Edge of Glass

by Catherine Gaskin

  He raised his glass. ‘Cheers ‒ and welcome to the land of your fathers.’

  ‘Right now I’m looking for a way out of the land of my fathers.’

  ‘True,’ he said. ‘It’s been a pretty strange welcome. I didn’t know how the Old Lady would take it, but I never expected it to nearly carry her off entirely.’

  ‘She knew I existed. It shouldn’t have been such a shock.’

  He said, thoughtfully, ‘You haven’t had any official existence in these parts, you know. There were rumours ‒ no one seemed to be sure. It was as if, after Blanche Sheridan ‒ Blanche Findlay ‒ left here to volunteer for some kind of war work in England after her husband went overseas, there was sort of an agreement between Lady Maude and Mrs. Findlay to bury everything about her. Both of them refused to talk about her. You’d think it would be easy to know what was happening to someone ‒ London’s no distance. But it was wartime, and people around here were sticking close to home. Perhaps some of your mother’s Dublin friends knew the whole story, but they didn’t pass it on if they did know. There were rumours of a man she became involved with, and some talk that she wouldn’t be coming back here. Then her husband was killed, and no one ever heard anything about her after that. At least that’s the way it’s remembered around here. No one knew the name of the man concerned ‒ or whether she’d married him or not. So when people made trips to London anyone with curiosity to satisfy had no place to start.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I wasn’t being snoopy, mind you. There seemed good reason to know. I asked Annie.’

  ‘Annie? Annie! She knew ‒ and she told you?’

  ‘She knew because she knows as much about Lady Maude as anyone will ever know. She told me because I think she understood what I had in mind to try to do. It was her hope, too … Well, she knew the name of the man. She knew there had been a child. After that it was simple. I simply looked in the London telephone book. What was harder was to walk into that shop. I didn’t know what to do or what to say.’

  ‘So you had to break a vase and steal the Culloden Cup?’

  He sprawled on the sofa, and at the recollection of that episode in the shop, a broad grin cut his face. The blond good looks that had so impressed me that morning when he had walked into Blanche’s shop had not been exaggerated in my mind. But he didn’t look like an actor any more; he was wearing a worn jersey and flannel trousers with mud on the turn-ups, and a streak of paint at one knee. In this glowing, warm room he seemed to be what was rare in a young man ‒ or at least in any young man that I knew ‒ complete, whole in himself, not fragmented and striving to be six other men than the one he was. It was oddly reassuring.

  ‘You’ll not hold that against me forever, will you now? Didn’t I pay you? ‒ for both ‒ And didn’t I restore you to the bosom of your family?’

  I sighed. ‘I wish you’d left me where I was. Why did you have to do such a thing?’

  The lightness went from his face. His shoulders seemed to hunch and the long frame bent inwards upon itself.

  ‘You might say I believed I owed the Sheridan family a debt ‒ what kind of debt I’d rather not say. It was nothing that money could repay. To restore the Culloden Cup to them would have been only a token. To bring you back to them might have been everything. It was all I could think of to do. If I’ve failed completely ‒ if I’ve brought a lot of trouble on your shoulders, and done them no good, then I’m sorry. I apologise to them and to you. But if you could find it in you to be patient a while ‒ if you could bear to stay at Meremount a little longer to give Lady Maude time to get used to you ‒ I think at least a part of what I hoped to accomplish might be done.’

  ‘Good for her, perhaps, but what about me?’

  ‘Yes … there’s you, isn’t there? It’s all for them and nothing for you.’

  ‘Connor doesn’t think that. Connor thinks I’ve come ‒ like this; at the last minute almost, with the thought that I can inherit all the things that he’s worked like a dog to hold together.’

  Brendan gave a low, dismayed whistle. ‘Does he now? Stupid, I am, not to have thought of it. It’s nonsense, of course. Everyone knows that Lady Maude intended the lot to go to him. That was why she was able to entice him into a pretty thankless job in the first place.’

  ‘Was it thankless?’

  ‘Until the arrival of the Praeger money ‒ yes, I would say it was thankless. The glassworks needed modernising, and there was no capital for that. Lady Maude would never consent to letting any part of it go to try to raise money. Connor has spent years flogging what is practically a dead horse. Then he married Lotti Praeger, and everything changed! There was going to be a whole revival of the Sheridan tradition ‒ and a lot that was new, as well. He had the Sheridan name, and then he had the money for a new works and equipment. There was going to be a training programme for apprentices, and gradual expansion as the trained labour became ready ‒ it takes five years to train a boy fully in glassblowing, engraving and cutting. He would have done all of it, Connor would. He’s a man who knows how to go after a thing and stick with it, He knows how to hold on. But he couldn’t hold the Praeger money. When Lotti went, the money went, too.’

  ‘Why? He was her husband. There must have been some claim …’

  ‘It turned out that Lotti owned nothing in her own right Who knows why? Perhaps it was Papa’s way of making sure that she paid him some attention. Perhaps Praeger did it so that anyone she married wouldn’t automatically assume rights to it. She spent plenty of money, but it was Papa’s money. It was Papa, not Lotti, who would provide the new capital for the glassworks. Lotti dabbled with her allowance ‒ the money for the renovation of Meremount, which Lady Maude had never consented to, the racing stable, the weaving factory she was going to start in Cloncath. Probably she could have financed them all herself ‒ or Papa had promised her extra money. But, you see, nothing was concrete. There were only plans. There was no cash in the till. When she was killed, there was nothing there ‒ not for anyone.’

  I understood better the quality and depth of the despair that had settled on Meremount, the hopes raised and dashed. Connor would have been less than human if he did not grieve a little for the future his blonde love had taken with her when she went.

  Brendan seemed to know my thoughts; he nodded towards me, as if affirming them. ‘All that’s left is the memory of her. To the people around here she was like some bright comet flashing by. They hardly knew her, and then she was gone, but there’s a kind of afterglow. They talk about her ‒ how beautiful she was, the clothes she wore, the car she drove ‒ all the things she was going to do. Heaven knows if she would have done half of them. But they credit her with them, and that’s what counts. She was full of life and intelligence, and far more sophisticated and knowing than they ever guessed.’

  ‘Why did they hardly know her? Didn’t she live here?’

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘Didn’t you know? Lotti only came once with her father to see the place just after he bought it more than ten years ago ‒ she was still at school in Switzerland, I think. The next time she came it was with a German film company who made a dreadful film with Castle Tyrell as a background about five years ago. I wasn’t there then. Last year she showed up again ‒ a holiday, she said ‒ just to rest. A few weeks later she was married to Connor. It set the county on its ears, I’m telling you. But when the fuss and feathers settled down, there was general rejoicing to think of all that beautiful Praeger money that was going to stay right at home in County Tyrell. Lotti was the most popular bride in a long time.’

  ‘But why did she marry Connor?’

  He smiled. ‘Are you denying there’s such a thing as love? Couldn’t she have been swept off her feet?’

  ‘By Connor, in some other place ‒ yes! But Connor at Meremount, weighed down with the glassworks and the farm … I don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t underestimate Connor ‒ he’s quite a boy-oh. And who will ever know the why of such things? Bu
t what you mean is that for all his charm and good looks he’s still Irish provincial, and for a girl like Lotti Praeger …’

  ‘Did you know girls like Lotti Praeger?’

  Now he laughed openly. ‘You mean I’m Irish provincial, too? Well, not completely. I’ve done my stint on the Continent ‒ Murano, Kosta, Elgberg. Yes, I’ve known a few that you might say were girls like Lotti Praeger. Not rich, like Lotti ‒ perhaps all of them weren’t as beautiful as Lotti. But sleek like her ‒ girls who seemed to know everything.’ He smiled down at his drink. ‘They taught me a few things, at any rate.’

  ‘You liked it ‒ the blonde girls, and all the new things?’

  ‘Yes, I liked it. I was free of myself, for one thing. I didn’t keep meeting little Bren Carroll clumping down the lane to school in his brother’s gumboots. Ireland’s a hard place to break the mould in ‒ it moves slowly. Perhaps that’s why Otto Praeger likes it so much.’

  ‘Then what are you doing back here?’

  ‘I’ll have to have another drink before I can begin on that.’ He reached out and took my glass. While he poured them, I sat and savoured the peace and serenity of the room, the bright fire, the warmth the whiskey had left in me. On his way in to refill the glasses, Brendan had drawn the curtains across the windows. There was no reminder now of the world outside, of what I would have to go back to.

  He placed the glass in my hand. ‘I was part of the whole wonderful future that everyone talked of for Sheridan Glass ‒ that’s why I came back. I was brought back. I was at the Eide works in Denmark ‒ on the design staff. Connor Sheridan showed up one day and practically handed the whole thing to me ‒ bright future, Praeger money and all. Not even a letter before he came ‒ that’s what I mean about Connor, he knows how to go out after something he wants. He was just there outside the works one evening, took me to dinner, filled me with good wine, and after that I could hardly wait to tell them I was leaving.’

  He slapped his palm down on his thigh. ‘It all sounded so bloody marvellous! The revered Sheridan name, but they were going to break new ground. They would continue to use Thomas Sheridan’s designs, because they’re steady sellers, but try some new things ‒ modern designs, and begin to build up a new market. I was to have all the facilities I wanted to do things on my own ‒ and be encouraged to do them. Connor wanted to exhibit wherever he could to put the Sheridan name in as many places as possible. I was going to be their first, and their chief, designer.’

  ‘How did he know where to find you?’

  ‘My mother still lives a dozen miles from here ‒ and my five brothers and two sisters are scattered around the countryside. I hadn’t been backward about letting them know about how I was doing out in the big world ‒ and the word spreads around. My father was a farm-labourer. He had a couple of acres and he ran a cow and a few hens to help keep us all fed. He was a decent man, but I just didn’t fancy doing what he did all my life. So I went to Sheridan to learn glassblowing. But Waterford was coming up as the big concern, with all the export orders, so I moved over there to finish my training. It got me away from the family, too, and at least I had a bed to myself. But I got tired of cutting and engraving the same designs all the time, and seeing the same shapes go by. At Waterford, you know, everything’s hand-blown, even the ordinary domestic glass ‒ but they blow into moulds. Which is fine, unless you have a notion to do something by yourself. So I saved a bit of money and took off for Venice. Well, that was where I saw what I hadn’t learned at Waterford, and never would. It was a terrible thing, the way I wanted to try some of the shapes they were doing, but of course I wasn’t an Italian, and my great-grandfather hadn’t been a Murano glassblower, so I didn’t have a chance. But I hung around Venice for a while, getting odd-jobs, and whenever I could I went and watched them working in the glasshouses, and I learned what I could. In Sweden I had a couple of jobs, and then I had an offer from Eide in Denmark. You know, in Scandinavia they like to practise their English, and someone was always asking me if I had an Oxford accent. They were only partly satisfied when I told them I spoke with the tongue of George Bernard Shaw. But they taught me a lot, too, and they were hospitable people. I enjoyed life there, and I thought I was never coming back. I thought I had broken the mould of Ireland for good.

  ‘Then Connor showed up. He knew all about me ‒ he’d tracked down a few exhibition pieces I’d made, he knew the kind of thing Eide turned out, and that was what he wanted to make a start on at Sheridan. He said Waterford already had the world market for traditional eighteenth-century Irish glass sewn up. Our chance was to break into something new, but using a great name. I went for it all, and who wouldn’t? I was to advise on the design on the new works; I was to have a free hand to hire anyone I wanted ‒ I was to go out after more designers with Continental experience. But you see, I was the local boy, so the men would take orders from me when they wouldn’t from someone speaking Swedish-English. Directorship, shares, everything … it was worth coming back to Ireland for.

  ‘I remember the night after Connor first contacted me I went into Copenhagen to have dinner with him and Lotti. That was last spring ‒ it was cold, there’d been a late snowstorm, and when it cleared the stars were as big as your fist and jumping out of the heavens at you. I remember saying some damn’ fool thing about how grand it would be if you could ever make crystal that came to life like those stars, and I actually gathered up a handful of snow and we all stood around like children under a street-light, looking at the individual prisms of it. Oh, we talked! The best thing of all was that night. We were going to remake Sheridan’s name. I was going to be the world’s greatest artist in glass. I could see it all ‒ palaces of glass, cathedrals of glass ‒ all the world aglow with light and brilliance. I was drunk on champagne and the beauty of it all ‒ and the three of us, we were beautiful too. I remember Lotti wore a leopard-skin coat and boots that matched it. I had never been that close to real leopard-skin before. The fur was pale, like her hair. That night, if I was the greatest artist in the world, Lotti was surely the most beautiful girl.’

  ‘And you fell in love with her,’ I said.

  The lids drooped over the burning blue of his eyes as he looked at me. ‘I suppose it shows, doesn’t it? And I suppose it did happen that first night. I suppose it shows, too, that I don’t know as much about beautiful girls as I’ve been making out, because I didn’t know until later that that was what had happened to me.’

  Then he tipped back his glass and drained it, a kind of salutation, I thought, to that night.

  I finished my own drink more slowly, but in the ten minutes or so it took, Brendan didn’t speak again. He seemed to have forgotten me, but I did not feel slighted. It was as if he had already admitted me to his most cherished dream, and having shared it, I could never again be on the outside.

  I put down my glass gently and reached for my raincoat.

  ‘I think I’ll have to go back now.’

  He turned quickly and looked at me as if I had emerged from some mist of his conjuring. He blinked rapidly. ‘Go back? Why?’

  ‘I think they expect …’

  ‘They have no right to expect anything. They’ve got along without you until now.’

  ‘That isn’t what you said to me in London. You as much as said I needed to have someone expect something from me.’

  ‘Is that how it sounded? Or did you only hear it that way because you wanted to? Well, they don’t need you right this minute. Stay, and we’ll find something to eat. I’d like to take you to a grand dinner, but Cloncath doesn’t have much to offer in that way. Anywhere else is too far for the kind of day you’ve had. Will you stay?’

  I nodded, feeling weak and passive. ‘They know I’m with you.’

  ‘I thought Annie would guess. I didn’t give my name ‒ but then she didn’t ask it.’

  ‘I wonder what’s so bad about being Brendan Carroll? If I mention your name ‒ to Connor, to Lady Maude, even to Otto Praeger ‒ they all freeze up. What have yo
u done to them?’

  He shrugged off the question. ‘Perhaps I haven’t done anything to them. They knew, of course, that I couldn’t stay on long after we found out that the money wasn’t there after all to rebuild Sheridan Glass. I’ve stayed out my year and tried to teach the experienced men what I could, and just hope they’ll pass it along. But there can’t be a programme now of opening up a line of modern glass ‒ they don’t have the facilities or the trained men, Sheridan will just have to trail behind Waterford as it’s done in the past. There’s nothing else for it. But they don’t need me for that ‒ they can’t afford me, and I can’t afford to stay here to do nothing.’

  The thought that had troubled me ever since Connor had first spoken of Sheridan’s need for capital occurred again. ‘Wouldn’t Otto Praeger be the obvious backer for Sheridan Glass? After all, he began in optics ‒ and he was going to invest in it through Lotti.’

  Brendan shrugged again, seeming uncomfortable for the first time. ‘Who knows. Maybe he’s gone cold on the idea. Maybe he was only interested because Lotti was. It’s his business ‒ and Connor’s. Not mine. Let’s go and see what’s to eat.’