by Rachel Hore
Only as I left the hospital did I remember that I hadn’t told Dad about the Reverend Quentin’s mysterious discovery or our proposed visit to St Martin’s.
After a snack lunch, I examined the paperwork for the Celtic window, checking the exact dimensions required. Then I measured the panel Dad had assembled and made some slight adjustments before soldering everything together and cementing it. I was quite pleased with the result. I didn’t seem to have lost my touch at all. Whether this would happen with my tuba was a different matter. I went upstairs that very minute to take it out of its case, and spent a pleasant hour taking it apart, cleaning it thoroughly, oiling the valves and playing a few exercises.
Late in the afternoon, I went out for a walk, up past the Home Office and on to Parliament Square. Dad and I often used to go this way, and sometimes he’d explain what the area used to look like. ‘Where we live was once orchards,’ he’d say. Or, ‘In Victorian times the Royal Aquarium stood on the site of that hotel.’
On the way back today I passed St Martin’s Church, where evening service was clearly underway. I studied its exterior with new interest. A stone over the porch proclaimed its foundation in 1851. When exactly might Minster Glass have made the windows? Who was the artist, I wondered, as I made my lonely way home. I ought to find out.
Dad had always been meticulous about researching such jobs, and I knew it would be important at some point for us to find the original paperwork in order to establish the materials and processes we would need to use in any properly conducted restoration. There were strict rules in place about these matters now. Conservation–stopping further deterioration–was the watchword. Restoration processes had to be documented, non-intrusive and reversible.
Minster Glass had been in business since 1865. I had known that since my early teens, that far-off time when I’d been content, homework permitting, to help Dad in the shop, learning the techniques of glass-cutting, painting, leadwork and using copper foil, and hearing anecdotes about the shop’s history. It wasn’t long before I recognised with ease the different kinds of potmetal glass and could calculate the amount of lead required to complete even a complicated design. I knew my grandfather lent his services during the glazing of the new Coventry Cathedral after the war. That, going further back, his grandmother ran Minster Glass after my great-great-grandfather died falling from scaffolding.
The books, papers and files that filled our flat to overflowing represented most of the paperwork documenting the firm’s history–though only Dad knew where everything was. Somehow it had survived damp and the Blitz, the transition from father, or mother, to son to grandson. Dad had converted the huge attic into extra office space after Grandad died, several years before I was born. There, along with much else, he kept the original cartoon drawings and handwritten Day Books that listed every job the firm had ever undertaken.
A year ago, Zac persuaded him to install a computer in the office downstairs. However, Dad still liked to keep up his Day Books, recording the nature of each job in a flourish of loopy black letters. ‘Much quicker than waiting for this booting up nonsense,’ he grumbled when I spoke to him a couple of months ago from Paris after one of his dizzy spells.
When I returned from my walk I climbed the wrought-iron spiral staircase and pushed open the fire door into the attic. It opened with a little sigh.
Through the skylight the setting sun bathed the boxes and filing cabinets, filling the huge room from boarded floor to sloping ceiling in an orangey glow. I switched on the single light bulb and the long black line of Day Books on their deep wall shelves loomed into focus.
Where the two earliest volumes should have been there was a gap. After a moment I spotted them on Dad’s mahogany desk, amongst the books, papers and cardboard folders arranged in piles across the leather top.
One Day Book lay open. When I pulled it towards me, another cloth-covered book was revealed underneath, the pages, relieved from the weight, fanning up suddenly. They were filled with Dad’s distinctive black handwriting.
I picked up this curious new find and turned to the front page. There was a title there in printed capitals, carefully underlined. Reading it, I was amazed. Dad hadn’t told me that he was engaged in writing a history of Minster Glass. I flipped open a page at random and a familiar name caught my eye:
During January 1870, Mr Ashe was requested by the patron, Lady Faulkham, to create three windows for the North Chancel of St Barnabas’s Church in Wandsworth, the theme to be The Last Supper. He immediately wrote to Edward Burne-Jones asking him to submit designs. The artist supplied some within two weeks but a letter from Lady Faulkham reveals that she took exception to the faces…
The firm had actually tried to commission Edward Burne-Jones, my favourite artist! I hadn’t known that before.
I pulled out a thin torn cardboard folder from a stack on the desk and looked inside. It contained drawings for a triptych of saints. In the file underneath I found bills and letters all fastened together in a yellowing age-curled wodge. Dad had clearly been doing his homework. I flicked through his notebook once more and scanned the opening page.
The first date mentioned was May 1865 when one Reuben Ashe set up the firm. But Dad had gone further back in time, tracking Ashe’s career up to this point. It was some pages before he returned to the progress of the new business in Greycoat Square. I jumped to the place in the book where he had last laid down his pen.
Although the thick notebook was half-filled he had only reached…no, it couldn’t be. A moment passed before I appreciated the coincidence. I looked again. Dad had reached 1880 and the last paragraph he had written concerned the very building Zac and I were going to see, St Martin’s Church. Then I remembered Jeremy Quentin’s letter, the reference to discussions they’d had, and saw that it wasn’t so surprising after all.
I read on.
The subscription to build St Martin’s Westminster had been raised by a benefactress keen to minister to those thousands of the godless poor who huddled in their rookeries in the shadows of Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, under the disdainful noses of the rich and powerful.
Its great East Window, a powerful Crucifixion scene, was designed for Minster Glass by Charles Kempe in 1870, replacing a pattern-book Nativity that by this date was considered workaday and old-fashioned. Then, in 1880, the rector, a Mr James Brownlow, had the opportunity to order new windows for the Lady Chapel…
Frustratingly, the account ended here, though Dad had pencilled a couple of queries in one margin. Check when Burne-Jones worked for Morris & Co. was one. Who was Laura Brownlow? was another.
I pulled the Day Book over, intending to cross-reference some of the entries. The East Window, it turned out, had been commissioned by a Reverend Truelove in 1870. It took me a while longer to find the others. Here they were in April 1880: Two leaded lights for St Martin’s Westminster, ordered by Mr Jas. Brownlow, subjects to be discussed. But that was all.
I regarded the piles on the desk thoughtfully. Somewhere in these mounds of paper would be useful information. I began to sort through the dusty files, taking care not to disturb the order they were in. Nothing of obvious relevance rose to the surface and since I wasn’t sure what I was looking for anyway, I soon gave up.
Turning off the light I took Dad’s notebook down to the living room, where I curled up in the chair by the window and began to read.
Reuben Ashe, I learned, had started the firm in a modest way at a time when coloured glass was all the rage again. A rash of church-building had fuelled a newfound Victorian obsession with the medieval. Dad described small restoration projects, modest commissions for public halls, then a church window or two over the river in Vauxhall, several for the chapel of a large country house in Essex, a triptych for a City guildhall.
The firm grew quickly in size and reputation until it occupied the adjoining building–where the café was now. By mid-1870, Dad wrote, Ashe employed ten men on and off, and many larger jobs were being requeste
d–leadwork for the new suburban churches and public buildings being relentlessly rolled out across the green fields beyond London. They bought their glass from manufacturers like James Powell in the East End.
Dad described many of these commissions in meticulous detail. Too meticulous, I thought fondly as I turned the pages, remembering his favourite aphorism: the devil is in the detail. Any reader unacquainted with the trade would quickly weary of the lists of materials, the quoted letters from architects. I thought of him sitting up in his attic alone for hour upon hour, like Mr Casaubon in Middlemarch, filling the lonely hours with endless research into the dusty past. Perhaps I was wrong about him being lonely, but even so the thought made me feel even more guilty that I had seen so little of him over the last eleven or twelve years.
The paragraphs about the Crucifixion window were interesting. Minster Glass had been paid to use the best antique glass, no expense spared, and the splendid result had led to many more church commissions. I wondered what designs the Victorian Reverend Brownlow had requested. Well, I’d find out tomorrow. I was surprised to realise how much I was looking forward to the visit.
Chapter 4
Angels are intelligent reflections of light, that original light which has no beginning. They can illuminate. They do not need tongues or ears, for they can communicate without speech, in thought.
John of Damascus, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith
‘Did you know Dad was writing a history of the firm?’ I asked Zac’s back view on Monday morning, in between bursts of noise from the electric grinder. Having cut all the pieces for his sunrise window, Zac was filing rough edges.
‘He told me, yes,’ said Zac, pausing briefly in his task. He was no more friendly this morning than he’d been on Saturday, and it was really beginning to irritate me.
‘Has he been doing it for long? He doesn’t seem to have got very far.’
‘A few months maybe, I’m not sure.’ The grinding started up once more.
‘Zac!’ I said, raising my voice. The grinding stopped.
‘Mm?’ he said, without turning round.
‘Zac, do stop a moment and listen. I’ve been thinking.’ I knew I sounded nervous. ‘I will stay and help you here–at least until Dad gets a bit better. But I can’t leave my music for too long.’ My speech lacked conviction. I cursed myself, for I’d lain awake half the night settling all this in my mind.
Zac finally turned to face me, but as he was wearing safety goggles I couldn’t discern his expression. Suddenly he ripped them off, tossing his head to free the strap from his dark curls. His eyes met mine and I was shocked at the fury in them.
‘Then I suppose you’ll be off and we won’t see you again till kingdom come.’ His words were like a dash of cold water.
‘Don’t be silly,’ I snapped back. ‘Why are you so angry? You must see the sense of what I’m saying.’
‘You can do what you damn well like. It’s not up to me, is it?’
‘What’s not up to you?’ How dare he be so rude?
‘When you come, when you go. It’s just that your dad’s managed on his own for too long. He hasn’t been well for years.’
‘He hasn’t been on his own. He’s had you.’
Zac rolled his eyes and said, ‘You’re being obtuse, excuse my plain-speaking. I’m not talking about work. He needs family, Fran. He needs you. You should have been around more. I’ve tried to do my bit, keeping an eye on him, but it isn’t easy. It’s not my place to remind him to take his medication or to nag him to eat properly.’
So that’s why he was angry. Because he thought I was an undutiful daughter. Well, he was right to some extent, but he didn’t know the background. I should have explained it to him then, but I was too angry and too proud. I’d never really talked to anyone about my relationship with my father, not even my old best friend Jo. It was all too private, too complicated.
Instead I said in a low voice, ‘You don’t understand. What about my life, Zac? I’ve done what children do. They grow up, they leave, they make their own way in the world.’
‘Yeah, but they shouldn’t just abandon their parents. He had no other family.’ He glowered at me, his hands planted on the worktop in front of him.
‘Zac, you’re overstepping the mark. Anyway, you’re a long way from Glasgow. What about your parents, then?’
‘I’m sorry I spoke so plainly. My ma died a long time ago now…twelve years. My da’s married again, someone much younger. We don’t get on particularly well, Sally and me. She doesn’t like to think Dad’s old enough to have a son in his thirties, I reckon. At any rate, he doesn’t need me. It’s not the same thing at all.’
So his family life was as lonely as mine. Still, I reckoned he didn’t have the right to lecture me about my obligations.
I tried again to put my side. ‘Zac, when you’re a musician, you have to go where the work is.’ He had an answer to that one, too.
‘You had plenty of opportunity to come home and visit between jobs. Or, I don’t know, couldn’t you have played with orchestras in London? Whatever, you’ve rarely visited in all the years I’ve worked here.’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘You haven’t been back since the Christmas before last. And before that…I can’t remember.’
Nor for the moment, could I, but that was hardly the point. I was working. Or travelling. Doing the things you’re supposed to when you’re young and building a career.
At the same time, I couldn’t deny that when I had spoken to Dad recently, he had seemed a little frail. I knew I should have made more effort to come home. Zac was right. I’d neglected Dad in the same way that I had neglected my old friends. With that moment of revelation, desolation swept over me.
I said wearily, ‘I’m here now, aren’t I? Visiting him, looking after things. And as I told you, for the moment I’ll help you keep the business afloat…’
‘And what will happen if…when,’ he corrected himself, ‘he comes out of hospital and needs looking after full-time? You know, nursing and stuff.’
‘I…’ The thought panicked me. ‘Well, of course I’d stay and help him if I could. But I wouldn’t be any good at nursing.’ The thought of looking after a chronic invalid, especially in the shabby conditions upstairs, was horrifying. ‘Listen, Zac, I don’t know, OK? I’ll have to deal with that when we come to it. But we haven’t got to that point yet, have we?’
Zac sighed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘we haven’t.’ And suddenly the fight went out of him. ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said all that. I’m upset, that’s all. I hate seeing your dad how he is. In the hospital yesterday…He’s like a wreck of himself.’
‘I know.’ I could see the misery in Zac’s face and forgave him.
‘He’s been good to me, your dad. I suppose you could say he rescued me.’
‘Really?’ I asked, interested. Perhaps Zac saw a different side to Dad. Just then, the tinkling shop bell put a stop to further conversation. ‘Sorry, I’d better see who it is.’
‘Of course,’ he said, and returned to his grinding while I stepped into the shop to serve the customer.
It turned out to be a busy day, but just before five o’clock we managed to shut up shop in order to visit St Martin’s Church. Zac packed his toolkit and we set off together across the public garden to the opposite corner of the Square and Vincent Street. It felt companionable. Our discussion had definitely cleared the air.
‘Have you ever met this man we’re going to see?’ I asked him.
‘Jeremy Quentin? Never set eyes on the guy. Sounded all right on the phone.’
‘I don’t know him either, but his letter makes him and Dad seem great friends. It’s odd, isn’t it? What I think is that Dad must have been to see him about that history he’s working on. He stopped in the middle of writing a section about St Martin’s, you see.’
‘I didn’t know about their friendship either,’ he said. ‘Your dad’s never mentioned it. You know how secretive he c
an be.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I said feelingly. ‘Just think, maybe the history of those windows is up in the attic somewhere, waiting to be discovered. Oh, and did you realise Burne-Jones actually drew some designs for Minster Glass? Burne-Jones! Isn’t that brilliant?’
‘Oh, I know about your obsession with Burne-Jones,’ Zac said, his eyes glinting with humour. ‘Your dad’s mentioned that all right.’
I laughed, wondering what else my father had told this man. After all, for the last dozen years he’d been closer to Dad than I had. Zac had his secrets, too. What had he started to say this afternoon–about Dad rescuing him? I wanted to ask, but we’d already reached the church.
St Martin’s Church and its hall turned out to be linked by a lobby whose double doors onto the street were the main access to both. These doors stood open, and we walked through the lobby and right through the door that led into the back of the church. A deep peace stole over us as we passed from sunlight into gloom, the sounds of the traffic suddenly muffled. We lingered in the huge space listening to the echoey stillness, breathing the faint scent of incense that hung in the air. I wished I hadn’t worn high-heeled shoes for they clacked horribly on the tiles.
There was no sign of the Reverend Quentin, so we pottered about by ourselves, admiring the high, clear-glass windows of the nave, the pointed Victorian-gothic arches, the vaulted ceilings like great stone forest trees meeting overhead.
Memorials to lost soldier sons, to benefactors and previous incumbents decorated the cream-stone walls. Up ahead, the arched stained-glass window above the high altar drew us inexorably east.
‘That might be one of ours,’ I whispered to Zac. ‘Come on.’
Zac followed me between the carved choir stalls until we stood before the altar rail, gazing up. And were transfixed.
It was Kempe’s Crucifixion scene. Nothing unusual in the subject. But this was no bland, stylised tableau with a flaccid Christ, arms stretched as though in blessing. This communicated the full agony of the moment of death, the central figure hanging racked and exhausted. On one side, Mary His mother pleaded uselessly to a God Who didn’t seem to be listening; on the other St John gazed on in horrified pity, whilst below the plinth on which the cross stood, an hysterical Mary Magdalen was being hauled back, struggling, by bemused soldiers. The pale late-afternoon light fell on the passionate white faces. Emerald, ruby, blue and gold glowed with life. In full morning light this scene must blaze with drama. We stood for a long moment without speaking, gripped by it all.