Bird Inside

by Wendy Perriam

  She began to move the largest sheets, handling them as boldly as she dared, though forced to pause each time, as she tried to judge their colour, decide on where they went. She glanced across at Christopher, who was now standing on the stepladder, reaching halfway up the wall, repainting the face on the cartoon. He wasn’t checking up on her, seemed to trust her totally, apparently unworried about his precious costly glass. She liked the fact they were working as a team; must aim to copy his own drive and dedication, somehow make him proud of her, surprise him with her skills, and also prove to Isobel that she’d been wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

  She started sorting all the smaller pieces, collecting them together, so that she could grade them into colours; surprised by their odd shapes, their veined and rippled textures; some like hazy cloud forms, some like swirling rivers. She felt almost like a child, who’d been entrusted with a new expensive toy – the same sense of gloating pleasure tinged with apprehension, for fear she’d break or spoil it. She hated throwing out the fragments, which, despite their tiny size, still seemed too rare and lustrous to toss into a rubbish box. She dithered for some time over a small but very chunky piece in a dazzling pinkish red, which appeared to glow and smoulder, as if she’d snatched it from the embers of a fire.

  ‘Christopher,’ she called.

  ‘Mm?’ he said, not looking round, his head tilted at an angle as he reached up to paint the hair.

  ‘I don’t know where to put this bit. There’s nothing else quite like it, either in the boxes or the racks.’ She stood beneath the ladder, held it up to him.

  ‘You deserve a medal!’ he exclaimed, leaning down to look. ‘I’ve been searching for that piece for months. It’s a bit of streaky gold-pink, the most expensive glass you can buy. I got it from this amazing chap who’d been working in stained glass since the age of twelve or so, and eventually took over from his father. I knew him pretty well, and when he died at ninety-three, his son allowed me first refusal on all his stocks of glass. I bought some really choice pieces at half the trade price. This particular piece is probably Edwardian.’ Christopher shifted on the ladder, so he could hold it to the light. ‘See how thick it is? That makes the colour richer and more concentrated – so delicious I could eat it.’ He laughed, raised it to his mouth, pretended to be chewing.

  Jane realised from the growlings in her stomach that it must be well past lunch-time. Would lunch be scraps of glass – red for meat-course, pink for pink blancmange, washed down with dirty paint-water? The artist’s mind seemed far from food. ‘It’s like the inside of a rose,’ he said, still fixated on his jewel of glass. ‘You know, those damned great damask roses which are so intense in colour they seem to be alive and almost hot. Hey! I’ve just had an idea.’ He grabbed his brush again, turned back to his cartoon, started changing some small detail in the border.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Jane was trying to watch, but his arm obscured her vision.

  ‘I’m going to put you in the window – not just your face, your name.’

  ‘What name?’ asked Jane, confused; moving round, so she could get a better view.

  ‘Well, Rose, of course. I’ve got these little blobs of colour dotted round the border, but I’ll turn them into roses in your honour. It’ll be a private thing between us. As far as Isobel’s concerned, they’ll be just another symbol – and, actually, they’ll fit extremely well. I mean, roses have always been associated with eternal life – lush and blooming in a perfect endless spring. The Romans used to plant them in their funerary gardens for just that very reason, or scatter them on graves.’ He squeezed more paint from his tubes of black and white, dabbing at his palette, mixing with his brush. ‘And their thorns are meant to signify pain and wounds and blood, which all tie in well with Tom’s job as a surgeon. But as far as we’re concerned, Rose, they’ll be there for you – your emblem – and a pretty potent one; the flower of love, of feminine perfection, the flower most praised by poets, artists, writers, mystics, lovers – and my own small way of making you immortal.’

  Jane turned away to hide her face, which must match the blushing glass. Was he teasing her, or mocking, or could he mean it seriously? She struggled for a moment between elation, pride and guilt – guilt because she wasn’t Rose. Writers, artists, mystics, lovers, hadn’t deigned to mention Jane. Should she own up now before he worked a sham into the glass? He might be really furious if he found out later on, realised she’d deceived him, that her name meant ‘plain’, not feminine perfection. ‘Christopher, there’s something I should …’

  ‘Pass the sketch up, can you, Rose. I need to check the top part of the border.’

  She went to fetch it for him, checking it herself first, noting that the little dots of colour went all around the outside of the window, to form a lively abstract border. If he changed them into roses, her emblem would sing out, define the two tall lights. And if the Angel had her face and hair, then it would almost be her window. Isobel might be putting up the cash, but was that really as important as serving as the model? Why shouldn’t she be Rose? She had chosen it herself, and Christopher could render it official. It could even be a new start in her life. Isobel had urged her to phone her parents, tell them she was safe; even consider going home to try to make her peace with them. Far better to stay here and be made immortal in a window. Stained glass endured for centuries, defying wind and weather, whereas everything she had left behind was precarious and crumbling, likely to capsize.

  ‘Thanks, Rose,’ the artist muttered, as she handed him the sketch, and she stood a moment, silent, as if to accept her formal christening, while he drew a second rose-shape, a rough but robust-looking flower with a splint of thorns supporting it.

  ‘I suppose it’s the paradox of roses which has always fascinated people – I mean, a flower of such great beauty on a savage thorny stem. It’s a bit like light and darkness, or joy and suffering – one pointing up the other.’ He outlined one last leaf, then flicked the water off his brush, spattering the floor. ‘Saint Ambrose claimed that before the Fall, roses had no thorns, and it was only Adam’s sin which put them there.’

  ‘D’you think there really was a Fall?’ Jane reached up to take the brushes from him, helped him put his paints away.

  ‘Oh, yes – no doubt about it. Man’s a fallen creature. Maybe not the apple and the serpent, but some other foul temptation in another squandered paradise. Mind you, it gives me quite a kick to think we’re fallen angels. I’d rather be a Lucifer than some unfallen bloody drone. Right, can you do your ladder bit again – hold it nice and steady while I pin my cutline on top of the cartoon.’

  She wondered what a cutline was. He always assumed she was familiar with the terms; seemed to take it as read that anybody reasonably intelligent could make a stained-glass window, or at least understand the processes. He darted to a corner of the studio, returned with a tall roll of what looked like tracing paper, and as he climbed the ladder with it and let it hang down from the wall, she noticed that the outline of the window-shape had been drawn in on the paper, plus a series of thick lines running horizontally across it.

  ‘What are those?’ she asked, pointing to the lines, which had been ruled in bold black pencil, every foot or so.

  ‘They indicate where the saddle-bars will go.’ He saw her frown, shrugged a shade impatiently as he realised she was none the wiser, maybe even more confused. ‘Saddle-bars are metal supports which go across the inside of the window, and are drilled into the stonework on each side. The glass panels are tied to them with short lengths of copper wire, which are soldered to the leads, then twisted tightly round the bars to hold them in position. They stop the glass from blowing out, or buckling.’ He paused to ram a pin in, hard, sucked his smarting thumb. ‘Stained-glass windows are always made in sections, each panel roughly three feet high. It goes back to the Middle Ages, when everything was based on what a man could handle comfortably. The same holds good today, of course. You couldn’t lug a ten-foot panel up a ladder or
a scaffold.’ He sweated down his own ladder, stood a pace or two away from it, eyes fixed on his cutline.

  ‘I always rather enjoy this bit, and in one way you could say it’s the most crucial stage of all. I’ve got to think out how to break the window down, decide where I want my leadlines, then trace them on this paper. It’s important that I get it right, because, apart from defining the images, and giving tension to the whole design, it’s the leads which hold the window together. I also use the cutline when I come to cut all the individual glass-shapes. And, later on, the glaziers use it too, when they’re leading up the panels. It’s their guide as well, you see, helps them position everything exactly in its place.’

  She didn’t see, decided to admit it. ‘Look, I’m sorry to be thick, Christopher, but I’m getting rather muddled. I’m still not really sure what a cutline is – or leadlines, come to that.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, leaning back against the ladder. ‘Let’s start at Isobel’s front door. Remember that glass-picture she’s got set in to the upper half – that tiny autumn landscape with the sunburst?’

  Jane nodded, liked the picture. It seemed appropriate for Isobel to have a cheerful yellow sun blazing on her threshold, regardless of the rain or gloom beyond it.

  ‘In the building trade, that sort of thing is known as leaded lights, but in fact it’s a basic stained-glass window, and you’ll see them all around the place, in pubs and public libraries, and in hundreds of private houses, from Victorian times right through to the thirties.’ Christopher was fiddling with the pin-box. His hands seemed always restless, unless they were busy with a cigarette or paintbrush. ‘Next time you’re at Isobel’s, look closely at her door, and you’ll see the picture’s been made up of lots of little pieces of different coloured glass, held together with strips of lead – rather like a mosaic, except the leads are actually part of the design. And because those leads are so important, you need to mark them on the cutline, so that they outline the shape of each separate piece of glass. It’s quite a tricky process, since you have to think out several things at once. I mean, every piece must be manageable in size, so it fits into the kiln, and has no awkward curves or angles, which are difficult to cut. And of course you’re considering scale and colour, not only in themselves, but in relation to the building, and the setting as a whole. And then you have to decide whether you want a leadline to break across a form, rather than define it, and what width of lead you’ll use. I’ll show you in a moment, when I’ve made a few decisions as to exactly where I want my leads.’

  He swept out to the kitchen, returned with two large cans. ‘Want a beer?’ he offered, ripping them both open, so that they frothed across his hands.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, wincing at the bitter taste, as she copied him by drinking from the can. She would have preferred a chicken sandwich, or, better still, the late but lavish lunches she’d enjoyed at Isobel’s. Every meal at the Mackenzies’ had seemed a wild amalgam of breakfast, dinner, tea – eggs served up with chocolate cake, pork chops after muesli. She smiled as she remembered.

  ‘You look pleased with life.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I am.’ Her own words startled her. Why should she be pleased with life when she was a runaway, a stray, her whole world overturned? Yet it no longer seemed to matter quite so much. This studio was now her base, and Christopher her mentor – or almost more her team-mate as they stood swilling beer together, like two relaxed and equal colleagues. She felt happy in his studio, liked its mood and atmosphere: the faint and subtle smells of linseed oil and dust; the way the winter sunlight fell in bars across the floor; the browns and greys of barren fields surrounding it, contrasting with the coloured glass inside. And each week she’d get her pay, which was a huge relief when she’d been faced with the grim prospect of slow starvation or begging on the streets. The pay was only basic, but it was cash in hand, which would save her from officialdom, and she had bed and board thrown in. She also liked the fact that she was learning, moving beyond her parents’ way of seeing things myopically, with no long-distance view. Christopher’s keen vision swept angels from the sky, penetrated sunbursts. He was still glancing at his cutline, gesturing with his beer-can as he talked.

  ‘When I first started working in stained glass, the leads seemed horribly frustrating, a real constraint which tied me down, but I gradually found a way of using them expressively, not just to allow a change of colour, but so they’d play a part themselves in the whole impact of the window, make it more active, more alive.’ He drained the last few drops of bitter, wiped his mouth. ‘You see, any stained-glass artist worth the name is aiming at a sense of spontaneity, despite the technical restraints. The images mustn’t look inert, or imprisoned in the window, but should move as the light moves, one flowing into the other.’ He tossed his beer-can in the bin, fussed back to his cutline, as if he already regretted having wasted four whole minutes; busied himself with flattening out the bottom, repositioning the pins. ‘It’ll take me a good week or more to make this pair of cutlines, and it’s no good trying to rush it. Stained glass is a slow, laborious business, with several distinct stages. You have to take each one in turn, submit to the rhythm of that particular process, give it all it needs in terms of time and patience. It’s a different thing entirely when you’re working on a canvas. I’ve known some artists who can knock off a small landscape in an hour, but any two-light window will take at least three months, and double that if you include the whole design stage. And yet it must look fresh and vigorous, not laboured.’

  Jane glanced up at his back. Laboured was the last word she would use. Everything he did seemed energetic, lively – even now, his movements deft and quick. He looked boyish from behind; his slim hips outlined by the jeans, his hair stubborn in its thickness, as if it had obstinately refused to thin or disappear, as most men’s seemed to do once they had passed the age of fifty. He adjusted one last pin, jumped down from the ladder.

  ‘It’s funny, really, most modern ways of making things have speeded up dramatically, yet stained glass has hardly changed at all since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They didn’t use a paper cutline, or have fast efficient kilns like ours, but almost all the other processes were just the same as now. In fact, if a medieval glazier were to stroll in here, he’d probably feel perfectly at home. Though he might be rather envious of my carbon-wheel glass-cutter, ask if he could swap it for his rough and ready grozing iron.’ He laughed, strolled down to the sink, to empty out his paint-water, rinse his dirty brushes.

  Jane glanced round at the door, as if she half-expected some thirteenth-century craftsman to come barging in, sleeves rolled up, to help. She sincerely hoped he wouldn’t. That was her prerogative, and she was jealous of her role. She watched the artist sorting through his pencils, sharpening one or two, selecting a clean rubber, about to start his tracing.

  ‘While I’m doing this,’ he said, ‘you can clean the screens, scrape off all the plasticine, and give them a good wash. Then after that, perhaps you’d do some phoning for me. I’d like you to get on to the photographers and tell them … Damn! Who’s that at the door? They’ll break the bell if they lean on it like that. Go and see, will you, Rose, and unless it’s anyone important, say I’m out – okay?’

  The doorbell pealed a third time. Jane felt strangely nervous as she walked out to the passage. Would she come face to face with some smug medieval glazier, or Mrs Harville-Shaw, or a policeman sent by Isobel to march her back to Shrepton?

  The man whistling on the doorstep was neither medieval nor a bobby, but a burly balding hunk in twentieth-century jeans. ‘I’ve brought the glass,’ he barked, cocking his thumb at his Transit van which was panting just outside. ‘If the guv’nor’s in, could he give me a hand?’

  She rushed back in to Christopher, who didn’t even stop his drawing. ‘They’ve been quick,’ he commented. ‘I wasn’t expecting a delivery till Friday at the soonest. Good job we had a clear-up.’ He climbed down from the ladder, sauntered to the do
or, pencil in his hand still, as he nodded at the driver. ‘My assistant here will help you,’ he said, gesturing to Jane. ‘Just bring the glass right into the studio and stack it round the walls. Okay, Rose, can you supervise?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, flushed from Bass and pleasure, and accompanying the driver to his van. Christopher had called her his assistant, told the world – or at least one weighty member of it – that she was officially his helper. Isobel was wrong again – there was masses she could do – clean screens, stack glass, supervise deliveries, phone photographers. Best of all, she had a role and purpose; was involved in a project which might endure for a millennium, when petty things like parents were long since dead and gone.

  ‘You an artist, too, then?’ The driver started unroping the glass, which was stacked vertically, on end, with corrugated card between each sheet.

  She didn’t answer. He wouldn’t understand. She might not be an artist – yet – but she’d become model, symbol, helpmate, pupil, all in one brief morning.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘I’d divorce any man who played Birtwistle in my house.’

  ‘Come off it, Viv, he’s one of Britain’s most celebrated composers.’

  ‘Sez you, John.’

  ‘Sez the music critics of The Times, the Independent, Music Weekly, the Sunday …’

  ‘Oh, shut up, you two. You’ve been bickering all evening. Adrian, can’t you split them up?’

  ‘Okay. Anything for peace. Christopher, be a sport and sit next to lovely Viv, and John move down next to Rose. In fact, let’s all change places, then we can chat to different people. They did that at a dinner party I went to just last week – swapped seats every course. I got quite dizzy in the end, but it did mean I’d talked to everyone by the time we reached the After-Eights.’