The Glass Painter's Daughter

by Rachel Hore

  The sound of the church door opening released us from our trance.

  ‘I’m so sorry to keep you both.’ The vicar’s voice, warm and vital, carried across the nave. He dumped a couple of books he’d brought onto a pile at the back of the church, flicked some light switches on and off until he was satisfied with the result and hurried down the aisle to meet us, a blue plastic folder poking out from under his arm. He laid this down on a pew.

  ‘There’s always something to upset one’s best-laid plans, isn’t there?’ he said, shaking our hands, his hazel eyes bright in his lively, creased face. ‘This time some girls from the homeless hostel, all up in arms about something. Fortunately Sarah, my wife, is dealing with them.’ He kept hold of my hand in both of his and looked straight into my eyes. ‘I’m most sorry to hear about your father, Miss Morrison.’

  ‘Fran.’ A whisper was all I could manage, moved as I was by the sadness of his expression.

  ‘Fran. I so value his friendship and it’s heartbreaking to think how interested he’d have been in my recent find. I particularly wanted to show him, you see.’

  I wanted to ask him what it was, but he rushed on. ‘I’m so pleased to meet you at last, my dear. Edward has told me so much about you.’

  He patted my hand several times in a comforting way then, recovering himself, turned to Zac. ‘Now, Mr McDuff, I suppose we must get down to business. The report, the report.’ He picked up the folder, extracted some papers from it and looked at each of us in a fatherly fashion over his glasses, as though about to deliver a sermon.

  ‘You perhaps know that Anglican churches are required to have a full structural inspection every five years. This is the report on the recent one. The architect has raised a question or two about the windows. I’d like you to look at the altar window first to determine its condition.’

  He read out the architect’s general comments concerning wear and tear on the East Window, then he and Zac moved the heavy altar table forward. Zac stood on a chair behind it, from where he could examine the lower parts of the window, but it wasn’t high enough to see further up.

  ‘I meant to fetch the ladder. You wouldn’t give me a hand, would you? We’ll have to interrupt the Choral Society setting up next door.’ Zac followed him out into the lobby. I heard the door to the hall opposite open, a muffled echo of voices and a lot of banging and scraping before they returned bearing a long aluminium ladder.

  A few minutes later, Zac called down from a rung halfway up, ‘There’s certainly some deterioration in the paint. See, here, by St John’s head. And down there, look at this soldier. You’re losing the details of one side of the face. But I’ve seen a lot worse than this. With luck we won’t even need to remove the glass.’

  ‘That’s the sort of news I need to hear,’ said the vicar.

  When Zac had finished making notes in his pocket book, we pushed the altar table back into place.

  ‘The other windows are in here.’ The vicar opened the door to a small side chapel on the south side of the nave. ‘This is the Lady Chapel, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, of course,’ he said, bowing his head to the small altar’s simple brass cross. A wooden statue of Mary stood to one side. She had been badly damaged at some point; a crack ran across her neck.

  We looked up at the two stained-glass windows here. I barely noticed the one in the south wall, beyond registering its morass of browns and yellows. But the other, over the chapel altar, was so lovely, so poignant, it took my breath away.

  As I stared, the world around me seemed to vanish.

  It was the most beautiful glass picture of the Virgin and Child that I had ever seen. The infant–and this wasn’t one of those misshapen painted babies that made one doubt whether the artist had ever looked properly at a child–stood on His mother’s lap, His chubby arms around her neck. Mary held Him gently, protectively. They gazed into one another’s eyes, their faces rapt, serene. Almost, but not quite, touching. She was so absorbed in her child, it was as though cherishing Him was all that she was made for. I remembered the Mary of the Crucifixion window. Her son–a grown man, but still her child for whom she would give up everything–torn from her, mutilated, brutally killed before her eyes. The contrast was too much. But there was something else the image stirred in me, some sharp longing for my own mother.

  ‘You all right, Fran?’ Zac asked, his fingers lightly touching my shoulder.

  I turned, saw both men were looking at me, puzzled. ‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ I stumbled out finally.

  ‘Remarkable,’ agreed the vicar. ‘Such a shame about this…’ he went on and I tried to drag myself back to the technical details of the window. He was pointing at Mary’s robes, where something that looked like mould was growing on the other side of the glass, over the rich flowery pattern.

  ‘I wonder if we should try to halt this.’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Zac. ‘Very curious. I’ll need to study it from the outside, when I’ve finished here.’ This time he was able to survey most of the window from the lower rungs of the ladder.

  As he put away his magnifying glass and took some notes, I perused the second window.

  My first impressions had been correct. Artistically speaking, it was mediocre, a Second World War memorial in browns and yellows, with a matronly Britannia dangling a sombre regimental flag. To the brave men of the parish who lost their lives fighting for their country, 1939–45 ran the gothic lettering at the base. I suppose it would have satisfied the grieving families to see it there. But possibly not moved them.

  ‘It was about this window that I wanted to speak to your father,’ the vicar said, coming to stand beside me.

  ‘Oh.’ I was disappointed. Was this what all the excitement was about? This dull old war memorial?

  ‘Or rather,’ he went on, ‘the stained glass that was here before.’

  ‘There was another window?’ I asked, my spirits instantly rising.

  ‘Your father thought so,’ he said. ‘And I think I’ve proved him right. Look.’ He crouched in front of the altar, lifted the white cloth and dragged out a large, sagging cardboard box, grey with grime. I grabbed one end to help, wondering what on earth could be in it.

  ‘Whilst he was working on the report,’ Jeremy puffed, ‘our surveyor asked us to take everything out from under the stage in the hall next door so he could access a damp patch he’d detected in the outer wall. It was quite a job–there was so much rubbish. But during the process, we found this.’

  The cardboard flaps, limp with age, peeled back easily. The vicar lifted a sheet of old newspaper and we all stared inside the box.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, disappointed. Surely this was just some of the rubbish he’d mentioned–a heap of twisted metal and broken glass. Then the vicar reached in with both hands and picked up a section. He held it up and suddenly I saw why he was excited. Light glinted off a line of green studded with white flowers, and what looked like sandalled toes. I was amazed. What the box contained was a shattered stained-glass window.

  ‘I reckon it was destroyed in the Blitz,’ said the vicar, lowering the glass back into the box. ‘There’s a date on the newspaper somewhere. Take a look.’

  Zac reached for the paper, smoothed it out and read, ‘Fourteenth September, 1940. Yes,’ he said, frowning with concentration, ‘maybe that was the date it happened and someone rescued the pieces.’

  I studied the paper over Zac’s shoulder. It was the front page, and I could just make out that the yellowed photograph was of firemen picking through the ruins of a bombed-out building.

  ‘I’ve been looking through some files,’ Jeremy rushed on, ‘but I can’t find anything useful except the paperwork concerning this Britannia that replaced it. The Mothers Union got up the subscription for it after the war.’

  ‘Wonder if any of your parishioners remember this old one,’ said Zac, crouching down and picking out odd pieces from the box, turning them this way and that.

  ‘There might be one or two, indeed,�
�� the vicar muttered. ‘I’ll have to ask around.’

  ‘I wonder if Dad knew all about it,’ I put in. ‘I don’t mean at the time–he’d only have been a little kid then–but since. He knew so much about the firm.’

  ‘That’s why I thought he’d be particularly interested, Fran. While researching his book he’d read that there was another stained-glass window here before this one. He said he’d try to find out what it was–but that was the last time I saw him.’

  We looked at one another sadly. I remembered what I’d read amongst his papers. ‘I think this Virgin and Child must have been one of the windows a previous Rector commissioned in the 1880s,’ I told him.

  ‘Indeed. But your father thought another might have been made at the same time.’

  ‘And this broken one could have been it?’ Zac said. He was holding up a shard of ruby glass, which flashed gorgeously in the late-afternoon light.

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I whispered. ‘Dad would have been fascinated to see this.’

  ‘How is he, poor chap?’ the vicar asked, and again I was stirred by the deep sympathy in his gaze. ‘I’d like to visit. Would that be appropriate? I’m very fond of your father. He’s an interesting man, very interesting, and a brave one.’

  Brave? What did he mean by that? I said hesitantly, ‘I confess I hadn’t known you two were so friendly.’

  ‘Oh, we got to know one another a little recently.’

  ‘He’s…not an easy man to know,’ I said, wondering how much my father had told him, and the vicar caught the depth of my feeling.

  ‘Or to live with, I imagine,’ he agreed. ‘He’s very reserved, isn’t he? And I respected that, of course. Do you think he’s up to a visit?’

  ‘I’m sure he’d appreciate seeing you, but he can’t hold any kind of conversation. I’m so worried about him.’

  Zac tactfully moved away, saying something about looking at the windows from the outside. He took the ladder and soon we heard him banging about, unscrewing the protective metal grilles. I talked to Jeremy about Dad’s condition for a while, then we both went out to help.

  When Zac had finished and put the ladder away again, we all found ourselves back in the Lady Chapel.

  The vicar said, ‘You know, I’ve been pondering an idea. There’s been a recent bequest we might be able to use for work on the broken window. Stained glass is important. The windows are such an aid to worship, I find. In medieval times, coloured glass was said to inspire visions of ecstasy.’

  I glanced again at the Virgin and Child, thinking of the agony of the Crucifixion window, how each scene represented a different side of perfect love, and saw his point. No one, surely, could contemplate these pieces and remain unmoved.

  ‘If you would take the box,’ Jeremy asked us, ‘and see what you make of its contents, that would be marvellous. Find out what it is, for a start. Of course, if you thought it possible to restore, we’d need to consult the Parochial Church Council and the diocese. The red tape’s such a bother when you’re dealing with church property…’ He trailed to a halt, gazing down at the box. I guessed we were all thinking the same thing. Was this game worth the candle? Could we really transform this mess of glass and lead into something whole and beautiful?

  ‘Well, we can at least give you an idea of what it is,’ I said, ‘and go from there.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said the vicar feelingly.

  ‘You don’t have anything that would help us, do you? Pictures, for instance–old guidebooks to the church?’

  ‘I’ll hunt about. But I haven’t ever seen anything.’

  I imagined what might be lying somewhere amidst the files in Dad’s paper-filled attic. The thought of tackling them didn’t fill me with joy.

  Zac looked at his watch and cleared his throat pointedly. ‘Do you think we’ve seen enough for today?’

  I nodded. He bent down to close up the box, then tried to lift it. ‘Oh, don’t do that, for goodness sake,’ said the vicar. ‘It took two of us to carry it in from the hall.’

  ‘What worries me is the box collapsing,’ said Zac. ‘Tell you what, I’ll come by with the van tomorrow.’ The two men agreed a time, then they eased the box back under the altar and the vicar straightened the cloth.

  ‘I’ll say goodbye here,’ Jeremy said. ‘I’ve some things to sort out in the vestry.’

  It was after six, and for a while we had become aware of activity out in the lobby. People were beginning to arrive in some number, passing into the hall opposite.

  Zac and I were leaving when he said, ‘You go ahead. I’ve left my notebook,’ and returned to the chapel.

  Deciding to wait, I drifted to the door of the church to see what was going on. Someone was playing flourishes of chords on a piano in the hall. The lobby was full of people. No one took any notice of me standing inside the door.

  ‘We pay our subscription to Dominic. He’s the secretary,’ one florid-faced City type was instructing another. ‘He lends us the music. Some people already have their own, of course. The Dream is such a popular piece.’

  ‘I’ll borrow it this term, since I’m new to all this,’ said the second man.

  It must be the Choral Society the vicar had mentioned. So they were rehearsing The Dream of Gerontius, one of Elgar’s most famous works and, as with his Cello Concerto, a favourite of mine. I moved into the doorway in order to see better.

  Somebody said, ‘Franny, is that you?’

  A young woman with messy fair hair, in baggy cargo pants and a smock top, had entered the lobby. I couldn’t see her face clearly against the light for a moment, but I’d know that voice anywhere. And no one else had ever called me Franny.

  Chapter 5

  Beside each man who’s born on earth, a guardian angel takes his stand, to guide him through life’s mysteries.

  Menander of Athens

  ‘Jo! What are you doing here?’ I cried.

  I saw her familiar smile, the one that enlivened her whole face, and it was as though I’d last met her yesterday.

  People were pushing past us, muttering about the crush, so we moved outside onto the path. For a second or two we stared at one another nervously, but then she opened her arms and I leaned forward to hug her tightly. Considering my reluctance to ring her last night, I was surprised by how good it felt to see her again.

  ‘You haven’t changed a bit,’ I said, looking her up and down. People say that lightly, but this time it was almost true. The same rounded figure, the same frizzy strawberry-blonde hair, resistant to brush or conditioner, the same freckled complexion, untouched by make-up–in short, the same Jo.

  ‘Nor have you,’ she said, slightly less convincingly, and we both knew that when we had last met, a dozen years ago, I had been very different, a shy, awkward creature with bitten nails, interested only in music and art, hardly able to open my mouth to strangers. And now…well, let’s just say that twelve years had taught me more about presenting myself than how to tie a scarf artfully. I still bit my nails though.

  ‘What have you been doing with yourself?’ she asked. ‘The last I heard, you were at music college. Your dad said you were doing ever so well.’

  I recalled with guilt that she had written me several letters and postcards from university and I’d not replied to any of them. Which one had she gone to? Sussex? I couldn’t remember, except that she’d long hoped to become a social worker. Always wanting to bind up wounds, was our Jo, always genuine in her desire to do good.

  ‘I called at the shop once or twice over the years, you see,’ she said, her innocent blue eyes focused on my face, ‘but he always said you were away.’

  ‘I’ve been working freelance, playing with any orchestra that needs me,’ I explained. ‘I must have taken that tuba round the world several times.’

  ‘That explains it then,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Well, you always wanted to travel.’

  Just then, Zac shoved his way out through the crowd. He glanced at Jo and, rea
lising we were talking, mumbled, ‘See you tomorrow.’ Then he strode off, toolbag slung over his shoulder, in the direction of Vauxhall Bridge Road.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Jo asked, staring after him.

  ‘Just Zac,’ I said. ‘Dad’s assistant. The vicar asked us to look at the windows in the church. So what are you doing with yourself these days?’

  ‘Oh, I work at St Martin’s Hostel.’ This was the place for young homeless women the vicar had mentioned, back down the road, past the church. ‘I’m one of the wardens.’

  ‘Do you live in?’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘That would be a bit much. I’m still at Mum and Dad’s flat actually. They’ve got a place in Kent now but wanted to keep on Rochester Mansions as Dad still comes up to London a fair bit. I feel a bit old to be living at home still but, well, it makes sense with what I’m paid.’

  ‘I’m at home again, too,’ I said to reassure her, and told her about Dad’s illness.

  ‘Gosh, that’s awful,’ she said. The strength of feeling in her voice caught me unawares. ‘If I can help at all…’

  ‘Of course,’ I said hoarsely. ‘Thanks.’

  Someone behind us called out, ‘Isn’t that the new bloke coming up the road now?’ We all craned our necks, but I didn’t know who we were looking at, for the street was so busy.

  ‘I’m sorry, Fran,’ said Jo. ‘The conductor’s here. I’d better queue up, get my music.’