It was lucky Nick had a ground-floor flat. Carey still didn’t know if he’d ever be able to walk without limping, but he was determined he was leaving the hospital without crutches and would dispose of even a walking stick as soon as he could.
‘Thanks, Nick. And I’ll be staying with you only till just after Christmas. Then I’m off up to Lancashire. That visitor you so nearly knocked flat when you arrived was the bearer of some surprising news.’
‘Did he want you to makeover a cottage for him?’ Nick asked hopefully. ‘As long as you delegate all the physical stuff to other people, you could take commissions to renovate cottages again, couldn’t you?’
‘No, it was nothing like that. He was a solicitor and he’d been trying to track me down for ages. In fact, a couple of those letters you’ve brought me are probably from him. He came down himself in the end and one of the neighbours told him what had happened and where I was.’
‘Not an ambulance chaser, is he? They can’t sue anyone if they don’t know who the hit-and-run driver was, surely? Unless you’ve remembered any more details about the car that hit you.’
Carey frowned. ‘Sometimes I get a sort of flash and think I can see a big silver four-by-four … but that might be totally unrelated to the accident. Concussion can have weird side effects.’
‘So, not an ambulance chaser?’
‘No, he’s a family solicitor – in fact, I suppose he’s my family solicitor now. It appears that my father had an older brother and now he’s died and left me everything, because I’m the last of the Revells … or the last of that branch of them in Lancashire, anyway.’
‘You’re an heir!’ exclaimed Nick, his deep-set black eyes suddenly burning like coals with excitement. ‘You’re rich beyond your wildest dreams and can invest lots of lovely lolly in Raising Crane Productions! We’ll make a TV documentary series that will blast The Complete Country Cottage right out of the water!’
Nick’s small production company, in which Carey had an investment, was doing well, but still looking for that big, elusive hit.
‘Don’t get too excited, we’re not talking millions here,’ said Carey, damping down his enthusiasm. ‘There’s a run-down house and not much money. Plus, there’s a resentful stepdaughter and her husband living in the Lodge, who expected to scoop the lot.’
‘Well, tough,’ said Nick unsympathetically. ‘How come you didn’t know you had an uncle?’
‘There was a big family falling-out and Dad ran off to be on the stage when he was still in his teens and never went back.’
The rest was history: Harry Revell, progressing via ENSA on to the post-war stage, had become one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of his generation. He’d married very late and died when Carey was eight.
‘Dad never told me anything about his family and if Mum knew, she didn’t mention it. I’ll have to ask her.’
His mother had been a young aspiring actress when she’d married Harry, and she’d returned to the stage after he died. Eventually she’d gone to America and made her name in the hit series The Little Crimes of Lisa Strange. She played a terribly English spinster who travelled round the country solving mysteries, assisted by her sarky female black American driver. It had been going for years and showed no signs of ever stopping.
Carey looked Mossby up on his smartphone, though there were few pictures and little information. It was a white stucco Arts and Crafts house, linked by an old square tower to part of the original Elizabethan building at the back. It was situated on a sort of bluff with terraces leading down to a lake and woodland.
‘It’s a stately home, all right!’ said Nick.
‘It’s not huge, but it’s a little bigger than I thought it would be. The Arts and Crafts houses were mostly built by the wealthy middle classes, and were more like overgrown cottages than anything.’
‘Well, it should be right up your street, anyway. And did you say it needed renovating?’
‘It sounds as if it’s been neglected lately,’ agreed Carey, and they looked at each other in sudden mutual understanding.
‘This could be just the fresh start you need – and a major opportunity for both of us,’ enthused Nick. ‘Carey Revell’s Mansion Makeover – a Raising Crane Production!’
‘It’s not a mansion,’ Carey objected, but his friend had the bit between his teeth now.
‘I can make a pilot – see who’s interested in a series – and I think there’ll be a lot of interest, because there’s the dual angle of you recovering from a serious accident and the whole unexpected inheritance thing … and then all the usual ups and downs of restoration, only on a huge scale.’ His dark eyes glowed again. ‘It could run to more than one series and it’ll give us both the break we need!’
‘I haven’t even seen the place yet,’ Carey cautioned him. ‘Hold on a bit!’
‘Doesn’t Angelique live somewhere quite near to this Mossby place?’ Nick continued, carried away on a tide of optimism. ‘If there are any windows to be repaired or replaced, that’ll be really handy!’
‘Yeah, I expect she’ll think just the same way you do,’ Carey said sarcastically. Angel – or Angelique, to give her her full and slightly ridiculous name – was his oldest friend. As students he, Nick, Angel and a couple of others had shared a house together.
‘My old gran used to say that as one door closed, another opened,’ Nick said, getting up. ‘She was right.’
Then he went off to deliver Tiny to Pooches Paradise, after Carey had rung and pleaded with them to house the dog, because last time Tiny had made himself unpopular by biting a staff member. They were going to charge double, and triple over the actual Christmas period.
He couldn’t tell them how long they’d have to have him after that. He assumed Daisy had already offered Tiny to all her friends and acquaintances before she’d dumped him, and he didn’t rate Tiny’s chances of being re-homed if he went to a dog rescue centre.
Carey decided to worry about that later. He got the photos of Mossby up on his phone again and an innate feeling that this was his place – somewhere he truly belonged to – tugged at his heart, taking him totally by surprise.
It was ridiculous to feel that way, seeing as he’d never even heard of Mossby till that morning!
Or had he? Now he came to think of it, the name did stir up some very distant recollection …
His eye fell on the heap of mail Nick had dumped on the bed and he spotted a letter addressed in Angelique’s familiar scrawl and sent via his friend’s address, as all her letters had been since the accident. At least Nick had always remembered to bring those.
He ripped it open, skimming the enquiries after his rehab progress and smiling at the small caricatures she’d drawn in the margins: himself wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy and one of old Ivan, who worked in Julian Seddon’s stained-glass studio, hobbling about with a slopping mug of tea in each hand.
She wrote that she was off to Antigua in a few days to stay with her mother and stepfather, who kept a superyacht in Falmouth Harbour, as well as having a nearby villa. Angel had always spent two weeks with them just before Christmas – he’d gone with her himself a couple of times, when they were students – but last year she hadn’t, because her partner, Julian, had been recovering from a stroke.
Carey thought Julian must be making a good recovery if Angel was leaving him to his own devices. Or maybe he had insisted, realizing she needed the break? When she’d been to see him in hospital last time she’d been in London on business, he’d been troubled by how worried and strained she’d seemed.
His conscience suddenly twinged: maybe he should have visited them when Julian first had the stroke, or even rung her more often since? But then, everything had been wiped from his mind by the accident, except recovering and getting out of hospital as soon as he could, preferably on two feet.
He smiled, wryly. Angel always joked that he only remembered her existence when he wanted her to work for free, making or repairing stained glass for one of t
he cottages featured on his programmes, but that was far from the truth.
Since she fell in love with Julian Seddon the summer after she graduated and moved to Lancashire to live and work with him, she might have left the centre stage of his life, but Carey was always conscious of her there in the wings. And he was quite certain she felt the same way about him.
Perhaps I should explain the events that led up to my first, unlikely meeting with Ralph Revell, which took place in my father’s glass manufactory in London, in early 1894 …
My mother had died early and though my aunt Barbara, who came to take charge of the household, did her utmost to turn me into a young lady, not even her best endeavours could keep me away from the workshop or stop my fascination with the whole art and craft of stained-glass window making.
My father was an intelligent man with a great interest in the arts and well acquainted with William Morris and his circle. Under their influence he had turned away from the modern trend of merely painting pictures on to ever larger pieces of glass, giving a dull, flat effect, and instead enthusiastically embraced the return to the purer artistry of earlier times. Smaller pieces of glass, made in the Antique way, uneven in thickness and containing irregularities, gave life, sparkle and depth to a window. The dark lines of the leading formed part of the design and there was need for only minimal overpainting.
I shared his enthusiasm and it became both my lifelong passion and my profession. My marriage turned out to be a brief, mistaken digression along the way, although in saying this, I realize I will be thought very unnatural. But so it was.
2
Clipped Wings
Angelique
Sunday, 7 December 2014
Eighteen months ago, before Julian had his stroke and our lives changed for ever, he was the owl who stayed up late into the night in his office/studio downstairs, while I was the lark, winging off in the early hours of the morning to the stained-glass workshop at the end of the garden. We were Yin and Yang, two sides of the same coin, and our lives were perfectly balanced and happy.
But all that had changed, literally at a stroke.
Now Julian slept so badly that he was often up before me and, on this particular morning, since I’d found the previous day extra exhausting, it was after eight before I groggily surfaced.
It wasn’t yet properly light and looked likely to be another gloomy, cold, grey December day, but Julian’s side of the bed was empty. I switched on the lamp and saw that his stick was gone from where it usually hung on the back of a chair within easy reach.
Bathroom? I wondered.
But when I slid a hand between the sheets there was no warmth where he had lain and the house was silent, except for the ticking of the grandfather clock downstairs and the occasional creak of wooden floors adjusting to the fluctuating central heating.
I felt the familiar scrunch of fear in the pit of my stomach.
Was he lying in a heap somewhere in the house? Or had he risen early and made his way to the workshop like he’d done the previous day, so that I’d finally had to fetch the wheelchair to bring him back, totally exhausted, frustrated and angry.
And could I really leave him for over a week to fly off to Antigua, even though, apart from the frustrated anger when his body refused to do what he wanted, his health now seemed quite stable?
He was so keen for me to go that I suspected he longed to escape my anxious eyes as much as the confines of his condition.
When I got up my second guess proved to be right. There was no sign of him in the cottage, but his coat and set of workshop keys were gone and the back door unlocked. When I opened it and looked out, he wasn’t lying on the path, and over the hedge I could see the glimmer of light in the large Victorian building that housed the famous Julian Seddon Architectural Glass Studio.
Of course, he could still be lying in a crumpled heap on the floor of the studio, but his condition had been so stable for ages that I didn’t really think so. In which case, it would be a repeat of yesterday’s scene: I’d found him attempting to use his almost useless left hand to hold down a piece of deliciously reamy yellow glass over the white paper cutline he’d laid on top of a light-box, while he ran the wheel over it with his right. But glass slides easily, and you need to exert firm pressure while you’re cutting …
The scrunch of the wheel incising a firm line across the surface of the glass, then the sharp tap underneath with the heavy grozing pliers, so that the break forms cleanly – these are some of the delights of the craft we both loved so much and took for granted.
His assistant, Grant, or old Ivan, who was officially retired but haunting the studio almost as much as when he was employed there, could have expertly cut the piece for him. As could I, of course, but I knew that wasn’t the point. He had begun producing his brilliant designs again, but he wanted to be part of the whole process – the cutting, the painting and silver-staining, the leading-up of the calmes with the smooth caps of solder on every joint … even scrubbing the soft, oily black glazing cement into the finished panels, and then polishing the surface with powdered whitening till glass and lead alike were shiny and clean.
He wanted to be part of the whole act of creation, not just the spark that ignited it.
I knew, because I did, too. We recognized that desire in each other almost the instant our eyes met for the first time in a mutual, consuming passion. We’d always been as much in love with that complete act of creation as with each other.
That day was Sunday and we always used to like having the workshop to ourselves at weekends. There was a magic to it, as if Santa’s elves had gone home and we’d sneaked in to play. I’d go down and potter about very early, checking on the kiln, if it had been fired, or working on ideas in the studio. Julian would appear later, bearing cheese toasties and I’d make coffee by the sink in the corner, before we settled in amicable silence to our work.
How distant that idyllic life seemed now! I felt weary that morning and found myself hugely reluctant to face whatever the day intended throwing at me. Or whatever Julian threw at me – I’d taken him warm pain au chocolat the previous day and that hadn’t gone down well.
So I had a cup of coffee, spread a thick layer of my own home-made raspberry jam over a doorstep of fresh wholemeal bread, and ate it slowly. I figured I might need the sugar for energy.
My friend Molly, the wife of Grant, who worked in the studio, had made the soft and delicious bread, while the jam tasted of warm summer days. Happier days.
I washed up and hung my mug back on the dresser. Mine had a picture of the Five Sisters windows at York Minster on the side, while Julian’s sported a Chartres Cathedral roundel like a brightly-hued kaleidoscope.
Then, finally, I shrugged into my quilted coat of many colours and let myself out into the dove-grey day.
The big workroom was lit but empty and I went through the half-glazed door at the end and found Julian sitting at his desk in the studio, writing.
His right side, his good one, was turned to me, and tugged my heartstrings with familiarity. Julian … his long, sensitive face had always reminded me of a dreamy knight from King Arthur’s round table. He was slender, quietly handsome, his dark brown hair silvered now, but his hazel eyes still shaded by long black lashes …
He was more than twenty years my senior, but we’d fallen in love at first sight. Age had never been a factor …
The love was still there, though recently I’d come to accept that the nature of that emotion had changed. It had happened subconsciously over many months, until the knowledge finally presented itself as a fact. Until then, it had been better not to think, just to scramble through each day, looking after Julian, while keeping the business going as best I could.
As our relationship had changed from that of lovers to reluctant dependant and carer, I knew Julian had found the situation just as hard as I had – more so, for he was such a private person and resented each indignity of illness. And it brought anger – I’d never seen him angry in
all our time together, until one day frustration welled up like a volcano and he shouted at me. Just for a brief moment his eyes had held the hard gaze of a bitter stranger. Since then, I’d learned to dread that look.
But there had been some physical improvement in the first months after the stroke. He could walk to the workshop, supervise Grant and old Ivan, design a window or glass installation, take on more of the running of Julian Seddon Architectural Glass again.
But he wanted to be the man he had been and by now he must have realized as well as I that things would never be the same again.
The role of nurse and then carer had not come easily to me and in the first months I’d been thankful for Molly’s help. She’d previously been a nurse, though she now made her living filling the freezers of select clients with healthy home-cooked meals, and Julian seemed to find her brisk, impersonal no-nonsense assistance more acceptable than mine.
But I was sure that love in some form still existed between us and would eventually settle into a new pattern – and if it that was more a thing of shared interests and long association, then that was the way most marriages probably went …
Though actually, we hadn’t married because I’d never wanted to, even though after ten years Julian had teased me about my having become a common-law wife, whether I liked it or not. I suppose I might have changed my mind if there’d been a child to consider, but we had been so happy and fulfilled together that we’d kept putting off starting a family …
I must have made some small noise, for Julian lifted his head and, to my relief, gave me a slight, lop-sided smile.
‘Hi, Angel. I’m making notes for my will.’
I could feel the answering smile freezing on my lips and my heart began to thump. ‘Your will? Are you feeling—’
‘Don’t panic,’ he interrupted impatiently. ‘I’m not doing it because I’m feeling worse. It’s just that I’ve been putting it off because it always seemed like tempting Fate, but now I think Fate already knows where I live, so I might as well sort things out.’
The House of Hopes and Dreams Page 2