'And he needs the money so badly,' went on Sharon, her words tumbling out headlong. 'His wife has arthritis, he has to do everything for her, and that rules out the usual working hours. But he makes arrangements for someone to sit with her so that he can take his Tech classes.'
Neil had gone rather red. 'I have no intention of "closing him down", as you put it, but it's idiocy to try and hold the evening class together by bribery! We must enrol keener students. What happens to the daytime courses depends on the co-operation I get from employers on the question of day release. They seem to be a lukewarm lot! That's the reason for my visit this morning.'
'Oh,' said Sharon in a small, deflated voice. Fantastic though it seemed to him, the girl had actually imagined he was here to check up on her qualifications to teach Embroidery and Design. And now, embarrassed, she was in a hurry for him to leave. But he wasn't going to let her off so lightly.
'Tell me, Miss Birch, how do you set about finding a design for a carpet?'
Flustered, Sharon replied: 'Usually by chance. I was reading a book on Louis XIV and there was an illustration showing him as Mars, god of war. It fascinated me. The Sun King. I kept turning back to it again and again ——- and that was the start. The rays of the sun, gold against bronze. It turned out a best-seller. An abstract design, of course.'
'Always abstract designs or flowers? Never birds and beasts?'
'There's an old prejudice. People hate treading on them! It's different in a tapestry which is meant to hang.'
'Ah! After the autumn bouquet we get a deer-park or a tree full of robins?'
She treated him to a look of cool dislike. "No, Mr. Haslam, after the tapestry my class will be doing quite a different type of embroidery.'
'Of course. Stupid of me… So you go all over the world for carpet designs.'
'Yes, we do. The carpet industry is on its toes. We exhibit all over the world, too.'
'And your man is just back from Paris. Your turn next?'
'Oh, that's for the lucky ones!' said Sharon in sharp envy, and then flushed. She hadn't intended her words to betray so much.
Neil studied her. His look held speculation and a hint of mockery. 'You've always lived in Roxley?'
'I won an art scholarship and studied in London. Then I came home and took this job to be with my mother. She… died last year.'
'I'm sorry. But wasn't it rather selfish of her to clip your wings after the very first flight?'
Sharon said quickly: 'No, she really needed me. Tony ——— my brother - had just decided to go abroad and I was all she had.' She added lamely: 'And jobs in carpet designing aren't all that thick on the ground.'
She could see him disbelieving that statement and resented his prodding more hotly than ever.
'So you must find your designs on the spot,' said Neil, and there was no hint of mockery now. He turned to the watercolour sketch of the little park. 'I like this. So many people must have walked past the park every day of their lives and not even seen it, then you come along with your new eye. It has the freshness of a child's drawing. Humour, too.' He moved over to the drawing board. 'This is next in line?'
'We've been asked to design a church carpet. These splashes of colour are a muted reflection of the stained glass and I'm basing the scrollwork on the choir screen of the abbey. It's of wood and beautifully carved. Worthy of Grinling Gibbons.'
'I haven't seen the abbey yet. But I promise myself I shall - and soon.' He made that characteristic wry grimace. 'As you would gather last night, I'm still finding my way around. Every inch tough going!'
'If you will go round putting people's backs up,' said Sharon.
'Believe me, I'd prefer to be friends.' His voice held an unaccustomed humility. He could hear it himself and it irritated him. It was as if the hellish loneliness of his office up there at the Institute, of his room at the Raven pressed upon him, urged him to seek some congenial human contact, the sort of casual ease that passed for friendship when you had cut yourself off from deeper ties.
Sharon Birch looked at him steadily. 'For that, you'd have to be willing to take us as we are.'
An impossible condition, when there were so many things here crying out to be changed! He saw she hadn't the slightest intention of being friends and she had succeeded in making him feel a fool. He retreated to the practical. 'Do you always work to this scale? Surely it's very inconvenient?' He indicated the huge sheet of squared paper, already partially blocked out in colour.
'All carpet design is done full scale, though the weaves differ. Persian carpets are so fine, they may have twenty tufts to the inch - Axminster only four or five.'
'And the girls out there?' He peered through the glass partition.
'They're copying designs worn out in the machines. They go over to that table in the corner to mix their colours and then run to Bernard, the overlooker, to get them approved. They're on piece rate and grumble because he gives easy patterns to his favourites. But he has an Irish way with him and somehow they end up laughing instead of crying!'
'I must learn the knack.'
'No. Just be fair. How could Amelia Frith possibly cope with a language laboratory?'
Neil was outraged. First Mr. Smart, now Miss Frith…
'Look, I intend those French classes to come alive. It's a dead language, the way Miss Frith handles it!'
'But you'll get nowhere by putting in machines that cost the earth. The students are shy, they simply need drawing out.' Her face kindled. 'I've just had a marvellous idea. If you called it a French club - not a class at all - with films and records and a friendly cup of coffee, Miss Frith would feel quite at ease and so would the students. They'd soon be chattering away. Oh, things would go famously!'
'Young woman, are you organizing me?' It came out in an angry bellow. 'I believe I may be allowed to run the Institute in my own way!'
'By computers instead of human beings!' retorted Sharon. Then suddenly she seemed to shrink together. 'I take that back. It was unpardonable. But you can see we wouldn't agree on anything.' She flung open the connecting door in nervous haste and called out: 'Bernard, you're to take Mr. Haslam down to the weaving shed and have him shown round.'
Their parting was abrupt and she felt utter thankfulness when he was gone. But the morning was ruined. For the next hour she was wishing passionately to be down there in the private office, hearing Frank Roberts - with his dark, dramatic Welsh face and lilting voice - talk about his Continental tour, show his notes and thumbnail sketches. And they hadn't sent for her! Certainly she could go down without waiting for a summons, but her pride was against it. Also there was the risk of finding Neil Haslam installed in Mr. Ben's most comfortable chair, glass in hand, cigar smoke hanging on the air, listening and putting in his word.
Once again, and with all her heart, she wished this hostile, critical stranger had stayed away from her beloved valley. A terrible restlessness seized her. She felt like someone in chains and even heard their ghostly clanking. The way Neil Haslam would look at it, she was stuck here in a rut - and from choice. A woman without ties, free to wander, the world her oyster… Well, let him think what he liked. The chains were real, but he couldn't know that!
How long would Tony hold down that job in Nairobi? He had been enthusiastic at the start, but that meant nothing. She had given her mother, during that last short illness, a most solemn promise that if it all came unstuck, if Tony landed in difficulties again, he would find a home waiting for him in Roxley. Every time she looked at her bank sheet and was tempted to some extravagance, she remembered that at any moment, out of the blue, might come that frantic cable for the fare home.
Up to now, it had been no hardship to live out her life in the Roxley valley. She had good friends. She thought instantly of Ben and Maud Hallsworth. They had been so wonderful when she and her mother had Tony's dreadful trouble upon them. And there was Miss Frith and, of course, Adam Kershaw. She liked her job, tedious though much of the work was, and wouldn't have dreamt of letting
Mr. Ben down by going over to a rival firm with her head full of Hallsworth designs. That would have seemed the worst sort of betrayal, under the circumstances. Her evening class had been a time of release and comfort. And if these women didn't achieve great technical skill, at least she offered them a shared delight, an eye trained to discover beauty in all its forms. Because that couldn't be assessed on certificates, it would pass Neil Haslam's comprehension, she thought scathingly. Mr. Cragill hadn't understood, either, but somehow that was quite a different matter. And he had given her a blessedly free hand!
At the weekends she went fell-walking with Adam or rambled alone by the river and in the woodland, and afterwards pinned down some moment of beauty in water colours or a collage, according to her whim. It had seemed to her a good life. Only when Frank Roberts went abroad for new ideas or Mr. Ben took their latest designs to the carpet fair in Stockholm did she feel this sudden, fierce ache to spread her wings. It was upon her now.
She saw herself through Neil Haslam's eyes: a Miss Frith in the making. Rooted in this valley for ever and fading like the bracken on the hillside while glorious adventures passed her by; becoming at last dull and timorous with nothing achieved.
Panic rose in her. The noon siren went and the copyists instantly downed tools and went off helter-skelter, giggling, squabbling, to lunch in the canteen. Today Sharon couldn't face it. She tugged on her old tweed coat, stuffed a sketch pad in one pocket and a sweet russet apple in the other, and escaped from her prison.
CHAPTER THREE
What magic there was by the river! No traffic passed near, it was a world Sharon possessed alone and entire. She scrambled down from the road and sat on a fallen bough overhanging the water to munch her apple, hearing the river's secret laughter over the brown stones, its love-whispers among the reeds. The banks were steep and clothed with woodland, a hundred shades of red or gold where sunlight glanced through the leaves, and all this triumphant colour set off by the tall, pyramidal pines standing dark among them. Higher up, the narrow valley opened out into a moorland clough with heather and bilberry, the whirr of grouse, the sad, desolate cry of sheep and curlew. Surely, Sharon thought, you couldn't come much nearer to heaven! A robin kept her company with its little clicking song and a fat thrush ignored her, too busy cracking open a snail-shell on a nearby rock.
This is my world and I love it with passion. Why then the restlessness, the heart-searching? A stranger had shattered the spell, wrecking even the calm of the riverside, as if his clumsy foot had set a steep bank of shale clattering down. She sprang up and went on walking.
There was a deep cleft in the hillside like a rocky wound filled up with brambles and little twisted oaks. It was a place that funnelled the wind and every tree was already stripped naked. Here, in a few weeks' time, the ferns would be frost-fingered; and here, too, the first snowdrifts would bank up. Through the bare boughs Sharon caught a glimpse of the abbey's ancient stone and was reminded that she needed to sketch a detail of the carved choir screen.
She slipped quietly in and sat in a front pew, sketching rapidly. The sun pouring in through tall stained glass windows threw shifting patches of colour upon the stone floor and she felt a thrill of elation because she had caught this so perfectly in her design. Solemn music hung in the air. Adam Kershaw was up there in the organ loft and the place seemed full of the thunder of God and the worship of the angels. Forgetting to draw, Sharon sat in a trance of colour and sound, gazing through the carved screen at the tomb of the first abbot of Roxley. It seemed to her that she took in beauty through every sense. The moment hung timeless and imperishable.
Then suddenly it was over. The music stopped abruptly, lights clicked off, feet rang on the stones. Adam Kershaw slid into the pew beside her: a thin, stooping young man with long bony fingers and awkward movements. He was careless in dress and his glasses had made a little dint on the bridge of his nose, as if he had the habit of nervously pushing them up and down. Even his hair looked as if he grabbed it in handfuls and gave it a good shaking, for it stood up untidily here and there and a lock fell across his forehead. To offset the look of moody rebellion, he had a smile of great sweetness. And he was smiling at Sharon now.
'What a pity,' said Sharon. Did I disturb you, or did you think the Toccata in D Minor was above my head?'
'You dear clot, of course I didn't. But a change of mood came on me when I saw you sitting there.' He reached out to take her hand and sent the sketch pad clattering to the floor. Grovelling for it, he knocked off a hymn book and sat up red and rueful. 'Anyway, it's late. I must get back or Uncle Ezra will have my hide. Figuratively, of course. It irks him that he can't belt me now! They say to suffer is an ennobling experience. But I can see Uncle Ezra corroding away inside. It's the helplessness.'
'I'd feel exactly the same. I couldn't endure to be dependent on anyone,' cried Sharon. 'I must always be free.'
Scarcely an hour ago it had seemed to her that she was in chains. Of course that was nonsense. It was her friend Adam who was tied hand and foot. An orphan, he had been brought up by an aunt and uncle - practical, narrow-minded people who had no use at all for the artistic temperament. They had come down hard on the soaring ambitions of a gifted, sensitive boy. He had shown an early talent for music and had taken lessons with Mr. Longford, the abbey organist. But at home he had to practise in a cold room, wearing his overcoat. Uncle Ezra even begrudged the piano tuner's fee. 'It's well enough for a beginner,' was the invariable comment when Adam hinted the old instrument had outlived its day. It was often cold, too, in the abbey; but he could lose himself at the organ, forgetting physical discomfort and the bleak outlook of the future. In his final year at school he had astonished everyone by winning an organ scholarship which could have led to great things. But there was no question of taking up the scholarship, he must make do with the empty honour. Uncle Ezra needed him at the wire works, which was down there beyond the railway at the 'bottom end' of the town. It was some consolation to be appointed deputy organist at the abbey. He had a few piano pupils and an evening class at the Institute. And he had the friendship of Sharon Birch. Since his aunt's death, she knew things had been increasingly difficult for Adam; and though she would lie awake at night, trying to seek some way out for him, there was none to be found.
'How is your uncle lately?' she asked now, sliding a hand through Adam's arm.
'Not much different. We're down at the works at eight prompt every morning because he has this notion the men will slack off if the boss comes in late. The housekeeper helps him to dress. We have breakfast together and he turns the air blue if the bacon is too soft or the toast too crisp, though the doctor warns him any emotional stress could bring on another stroke. Then I push his wheelchair up the ramp into the van and drive him to the works.'
'Where the air is blue, anyway,' said Sharon, wrinkling her nose.
Adam groaned aloud. 'How I loathe it! The noise, the clutter, the stench of hot wire being tempered in beer.'
'Not our favourite cocktail,' agreed Sharon. 'It's a pity water would make the wire too brittle.' Just to think of that smell turned her stomach over - and poor Adam had to live with it! 'Look, let's climb to the top of the clough on Saturday and smell the gorse. It's just at its loveliest.'
'Right you are, but I have a wedding at eleven. Decent of old Longford, isn't it? He knows the three guineas comes in mighty useful.' He rubbed a hand through his hair. 'And some time this weekend I'll have to get out a new detailed scheme for my evening class. I planned to cover the classical composers this term and go on to the romantics after Christmas - just touching on the moderns if there's any time left.' Suddenly he was grinning. 'I played them Fur Elise to illustrate something I was saying about Beethoven and one good soul on the back row wrote down Furry Leaves' He stopped laughing. 'Haslam wants me to widen the scope and bring in some choral work that will get the students involved. I thought we might do some madrigals and perhaps a couple of antique carols, and if that goes well I'll have the whol
e class down here to join the abbey choristers in the candlelight procession on Christmas Eve.'
'Adam, how wonderful!' Sharon's face, which kindled to every change of mood, seemed to reflect already that Christmas candlelight. 'How will Canon Wismer take it?'
'I should think he'll be delighted. And Longford is dead keen.' Then, glumly: 'But it may be no go. My class is dwindling fast.' He forced a more cheerful tone. 'Decent of the new head to give me ample warning.'
'Decent!' Sharon choked. Her thoughts were unsuited to an abbey. She slid along the pew and Adam followed her up the side aisle, past the small secret stair by which in the time of Roxley's glory the monks had come down from their dormitory to chant the night office. Under the Norman dog-tooth arch of the porch she began to speak rapidly. 'That class is your lifeline. And to think that a man who is almost certainly tone-deaf has the power… No, we can't let it happen. I'll join the class myself and coax Miss Frith to come with me. She won't write down Furry Leaves, but whether she can sing in tune is another matter! I've just thought of two people who can: Ruby and Hazel, two of our copyists. They're trilling all day long like a cage of nightingales, and what's more, they can harmonize.'
Adam laughed and stared. "You don't expect me to learn embroidery in exchange?'
'No, but you might well put in a session knocking together bookshelves with Mr. Smart. I'd thought 9f sending my students along to learn how to frame their tapestries or make little stools we could cover in needlepoint.'
Adam's grin widened. 'So we all take in one another's washing. But for Pete's sake, what's the big idea?'
Sharon wasn't sure herself. She had started out to prove some great truth to Neil Haslam and the thing had got out of hand. Wouldn't he smugly take the credit if all his evening courses, after an inauspicious start, flourished exceedingly? She resented his bulldozing tactics, his superiority. That was the heart of the matter. Put into words it merely seemed childish. She read that in Adam's indulgent smile.
Margaret Baumann - Design for Loving (1970) Page 3