Bird Inside

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘Where is she?’ she asked coldly, glancing round the studio. Her rival was bound to be a female – some skilful fellow artist, voluptuous and enchanting, working tête-à-tête with Christopher, while she returned to camping out, jobless and a nomad.

  ‘Here.’ He touched her arm. ‘Take your coat off, Rose, and that extraordinary new outfit you’re wearing underneath it, and be back down here in five minutes flat in your oldest working-clothes.’

  She rocketed to the bedroom, returned in Rowan’s jeans and a cardigan of Isobel’s, found the artist tearing off the wrappings from a tall and bulky parcel. ‘Right,’ he said, pushing back his sweater sleeves, and revealing forearms tangled with dark hairs. ‘I’d like your help tacking up these cartoons on the wall.’

  ‘What cartoons?’ she asked, already baffled.

  He hauled a roll of paper from the parcel – stout white paper, tightly furled and standing four foot high. ‘This is a cartoon. It doesn’t mean a comic strip’ – he grinned – ‘but a photographic blow-up of my original design. When you make a window, you start with your design, or sketch, which is your blueprint, so to speak, and which you draw to scale, in colour – say, an inch to a foot. Then you get it blown up to the full size of the window, and from that you make your cutline.’

  She tried to concentrate. What she was seeing in her mind was not a photographic blow-up, but the strip of bare brown flesh which had appeared between his sweater and his low-slung hipster jeans, when he’d leant towards the parcel – just an inch of naked back, which somehow made her nervous. She wished he had more clothes on – a vest, a coat, a suit of armour – something to protect her from the idea of his nakedness – those dark hairs on his forearms now sprouting on his chest, even creeping down his stomach …

  ‘You also need the cartoon to trace important details on the glass – say a face, or an inscription, or a fold of drapery.’ Christopher was opening up a stepladder, a tall one with a wooden platform-top; shinned swiftly up it, one arm round the roll. She was surprised by his agility, the way he seemed so little hampered by his load.

  ‘You have to work in sections with a window so damned big. This is the main middle section, which I’m going to pin just here – not too high, otherwise it’s difficult to reach. Can you foot the ladder while I lean across? That’s it. We’ll start with the left-hand light, and then tack up the right one. Now, I want you to tell me if it’s absolutely straight, Rose – no dipping down to one side.’ He pinned the top two corners, then let the roll unfurl. ‘Pass me some more drawing pins. They’re down there on that ledge.’

  She dropped a scattering on the floor, clumsy from sheer nerves. If she was to work as his assistant, then she had to prove herself, and this was her first trial. It was hardly any test of skill to hold a ladder steady, but any minute now, he might faze her with some daunting task.

  He dismounted from the ladder, moved it over a foot or two, to fix the right-hand light, then clambered down a second time, still eyeing the cartoon, but stepping slowly backwards, so he could view it at a distance. She followed both his steps and eyes, stopping with a sense of shock as the blur of random lines suddenly transformed into a figure. The lines had meant little to her while she’d been standing right up close – just a jumbled disarray of shapes she couldn’t quite decipher. Now a powerful soaring creature, half-human and half-bird, seemed to scorch up to the sky; streaming hair uplifted, wings of feathered steel. Its bottom half was missing, and it was sliced off at the forehead, but even so, the effect was overwhelming. The studio was once again alive – electrified, dynamic.

  ‘The Resurrection Angel,’ Christopher informed her, his whole attention fixed on the cartoon. ‘It’s quite a challenge nowadays to make an angel convincing, avoid those sickly stereotypes the Victorians went in for, poncing in their nighties or mooning over lilies. I’ve tried to catch the essence of an angel, refine it down, remember it’s a spirit – something higher than mere man, a sacred intermediary between this world and the next.’ Jane was startled by his tone. He sounded like a devout committed godman, not the atheist and cynic he had claimed to be before. How could he believe in angels, or in another higher world, when he’d dismissed such things the day they’d met as childish wishful thinking? Yet his Angel was so supercharged, it compelled belief, demanded it; seemed indeed a spirit with more power than its creator.

  ‘What happens at the top?’ she asked. ‘Do you have clouds or sky or …?’

  ‘I’ll show you on the sketch,’ he said, tugging open the middle drawer of a sturdy wooden chest, and bringing out a drawing mounted on black card.

  She could see the whole design now – his Resurrection Angel complete with feet and forehead, but in glowing jewel-like colours, and looking like a miniature compared with its huge copy on the wall. The word ‘sketch’ seemed far too casual for this careful detailed drawing, enclosed in a two-light window shape, complete with tracery. It looked a work of art itself, the Angel’s potency undimmed, despite its modest size.

  ‘The sketch is really crucial,’ Christopher was saying. ‘All your ideas and energy go into the design, whereas the glass itself just interprets those ideas. And you keep it handy right through the whole process, refer to it continually, because you can never see the whole of the window all at the same time – at least, not when you’re working on this scale.’ He handed her the drawing – reluctantly, she sensed, as if he feared to lose control of it. ‘The whole project stands or falls on this design. It’s how you present your window in the first place, not just to the donor, but to all those crass committees, who may try to modify it, or even turn it down. Frankly, I won’t compromise. I have to do what I know and feel is right, and if the philistines don’t like it, they can …’ He made a hostile gesture, to fill in for the words; continued talking, now pacing up and down.

  ‘But you’re still constrained by other things – especially the architecture itself. St Mark’s is fifteenth-century, and it’s always rather tricky trying to fit a modern window into a building so much older; match the ancient with the new. And the south side has its own particular problems. The light’s most changeable that side, and also most intense, which affects your choice of colour. Too much red or yellow and the whole thing looks too hot – maybe even crude.’ He glanced back at his sketch again, as if rechecking his decisions. ‘I’ve used mainly blues and greens, which I feel are right symbolically. Blue’s a spiritual colour, which gives the feel of sky and space, suggests heaven and a higher world; and green’s for Resurrection – spring, rebirth, and so on.’

  ‘How long did it take?’ Jane asked, admiring the gradation from a perky lichen green beneath the angel’s feet to a streaky slatey hazy blue, which finally misted into the white and gold of heaven. ‘I mean just to do the sketch?’

  ‘Only a couple of weeks of actual drawing, but a heck of a lot of thinking out beforehand. I kept it sort of simmering in my head, pushing images around, or mulling over colours, when I was in the bath, or driving, or cutting glass for someone else’s job. I sometimes even dreamed about it. One night, I saw the Angel in a dream, which gave me the idea of having it break across both lights. That provides a sort of jolt, you see, unifies the window, draws both sides together.’

  ‘The Angel’s like a bird,’ said Jane, examining the wings, which seemed to lift off as she watched.

  ‘Yes, deliberately. Birds are symbols of the soul – and spirits again, spirits of the air, the spirit freed from the body, so it can soar up into heaven, and therefore very apt in Tom’s case. And, like angels, they’re commuters between this world and the next. In fact, they’re sometimes used as messengers of angels. I tried to fuse the two – create a bird with a human face, and with hair as well as wings. Birds are such intense things. They have a very high body temperature, as high as a hundred and ten degrees, and amazingly fast heart-rates, especially when they’re flying – over a thousand beats a minute for a small bird like a tit, and double that for a humming-bird, which is really quite inc
redible.’ The artist seemed intense himself, speaking with a vehemence he never used in normal conversation. Did he identify with birds – their vitality and speed, the way they fought for space and freedom, fought against enclosure or any clipping of their wings; always vibrating with alarm and nervous energy? She compared her own quiet father, whose safe job in insurance was something passive and routine, never galvanised him, roused him, and who lived tamely in his cage at home, content with seed and water, and a few simple plastic toys.

  ‘I’ve put three small birds down here, as well.’ Christopher leant over, pointed to the border at the bottom of the sketch, beneath the Angel’s feet. ‘They’re all resurrection symbols – the phoenix because it rises from the ashes; the eagle which renews its plumage by flying up to the sun, and the dove holding out a palm branch, which means victory over death.’

  Jane couldn’t really recognise the species. They’d been simplified, abstracted, only made explicit by their emblems – the fire, the sun, the palm. She was beginning to feel a total ignoramus; had never understood before how much thought and knowledge went into stained glass. Up till now, it had been nothing really more for her than a few stuffy saints in simple standard colours.

  ‘The birds relate to Tom, as well,’ Christopher explained. ‘The phoenix stands for mercy and compassion, because it won’t eat any living thing, or even tread on grass or plants. The eagle is said to have dominion over all the other birds, and so represents authority and power, and the dove is peace and gentleness. Thomas was a gentle soul, active in the peace movement, but also had the power and skills of a top-rank medico. He was also maddeningly untidy, rather mean with money, and hopeless with his kids. But since the window’s in his honour, we only stress his good points.’ He laughed, fumbled for his cigarettes, which were squashed in his back pocket. ‘I took the eagle from the surgeons’ coat of arms. It’s the crest of their Royal College, so it’s relevant twice over. Isobel suggested the serpent twined round a staff, which is the symbol of medicine in general, and is also included on the surgeons’ coat of arms, but I didn’t want the thing to get too cluttered. Mind you, I’ve done enough serpents in my time. They’re symbols of so many things in so many different cultures, you could write a damned great book about it.’

  He leant back against the wall, exhaled a curl of smoke as he studied his cartoon again. ‘I’m still not happy with the face. It’s not quite strong enough. Sometimes, when you get your sketch enlarged, a few details just don’t seem to work. Perhaps I’ll have another bash at it before I make my cutline.’ He suddenly turned to look at her, eyes full on her face, his Marlboro drooling ash as he appraised her hair and features. ‘I’ll use you as my model, Rose. You’ve got good bones, and the sort of hair an angel would be proud of.’

  She flushed right to that hair. ‘But I look a mess, and I’m wearing my old clothes and …’

  ‘Never mind your clothes. It’s your eyes I’m more concerned with. I like the way your eyebrows sit. Eyebrows are important, even for an angel. Move nearer to the window, please, and sit sideways to it, could you, so your face is half in shadow. No, don’t drop your head like that. Look straight at me, okay?’

  He went to fetch his sketch-book, pulled a stool up close to her, stared at her intently before making his first marks. All her imperfections seemed to swell and shout; the mole on her right cheek, the tiny spot which had erupted on her chin last night and now seemed hot and huge; the split ends on her hair, which needed trimming. And yet he’d praised her hair, praised her bones, her eyebrows. She felt suddenly important. The Angel-bird would have her face. She’d be included in the window, turned into a spirit, a messenger between two worlds.

  She tried to sit as still as possible, make her expression worthy of an angel; not fret at Christopher’s scrutiny, but simply look right through him, as if she were gazing into heaven. He didn’t say a word, just kept on drawing vigorously and swiftly, his charcoal squeaking on the paper, one piece even snapping. She was aware of a new bond between them – he duplicating her, in charcoal – or perhaps even recreating her, like God. She had his whole attention now, and the silence in the studio seemed to emphasise the importance of the project; make it almost spiritual, as if they were both in church, or involved in some strange rite.

  ‘That’ll do,’ he said, at last, laying down his pad and squinting up at the cartoon. ‘I may need to have another shot, but these will get me started.’ He went to fetch tubes of paint and brushes, while she examined her own face, surprised by it, yet flattered. Although he’d caught her likeness, he had transformed her mood and character, made her both more strange and more exciting; exaggerated all her basic features – her full mouth gaping wide, her deep-set eyes looking haunted and half-lost beneath jutting jagged brows; her hair alive, electric.

  Christopher was swarming up the ladder, setting down his painting things on its sturdy platform-top. ‘This may take some time, Rose. I want to change the hair, as well. Hair like yours is rare. I should have met you earlier, when I was grappling with my original design.’ He leaned down to touch the hair, pick up one long strand. She stood rigid and embarrassed, uncertain what to do. Was this just another part of his artistic scrutiny, a closer reappraisal of the shade and length and texture of her hair, or an advance she should rebuff? She felt chained to him by the fetters of her hair, chained by something else – something much less tangible, which both baffled and alarmed her. He gave her hair a final teasing tug, then let it go, at last. ‘While I’m working, I’d like you to start clearing away the glass. I left it around deliberately, so you’d get the hang of handling it, and learn where all the different pieces go.’

  ‘But won’t you need it for the window?’

  ‘Maybe some of it, but I’ve ordered new glass, chosen it specifically. Choosing the right glass is all part of the job – and a vitally important part. Anyway, I like to clear my studio before I start on a new job. It’s essential to be disciplined when you’re working in stained glass. It’s a very dusty, bitty sort of process – chaotic, you might say – so you have to keep things orderly and tidy, so you can lay your hands on exactly what you want.’

  Jane said nothing. He sounded like her father. She was scared she’d let him down, also frightened of the glass itself; worried that she’d break it, or even cut herself. It was all around the studio – large sheets propped against the walls, smaller bits and pieces lying on the worktops, fragments crushed to powder, or ground into the floor.

  The artist prowled down from the ladder, seized a sheet himself, as if too impatient to wait for her to start; calling out instructions as he returned it to its rack. ‘Any whole or half-sheets put back in these racks. They’re all marked with their colours, but if you’re not sure about a certain shade, then ask. The smaller offcuts go into these boxes, again sorted into colours. And all the really tiddly bits, just sweep up with a brush and dump in here – which is what we call the cullet box. I suggest you wear a pair of gloves until you’re more used to handling glass.’

  He tossed a scrap of blue glass in the box, then turned his back, started rooting through a cupboard. ‘Come here,’ he ordered curtly, as if he were summoning his dog. She approached him apprehensively, flinched away as he reached his arms towards her. He had already touched her hair; was he trying now to grope her? She blushed at her mistake, as she realised he was holding out an apron, merely endeavouring to tie it round her middle. Even so, his hands felt very intimate, lingering too long as they fumbled at her waist. ‘That will help to keep you clean,’ he said. ‘Your clothes get really grubby working with stained glass, and you’ll find the fragments creep in everywhere – down your nails, in your hair, even in your shoes.’

  He was still standing very close to her, the prickle of his sweater seeming to chafe against her body, though she wasn’t actually touching it. She tried to edge away, felt disturbed and threatened somehow, as if he were dangerous like the glass. Did he really need her there as his assistant? Isobel had told her he ne
ver worked with anyone on principle; preferred to concentrate alone, without noise or interruptions; resented any invasion of his privacy. So why had he invited her to live, as well as work there, and why had she returned? After all, Isobel had offered her a bed, urged her to stay longer, promised she would help her find another, more appropriate job. Yet she had somehow felt suspicious of the older woman’s motives; feared she wanted the artist for herself.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’ll make a start.’ That provided an excuse for her to move, though he followed, with a pair of gloves, and a few final points about sorting tints and colours, and how she must hold them to the light to see them clearly.

  ‘Don’t look so terrified. The stuff won’t bite, you know. You need to just relax with it.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, wishing that were easier; wondering why she felt so tense; why he had that strange effect on her – a mixture of excitement, agitation, and sheer nerves. She pulled on the leather gloves, tried to fix her whole attention on the racks. She’d run through all their names first, then try to check the colours against the sheets of glass inside. The names themselves were strange, chalked in red above each rack – spoilt ruby, copper ruby, and something called streaky gold ruby, which was a vivid blue and fuchsia shade, with no gold in it at all. Even the whites, which she would have expected to be simple, confused her with their intricate varieties – warm white, cold white, seedy white and reamy white, green-blue-white, white opal. She admired their subtle shades – the palest, most ethereal tints of green or grey or amethyst, which seemed to fade still further when she held them to the light, so they were transformed to ghostly pearl, or watered silk.