‘The saddle-bars seem to be intact, thank Christ, and none of the glass has blown out.’
She tensed at that ‘thank Christ’, disliked the thought of godmen trying to be trendy, tossing in a ‘damned’ or two to show what sports they were. She turned away, leaned against the font, ran her hand across its pregnant underbelly, which felt smooth and clammy-cold.
‘The whole window was destroyed in the last war, and they asked me to replace it. It was my first commission, actually – caused me more sheer bloody heartache than anything else I’ve ever done, even windows twice the size.’
She stared at him, bewildered. Vicars preached sermons, didn’t make their own stained glass. ‘So you’re not the vicar?’
‘God, no! I’m an artist.’
‘You mean, you … you made that window?’
‘Yes.’
He made the ‘yes’ so matter-of-fact, he could have been talking about a piece of minor carpentry, some odd ledge or bookshelf he’d rigged up in his home, not a thirty-foot-high window, intricate with shapes, which dominated the entire west end of the church. How it was created she had no idea at all. She had never really thought about stained glass. It was simply there, like trees were there – something she took for granted without bothering to question. And if her parents took her out, it would be a day-trip to a wildlife park or motor museum, rather than a cultural tour involving art or architecture.
The artist was still peering at his window, concentrating now on the lower right-hand corner, which looked a dirty leaden grey, but might in fact be peacock blue, or the red of flames or rubies. She tried to see the window with his eyes, envied him the fact he knew its colours, didn’t need to wait for sunrise.
‘I was bloody lucky really to have my first commission almost on my doorstep, instead of having to flog five hundred miles or more to some godforsaken village in the wilds. I was friendly with the vicar, who liked the panels I’d just done for a stained-glass competition, and he put my name forward for the job – not that it helped, when it came to the crunch. The PCC hated my design, wanted all the symbols made more obvious. They’re total bloody philistines as far as modern art’s concerned, run a mile from anything that’s not tamely figurative.’
Jane didn’t dare reply, knew nothing about modern art herself. And who or what was the PCC? She’d never heard of them.
‘All we could agree on was the theme – the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost. But of course those fogies wanted Fortitude to be an angel with a flaming sword and Wisdom a Greek goddess with a scroll.’
She mumbled something vague, hoped he’d change the subject. The Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost were as much a mystery to her as the PCC, or saddle-bars.
‘I made that window a hundred years ago, but I’m still having problems now. A different set of philistines, but the same crass literal-mindedness. Though the donor’s got more sense, thank God. In fact, it was because she liked my style so much that she commissioned me to do another window – that one over there.’ He flung his arm out, gestured to the darkness. ‘It’s the first time ever I’ve been asked to do two windows in the same church.’
‘You mean, people just commission windows like … like …?’
She groped for an analogy. ‘Like ordering a birthday cake, or a McDonald’s takeaway?’
He laughed. ‘If they’ve got several thousand pounds to spare, and a hell of a lot of staying-power and patience. It’s over a year now since Isobel first approached me, and the window’s hardly started. Most of that time was spent going cap in hand, first to the vicar – a new one with no taste – then to that decrepit bunch who call themselves the Council, and after arguing the toss with them over every footling detail, we then had scores of new objections from the Diocesan Advisory Committee – another set of know-alls who see themselves as gods. The theme of this new window’s Resurrection. I’m beginning to feel I’ll need it personally, if and when the window’s ever finished.’
Jane was still gazing at the glass above her head, amazed he could have made it, that anyone could make it. How and where did he begin, or ever reach so high? ‘Will it be as big as this one?’
‘Not so tall, but wider. It’s a two-light window this time. Want to take a look at it?’ He swept along the side-aisle, walking far too fast for her, as if he were perpetually in a hurry, chafing at Diocesan Committees, or girls who tripped and blundered in the dark. Her other leg was bruised now, though she didn’t stop to check it. She could feel his impatience twitching through the church, as he stood on the south side, already lighting up the drab glass with his torch.
‘It’s plain glass here, you see, which should make things a bit simpler. If it was a question of replacing some smirking nineteenth-century saint or saccharine madonna, all hell would be let loose, especially if the donor was the worthy great-greatgrandfather of the chairman of the Council.’
Jane glanced around her nervously, as if the Council might be present, concealed behind the pillars, but recording these impertinences. His voice still seemed too aggressive for a church, his manner too offhand. She recalled the words of gentle hymns they’d sung at school assemblies, humble deferential words which flattered and cajoled. Wasn’t that the proper language for God’s house?
‘Isobel specially wanted a window on the south side. It gets a warmer light, you see, which gives the glass more life. That’s probably psychologically important to her. Her husband was an enlightened man himself, and the window’s a memorial to him, even a way of resurrecting him, I suspect. He died pretty nastily in a pile-up on the motorway. Ironical for a surgeon who spent his life patching up other helpless wrecks.’
Jane said nothing for a moment. It seemed disrespectful to make some trite remark, yet she almost envied the dead surgeon – to be that honoured, that exalted. ‘Gosh! I’d love a window when I die – to sort of make myself immortal.’
‘Well, you’d better start saving for it now. Something on this scale would set you back a good twenty thousand pounds. Or probably ten times that, if you live another sixty years.’
She grimaced in the dark, didn’t want money mixed up with immortality; had no intention of living sixty years. Old age was worse than death. She’d watched it at first hand. ‘I hate the thought of death. Just some horrid little plot in a faceless crematorium, and being burnt in a microwave with hordes of other bodies, and your ashes all mixed up with other people’s, and the undertaker grabbing back your coffin so he can re-use it for another corpse, and …’
‘I’m surprised you’ve thought so much about it at such a tender age.’
She bristled silently. Why did people always assume that because you were still young, you were casual, superficial, didn’t dwell on serious things? Even as a kid of eight, she’d been anxious about dying.
‘What are you, seventeen?’
‘Eighteen,’ she said fiercely. ‘Eighteen and a half.’ The half was an invention. She’d been eighteen just a month ago, celebrated with a big and showy birthday party, a present from her parents – the worst evening of her life. She was suddenly transported back – piano, drums and saxophone clashing in her head, the dance-floor tipping sideways as Uncle Peter’s whisky breath blasted in her face; his hot hand on her back, his seesaw voice belching out those crazy lethal questions.
‘What?’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear.’ The artist had stepped closer, his voice fused with Uncle Peter’s. She tried to disentangle them, smash up the whole party, as it had broken up in fact: guests shouting, sobbing, quarrelling, or sneaking out embarrassed to their cars.
‘I just asked what you were doing out at such an unearthly hour?’
She wished he wouldn’t question her. It made her feel uneasy, as if he already knew the answers, and was seeing if she lied. He had guessed her age within a year, yet they could barely see each other. Did he have some secret powers? She couldn’t tell his own age, not even the rough decade. She’d like to ask him outright, but that was not allowed. One rule for the young again. Anyway, he was still awaiting he
r reply. She mumbled something fatuous about not being able to sleep, edged a step away.
‘Name?’
She didn’t answer. He made it sound so rude, as if he were a sergeant-major; she servile, on parade. Or was he merely saving words, saving time again? Her nails were digging in her palms, in an effort not to snap. Sharp, like thorns. ‘Rose,’ she muttered suddenly.
‘Rose? Your name?’
‘Mm.’
‘Pretty.’
She could be pretty in the dark, could be almost anything – exotic, foreign, even royal or titled. She no longer had a name or an identity, so why not ditch the Jane and snub her parents? If they had called her something pretty in the first place, she might have grown to fit it. Rose was rather beautiful, so the artist had approved. Artists all loved beauty, and artists were as rare as vicars – rarer, actually. She had never met one in her life, not a proper one. Miss Mason had taught art at school, but she was very ordinary, wore anoraks and Hush Puppies, made lumpy garish collages out of silver foil and scraps of felt, not Resurrection windows.
‘Rose,’ she said again, trying to conjure up a surname which would harmonise and match it, impress him equally. She could feel her hair rippling down her back, twining into ringlets, her pale eyes flashing into black, her too-wide mouth a rosebud. ‘Could I commission a window – I mean, just because I wanted to, not for any husband or bereavement?’
‘If you’ve got the cash, why not? What sort of work d’you do?’
She paused, relieved he didn’t presume she was a schoolgirl, but reluctant to reveal her lack of role. ‘I’m … er … working out my future at the moment.’
‘I envy you.’
She glanced at him, perplexed. He’d sounded almost bitter, had switched the torch off, subsided in a pew. Darkness closed around them both, she standing in the aisle still, he sitting, shoulders hunched. She looked up in surprise at the faint cough of a lighter, its blue flame biting through the gloom, exposing his dark face; the dead point of a cigarette igniting, deepening, dwindling to a tiny glow of red. Smoking in a church? It seemed a desecration, an insult to his window, to the church’s congregation, its coffined dead outside. She also felt excluded. He hadn’t asked if she smoked. Rude again, demeaning, as if he’d dismissed her as too young for any vices.
The smell of smoke was quashing all the church smells, reminding her of death again – crematorium chimneys, cancer of the lung. He turned the torch back on, propped it on the seat beside him, used its light to scrabble through his pockets, draw out a scrap of paper which he bent into an ashtray. Her eyes tracked along the torch-beam to a swathe of dull grey floor, the fallen petals of some small red flower like blood-stains on the stone. The paving was uneven; the tattered pennant above it all but crumbling into dust. That was all she’d be herself in another sixty years or so – dust and ashes in an urn, a rose-bush in a garden of remembrance. She shrugged, sat down, chose the pew in front so she needn’t see him smoking, could restore the church its dignity and power. She looked up at the altar, the huge window poised above it, so dense with wings she felt it might take off. The moon was pressing close to it, stencilling in its shapes, not in their true colours, but in shades of yellow-grey. She could even make out some pale letters: ‘GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO’, running round the border of a halo.
She shut her eyes, so she could concentrate on glory – a whole vast congregation joining in a service – triumphant music, rich embroidered vestments, lilies, incense, choir. Great to have a faith, to conquer age and death; to be martyred even, die for something, burn for some huge cause, so you could rise above the hurts and disillusion. Jobs were so banal – the few she’d tried, or read about – withering in offices, decaying at some desk. They had tried to talk her into doing a degree, but university was only school without the rules – or different rules and even longer hours. She had yearned to work for some ideal, but ideals kept disappearing when you tried to track them down, and her stint at the Old People’s Home had been mostly bedpans, bedsores. You spent so long growing up, reaching double figures, fretting through your teens, waiting, hoping, fantasising, then landed up as computer-fodder serving a machine – worse, landed up as nothing, a question mark, a riddle.
They had done Keats at school, for A-level. ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty.’ Okay for him to say it, but try saying it yourself to parents or headmasters, and you were called immature, or arty, living in a dream-world.
‘That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ A blatant lie on Keats’s part. You had to know scores of other things – algebra, biology, how to use a database, how to set out your CV when you hadn’t really got one yet, how to seem intelligent at interviews, appear delighted by the prospect of just four weeks off a year and a subsidised canteen; how to build another life when your first one had been smashed.
She let her eyes drift open, saw feathered wings again. Did angels have CVs, or long vacations? Did they worry, feel alone? She heard a sudden noise behind her, turned round to see the artist rising from his pew, re-buttoning his coat.
‘Well,’ he said, shaking the now feeble torch, to jerk it back to life. ‘Now I’ve checked my window, I’d better check my studio. You’ll be all right here, will you, on your own?’
‘Mm,’ she answered vaguely, feeling somehow disappointed. She was back to Jane again – plain, of no importance, not a commissioner of windows, not a savage sultry Rose.
‘It’ll be light in half an hour. In fact, I think the sky’s lightening even now – just the palest glimmer.’
She shook her head, had almost stopped believing there was such a thing as daylight. She could see the sun lying smashed and mangled on some lonely narrow road, a victim of the storm.
‘Ciao then,’ called the artist, already halfway down the aisle, his footsteps seeming to play it like an organ, as the whole church boomed around him.
‘’Bye,’ she muttered, as she slumped back on the seat. He hadn’t even given her his name.
Chapter Three
‘Christopher,’ he said, as he slowed to check his right of way at a set of blinded traffic lights.
‘Not Chris?’
‘No, Christopher. No shortenings. It means bearer of Christ, which I rather like.’
‘But you just said you didn’t believe in Christ.’ It had shocked her, that remark. How could an artist making windows for a church be atheist, agnostic?
‘I said I didn’t believe in God. You can’t not believe in Christ. He’s a historical fact – well, Jesus is, anyway. As for Saviours and Messiahs, that’s something else entirely. Are you a believer, Rose?’
Jane tensed. Every time he used that ‘Rose’, she felt pleasure mixed with guilt, knew she ought to put him right, yet every time she didn’t, the name seemed more her own, changing her, inspiring her, paying out her parents. ‘I believe in believing,’ she began uncertainly. ‘At least, I think I do. I’m sure it makes you better, gives you causes and ideals, but …’ She shifted in the passenger-seat, gazed up at the horizon – a forest of Scots pines with hardly a single branch left, just naked stumps picked clean by last night’s gale. It was so hard to find the right thing to believe in, something huge enough. Her parents put their faith in petty things like punctuality, tidiness, and vague but pompous concepts such as Unselfishness and Honesty, which always had capital letters, but didn’t actually prevent them telling strings of small white lies, or refusing to give money to the homeless, on the grounds that it encouraged layabouts. They also believed in Education, which meant their only child must go to university, to reflect credit on them, move them up a notch or two in status, since they hadn’t been themselves.
‘Anyway, he was said to be a giant.’
‘Who?’ she asked, streaking back from Shrepton.
‘Saint Christopher.’ His mouth relaxed into a grin, which then expanded to a laugh. She was glad he could take a joke against himself. He was barely five foot six, which gave him four good inches over her, but was still short for a m
an. She’d been fazed altogether to see him in the light. He had returned to the church as its clock was striking seven, pounded down the path, scattering ‘damns’ and ‘blasts’, having only realised when he was halfway to his studio that he’d left the place unlocked, which meant at risk from vandals. He’d been surprised to find her there still, now wandering in the graveyard, offered her a lift. The lift was still in progress, a slow and dangerous drive, negotiating road-blocks, crawling round dead cars, their mangled bodies flattened by fallen trees and buildings. Only in the last half-mile had she felt confident enough to ask his name. But they’d been discussing other things, important vital things which sprang naturally from the carnage all round them; and he hadn’t sounded patronising, or made her feel she was too young or inexperienced to have opinions and ideas.
She still couldn’t tell his own age, though he was far older than she’d thought. She had been disappointed somehow to see he had grey hair – not greying, total grey. Yet it was thick assertive hair, standing up like the crest of some exotic bird above his lean lined face. The dark eyes she’d envisaged were lighter than her own, a different shade from hers, more steel in them than sky. She glanced down at his hands, gripped tightly on the steering-wheel; not the slim artistic fingers she’d imagined, but workman’s hands, blunt with dirty nails. They didn’t match the rest of him: the expensive camel coat and fine grey cords, the fastidious-looking features – narrow nose, neat mouth – the tidy brows, good teeth.
Her gaze moved to her own hands, down further to her creased and grubby tracksuit. He must have found her disappointing in his turn, once the light exposed her, revealed her as a drab and windblown Rose. Just as well she hadn’t got a mirror. She hardly dared imagine what she looked like, hadn’t combed her hair or washed her face for what felt like a week. She was worried she might even smell – of paraffin, or mouse-droppings, or maybe of the sea. The last few lonely nomad weeks had left their imprint on her, removed her from the sterile world of bubble-bath and hairspray.
Bird Inside Page 3