The Glass Painter's Daughter

by Rachel Hore

  ‘How wonderful to be beautiful and to inspire that kind of love,’ Jo sighed as we left. I was about to make some light reply when I saw that she meant it.

  ‘Jo, you must know that’s nonsense. You’d be in danger of becoming a “thing”, an object of desire instead of a person. I should think May Morris came to find all the worship very irritating. She was said to be a discontented person.’

  ‘Still, being worshipped sounds all right to me.’

  Jo seemed so miserable that I asked her, ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Don’t listen to me. I’m just having an off-day. I don’t even matter to my parents today.’ We both laughed.

  I squeezed her arm. ‘You’re nice exactly the way you are,’ I said.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘and I suppose I’m…I don’t know, a useful person. But I’d rather be pretty. Like you.’ Her smile was sad.

  ‘Now you’re making me cross,’ I said. ‘You’re lovely. And I don’t think I’m pretty as you call it, at all.’

  She laughed. ‘Will you come and have some lunch?’ she asked me. ‘Effie rang from work after I got off the phone to you. She hasn’t got anyone to help this afternoon so I said I’d go in at three, but…’

  ‘I ought to see Dad then, anyway,’ I said quickly, ‘but lunch would be great.’ We stopped at a little supermarket to buy a few things.

  Jo’s parents’ flat was on the first floor of an immensely solid Edwardian mansion block with a wide, carpeted communal staircase. The flat itself was much the same as I remembered it, opulently decorated with Sanderson-print wallpaper and formal brocade curtains tied back to let in what light could be gleaned from the gloomy street.

  We ate in the kitchen, overlooking a communal garden where two women in full Islamic dress sat on a bench, talking animatedly. Three tiny dark-eyed children, the girls in white dresses, played on the grass nearby.

  ‘It’s funny,’ said Jo, passing me the bowl of green salad, ‘I always planned that by the time I was thirty I’d have children of my own. And there’s not even the remotest possibility on the horizon. Do you ever want kids, Fran?’

  I grimaced. ‘The idea terrifies me. Think of my weird upbringing. Suppose I messed up too?’

  Jo put down her fork and knotted her fingers together, frowning. ‘Your dad did his best though, Fran. It’s not his fault that your mum died.’

  ‘I suppose not. But it was his fault that he erased all memory of her, leaving me with…a void.’ I remembered my conversation with Zac yesterday. His girlfriend Shona had done the same thing with their daughter. Deprived her of a father.

  ‘Did your parents ever say anything about my mother?’ I wondered suddenly. ‘I mean, Dad must have spoken to other grown-ups about her sometimes. I once heard one of the teachers ask about her.’

  Jo, mouth full, shook her head slowly. It had always amazed me as a child how much power grown-ups had in situations where I felt quite helpless. I remembered how swiftly Dad dismissed my first piano teacher when I told him how the wretched woman struck my hand with a ruler if I played a wrong note. I had worried about the matter for weeks, frightened that he would belittle my suffering if I told him. But parents would keep things from you too, as I well knew, and secrets they thought small came to assume giant proportions. Mrs Pryde had intimated she knew exactly why a quiet, studious girl called Kathy hadn’t returned to school after half-term one hot summer–but ‘it wouldn’t be fair to her mother to spread it about, darlings,’ was all she’d say when Jo begged to be told.

  ‘What about the Kathy Maybury thing?’ I asked Jo, who looked understandably puzzled at the sudden change of subject. ‘Do you remember, we imagined she must be pregnant, or messed up on drugs, or that she had murdered somebody?’

  ‘Oh, Kathy. It was ridiculous how secretive everyone was. It sounds so normal now. The poor girl had just been working too hard, made herself ill. But everybody thought it was terrible back then, a nervous breakdown. It marked you as a failure. In fact, she just switched schools after the summer holidays. Mum heard she did really well in the end.’

  The phrase ‘ill with grief’ floated through my mind. It was from Laura Brownlow’s journal and Laura had been speaking about her mother. ‘Have I told you about this diary I found?’ I asked Jo now. She shook her head, pushing her plate away with half her food uneaten. I explained.

  ‘Laura’s mother, Theodora, lost two children to disease. Clearly something broke inside her, but no one knew how to deal with that then.’

  ‘It must have been unimaginably awful,’ said Jo, her eyes huge with concern. ‘Yet people in those days said losing their children must be the will of God.’

  ‘It does sound callous to us today, doesn’t it? But how else could they deal with it when there was no cure for common childhood diseases? Laura’s parents’ faith was what kept them going. Think of those gravestones referring to children “fallen asleep” or graves with statues of children resting in the arms of angels. It seems sentimental to us now, but it must have helped parents express their grief.’

  A cry came up from the little party in the garden below. The tiny boy had fallen and lay weeping. One of the women scooped him up and stood rocking him in her arms as though he were the most precious thing in the world. I glanced at Jo. Her expression was troubled. She looked down at her watch, said, ‘We’ve got another hour,’ then stood up and started clearing away plates with what seemed unnecessary haste.

  At her request I made us a pot of tea. ‘Have you practised for choir tomorrow at all?’ I asked. ‘Ben’s sure to notice. He’s grumbling about people sight-reading at rehearsals.’

  ‘Haven’t had time,’ she said crossly. ‘Anyway, we don’t have a piano like you. I should have ordered one of those tapes Val was offering, but I didn’t realise it was all going to be so serious.’

  ‘Was the last conductor like this?’ I said.

  ‘No, much more easygoing. We thought Ben would be, too. He took us for a trial rehearsal back in June and he seemed very relaxed.’

  ‘But now he seems more serious about it?’

  ‘Yes, he’s definitely more ambitious than we imagined. The thing is, a lot of people only come because they enjoy singing. Most of us aren’t musicians or anything. We don’t want to spend all our spare time practising. People won’t like the conductor pushing them too hard.’

  ‘And you think Ben’s doing that?’

  ‘Possibly. We’ll see how he is tomorrow. But if he carries on like this, I don’t think I’ll enjoy going.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ I said. On a wicked impulse I added, ‘Dominic will miss you.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘He will. He can’t take his eyes off you.’

  ‘Rubbish. He’s just friendly. He’s never given the slightest—’

  ‘Trust me, I notice these things. Not with regard to myself, unfortunately, but with other people.’

  She smiled sadly and started to pull at a hang-nail on her thumb. ‘He’s a very nice man. But I think you’re wrong and, anyway, I’m not interested.’

  I thought of Dominic, one of those instantly likeable men, who shone with goodness and honesty. He was nice-looking, too. Not classically handsome or, it struck me now, sexy, like Ben. He wasn’t aware of his attractiveness in the way Ben was. He was just someone you warmed to instantly. A lovely person, who’d suit Jo down to the ground.

  ‘Why aren’t you interested?’ I insisted, but found I’d gone too far.

  She ripped at the hang-nail and it tore off. Blood welled up. ‘Oh, whoever knows why someone is or isn’t attracted to someone! I can’t explain it.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, but instead of apologising profusely as she usually did if she feared she had caused offence, she merely sucked at her thumb while pouring the tea, a self-absorbed expression on her face.

  She plonked a mug in front of me.

  ‘So how’s Amber getting on?’ she asked, sitting down.

&n
bsp; ‘Oh, she’s going great guns,’ I replied. ‘Got Zac twisted around her little finger. He’s really impressed with her progress. Do you know, she created designs for two children’s nursery windows, and they’re beautiful.’

  ‘I’m so glad,’ Jo said, and it was the old, upbeat Jo again, eyes shining. ‘I can see it’s made a real difference to her. I don’t think life at the hostel is much easier for her, but she seems to be taking it better. She was going shopping for some clothes yesterday. I wonder what she’s got for herself.’

  ‘Not a great deal, on what I can pay her,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t she have to pay the hostel rent if she’s earning?’

  ‘Only something small,’ Jo said. ‘Tell you what, have you seen the hostel? If you’ve got time now, you could come in with me, before you go to see your dad.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ I said.

  Just as we were leaving the flat the telephone rang. Jo snatched it up, but when she said, ‘Mum,’ a look of exasperation crossed her face. ‘I’m fine, really. Fran’s here but we’re going out now. I’ve got to work.’

  She put the phone down. ‘She was ringing from the party they’ve gone to, worried at the idea of me being here on my own. Honestly.’

  I remembered Jo’s tone of indignation, that her parents should have their own lives, and forbore to comment.

  The modern brick building that was St Martin’s women’s hostel must have replaced the rather grim 1930s offices I remembered, sometime since I left home. For some reason I had a preconception of bare school-like dormitories or an old-fashioned youth hostel with sets of bunks. It was a pleasant surprise to be shown single rooms that were cheerfully decorated and strewn with female possessions, often with en-suite bathrooms. On the ground floor there was a kitchen and a café which was open for snacks at certain hours, and a big living room with the inevitable TV blaring away in one corner.

  ‘It’s really lovely,’ I told Jo.

  ‘It is a temporary home,’ she said. ‘Somewhere the girls can live until they’re set up and ready to move on. We can take about thirty at a time, and, as you might imagine, there’s a waiting list. If they break the rules, they’re out though. We can’t put up with illegal drug use or drunkenness or violence, anything like that.’

  Being a Sunday afternoon, there were not many people around. Just a small huddle of girls in a corner of the café drinking fizzy drinks from out of the machine. One of them, dressed in a T-shirt and what looked like pyjama bottoms, leaned against the whitewashed wall smoking a cigarette, her black bobbed hair framing a face the colour of whey but for a slash of scarlet lipstick. She had small pretty features, but a hard twist to her mouth and cavernous dark shadows under her eyes. The look she fastened upon Jo and me showed such disdain that it hurt. The other girls lounging, feet up on the chairs around us, glanced up briefly as Jo said hello.

  ‘This is my friend Fran. I’m showing her round. Lisa, you know you can’t smoke in here. Take it outside, please.’

  There was a tense silence that seemed to go on and on. Then, slowly, Lisa took a last long drag on her cigarette and dropped the butt into a Coke can. She walked off in the direction of the stairs, all eyes on her. Nobody spoke.

  ‘Well,’ said Jo, to no one in particular, and the tension relaxed.

  ‘You on tonight, Jo?’ asked one of the other girls, a plump, unhappy-looking blonde with a little girl’s voice, wearing caked make-up that failed to disguise bad acne.

  ‘That’s right, Cassie,’ replied Jo. ‘Anyone know if Amber’s about? Fran here, her dad owns the shop Amber’s working at.’

  The girls glanced at me with more interest. After a moment Cassie said, ‘She and Lisa had a row. Amber went out in a strop. Dunno where.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jo. ‘What were they fighting about now?’

  ‘Oh, same as ever. Lisa calls Amber a runt or something and Amber starts whingeing. She’s such a baby.’

  ‘Oh, Cassie…’ Jo started to say.

  ‘She’d be OK if she stood up for herself,’ said a skinny girl who was searching her hair for split ends. ‘That’s what Lisa hates–that Amber doesn’t fight back.’

  Jo and I moved on through to the entrance hall. ‘It doesn’t stop at name-calling, that’s what worries me,’ Jo said in a low voice. ‘Lisa can be vicious and the others are scared of her. They’re not bad girls but they’re cowed by her and will do what she says. Still, we get by.’

  I hugged Jo goodbye, and thanked her, then set off to see my father.

  Dad wasn’t wearing the oxygen mask today and a nurse explained that his breathing was much better. He lay against a pile of pillows, watching me with anxious eyes. Once he opened his mouth and I thought he was trying to speak, but it turned into a yawn.

  ‘I’ve told you about Amber, haven’t I?’ I asked him. ‘She’s the girl who’s come to help in the shop. She lives in the church hostel. I went to see it this afternoon. It’s nothing like you’d expect, you know.’ I sat down. ‘Jo was right about employing Amber,’ I went on. ‘She’s got something of a flair for the glasswork. She’s even working on some designs with Zac. He’ll do all the difficult stuff, but she’s helping choose the glass.’

  Dad’s eyes gleamed with interest, or was I imagining it? Anyway, it motivated me to go on. ‘It’s making life easier, having Amber. Gives us a bit more flexibility. And the customers like her.’ She was good at small talk about people’s health and the weather, at which neither Dad nor Zac excelled.

  I remembered Zac confiding about Olivia. ‘Zac told me how you originally came to employ him,’ I said to Dad. ‘You never said at the time. I think it’s wonderful, the way you helped him.’

  I waited, as though I expected him to respond. What would he have said? ‘He was obviously the man for the job.’ Or, ‘It seemed the sensible thing to do.’ Something matter-of-fact, anyway, that allowed no room for emotion.

  Ben rang early that evening.

  When I picked up the phone I wandered over to the living-room window and peered across the Square, wondering if I would be able to see him. But the evening light dazzled off his windows.

  ‘Coming to choir tomorrow?’ he asked.

  ‘The wildest of horses wouldn’t keep me away,’ I quipped.

  ‘Good. I was ringing to ask your advice as a fellow musician. What do you think about singing exercises?’

  ‘Singing exercises?’

  ‘Yes, for the choir. If we spent, say, the first half-hour practising breathing, relaxation, scales, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Mmm.’ I tried to envisage Jo enjoying this.

  ‘It could make all the difference to their performance.’

  ‘Why are you asking me? I’m new. I hardly know anyone.’

  ‘That’s exactly why–you’ve still got some sort of objectivity about the whole thing. And, as I said, you’re a musician.’

  ‘Oh, OK. Since you ask, I suppose they wouldn’t mind a few minutes, but any more than that, they might see as hard work and a bit boring. Half an hour would be too much.’

  Ben gave a sharp intake of breath and said, ‘That’s what Michael thinks. I suppose you’re both right. OK, I’ll try ten minutes.’ Then he said softly, ‘I’m so sorry about Friday night, by the way.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It must have been tiresome, listening to stories about people you don’t know. Nina’s used to us now, of course…’

  ‘No, it was fine, honestly. Though it’s nice of you to say.’ I was touched by his concern.

  ‘Good,’ he said. There was a brief silence, and I wondered if he had some other motive in ringing, but then he said, ‘Ought to go. PCC meeting in twenty minutes. See you tomorrow. Maybe we can fix up something.’

  ‘Yes, let’s,’ I said, hoping he’d do so right away. But he’d rung off.

  I put the phone down, unsure whether to feel happy or exasperated; whether to believe there was something between us or not. He was attractive, I couldn’t deny that. We had a shared interest in mus
ic and, I could be wrong, but I thought there was some spark between us.

  Looking back now, I realise that I’d got over Nick very quickly. It hadn’t been a deep thing at all. But it had left me tender. What with that and my anguish about Dad, my guard was down.

  I couldn’t settle to anything that evening. I tried playing through some Gerontius on the old piano, but it was horribly out of tune. I contemplated my tuba case, squatting in a corner, but didn’t have the will to take the instrument out. The flat looked wretched with its faded furnishings, its sense of absence. Shreds of memories from my childhood rushed in. In the end I trudged gloomily up to the attic. It turned out to be the best possible thing, for I quickly got absorbed in searching the remaining files in the cabinet where I’d found Laura’s journal.

  By the time I surfaced my watch said eleven o’clock, but I’d found nothing. I’d hauled files dated 1880, 1881 and even 1882 out of the drawers, trawling through them not once but several times, turning over every letter and receipt, unfurling endless drawings in my search for a cartoon for the angel window.

  I’d found sketches for saints and disciples, crucifixions, Holy Families; for creations and apocalypses, and for angels, yes, dozens of angels. The Angel of the Lord–believed to be the personification of God Himself–saving Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego from their Babylonian furnace, messenger angels visiting Virgins and shepherds; whole choirs of angels praising God in Heaven–but not my angel.

  I carefully refolded a torn sketch for a roundel of cherubs and returned it to its place, filed under June 1882. Apart from that letter from the Reverend Brownlow, Laura’s angel seemed to have vanished from official record. Every reference to its construction had disappeared. Why?