazine that had arrived in the morning post. He stared at my poster with a stunned look on his face. When I asked him what the matter was, he snapped, ‘Nothing,’ and, as ever, the shutters came down.

  The next day, when I came home from school, the poster had disappeared and, although this might seem strange, I didn’t even question the matter. I was angry, yes, disturbed certainly, but I had just enough compassion in my selfish teenage soul to realise that my poster had touched some terrible sadness in him. So I bit my lip and l
et the matter go.

  The day after our visit to St Martin’s, Zac arrived at the shop at nine, but didn’t bother to remove his jacket.

  ‘Fitting some windows this morning,’ he said. ‘Give me a hand getting them in the van?’

  ‘Oh. Yes, of course.’ This meant that I’d be stuck looking after the shop, but I bit back my complaint and went out to help him polish and pack up two panels representing a pair of gorgeous peacocks, which had been drying in the garage in our yard, then to carry out the sunrise, which he’d finished the day before, and Dad’s Celtic knot to take their place. He backed the van out of the drive at a lick. Locking the garage door, I went through to open the shop.

  It was a glorious morning, the kind of morning when I used to shirk my music practice, but today I forced myself to sit in the shop and make suncatchers. We had sold a dragonfly and a fairy yesterday from the line-up in the window and they were easy to replace using Dad’s old pattern-book for inspiration. Cutting out simple glass shapes, edging them with copperfoil and soldering them together to make fairies, birds or butterflies, adding a copper loop to hang them by, came so naturally to me it was almost a meditative task.

  The bright sunshine made everything look dirty, so after I’d arranged my suncatchers in the window I found a brush and a soft cloth and set about cleaning the shop, stopping only to sweettalk an indecisive customer into buying a pair of poppy-patterned lampshades as a wedding present for her niece.

  The shop obviously hadn’t had a thorough clean for ages, for I was soon coughing at the dust I stirred up with my broom. I wedged the door open to clear the air, then one by one unhooked the items in the window to wipe them over carefully. It was while I was removing our lovely angel from the chains by which she hung that I looked through the window to meet a pair of dark eyes. It was the stray-cat girl I’d seen a few days ago; then she’d seemed wary, now she was agitated. Even before I’d laid the angel on the counter she had moved into the open doorway.