The Crystal Cage

by Merryn Allingham

  Both men took stock of each other, and neither felt any liking. There was an uncomfortable silence following the polite handshakes until de Vere gestured them both to take a seat while he barricaded himself behind the fastness of a large mahogany desk. In contrast to his precise appearance, the desktop was amazingly cluttered: sheaves of plans fought for space with drawing implements and open books were piled one upon another. Tiers of shelving above the desk overflowed with files so battered that they leaked paper at every corner.

  De Vere struck at the silence. ‘You are only lately arrived in England, Royde, and may not know that Mr Renville is a most important dealer of Italian goods.’

  ‘The most delicate silks in the world and the very finest of Venetian yarns,’ Edward Renville interjected, his thin voice at odds with his appearance.

  Daniel de Vere coughed delicately. ‘Mr Renville has come to us with a most interesting proposal.’

  His tone suggested that such interest was muted. ‘Mr Renville intends to display his wares at the Great Exhibition, which is now only four months away, and is desirous of having an Exhibition space designed and built to show his goods to their best possible advantage.’

  Then to underline the importance of his words, he added for Lucas’s benefit, ‘The Exhibition is likely to be one of the greatest events of the century.’

  Renville nodded solemnly. This time he spoke at length and his voice was as clipped as it was thin, as though he were unwilling to give more time to each syllable than absolutely necessary.

  ‘My business is thriving, Mr Royde. Turnover continues to increase and I have little need to seek further business.’ He almost swelled physically as he made this claim. ‘However, as Mr de Vere has said, the Exhibition is likely to be one of the greatest moments of a great century. Such an important enterprise as Renville’s should not be absent. We need no introduction to the cognoscenti, but it is only right and proper that the rest of the world has an opportunity to know and appreciate our matchless quality.’

  The man is a pompous ass, Lucas thought. And why choose me for the dubious honour of working for him? His employer answered his question almost immediately.

  ‘Mr Royde is newly qualified but is an architect with immense potential. At the moment he is not engaged on a major project for us and therefore can give immediate attention to your requirements.’

  Lucas silently translated. This is a job that de Vere considers trifling and hardly worth the effort. But Renville is a new client who may offer more substantial work in the future and he is reluctant to turn him away. I am available and I come cheaply.

  Renville was now looking even chillier, his silver-grey eyes veiled in frost. He began flicking imaginary dust from his lapels in a gesture redolent with disdain; his body language signalled clearly that he considered he was being dismissed with an inexperienced assistant and that was not what he was used to. He looked likely to walk away.

  Eager to placate his awkward client, Daniel de Vere hurried on, ‘I think you will find that Mr Royde’s knowledge of the Italian states will add enormously to the project. He will be the right man to design you a fitting backdrop for your exquisite silks.’

  The visitor looked unconvinced, but then a calculating expression flitted across his face. ‘I had expected to employ someone a little more experienced, de Vere,’ he said, chopping at the words in his thin voice. ‘We will need to talk cost.’

  ‘Naturally,’ de Vere responded smoothly.

  Lucas felt vastly irritated. He might as well not be in the room. It was a bargaining process between two powerful men, and he was a simple pawn. Whether or not he wished to design for Renville was immaterial. He would have to. But despite its disagreeable source, the commission was sounding interesting. A display space created especially for the sensuous silks of Italy; he might even infiltrate his beautiful tiles into the design, and then the rest of the world, as Renville had put it, would see them at last. It might just be his breakthrough—a goodbye to the Gothic pillaging, the cramped cubicle, tea at ten thirty.

  ‘Mrs Renville will be in charge of the project.’

  They had risen from their seats readying themselves for the obligatory farewell but at this statement, both de Vere and Lucas blinked.

  ‘Mrs Renville?’ de Vere queried.

  ‘My wife,’ Renville said curtly, as though that explained everything.

  Then, seeing their blank faces, he said in a tone verging on the acerbic, ‘You cannot think that I would have time to supervise something so…’ and he struggled to find a properly dismissive word, ‘…frivolous. I have a business to run.’

  Daniel de Vere swallowed hard and when he spoke, a newly abrupt manner signalled that he knew himself to have judged rightly in delegating this small undertaking to the most junior of his staff.

  ‘The project will be carried out in whatever way you think fit.’

  ‘Good.’ Edward Renville drew himself up to his full height and looked through them. ‘Our dear Queen opens the Exhibition on May 1 and Renville’s must be ready. As it happens my wife is Italian and an artist herself. She will oversee the design and make sure that it is right for our merchandise. She has a sharp eye, not as sharp as mine, but sharp enough. Most importantly, she will ensure that the business does not incur unnecessary expenditure. In that she will have my full support, do not doubt.’

  The slightest of smiles creased the corners of his mouth. He seemed delighted that he had trampled any likely opposition. With this final admonition, he lodged his top hat firmly on his head and turned to shake hands with Daniel de Vere. Lucas was accorded a brief nod.

  ‘I will bring her here,’ he announced. ‘This afternoon. You will need to get started.’

  Both men looked taken aback. ‘No time like the present,’ Renville gave a satisfied grimace. ‘But before I sign anything, I will need to see the small print, de Vere!’

  He wrenched open the door to the outer office and stalked a pathway through the interested minions.

  ‘Well, Royde,’ de Vere said in a carefully controlled voice once their visitor was out of earshot, ‘You should hold yourself ready this afternoon for a visit from Mrs Renville.’

  Then as he made to return to his room, he added quietly, ‘Remember, they are the clients. They decide. But do try to steer the lady away from anything too elaborate. Something quite simple, I think, something quite modest. Yes, modest, that’s the word.’

  And his office door closed with what seemed a sigh of relief.

  Lucas wandered back to his desk, unsure of what to think. He had disliked Renville on sight, but if an architect only worked for those he took in immediate liking, he would starve. Had he not bemoaned the lack of satisfying work and daydreamed of a chance to show his skill and here was a commission? And here was a commission that opened up any number of new possibilities. He had been in England for only a few weeks and knew little of the Exhibition, but from a brief scan of the newspapers, he had a measure of its likely importance. Discussions in the press were frequent and wide-ranging: from arguments over admission prices to warnings against opening the Exhibition to ‘foreigners’ to moral panic whipped up by some of the papers that Hyde Park would be inundated by socialist demonstrations. The mere fact that so much discussion was taking place meant that a very large audience was expected. And that meant an audience for his work as much as for Renville’s goods. Realising this, he had begun to feel a thrum of enthusiasm, his decorative tiles dancing through his mind, a vibrant kaleidoscope of colour and shape.

  But then the blow had fallen. He was not to be free to plan as he wished, free to win over this admittedly difficult client to a striking and innovative design. He would have someone looking over his shoulder the entire time, and the end result would not be his. It would be a mishmash of ill-fitting tastes. Not only that, but it was a woman with whom he had to contend. He was to be supervised by a woman who was ‘artistic.’ It couldn’t get much worse. She would be one of those wispy, middle-aged females who had
taken up watercolour painting as an antidote to the crushing boredom of domestic life and she would be replete with unsuitable suggestions that he would be forced to pretend to take seriously. Then he would have the fight of his life to dismiss them, one by one, from consideration. And with Renville huffing in the background, he would be unlikely to win. At this moment even the Gothic seemed preferable.

  ‘Working for a woman, eh?’

  Fontenoy had come up behind him, unheard. Lucas was still astounded at the way news found its way around the office almost instantaneously. He didn’t reply, and Fontenoy went on with his teasing.

  ‘Now I wonder why DV chose you?’ De Vere was always known by his initials in the office. ‘Could it be that those blue eyes and that charming smile are likely to loosen the Renville purse strings?’

  ‘Don’t you get tired of singing the same song, Fontenoy?’ Lucas returned in some exasperation. ‘Having a female supervising the project will not make the slightest difference.’

  He lied, he knew. It would make it twice as hard. If she wasn’t fey, she would be a dragon desperate to exercise some influence on the world. Married to an autocrat stuffed full of his own importance, why wouldn’t she?

  Fontenoy raised sceptical eyebrows, and Lucas was goaded into defending himself.

  ‘Mr de Vere chose me to lead the project before ever he became aware that Mrs Renville was to be involved.’

  He might as well make it sound important, even though his role had already been downgraded. Fontenoy’s eyebrows stayed where they were.

  ‘It’s simple. I’m the logical choice. Renville sells Italian silks and I’ve spent the last two years in Lombardy.’

  ‘Ah, that would explain it, then.’

  His colleague gave a smirk and went back to his work, leaving Lucas feeling depressed. His earlier small enthusiasm had vanished and the Renville design no longer represented any possibility of advancement. Instead it was a dead end towards which he must trudge. He had no choice, he told himself; he was an employee and he did what his employer requested. But the opening of the Great Exhibition on the first day of May was beginning to sound like a date that couldn’t arrive quickly enough.

  * * *

  The summons came halfway through the afternoon when Lucas was indifferently leafing through the firm’s scrapbook of Gothic mouldings searching for new options to present to a dissatisfied client. His colleagues again looked up from their desks when his name was called and again were disappointed to discover that they were not to be party to the introductions. Like her husband, Mrs Renville had slipped in through the rear of the building.

  ‘Buona fortuna!’ whispered Fontenoy wickedly as Lucas made his way towards the office door.

  The blinds had been drawn against the afternoon sun, and it took some while for Lucas to focus in the darkened room. The burly outline of Edward Renville was the first shape to emerge. He was standing by de Vere’s massive desk, tapping the wood with impatient fingers. He looked towards the door as Lucas entered and made only the barest of acknowledgments before embarking on introductions.

  ‘I have brought Mrs Renville to meet you, Royde. As I intimated, the Exhibition space will be largely my wife’s concern. But that should not worry you—she will do a good job of overseeing the work. She has artistic flair and will be happy to advise, will you not, Mrs Renville?’

  Lucas looked at the woman addressed and felt his heart sing. She must have been at least twenty years younger than her uncompromising spouse, and a thousand times more attractive. She was bareheaded, and her long, dark hair was drawn back smoothly from an oval face and fastened into a knot from which one or two curls escaped with joyous abandon. Her heritage was betrayed in the smooth olive complexion and the soft brown eyes that even now were smiling out at him. Women’s fashions were often unflattering, he thought, even downright ugly, but the light blue silk dress Alessia Renville wore did nothing to conceal her beautiful form. In the warmth of the office she had unbuttoned her woollen cape and Lucas caught a glimpse of full but shapely breasts and a neatly nipped waist.

  When she spoke, the accent was hardly detectable. ‘I am pleased to meet you, Mr Royde. I am most interested in design, though I cannot pretend any expertise. But it will be a great pleasure to work alongside you.’ Her gentle voice seemed to reach into him and give a little tug at his soul.

  He stood as though rooted to a few square inches of floor, unable to think at all sensibly. He knew he had to pull himself together. This was a business meeting, and she was his client’s wife.

  He moved towards her and took her proffered hand. ‘It is a great pleasure to meet you, Mrs Renville,’ he said in a carefully neutral voice. ‘Our shared acquaintance with Italy is sure to result in a most successful collaboration.’

  Seeing a deep frown appear on Renville’s face, Daniel de Vere interposed. ‘Mutual experience will make for an excellent beginning, but naturally the collaboration will be an entirely English one.’

  ‘Entirely,’ Alessia Renville added unexpectedly. To Lucas’s ear her tone held a note of gentle mockery, but when he shot her a swift glance, her face was without guile.

  Her husband gave a loud harrumph and once more collected his hat from the desk.

  ‘We must be leaving,’ he announced abruptly. ‘I still have many hours of work before me.’ His disdainful glance dismissed the notion that this could ever apply to an architect. ‘And I must first escort my wife home.’

  ‘Of course,’ de Vere said smoothly. ‘Will Mrs Renville be coming to our offices for consultations? If so, I would be happy to make my room available to her whenever she wishes.’

  ‘Royde will come to our house,’ his uncomfortable guest stated baldly. ‘Next week, Thursday at two in the afternoon. Bring some ideas for my wife to see. Once she has agreed to them, we will make a start. The Exhibition site has been under construction since last September and is already well developed.’

  Lucas was confounded. Surely even this philistine must realise that it would take time to create a design that would perfectly display the beauty of the silks he sold. But there was little point in arguing. Edward Renville was a rich man who expected his demands to be met.

  ‘If the site has already reached an advanced stage, it would be helpful to know the precise location of the space that you have been awarded,’ he managed in a tight voice.

  ‘You will need to discover it for yourself. It is immaterial. What I want to see are plans—and quickly. Space at the Exhibition is heavily oversubscribed and only my considerable influence has obtained one.’

  Lucas gave up. The man was an ogre and a stupid ogre at that. He could not keep the contempt from his face, but before Renville had noticed the affront, his wife had collected her bonnet from a nearby chair and was holding out a gloved hand.

  ‘Till next Thursday then, Mr Royde,’ she smiled gently.

  ‘A giovedì,’ Lucas repeated quietly, holding her hand for just a shade too long.

  The unexpected music of Italian provoked a glowering expression in Edward Renville and without further pause, he ushered his wife through the side door and out into Great Russell Street.

  Chapter Four

  London, early February 1851

  The following Thursday Lucas left Great Russell Street promptly at half past one in the afternoon. The Renville house lay only a short walk away, but he needed time to compose himself before the meeting with Alessia. It had been dominating his thoughts for days; she had been dominating his thoughts. He had felt her presence constantly: the soft glance of liquid brown eyes, the rustle of blue silk, the faint trace in the air of what he now realised was jasmine. Each time he reached for his pencil to map out sketches for the Renville pavilion, she had been there following every line he drew. It had been difficult to concentrate on the task but by dint of spending every waking minute on the designs, he had come armed today with a small sheaf of drawings.

  The more he had thought of her, the more he knew the Renville space had to be an arbo
ur, almost a secret shrine. He had sketched the thinnest of marble pillars to enclose and demarcate the area and these he had wrapped in serpents of shimmering silk. They would support a roof, undulating and lined with glass, which would reflect back the beauty spread beneath. Swathes of the finest gauze would follow the line of the roof and act as a canopy over the central feature, which in his mind’s eye took the form of a bed. A large, circular bed. But he was not foolhardy and knew that if Edward Renville scented even a hint of immorality, his dismissal from the project would be instant. He guessed, too, that such a daring statement would not please Alessia either. Instead he compromised on a love seat, its cushions covered in rich silks. The exquisite tiles, whose design until now had occupied every hour of his free time, would be cast in gentler hues from the palest oyster to the deepest royal purple and strewn between the fragile pillars.

  As he walked, he went over the plans in his mind and for the hundredth time heard himself explain them. He decided that he sounded confident and professional and could only pray that when he met her again, he would not be struck dumb as he had in de Vere’s office.

  Prospect Place proved to be a small cul-de-sac, and the house, when he reached it, fulfilled his expectation of a prosperous, middle-class residence but one that stood in the midst of a row of grander houses, which like his own in Red Lion Square, had suffered the indignity of being divided into smaller lodgings. He opened an impressively solid iron gate and walked up the short path to Wisteria Lodge. The bay windows were hung with thick curtains and behind them a further layer of net. The doorway had been refashioned into a mediaeval arch and the front entrance was a massive brass-studded ebony door. It was frighteningly reminiscent of a fortified castle. He sounded the knocker.

  A parlour maid ushered him through a vividly tiled hall into a drawing room that looked out on to the street. It might have been a light and airy space but for the heavy curtains and overstuffed furniture. A cast iron fireplace and a large expanse of dark-stained wood took away whatever breath the room possessed. The sole saving grace, Lucas thought, was the delicate chandelier that hung from a central position, its fragile glass droplets gently swaying even in the still air. He placed the papers he had prepared on a small marble table and waited, hat turning in his hands. The clock ticked the minutes away. When the quarter struck, he began to wonder if he should leave. His presence might not after all be welcome today, but he could hardly let himself out of the house, and the maid had disappeared below stairs. He glanced at the servants’ bell but his courage failed, and he remained immobile.