by Alex Monroe
The harder I tap, the more the petals curve up to take the shape of the punch. The outside petals twist wildly in various directions, but as I work on the inside petals they become more even. Each layer is then soldered together in the right sequence, the central petals forming a tight ball. It starts to take shape, almost what I’d wanted, but still there is something wrong, something alien about this ball of tortured silver. It’s like an insect from another world. Not gorgeous, but unsettling. Where’s the glamour in it? Where’s the brash charm? It’s hard to put my finger on what is wrong. But I realise this whole idea of the twisting petals just isn’t working.
I asked my mother recently why they chose such a vast, impractical house when they had no money and little chance of making any. She said it was because it had three staircases and she thought it would be great fun for us kids. Actually it had four.
They found The Old Parsonage off the main road in Woolverstone, an odd strung-out kind of village, with a school and a post office but no pub. The house was falling apart. It was the biggest in the village, with the exception of Woolverstone Hall, which at that point was a London County Council boarding school. The gardens of The Old Parsonage led down towards the river Orwell, and it was a short sail from there to Pin Mill.
As well as the many staircases, it had umpteen rooms. Along the eastern side they all interconnected on the first floor through a series of little antechambers, so a small boy could hide almost anywhere. There were attics, cavernous cellars, drawing, sitting, and dining rooms, halls, a school, a forge, stables, garages and I don’t know what else. Ever since the departure of the parson at the turn of the century, the house had been left to crumble, bit by bit. By the time my parents arrived, the gardens were far from spectacular, the tennis courts were used as goose pens, greenhouses had sagged and cracked and the orchards were long-legged and overgrown.
Suffolk was, in those days, very much off the beaten track. On the way to nowhere, it was still untouched by the rest of the world – just the place to escape the prejudices of 1950s Britain. Aldeburgh and Snape had become a bohemian retreat for an artsy crowd. Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears tucked themselves away there, and it certainly never occurred to me that there was anything unusual about the eccentric same-sex couples who used to come to tea with us. Why shouldn’t a woman wear men’s clothes and smoke with a cigarette holder? I’ve often wondered whether these unconventional, creative individuals were drawn to the area because of the remarkable lack of a middle class. There was nobody to pry or to gossip, and certainly no one to judge. The toffs were all completely crackers and sleeping with their sisters, while the common people were no bother – far too busy working and besides, it wasn’t their place.
The house was bought, but it had to be made habitable. Stuart worked his days in the office and spent every spare minute fixing up the old place. In 1964 The Old Parsonage was ready enough for the family to move in, two parents and four kids by this time. (Four years later one more, Tom, would arrive.)
I have an image of us with our decrepit 1926 Humber parked at the end of the long drive, piled high with luggage and looking like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang without the shiny bits. You couldn’t have called it a convertible because it didn’t convert. It simply had no roof and when it rained we all got wet. Just as well for the dilapidated garages you see behind, which would once have housed several grand carriages. Enormous black doors and small windows all milked up with cobwebs. To the left is the old forge and stables, with a hayloft above. A high wall joins the stables to the main house and there is a gateway in it, which leads into the walled gardens.
Me, fast asleep on a pile of sand at The Old Parsonage, circa 1964.
A big pile of sand is heaped on the drive and the sun is shining. The smallest of the children has toddled off to investigate. Finding the warm sand soporific, he lies down and falls asleep. His eldest sister, Debbie, is keeping an eye on him while Peggy-Ann and Stuart begin to unpack. Nikki is helping. (She’s always helping, always looking after the little ones.) Her hair is as black as her mother’s, cut short like a boy’s. Where’s Roddy? Even at three he was a right little bruiser, with big red cheeks. He’s probably off looking for spiders to eat. I’m the sleeping baby, watched over by my sister. Neglected or protected, I look extremely content.
My father at the wheel of our clapped-out 1926 Humber on the drive at The Old Parsonage. This photo was taken by my mother in 1964.
This was the start of a childhood spent between woods and river in the wilds of Suffolk. Grown-ups I remember only in glimpses and glances. There were always lots of people in the house and lolling around in the walled garden, swooping me up and whisking me off. Plonking me down in the long grass while I was still small enough. I look back on this period of my life with a mixture of fondness and disbelief, piecing together the details through a thick warm blanket of honey-coloured haze. Danger lurked in the shadows, but we grew up as free as birds, at liberty to explore and experiment as we liked. Perhaps the occasional relative or nanny issued orders or instructions from time to time – somebody must have told us what to do, once in a while, surely? Perhaps not. Certainly my parents seemed blissfully unconcerned about their offspring. Other than their occasional inadvertent attempts at filicide, I remember them having little to do with us. Left to our own devices, we hunted and we fought, we fished and we camped. And I drew and I made things.
I’m cutting out another set of petals. This chrysanthemum will have fewer petals on each layer and each will be a little fatter. Once again it comes out harsher than I’d planned, so I go back into my design studio and redraw the original petals, making them deliberately softer and fatter, with fewer in each layer. Third time lucky, it’s just right. When I show it around the studio, people smile warmly, and relief makes me extravagant. I know what I’m doing now, so I make about ten more flowers, in varying shapes and sizes, and I make buds and leaves too and turn the petals into little settings for pearls and it all starts falling into place.
When I’ve got several convincing blooms and a fine selection of foliage, I send the originals off to be cast. That way I’ll have a number of pieces to play around with. It’s like casting a bronze statue, but in miniature – the lost-wax method. After making a rubber mould from the original, my casters inject wax into it to create an almost exact replica, which can then be encased in plaster. When the plaster, now set, is heated in an oven, the wax melts away, leaving a cavity into which molten silver can be injected. Break open the plaster, and hey presto . . . the casting, a near-exact replica of your original piece. Of course it’s never perfect and there is often quite a bit of work to be done on a casting to bring out the fine details or textures, but originals can be reproduced faithfully. If I’m lucky, I’ll get the castings back in about a week or so. It can be a tense wait.
It’s 2011, late autumn, and my father is dead. I’m standing in his workshop at my parents’ house in Framlingham surrounded by his old tools, a wave of sadness washing over me. It’s a mess. Unused for several months, it’s become a dumping ground for anything without a home: broken garden furniture, boxes of rubbish, old vacuum cleaners. I’m not ready to sort out any of his tools, but I want to make a start at clearing out some of the crap. Make some space, ready for when we divvy up and share out what remains of a lifetime of making things. The workbench he built while he was at school stands against the wall on my left. It has a shelf and a tool rack, and all the chisels and screwdrivers are still in their proper holes, arranged from narrow to broad. Old tools with handles polished smooth from a lifetime of use, the steel a warm brown colour, brass collars and studs bright and shining in the half-light, just exactly as they were in his workshop at The Old Parsonage. I spot his leather-bound tape measure; its brass winding crank folds back into the case with a satisfying snap when you’re done. Measure twice and you’ll only have to cut once, he would patiently explain. It pains me to see some other tools lying on the shelf, with no holes cut to house them. Tools we took from h
is father’s workshop on the day of his funeral. Just as old and just as cared for. Two generations of tools.
I take a few minutes to soak it in and look around. I spot an old plane, which I first learned to use when I was about six. That brace-and-bit drill, steel and wood, with huge bits whose names I love: auger bits (little screw tip and long spiral fluting); centre bits (my favourite – their screw tips pull the cutting edges onto the wood, slicing their way through). This centre bit here even sounds good as it cuts. In fact, it smells good too. I think about cutting a hole in fresh green oak, or drilling into a slow-grown hunk of larch or deal. Every sense engaged. Somewhere in this workshop I’m sure there is even a gimlet bit. Too old-fashioned even for my father, it’s a stubby little thing for which I still have an affection. I used to use a gimlet to cut the holes for the steering on our go-carts.
Best make a start. I empty out boxes and boxes of stuff for the dump. Old plumbing equipment, offcuts of plastic pipe, broken toasters and fan heaters, and masses of discarded bits of wood. I make a pile for chucking and a pile to give to nieces and nephews. And then at the back I find a pretty red-brown oak box, polished, and about the size of a large, wide shoebox. It’s beautifully inlaid with ebony and little mother-of-pearl discs. The lid slopes at an angle. It’s a writing box, I realise. I hesitate before opening it. By definition, it must be private. Who does it belong to and why is it here now?
It’s not locked. The box is full of letters, mostly addressed to my grandmother Madeleine. Dodo, we used to call her, for she always seemed too sharp and intelligent and remote to be addressed as ‘granny’. I liked her very much, though we only saw her about once a year, at Christmas. She always had a hint of glamour about her.
Lots of these letters are from Dodo’s children, at different stages of their lives, but some are much older, written in her own childish hand to her grandparents or her aunt when she was away at school. The light is failing and I have a train to catch so I’ll have to take these with me and come back soon to finish emptying the workshop.
I take the 19.30 from Wickham Market and, in the dusk, we chug along the single-track line towards Ipswich, where I have to change. The train from Ipswich is very tatty but not too busy. I find a seat with a table, put the old writing box on the seat beside me and take out all the letters. I’m still in a sorting mood and I feel I should organise them: letters to return to my uncle Bill in one pile, those for my mother in another. Older letters and various certificates I put in a third pile. Inside the writing box there is also a little compartment for storing pens. This is empty but almost subconsciously I fiddle with it, just in case I’ve missed something. The bottom of the penholder seems much higher than the bottom of the box. It occurs to me that there must be a space beneath it. I push down firmly on one end and suddenly the other end opens, revealing a secret compartment. Inside, there is another small bundle of letters.
Looking up from my shabby seat on this rickety old train rattling its way to Liverpool Street, excitement rises in me. This like a film, I think. Across the aisle, a bored-looking young mother is concentrating on ignoring her sweet-eating children. She’s absorbed in a gossipy magazine. An elderly couple doze two seats down. It almost seems odd that they’ve noticed nothing.
At first glance the letters from the secret compartment look similar to the others, the odd certificate or a letter to an aunt, but one – in an unusual hand – catches my eye. It is addressed to Madeleine, sent from Oxford and written on yellowing, rather crumpled paper (I imagine my grandmother reading and rereading it) squared, in that continental style. It opens with the words: My dear, dear darling. Of course, I turn immediately to the signature, but there’s no name to be read. It’s just an intimate squiggle, barely even an initial. You would only sign your name like that to someone who knew you very well. I return to the beginning and scan through three pages of heart-broken passion, the final pleas of a spurned lover. Oh, could I speak English, he writes, oh could I touch your heart, you could not kick me away like a dog. And yet I hope, I always hope. He is all alone in Oxford now, sitting, sitting, his head buried in his hands. He recalls in broken sentences the joys of their former companionship, daily walks, discussions of poetry. But he’s coming to London for a few days. They have one last chance at happiness, it seems. Couldn’t she meet him at Paddington the following Monday – his train will arrive at 4.20 p.m. – and they could go to the British Museum, and she could read him the poems she talked of . . . ? Will you come to Paddington Station and help me to find out an hotel? I arrive Paddington next Monday at 4.20 p.m. Dearest Madeleine, will you write to me that I see you again?
It’s the only love letter I find. Curiosity overwhelms me, and from the train, I phone my mother. She is disappointingly uninterested in the whole thing. She does remember something about a German boy. Madeleine knew him before Charles, and thinks perhaps he was interned, or deported because of the war? Impossible. The chronology is out. This letter is dated 11 October 1929, surely too early for anti-German feelings in Britain, so long after one war and well before the outbreak of the next? I check through the papers in my third pile and find Madeleine’s wedding certificate. She married Charles on 9 August 1930. I wonder what happened to our passionate German? For a moment, I’m confused. The dates don’t seem to be adding up. I even manage to convince myself that Madeleine must have been well and truly pregnant when she married Charles.
In the harsh artificial light, I look up from my table strewn with old letters and catch my own reflection in the dark window. The dull mundanity of the tatty old Ipswich train to Liverpool Street is reflected behind me, and all at once my curiosity is overtaken by a sense that I’m prying into real lives, lived by real people. I feel terribly guilty, so I pack all the letters up in the old writing box. They’ve stayed there ever since. But that little story I’d started telling myself about the blousy chrysanthemum flower, a story in silver and gold, is beginning to change. It’s taking on a life of its own.
While I wait for the castings to come back, I have another thought. I love working with other people and have recently employed a young Norwegian graduate from Central St Martins whose eye for the ‘now’ has impressed me. Ulrikke Vogt is just the person to shake things up a bit and freshen my designs. She’s imaginative about construction and there’s glamour in her clean Scandinavian style. So together we do a few sketches.
Remembering the Hollywood photograph of Grace Kelly with the corsage, we draw the jewellery on the body instead of floating on a page. I even buy a mannequin so we can see how things sit. By the time the castings come back we’re ready to begin the job of constructing each piece, playing with the forms and experimenting with different chains and stones. Over the course of the next week the collection starts to take shape. At this point the other young women in the workshop become involved too, and I begin to take more of a back seat. My job now is to keep the collection on track and channel everyone else’s enthusiasm.
By the end of week two I can stand back and look at the pieces with detachment. I’m happy. Perhaps not everything is in there. Maybe there’s some elusive aspect of the flower I haven’t quite fully expressed this time. But I’ve got my sketchbooks. It doesn’t have to end here. And my relationship with the chrysanthemum has developed along the way, obscurely and unexpectedly. I have a real connection to this flower now.
The new collection has allure and panache and it makes me smile. I’m ready to put it on show, and see if the world agrees.
The Bee
The purest moment of creation is right at the very start: that tiny inkling, the appearance of the spark of an idea. It’s got to have enough about it to keep you at the bench, grinding away, hour upon hour and day after day. And it doesn’t stop there. It has to grow into a full collection. A beautiful simple centrepiece that anyone can wear. Several of these, in fact. And then some other stars, much more lavish, that will photograph well. Not to mention a supporting cast, earrings and necklaces, rings and bracelets. That first
idea needs to be able to maintain your excitement for the next few years, as it grows from a fleeting thought inside your head into something that a stranger can walk away with from a boutique in Tokyo or Saint-Germain, and treasure for the rest of her life.
One of those moments came to me once in Switzerland, when I was climbing up through the forests of Grindelwald, retracing the path taken by Sherlock Holmes on his way to his final, fateful meeting with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. As Watson did Holmes, my companion had briefly abandoned me, and I was enjoying the solitude. Eventually I sat and rested, settling on a cool rock. The lower branches of these tall pines were bare. Thin shafts of light pierced the scented canopy and fell on puddles of rainwater collected in the rocks and mosses. It smelled of damp woody earth, and pine, and promises of a summer to come. Delicate flowers grew in the crevices – dog’s-tooth violets and mountain pasqueflower, with downy purple heads drooping like bells. Others, tiny ones, I didn’t recognise. A scattering of mushrooms had popped out from the lush brown peaty soil, fleshy caps on spindly stalks, looking as if they hadn’t been there a few minutes earlier. As I sat and watched, a couple of ants went about their business. I tracked their path from where I sat. They were purposeful, and oblivious to me. A few bees flew low. It was early summer so I guessed they were looking for a good place to nest. You could almost see them deciding, bumbling around over crevices and rotten tree trunks, checking out one spot after another. One was distracted by an encounter with a violet with curled-back petals and irresistibly laden stamen. I could see the bee suspended, hanging on, legs powdery with pollen.