by Alex Monroe
Leftovers were precious, fed to the poultry or scraped into a huge cast-iron pot, which constantly simmered on the warm-plate of the Aga, a perpetually evolving soup stock.
Nikki was cook, although she rarely sat down to eat with us. She would start the day at dawn, bringing mugs of hot sweet tea to our rooms, and end it by thumping a saucepan of vegetable stew onto the table and storming off, complaining that she couldn’t work wonders and how could she feed a family if there was no food in the cupboards.
I took over the running of the greenhouse during my last term at primary school and was quickly caught up in the magic of making things grow. I learned how to germinate seeds in trays and persuade cuttings to take root, how to transplant seedlings and dispatch snails. I gathered together the right tools for each job – dibbers and daisy-grubbers; mattocks and hand hoes – but I only needed my fingers for my favourite task, which was pinching out the side shoots from the tomato plants, releasing an unmistakable tomatoey smell. Later came the reward of popping a warm ripe fruit into my mouth, and bursting it between my teeth.
That summer I had plenty of time to experiment. Term started late at the public school in Ipswich, where I’d won a scholarship as a day boy. Even early in the autumn, I could get back from school just before the light faded. I remember a noticeable chill in the air outside, but in my greenhouse, the bricks were still warm. I’d come in and inhale the clean rich smell of tomato leaves and geraniums and damp soil, then head straight over to an upturned terracotta flowerpot. There was a pile of them in one corner, which could have been carelessly – exquisitely – arranged for a photoshoot. My hand would reach underneath and pull out my stash of cigarette packets, bought from anonymous Ipswich vending machines with our home-made fifty-pence pieces. Another pot hid my matches. I lit up and began to puff away on a Players No. 6, Finest Virginia. For an eleven-year-old boy, this really was the Good Life. I had claimed the first bit of my own territory.
Bees I know; I’ve made bees before. The countless hours spent at my bench carving the bee for my Original Sin collection have lodged in my fingertips. This one is different of course, bumbling around, tipsy on pollen, wings in mid-flight, but the techniques are much the same. Keys, too, are straightforward, and anyway, I have a huge collection of old locks and keys at home. But the pea . . . how does a pea work? Luckily I grow them on the allotment, so it’s easy enough to find out.
My plot’s not far away and the timing’s right, so I jump on my bike and race off right away, up and down a few hills, to see how they’re coming along. Our allotment is very picturesque. Squeezed between the South Circular and Dulwich Woods, near a cricket club and a tennis club, part of it nestles under a huge willow tree. But that makes it shady, and what with the London clay, which floods in the winter and cracks up like concrete in the summer, not to mention the couch grass and the snails and the pigeons, it often feels a losing battle. For me, though, that isn’t the point. It’s still a place where I can escape for a few hours a week. I never expected to tame it, but I’ve enjoyed having a go.
There are a few different types of pea: fatter ones for shelling, and the flatter mangetout varieties, which we’ve been growing, though they’re looking a bit ragged as they clamber over green netting and twiggy hazel sticks. I pick several good ones – slightly overripe, calyx as jaunty as a pixie hat. I look around and feel tempted to stay here longer. The plot badly needs watering, and the weeds are fighting for space with the onions. Turning my back on it all, I sling my rucksack on my shoulder and set off for the studio, calculating as I pedal exactly how many days there are left before 10 July.
Dissecting the peas back at the workbench, I try to work out precisely what it is I like so much about them. They are very tactile. They have a matt bloom on their skins that reminds me of those childhood greengages, and you can rub them between finger and thumb to make them shine up just as beautifully. There is a satisfying contrast between the smooth curve of the pod and the spiky calyx and stalk. But most appealing thing of all is the peas-in-the-pod element. It’s an idea and a reality: the undulating belly of the fruit holding its sugar-sweet seeds.
Popping the first one open I can see how it was made. Firstly there’s the stem. Its circle of sepals once enclosed the blossom and now they hold on to the fruit. The fruit itself has two layers of skin, and a kind of frame, to which the little peas are attached. The outer form is created as the peas within gradually swell. The only way I can reproduce that is by doing exactly the same, but in miniature.
I cut six tiny discs from a sheet of silver. They vary in size, but all are between 2mm and 3mm – almost too small to hold. These will be my peas, and I need to find a way to file them into spheres. On my last trip to Japan I bought a pair of pliers so fine I wasn’t sure what I would use them for. Here’s my chance to try them out. Optivisors on, I pinch the largest disc in the pliers and start to file. Ten minutes later, six peas in a row sit in front of me.
The frame has to be a hair’s width thin. After drawing and redrawing I settle on a shape, reduce it down to about 25mm and transfer the drawing onto a sheet of wafer-thin silver. Cutting it out is a precarious business. The silver is so fine it can’t support its own weight, far less tolerate any slipping or snagging with the piercing saw: if its shape is distorted in the slightest, the piece will be ruined. I find myself holding my breath. Along the inside curve of the frame I leave six little teeth. I’ll be soldering the peas to these. And then I cut out the skins a second time, again in a sheet thinner than tracing paper. Lastly the calyx. This I cut in two halves without the stalk attached. I will solder on a short section of wire later.
I gently lie out the pea-pod-shaped frame on a charcoal block and arrange the miniature peas inside, from small to large to small again. It looks odd when I’ve soldered each one into place, like an X-ray of a pea-pod. Next I make a sandwich, layering the two flat skins on either side of my skeleton and tacking them into place with the tiniest speck of solder. I’m hoping that if I squish the two skins together in a rolling mill, they will gently take the shape of the peas inside, giving the lovely undulating fat-belly curves of the pea. Texture is important too. I want to reproduce the soft bloom you just can’t help wanting to touch. I sandwich layers of rough cartridge paper on either side of my pea-pod and bind the whole thing up in masking tape. Now for the squishing.
My rolling mills work something like a mangle. Turn a long crank and the two steel rollers turn. The height of the rollers can be adjusted by turning a screw on the top. I adjust it to what I think is about right and start turning the crank, feeding my paper parcel into the rollers as I turn. It catches and pulls the parcel in. The crank stiffens – too tight? I use two hands and pull with all my might. Half a turn more and the squished-flat parcel plops out on the other side.
That ought to do it.
The masking tape and paper have been destroyed, so it’s hard to peel away the wrapping from my little silver pea. It’s like opening a Christmas present. I scratch and tear over-eagerly, stickiness collecting under my nails, and suddenly there it is, a tiny little pea-pod, softly bulging with promise. It’s worked.
No time to linger: this is exciting. It needs the touch of a file where the two sides don’t quite meet precisely enough. There. Then I plop it back on the forge and solder up the joins. I have to bend the calyx halves slightly to make them fit, solder them on, then there’s just the right little curve of wire which makes the stem. Into the pickle, a minute or two in the barrel polisher and I’m ready to show the others in the workshop. After a huddle of coos, I know I’m on track. This pea is going to be all right. In fact I know the whole collection is going to work now. I just need to crack on and get it all made.
My anxiety grows as press day approaches: The Gardener, an exhibition and story to introduce a new collection of jewellery at Penhaligon’s in Covent Garden. It sounds almost as grand as my thesis on sundials. The concept of writing a story and putting on an exhibition to launch a collection out of sea
son takes some explaining in the fashion world. And I know that it will only really work if we can muster a bit of enchantment on the day. But the press are interested. Emma has done her work well. The invitations have all been sent and we have a long list of RSVPs, and some wonderful goodie-bags for attendees. Editors and writers have been phoning up for a sneak preview but Emma is suitably mysterious.
You’ll just have to come and see for yourself.
It looks like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon on wheels. The roof rack of my car is alarmingly laden with overgrown seed trays and trailing greenery. I’m struggling to see anything in my rear-view mirror other than the display equipment packed inside: lights and tables and chairs and boxes filled with catalogues and brochures. It’s press-launch day and I pull up outside Penhaligon’s at eight in the morning to find that Richard, the shop manager, isn’t there yet. Emma and Susie Lee and I unload, and I leave them guarding the piles on the pavement while I set off to find a parking place. By the time I’m back, the shop door is open and everyone is shifting boxes and bags inside.
Two By Appointment signs above the door add to the reassuringly old-fashioned appearance bestowed by Penhaligon’s polished-brass-and-plum frontage. The Covent Garden shop on Wellington Street sits between the London Transport Museum and the London Film Museum, and today there are bunches of pink balloons fluttering from the awning. Inside, it looks dark and mysterious and, as you walk in, an enticing mishmash of perfumes floods your nostrils. It’s an Aladdin’s cave for the senses. I once had an evening out on the town with the perfumier from Penhaligon’s, and I’m reminded of it now: it was an intriguing visit to a world experienced purely through smell.
A great circular table covered in glass tester pots stands in the middle of the shop. The walls around are lined with dark wooden cabinets full of coloured bottles and boxes lit by a thousand twinkling lights. There are several old sets of drawers that wouldn’t look out of place in an apothecary’s shop, and a vast Victorian shaving sink in porcelain and chrome. The fireplace has already been lavishly decorated in a cottage garden theme.
In these dimly lit surroundings, Richard now stands and glows, his primrose-yellow trousers and pink waistcoat beaming at me like a burst of sunshine on a grey day. He welcomes in all our old gardening tools and bamboo canes, our piles of hand-thrown clay pots and galvanised-tin watering cans. We begin to set up the exhibition. The idea is to recreate the feel of an archetypal potting shed or greenhouse. We arrange two faded canvas garden chairs beside a rickety old table strewn with vintage gardening magazines and make sure there’s a pile of my picture books ready to be picked up as you come in. Plants sprout and tumble from a two-metre-long wooden seed tray of moss and grass along the back wall. In the centre of the room stand three stacks of old fruit boxes, each topped with a seed tray planted with all sorts of weeds, lit by miniature spotlights. An earthy smell is beginning to mingle with the perfumes. It’s all ready now for me to lay out the jewellery.
The first to arrive is the gang from Marie Claire. Old friends, so I enjoy taking them round and explaining everything. It helps get me into my stride for I can’t help responding to their delight. More people arrive before long and then the day swims by. In the afternoon Emilia Fox pops in. I take her out for a late lunch and as we sit in the restaurant I can see people stealing looks at us. I’m lunching with a beautiful actress and at last I can believe this exhibition is going to be a success. For once I stop worrying about what is coming next and enjoy the moment.
Then I show Emilia round the exhibition, and she loves it. Every seed tray is a tiny landscape, an inviting green world carefully planned to look perfectly wild and natural. Small logs are half-buried, with tiny tendrils of ivy climbing over them as if they have lain untouched and rotting for years. Grass grows between rocks and mossy bricks. My lifelong habit of collecting dead insects and mollusc shells has come in handy. Snails and beetles lurk in crevices. A little daisy is just opening up its petals and minute stinging nettles emerge here and there, the tiny hairs on their leaves softly catching the light. I’ve placed each piece of jewellery on a rock or a tiny fallen tree trunk, where they sparkle under the pinpoint spotlights, gleaming beautifully. The pea-pod earrings look perfect on the cut surface of an upturned log. I adjust the lights slightly to catch the sapphire water-drop of the tiny watering can shimmering beside them. Emilia picks out her favourite pieces. Someone takes a photograph.
In winter at The Old Parsonage, when the greenhouse became too cold even for me, I had another retreat. I spent much of my fourteenth year in the enclosed red-lit world of my darkroom, discovering the possibilities offered by photographic paper and plant forms. It was no more than a windowless broom-cupboard really, halfway down the long corridor running between my parents’ room and the girls’ quarters. I’d installed a worktop, and I had a projector, which I could swing over the edge and project onto the floor if I needed to, for something really big. Then there were the usual developing tanks and fixing tanks and a red lamp, clipped to a shelf.
I could only develop and print black-and-white film, but I also loved making photograms.
Even then I was drawn to natural forms. I laid translucent flowers and leaves on photographic paper, experimenting with different arrangements of grasses and ferns – unfurling fiddle heads, patterns of spores, spikelets of fescue flower. Playing around with spiky umbellifer heads or stag-beetle antlers, I shaded some areas, over-exposed others, and finally I would expose the whole thing to light. The next stage was to dip the prints in trays of developer, then watch and wait with narrowed eyes peering through the red half-light, until the image magically appeared. Out with the tweezers. A quick dunk in a bucket of water, and then into the fixative. After a final rinse, I could peg each print onto a little washing line before turning on the main light to see the results.
When I was younger I used to collect pillowcases of chestnuts to sell to a neighbour for his pigs, or to eat at home. In late November one year I thought of putting their husks to a new purpose, in my photography experiments. It was a close call whether to have a go at that, or to develop some images of ferns viewed from inside the greenhouse, or begin to explore the possibilities of my ever-growing feather collection. But our most recent autumnal scavengings had produced a good variety of conker shells and beechnuts and chestnut husks, so I decided to try out different combinations on photographic paper. I had reached the fiddling around stage. A group here . . . or would this look better over here? I stood back to get some perspective and caught my hand on the wire from the light. It unclipped itself from the shelf and plopped sizzling into the bucket of water, plunging me instantly into darkness.
I fumbled for the doorknob and felt my way out into the dim corridor, where I hesitated, unsure of my next move. Far away downstairs, my parents were hosting a party. Now that I was out of the darkroom, I could just hear the odd wave of laughter, building and dying like distant surf. I could picture all those tipsy grown-ups with their intrusive questions, boozy hugs and lipstick-smudged kisses. The last thing I wanted to do was draw attention to myself. Anyway, children were absolutely banned from the drawing room. We had a firm understanding about this: children could do whatever they wanted, anywhere in the house, as long as they didn’t disturb the grown-ups in the drawing room. The grown-ups, in turn, could do whatever they wanted there, I suppose.
But I had a feeling I ought to seek some advice. I set off in the direction of the party, and paused before knocking on the big white door at the foot of the front stairs. Behind me the vast hall stood empty, grand piano and music-stands in one corner, a colossal square column in the centre of the room, lifeless fire-places opening up on either side of it.
My parents looking very glamorous at an evening do.
No reply. I could hear loud music, so they probably hadn’t heard me. I turned the cold white porcelain door handle and pushed the heavy door open. The room was full of grown-ups, lounging and laughing in three great sagging sofas round the hearth, or
standing around on colourful Casa Pupo rugs – they came from Spain, via Pimlico, and looked impressively continental scattered over wooden floorboards. Other guests were propped against swirling grey-patterned wallpaper, or supported themselves with an outstretched arm against one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, leaning into some intimate conversation or shared joke. A few more perched on the ornate club fender, their cheeks glowing from a blazing fire. Through whisky-scented smoke, and noisy, whirling, classical dance music – Hungarian rhapsodies perhaps, or Berlioz, or Liszt? – I peered around, trying to locate my father. Twisting towards him between the guests, I quietly told him what had happened. How the light had fallen in the water.
Well, take it out! he said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. But don’t forget to unplug it from the wall first.
Darling, darling, oh do come over here . . . a grown-up was calling to me. A woman across the room in silk and décolleté, beckoning me over. Quick! I darted out and back up the long staircase, out of the bright, noisy drawing-room bustle and into the quiet grey and dark green of the unlit staircase. Up to the landing, right, then left along the corridor, and I was back at my darkroom, now pitch black. Hurry, hurry. How would I ever find the light? I fumbled about for it, starting at the plug and following the flex down and into the bucket, which I could just see now that my eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness. I reached into the murky water and grabbed it.
Every muscle in my body seemed to contract instantly. I was knocked right out of the room and into the hallway. Still standing, I juddered about like a cartoon character, my hand locked onto the light with a terrible force. I had never known pain like this; I didn’t know if I could bear its intensity, ever-growing, constricting everything with a frightening purity. My body was completely rigid yet I twitched uncontrollably as I danced my solo electric rhapsody. My brain still seemed to be working, which meant that a detached part of me could watch as smoke started to rise from my hand. The light at the far end of the hall flickered as I sapped its power. And soon a dark cloud began to fog my vision. The pain grew even stronger, creeping along my arm and into my torso and I vaguely registered the fact that I must be losing consciousness.