The Glass Painter's Daughter (29 page)

Then Michael said something that shook me. ‘I’m not sure he’d be happy that I told you, but sometimes I didn’t believe his stories that other boys had hurt him.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, shocked.

‘There were cuts on his thighs, Fran. You’re not telling me someone else did that?’

‘Oh,’ I said, trying to assimilate this. ‘How dreadful. Poor Ben.’ We were silent for a while.

‘What happened after you left school?’ I asked, imagining them drifting apart at university.

‘We both came to London, so we saw each other often. I went to University College to read English, and Ben won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music.’

‘Where I went,’ I told him. ‘Though I never knew him there.’ He’d have been a couple of years ahead.

‘Ben always worked damned hard at his music, but he also got discouraged easily and then we–his family and I–had to try to buck him up.’ I nodded in recognition.

‘Ben has this fear of failure, that people will laugh at him or pity him, you see, so sometimes he gives up and finds someone else to blame,’ Michael told me. ‘It’s as though he’s protecting some unhealed wound deep inside. When things get bad he doesn’t see them through. Yet when things are going well, he’s ecstatic; it brings out the best in him.’

I thought of him conducting, his obvious drive and talent, then of the way he had spiralled down into misery after the committee meeting about the future of the choir. ‘I think I understand what you mean,’ I told Michael.

‘I suppose that’s it in a nutshell,’ he said, considering. ‘He yearns for the fruits of success, for adulation, but there’s some faltering in self-confidence that stops him going for it. And, well, he manipulates other people to get what he wants. I don’t think he means to, but he does. Then, of course, it all goes wrong. It was like that with Bea.’

‘Bea. You mentioned her the other night. Who is she?’

‘Beatrix Claybourne.’

I remembered the elegant handwritten name on Ben’s sheet music, the framed poster on the landing upstairs.

‘Has he told you about her?’ Michael went on. ‘She’s a pianist too, a brilliant one. He went out with her at college; there was talk of them getting engaged. But it soon became apparent that she was outshining him. Everything went right for her–she won the awards, was sought by the best teachers. And in the end she couldn’t stand his jealous rages. They broke up.’

I stared at him, not wanting to believe him, but remembering something Ben had said about Nina’s brilliance. His eyes had shone with ambition.

‘You said he used people,’ I whispered. Ben might not admit this to himself, but it was obvious he hoped to win personal success as Nina’s musical partner.

‘Yes,’ Michael said softly.

‘You introduced Nina to him, didn’t you?’

He nodded miserably.

‘I met her at a concert a year ago and we started seeing each another. I was so happy–but then she met Ben. Her teacher’s an acquaintance of Ben’s, agreed with me that they’d be good together. Of course, professionally they are. But I should have considered the possibility of her falling in love with him. There’s something fatally attractive about him. You know that, Fran.’

We had stopped now, sat on a bench to watch a boy throw a stick for his dog.

‘But Michael,’ I said, ‘if Ben’s not interested in her that way, maybe she’ll come to accept it. Things can’t go on like this for ever. Maybe she’ll come back to you.’

The boy had thrown himself on the grass, fed up with the stick game. The dog barked for more, but he took no notice.

When he looked at me this time, Michael’s expression was bitter. ‘What is it?’ I asked, uneasily, but I read it in his face. He opened his mouth, but could say nothing.

‘Michael.’

‘I have to get back now, Fran. I have a meeting.’ He stood up, said goodbye, and started to stride off across the grass towards St James’s Palace.

I watched him go. There was no point chasing him, or begging him to tell me. I had discerned what it was he needed me to know.

‘It was sometime last week. I’ve forgotten when. I only kissed her,’ Ben said, staring at the floor. ‘Nothing more. We didn’t…go to bed or anything. I wouldn’t do that to you, Fran.’

But he’d treated Nina carelessly. He’d led her on when she was besotted with him; working with him so intimately, her desire was at fever pitch. It was wrong of him. How could he be so casual to anyone? And why had it taken me so long to realise?

I squeezed my eyes closed in an effort to clear my mind. When I opened them again, there he was, lounging sulkily, mutinous. And suddenly I couldn’t be bothered with him any more. I was free.

‘Ben,’ I said heavily. ‘You’ve simply no idea, have you?’

I opened the front door and walked out, pulling it shut behind me with what I hope sounded like a final bang.

I was miserable for days, half-hoping Ben would ring and beg me to come back, determined that I wouldn’t if he did. He didn’t ring, which cast me into deeper gloom. Working in the shop I’d find tears welling, and if I were alone I’d let them run down my cheeks unchecked. I was still angry with Ben and furious with myself for having got mixed up with someone like him again, after all my promises to myself. Yet all the time, the memories would catch me unawares. Ben conducting, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, beautiful, intense, determined. Or playing the piano, eyes closed, lost in the world of the music. I dreamed of his long, slow kisses and my body cried out for his. Although I’d known him for such a short time, I’d allowed myself to get in too deep, too quickly.

It was hard living so close. Several times I caught myself staring across the Square, searching for a glimpse of him. Once, a week after our quarrel, I saw him let himself out of his flat, the long golden scarf round his neck flapping in the wind. He glanced over in my direction, but didn’t notice me watching from behind the curtain in the living room. He walked off quickly in the direction of the church. I hadn’t been able to face going to choir. Did he miss me? Indeed, did he give me any thought at all? I dropped the curtain and turned away.

I had better things to worry about, I told Jo, when I went round to confide in her. She, nursing her own broken heart, understood more than anyone how I felt. The most important of my worries was my father.

I visited Dad several times a week now. Zac often came with me and we’d sit at either side of the bed and converse, addressing comments to Dad as though he were listening, but of this we couldn’t be at all sure.

Zac never said a word to me about Ben, but it must have been obvious I was no longer seeing him. He was particularly gentle, and sometimes in the shop I would glance up from whatever work I was doing to find him looking at me, a thoughtful expression on his face.

He’d been working on Raphael for weeks now, giving the window every spare moment. Amber and I helped where we could, but we didn’t have Zac’s expertise. He was at the painting stage now, which involved great delicacy, tracing the main drawing lines on the new pieces of glass and retouching some of the old in paint made with iron oxide and powdered glass.

‘The gold colour of the hair was made by painting the glass with silver nitrate and firing it,’ he told Amber one morning, making a note in
The Angel Book
. ‘But first you had to paint the lines of hair and feathers straight onto the glass and fire that.’ He wouldn’t be able to refire the original glass, he added, in case future generations needed to alter what he had painted.

Because the eyes were missing he had been unwilling to do much work to the face, but now he was able to work on its reconstruction, filling in the gaps with a tinted resin. On Russell’s vidimus and cartoon the features had seemed regular, but bland. There had been no life in the face. Finally Zac had the chance to make his mark.

One day near the end of October, the two of us found ourselves alone in the workshop. Zac was telling me about a customer who’d come in that morning when I was out, wanting a crystal wand. ‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ he said. ‘It was for some weird magical ritual and I didn’t feel comfortable about it, so I quoted him five thousand pounds and luckily he went away.’

I laughed at Zac’s ruse and it seemed it was the first time I’d laughed easily for ages. Perhaps at last I was starting to forget Ben. I smiled in relief at the thought and Zac looked at me intently.

‘Stay exactly as you are,’ he said. With a few quick lines he drew something on a piece of paper.

He showed me what he’d sketched. ‘That’s how you think I look?’ I asked. I wasn’t displeased, as he’d made me far prettier than the mirror ever told me, but still, I didn’t think it was me.

The next day, when Amber studied the sketch, she cried, ‘The angel looks a bit like you, Fran.’

‘No, it doesn’t. It could be anyone,’ I said, somewhat grumpily. ‘Anyway, you’re not supposed to change Philip Russell’s version, Zac.’ I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be immortalised as an angel. It was too much to live up to.

‘The original sketch definitely has a look of you,’ said Zac, quite seriously. ‘It’s the fullness of the mouth Russell painted. And there’s something about the eyes, too. You to a T.’

‘Whoever heard of an angel called Fran?’ I said.

‘I read about one called Eric,’ said Amber solemnly. ‘A girl kept reading the name Eric around the place and her spiritual guide told her that must be what her angel was called.’

Even Amber joined in our laughter.

‘It’s finished,’ Zac said quietly a few days later. Amber and I rushed over to look. I couldn’t believe how beautifully he’d reconstructed the face. It had been a complicated process that involved creating a moulded clear glass backing plate to hold it, the original pieces painted and seamlessly stuck together with special glue. Then he had slotted the whole window into a bronze frame.

Now, using a board, we helped him transfer the heavy window onto the light table. Zac flicked on the switch and Raphael shone in all his golden glory.

Amber yelped with delight.

From the tips of his gold wings, folded to a point above his head, to his sandalled feet amidst grass and flowers, he was perfect; a tall, long-limbed figure clad in gold and white, flowing blond locks framing his calm, slightly smiling face. One hand was raised in blessing and, right at the bottom, the inscription
God heals
stood out as clearly from the window’s ruby border as it must first have done a hundred years ago. The crack was hardly noticeable.

‘Well?’

I broke from my reverie. Zac smiled at me, waiting.

‘He’s amazing. I can’t believe it’s not the original.’

‘It is, mostly. And anyone who needs to strip it down again in the future for any reason can.’

I picked up
The Angel Book
from a nearby worktop and flicked through the pages. Zac had meticulously noted every detail of every step of his reconstruction, including drawings and photographs, descriptions of new glass and lead, of the composition of paints and resins he’d used. The whole thing had taken him five weeks.

‘And under the lead here,’ he bent to indicate the bottom left-hand corner of the window, ‘I’ve painted
Minster Glass
. And there’s the piece with Philip Russell’s Celtic knot, so future generations can blame us if needs be.’

‘There’s nothing to blame us for,’ I said, shaking my head in wonder. ‘Zac, it’s beautiful, superb. Jeremy’s going to love it.’

He was fiddling with the camera again now, so my attempt to hug him got a bit confused. For a brief moment though, he hugged me back and I felt his breath in my hair, smelled the saltiness of his skin. I stepped back, both of us a little startled.

‘Thank you,’ he said, smiling. ‘I hope Jeremy doesn’t have the same reaction.’

Jeremy came that afternoon, walked around the angel several times and then finally said, ‘It’s magnificent. Thank you.’

During the following days, we had a steady stream of parishioners making a pilgrimage to the shop to see the window. They all agreed that it must be installed in the church. Now we had to wait for official permission.

I often found myself going over to study the angel, feeling the force of that calm, strong gaze. How close, I wondered, had Zac managed to get it to the original? Perhaps we’d never know.

Somehow life is bigger after all

Than any painted angel.

Oscar Wilde,
Humanitad

L
AURA’S
S
TORY

It was nearly the end of July when Philip Russell asked Laura to accompany him to the Grosvenor Gallery in New Bond Street, to see Burne-Jones’s sensational new painting:
The Golden Stairs
. She’d never been there before. At first, her attention was caught by the Sunday crowds and the olive-green rooms cluttered with furniture and ornaments, even before she contemplated the paintings.

As they stared up at the huge, glowing picture, Laura wondered at how ethereal, how spellbinding these barefoot women were, endlessly descending their mysteriously suspended staircase. Here was mysticism of a different kind from the awe she felt in her father’s church. What would James Brownlow think of it? She couldn’t imagine that her father would like or even try to understand this faintly pagan scene. But nor could she name the deliciously disturbing feelings the painting inspired.

Philip explained in a whisper about the faces–that one was Mr Morris’s daughter May, the girl in profile at the top Mr Burne-Jones’s own child, Margaret. Laura imagined what it must be like to be made famous in a painting. It was a form of immortality her father would definitely disapprove of, she decided.

From further down the room there came a ripple of female laughter. A tall woman in a flowing sage-green robe, all embroidered with birds and flowers, peeled away from a cluster of ladies around an Alma-Tadema painting, and Philip gave a little gasp. She was a real beauty this one, Laura thought, with that head of glossy dark curls tamed into a knot at the nape, fine sloe-black eyes, a long straight nose, perfectly moulded lips, and a lively expression. The woman’s gaze darted around the room and came to rest on Philip. For a moment she grew perfectly still, then she moved towards them. To him she said gently, ‘Philip, are you well?’ and placed a graceful hand on his arm. He seemed agitated.

‘Marie. Yes, I am quite well, thank you. This is Miss Brownlow.’ The woman’s eyes passed over Laura’s face and figure briefly, without interest. Laura’s cheeks burned.

One of Marie’s companions called out, ‘Mair, have you seen the King Arthur?’ and she murmured, ‘Goodbye, so nice to see you…’ As she moved away Laura noticed the row of iridescent buttons marking the languorous movements of her spine.

‘Was that…?’ she muttered, turning to Philip, already knowing the answer.

Russell nodded, tearing his eyes from Marie and blinking furiously as though waking from an enchantment. ‘My wife.’ He looked around wildly. ‘Now, there’s another work will interest you,’ he said, pulling her roughly into an adjacent room.

‘Don’t.’ She felt like a pet on a leash.

Everything was ruined.
I want to go, I want to go
, thrummed through her mind as she drifted past painted faces and landscapes, hardly registering artist or subject. She remembered the way Marie had dismissed her, a dowdy brown-feathered bird next to her own exotic plumage. When Philip suggested they leave, she dumbly assented.

They walked across Green Park, where mist was rising from the grass. Russell was plunged so deeply in thought that he answered Laura’s lame attempts at conversation with monosyllables.

On reaching Victoria Street he seemed to stir from his melancholy. ‘You haven’t seen my studio, have you?’ he said. ‘Some artists open theirs to the public and I’m wondering whether I should. Come and tell me what you think.’

‘I should go home. My father…’

‘Please, come with me. I don’t want to be alone.’ He patted her arm in a clumsy affectionate way that brought with it a heartbreaking sense of her brother Tom, and she relented.

‘Only for a minute then.’

‘It’s not far. Down Wilton Street, here, towards the river.’

He drew her past the railway station down into a maze of whitewashed terraces bathing in hazy late-afternoon sunlight. Caged birds sang by open windows. A little girl leaning on an upstairs sill waved to them. Laura waved back. Further on, from the depths of a drawing room, could be heard the opening bars of a Bach Prelude being played over and over again, the unseen pianist tripping up at exactly the same place each time.

In Lupus Street the houses were gay with flower boxes. Philip led her to the steps of number 13, then up a staircase to the top of the building where a huge attic with a north-facing skylight served as his studio.

Canvases of all shapes and sizes lined the walls. On a table a sketchbook lay carelessly open. She glanced at this, then at the small canvas on an easel under the skylight. Her dismay deepened. Everywhere she looked was Marie’s face. He could not possess his wife in person; instead he’d trapped her image, over and over again.

She backed away towards the door, reaching for the handle. ‘I shouldn’t have come.’ Her voice sounded too loud in the echoey room.

‘Why not?’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I cannot advise you about opening your studio. Or…compete with your wife.’

‘My wife? What is Marie to do with you?’

‘Philip, she is everywhere. Look.’

He stared around the room like one enchanted, then stepped over to the easel and gently touched Marie’s painted cheek. He’d evoked her as some wild spirit, Laura thought–a river nymph, perhaps. His hand dropped to his side.

‘All this…’ she gestured to the portraits ‘…makes our friendship intensely painful to me. There is no room for anyone else in your life.’

‘I need you,’ he said, his voice harsh with emotion. ‘Even my old friends neglect me now. Don’t you, also.’

‘But you must see. You don’t really care for me, you care for her. I’m…someone you talk to about Marie.’

‘We talk about all manner of things. Laura, I’m dismayed that you find our friendship painful.’ He came to face her now, took her hand. ‘How cold you feel,’ he said, warming it in his. ‘I find I can talk to you without needing to think.’

She made a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. ‘That does not flatter me, Philip.’ She pulled her hand away.

‘Oh, I didn’t mean…I just meant that I feel at ease with you. Not constantly guarding my tongue as I am with…Marie.’

And yet you don’t notice me, not really. You don’t see me as you see her. You don’t draw me constantly, as you do her
. These thoughts shouted in her head but she didn’t dare give them voice. To hide her distress, she picked up a little wooden bird from a shelf by the door, cradled it warm and round and safe in her cupped hands. This was what she was meant for: to comfort; not to disturb or excite.

When she was calmer she said, ‘Philip, you must learn to forget Marie. Not forget her altogether–I don’t mean that. She’s your wife and the mother of your child. But you must learn to distance yourself from your loss. It’s been over a year. She won’t come back. You will drive yourself mad if you cannot accept this. Think of the damage you do to your son.’

His face turned to stone. For a moment she feared she had said too much.

‘I cannot forget her, as you ask. Any more than your family can forget Caroline.’

‘That’s different,’ Laura sighed. ‘Caroline is dead. We’ll never see her again in this life.’

‘At least she died in the full knowledge of your love for one another!’ he cried out. ‘You have that satisfaction.’

‘’Which makes us miss her all the more!’ Her own voice was raised now. ‘No, I don’t mean that,’ she added quickly, seeing his distress. ‘Only that you can’t compare the two losses. But I do know that our duty is to be thankful for what we have and to make the best of what we are given. And I think our angel will help us do that. When he is finished.’

‘He
is
finished,’ Philip said. He wandered back to the easel where Marie’s face looked out.

‘What did you say?’

‘I meant to tell you earlier. Your window is ready. You may come and see it when you like.’

‘Philip, that’s wonderful!’

‘I thought you would be pleased.’ He took the painting from the easel and placed it in a drawer. Then, with slow, deliberate movements he gathered up all the other portraits of his wife and piled them in a cupboard. Laura watched, amazed.

Closing the cupboard, he turned to her and smiled. It was a dazed, unhappy smile, as though at last he was struggling to wake from the spell Marie had cast.