The House of Hopes and Dreams

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘I do have business here, because my workshop will be carrying out any projects designed by you that were commissioned while you were still on the Julian Seddon payroll,’ he said, and I stared at him blankly.

  ‘But there wasn’t anything outstanding, only enquiries. We finished the last commission to my design before I went to Antigua and Grant told me Julian’s window for Gladchester had been packed off.’

  ‘When you left, you took cartoons, cutlines and design work from a cupboard I’d locked up, including two recent designs submitted for competitions.’

  ‘Oh, you’re not at that again, are you, Nat?’ I sighed wearily. ‘We’ve already had this out and you’ve been told repeatedly that Julian was happy for me to take private commissions or submit designs for windows and installations that weren’t to be made in his studio.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Ivan from behind me, and Nat gave him a dirty look.

  ‘I might have known you’d be here.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be? You fired me, didn’t you?’ Ivan demanded.

  ‘You can’t fire someone who isn’t employed by the business – you’d retired … and I bet HMRC would like to know Julian was still paying you while you were drawing a pension,’ he added nastily.

  ‘I didn’t do it for money, just for love of the craft – and you try proving different,’ Ivan said. ‘And don’t think to stir up trouble for Angel, either, because she’s paying me a bottle of beer a day and the tax man won’t thank you for reporting that.’

  ‘A bottle of beer? I think you’re barmy!’ Nat said, thwarted, then turned his attention back to me.

  ‘I’ve spoken to my solicitor about the items belonging to the business that you’ve taken—’

  ‘If by solicitor you mean Mr Barley,’ I interrupted, ‘then he told me he wasn’t going to act for you in any capacity once Julian’s estate had been wound up.’

  ‘That old fool should have retired long ago! No, I’ve got a different solicitor now. So you’d better return what you’ve stolen, or you’ll be hearing from him.’

  He looked around, eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘I expect you’ve got them stored here somewhere? If so, I’ll take them back now, and there were portfolios in the loft that are missing, too, not to mention all those sketchbooks from the studio cupboard.’

  ‘My sketchbooks? Are you mad? They date all the way back to my early teens and my whole life’s in there. They’re private,’ I declared so fiercely he took an involuntary step back.

  ‘I’d burn them before I let anyone else have them! And those and the artwork in my portfolios would be useless to you, because you can’t design windows in my style. It’s distinctive enough to be recognized if you tried to make something similar.’

  ‘That big roll of artwork and cartoons is my main concern – if you give me those now, then I might reconsider letting you keep the rest,’ he said magnanimously. ‘But I’m not going away empty-handed. Have you got them here?’

  ‘No, and I wouldn’t give them to you if I had!’

  ‘You’re a cheeky bugger, young Nat,’ Ivan put in scathingly. ‘She’s giving you nowt.’

  ‘You keep out it,’ Nat told him. He spotted the cupboards at the far end of the room and started forward. ‘I bet they’re in there – and there’s nothing to stop me taking my own property.’

  ‘I’ll stop you,’ I said, leaping in front of him and furiously brandishing the dripping paint roller. ‘Unless you want to be striped like a zebra, you’d better shove off back where you came from.’

  ‘Garry – Vic!’ suddenly bellowed Ivan at the top of his voice. ‘Get in here, quick!’

  From the way all the workmen piled into the room, I suspected they’d been listening, just the other side of the door: Vic, the electrician, and his mate, who were both necklaced in loops of cable, while the plumber, Garry, brandished an antique and dripping ballcock. His large and silent lad followed him in, carrying a huge spanner. They lined up on either side of me. It was like having my own personal A-Team.

  ‘Are you going peacefully, or shall I get my lad to put you out?’ asked Garry, making a sweeping and slightly threatening gesture towards the door, though I think he’d forgotten he was holding the ballcock.

  Nat’s eyes swivelled from the large spanner to Garry’s face and he must have decided discretion was the better part of valour. He slowly backed away.

  ‘I was prepared to be reasonable,’ he told me. ‘But you’ll be sorry, when you hear from my solicitor!’

  After he’d gone, we celebrated our victory with tea, while Ivan gave everyone a potted history of Nat’s perfidy, which I hope made his ears burn. Then I went up to the house to wash and change, seeing as the paint from the roller had run down my arm inside my jumper.

  The cleaners were just driving off as I arrived there, so everything was sparkling clean except me. I went up the backstairs to my room, but once I’d changed I came down the main one, where I found Carey sitting on a step, sanding the banisters, watched by Fang.

  I sat down next to him and Fang clambered on to my knees and tried to lick my chin.

  ‘I’ve just had a frightful scene with Nat,’ I said, and while describing what had happened I found myself shaking with anger all over again.

  He put his arm round me and gave me a hug. ‘You should have rung me – I’d have come right down, and sorted him out.’

  ‘It all unfolded so quickly, though it could have got nasty if I’d been there on my own. And messy,’ I added, thinking of the paint roller. ‘I don’t really think he’s got a leg to stand on – it was all empty threats – but all the same, I think I’ll give Mr Barley, Julian’s solicitor, a ring and run it past him,’ I said, and Carey agreed that was a good idea.

  Mr Barley was quite horrified when I described Nat’s visit and his demands that I should not only return my recent cartoons and artwork, but my portfolios and sketchbooks too.

  ‘He said he had a new solicitor and I’d be hearing from him!’

  ‘I was aware that he was placing his affairs in someone else’s hands, but in any case, I would not have wished to act for him.’

  ‘I feel I’ve been scrupulously fair in only taking what personally belonged to me, both in the cottage and the workshop,’ I said. ‘He even wanted the artwork for two recent designs I submitted to competitions, but I’ve witnesses to prove that Julian was happy for me to take personal commissions and enter competitions for windows that wouldn’t be made in the workshop.’

  ‘Most fortuitously, I can confirm that,’ Mr Barley said. ‘Julian and I had discussed how that aspect might change, should he make you a full partner or director in the company. He further mentioned it in a note to me, regarding the terms of his will.’

  ‘Then that must be conclusive? Nat has no entitlement to them?’

  ‘No indeed, though I suppose the portfolios and sketchbooks might be a grey area. Are they perhaps very personal to an artist?’

  ‘The sketchbooks are all very small – A5 – and date back to my early teens, so there are dozens of them. They’re more like visual diaries than anything, full of drawings, paintings, notes, cuttings, dried leaves, photographs of things I’ve found interesting … just reflections of what I was doing or thinking at any given point.’

  ‘A diary certainly wouldn’t belong to the workshop, so it’s an interesting point,’ he said. ‘Does anything in the sketchbooks directly relate to window designs?’

  ‘No, that’s not how it works, though things in them might inspire a train of thought that leads to a design idea.’ I paused, and then confessed, ‘I use much bigger sketchbooks too, sometimes, where I do more detailed work towards a particular window design. I always tear the pages out and put them in portfolios as I go along. But Nat will never need those because I’ve left behind the actual finished cartoons and cutlines for all the windows I designed for Julian.’

  ‘In that case, I think Nat would be foolish indeed to try and take legal action to recover any of those a
nd I expect if he really has consulted a solicitor, then he will have been told so. However, do let me know if you have any further communication with him.’

  I felt more relaxed after talking to Mr Barley and I hoped I’d heard the last of Nat, but all the same, I decided I’d keep my portfolios and sketchbooks in the studio at the house, except the most current ones, just in case …

  Carey and I spent a quietly companionable evening in the house studio, where he added the day’s notes, observations and pictures to his laptop and I checked up online about what I had to do to register my workshop for business, health and safety regulations and insurance.

  Of course, having worked with Julian for twelve years, I already knew quite a bit of this, but I’d never set up my own workshop from scratch before.

  Then I turned to googling glass suppliers. A whole host of firms making, importing or selling sheet glass had sprung up when the famous Hartley Wood glassmaking firm had ceased business years before and we’d had to find other suppliers. Some of the best flashed glass still came from Germany, though.

  Like Julian, I wasn’t keen on mechanically produced glass: it seemed soulless, even though it could look quite clever in modern installations. But on the other hand, I was quite intrigued by the more frequent use recently of fused glass, where either pieces of different coloured glass were melted together at high temperature in the kiln, or as blobs fused on to the piece of glass already cut to shape for leading-up. It had always seemed to me to be fraught with possible future problems like weakness and fracture, especially if the glass wasn’t annealed properly, but maybe I’d experiment with it in the future.

  I’d already had an email giving the shipping date for my kiln and it would soon be on its way … and suddenly I wondered if it would fit into the back room of the workshop without widening the door!

  Louis came over with Ivan on Saturday and he seemed gutted to have missed all the excitement of Nat’s visit.

  I told them what Mr Barley had said and then we went and measured the doorways into the room designated for the kiln, to see if it would go through. It would be a very tight squeeze indeed. The frame of the inner door might even have to come out.

  They left at lunchtime to go and watch some game – rugby, I think, though I hadn’t really been listening. I had lunch with Carey, once I’d winkled him away temporarily from his endless banister sanding. I had to admire it, first, though there’s not a lot you can say about sanding, except: ‘Oh – smooth!’

  Then I returned to the workshop to start unpacking my little hoard of Antique glass, which I’d been looking forward to. I held each sheet up to the light to see the colours and then wiped it, first with a damp cloth and then a dry one, before placing it in one of the large pigeon holes in the special wooden shelving unit. I made little labels for each one: Streaky Grey, Pot Metal Emerald Green, Flashed Ruby Red on Clear … an interesting Medium Blue Over Very Pale Green.

  It all took time, since every treasure had to be gloated over. I hadn’t even looked in some of the tea chests of glass I’d bought as job lots from firms closing down. In fact, I’d only just emptied the first box, when Carey rang me to ask if I was staying in the workshop all night, or intended going back for dinner.

  Ivan helped me unpack the rest of the glass next day, but Louis vanished after a while with Carey – a couple of his tree surgeon friends had arrived early that morning and they intended cutting up some of the fallen trees in the woods round the lake and trucking the logs up to the courtyard, where they could be stacked in an empty hay barn to season. Louis obviously thought this would be much more fun than washing glass, painting walls and window frames, or scrubbing shelves, and after a while I realized Ivan had taken his coat and vanished, too.

  I went out of the workshop and followed the sound of powerful saws down to the woodland, where I found all the men, including Clem, had formed a merry lumberjack party.

  There’s nothing like the sound of a chainsaw to attract the other sex: it’s like a bright light to moths.

  And since Carey’s fan mail arrived, anyone turning up to help outdoors was issued with one of his splendid collection of hand-knitted jumpers or tank tops to keep them warm, so the whole scene looked a bit like a page out of a book of knitting patterns for men, circa 1973.

  I did not enjoy the constrictions pregnancy increasingly imposed upon me and would be glad to have it over with, though I was starting to feel a certain curiosity about what my child would be like. Ralph only spoke of it as if it was a boy, but I would be just as happy with a girl.

  Honoria took a huge interest in the forthcoming child and was sewing a layette with the most exquisite skill. I wished Lily could see it, but since we were both in the same interesting condition, neither of us was able to travel.

  I found time to put the finishing touches to my coloured cartoon of the Lady Anne window. I still had no idea what the significance of the figures in the quarries around the central depiction of the old house could be, though I hoped it was more cheerful than the man in the flames at the bottom suggested …

  I might, perhaps, be wrong about that and it was a hayfield after all – and about the window having some kind of message. Yet surely those repeated sequences of motifs – like hanging drapery and flat roses in circles – must mean something? They did dimly make me think of something I’d seen in the old wing of the house …

  30

  The Big Wave

  Nat must have contacted his solicitor the moment he left me on Friday morning, possibly even from the car before he drove home, because I got a very scarily official letter on the following Monday, threatening legal proceedings if I didn’t return all the material belonging to Julian Seddon Architectural Glass that I’d removed.

  It was just as well I’d talked to Mr Barley, or it might have thrown me into quite a panic. As it was, it still slightly put me off my breakfast.

  I read it aloud to Carey and he said Nat was a fool to have wasted his money paying his solicitor to send such a letter.

  ‘I’ll post it on to Mr Barley, but I think I’ll just ring him first to let him know it’s on its way,’ I said, which I did as soon as his office opened. I felt rather guilty that he’d previously declined my offer to pay him for his help, but he’d assured me that he saw it all as part of the settling up of Julian’s estate.

  He told me that there was nothing to worry about. ‘Once I’ve explained the situation to Nat’s solicitor, and that I have written proof of Julian’s attitude in the matter, you are unlikely to be troubled in this way again.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ I said, but I still worried that I might be on slightly shakier ground when it came to some of the more recent sketchbooks and portfolios. I even contemplated hiding the lot in the attic, but I do like to have them handy, and anyway, Carey pointed out bluntly that I was making much ado about nothing.

  ‘Nobody’s going to turn up with a warrant to search Mossby and take them away,’ he said. ‘Even if Nat was stupid enough to tell the police you stole them, they have more important things to do than arrest you for taking your own sketchbooks.’

  ‘It does sound silly when you put it like that,’ I agreed.

  ‘From what you said, Nat seemed to be keenest to get hold of the artwork for the two competitions you’re waiting to hear about, Shrimp,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Have you wondered why?’

  I stared at him. ‘You mean … he might know something about one or both of them that I don’t? But I checked their websites the day we got broadband and neither of them had put the winners up.’

  ‘I expect they’d write to you, or email you the results too, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose they would … and I’d have used Julian’s workshop address. So, if they have, then Nat hasn’t passed the letters or emails on.’

  ‘Come on, let’s check them out again,’ he said, leading the way into the studio and standing behind my chair while I opened my laptop and turned it on.

  ‘Which one firs
t?’ he asked.

  ‘The children’s library transom window, because if I haven’t won that one, the design will be really easy to adapt for something else, so I won’t mind not winning so much. They wanted the subject to be Noah’s Ark, so Julian and I were both working on Noah-themed ideas at the same time.’

  It was just as well that I didn’t really mind not winning that one, because the prize-winner’s name was up – and it wasn’t mine.

  ‘But I know his work and he’s very good. He deserves it,’ I said. ‘Perhaps your theory was wrong, Carey, and Nat’s just being bloody-minded?’

  ‘Well, get up the website for the other, and then we can be sure.’

  ‘I hardly dare to look – it’s for that installation in a Brisbane shopping mall and I really want it.’

  I reached the site and scrolled down …

  ‘Well, that’s lucky, because you’ve won it!’ Carey said, leaning over my shoulder.

  I opened my eyes and my name danced in front of me – and when you’re called Angelique Arrowsmith, there’s never any mistake: it had to be me!

  ‘Congratulations, Angel!’ he said, scooping me bodily off the chair and whirling me round.

  ‘Be careful – your leg!’ I exclaimed, and laughing he put me down again and hugged me. ‘You’re as light as a feather – and aren’t you the clever one, winning the prize!’

  ‘I can hardly believe it.’ I went back and started at the screen, where my winning design was displayed in miniature under my name.

  ‘It looks interesting,’ Carey said, ‘but it’s too small to really see any detail. I assume you’ve got a copy of the design?’

  ‘Of course, much larger and in full colour. I’ll have to turn it into a cartoon and send it to them, then someone else will interpret that into a cutline,’ I said, my mind straying ahead to the practicalities of turning my idea into a reality. ‘The cartoon will be rectangular, but the freestanding frame it’s to be set into will have a gentle wave in it, which sort of goes with my design.’