by Rachel Hore
‘But to invite him on my birthday? To a family gathering?’
Her father sat down heavily in his chair. ‘Perhaps it was insensitive of me,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, there is too much on my mind. However, whilst we are touching upon one delicate subject, I must raise another. Mr Bond came to me recently with a concern.’
‘A concern?’
‘About you, my dear.’
‘Me? What right has that man to express concerns about me?’
‘He has our family’s best interests at heart. And he still cares for you, Laura. What he had to say alarmed your mother and me.’
‘What he…? What do you mean?’
‘That you keep such open company with Mr Russell. No,’ he raised his hand to stop further interruption, ‘I know you are an innocent in this matter, my dear. However, you must consider your position as a young lady with, ah, hopes and expectations.’
‘Mr Russell is a married man, Papa. There is no possibility of anything else. We are friends only.’
‘Yes, indeed. I know this. But worldly opinion twists that which is pure, preferring to believe the worst. And being a daughter of a Church of England clergyman you must be, like Caesar’s wife, above suspicion. Bond tells me what I did not know previously. The man is the subject of a public scandal. His wife has left him, though I gather he is the wronged party. I feel it my Christian duty to receive him in the house, but it still does not do for you to be seen with him. Laura, I’ve never been able to forbid you to do anything, you know that. And though you are a young woman of forceful opinions, you have never before given us cause for concern.’
‘Papa, I do not now.’
‘Perhaps not. But I counsel you to be careful. He will make our windows and be gone from our lives. And, Laura, I accept your feelings with regard to Mr Bond’s suit, but I must ask you to respect my position. He is a stalwart supporter in the parish and I can’t prevent the two of you meeting from time to time.’
‘I didn’t mean that he should be banished from the church, Papa. Merely that I should not have to simper sweetly at him across our drawing room on my birthday.’
At this her father laughed and squeezed her hand. ‘Ah, my dear, again I’m sorry. And a secret part of me is pleased that you will be with us for a while yet–despite Mr Bond being a most excellent man. Now I must wrestle with Sunday morning’s sermon. A particularly difficult exposition on The Four Last Things.’ And patting her shoulder, he guided her out of the room.
Laura stood in the hall, trying to collect her feelings. From the drawing room came the plaintive tones of Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude played with all the passion her mother could muster.
Why did that man Bond have to interfere, to tarnish something good? She was still holding the package he’d given her. Tearing off the paper, she saw it was a copy of Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin, a present she’d have welcomed if it had come from anyone else.
‘Oh, confound the man!’ she cried, and slapped the book down on a console table where it caught a metal statue of St Christopher Carrying the Christ Child. The ornament slid to the floor with a crash.
The Chopin foundered. There came a long silence, then the crashing opening chords of Beethoven’s Sonata Pathétique.
Laura listened for a while, allowing the music to fill her. Then she rescued the statue, relieved to see it was not damaged, and climbed the stairs.
As she gazed once more at her reflection in her father’s mirror, her thoughts swirled. The girl who looked back at her could not be called beautiful, but she had strength and spirit. The set of her chin might, however, label her stubborn. Now Laura knew what to do.
As twilight fell, she sat at the table in her room writing a letter to Mr Russell, assuring him of the family’s delight in his drawings. She hesitated for a moment then wrote, It would interest me greatly to view the construction of the window, if you would permit it.
Chapter 22
For He will give His angels charge of you, to guard you in all your ways.
Psalm XCI. 11.
‘Zac! I’ve found it. Look!’ I wouldn’t even let him take his jacket off the following morning. But he was as excited as I was to see the drawings.
‘Fran, it’s exactly what we needed. Isn’t he magnificent?’
‘You think it’s a he?’
Zac considered the matter and shrugged. ‘Could be either. The shape of the face is masculine, isn’t it? Square-jawed, like one of those Renaissance angels. And the hands are too broad for a woman’s.’
‘But the features themselves…’
‘Are delicate, I agree. No, it could be either.’
‘It’s Raphael, Zac. There’s a passage in Laura’s journal about it, too. Look, here is the pilgrim’s staff and the hand raised in blessing. And the motto “God heals”. Gabriel would hold a lily.’ I waved the drawing and did a little dance that made him laugh. ‘Isn’t it fantastic, Zac? Come on now, we must ring Jeremy.’
The vicar promised to come round as soon as he could disentangle himself from a parish finance meeting.
Amber arrived late.
‘Sorry, the police came this morning. Something about a fight last night. Some blokes Lisa knows, but no one’s saying anything.’
‘Was anyone badly hurt?’ I asked and she shrugged.
‘Don’t think so. Ooh, what’s that?’ She admired the picture of Raphael and pronounced the angel a ‘he’.
Jeremy, when he appeared, stuck to his line that angels were androgynous.
‘Well, we can’t call the angel “it”. That doesn’t sound right at all,’ said Amber. In the end we settled for ‘he’ and ‘he’ Raphael remained.
The vicar was on his way somewhere and could only stay a minute, so we agreed to reconvene on Thursday morning to discuss how to proceed.
After he left I remembered that Jo and I had agreed to meet that evening. I hadn’t heard from her, so I dialled her number, thinking I’d leave a message, but she was in. ‘Oh no, that’s awful. I’m really sorry,’ she said, ‘I’d completely forgotten and I’ve double-booked. I’m just getting ready to go out, Fran. Something I can’t cancel.’
‘Oh Jo, that’s a shame.’ I felt crestfallen. There was once a time when I had taken Jo for granted. Now, it seemed, the tables were turning. But as I finished the call I remembered I’d be seeing Ben the following night and that cheered me up.
At five o’clock, when I’d finally finished unpacking the morning’s order and was switching the sign on the door to Closed, the woman from the Museum rang to tell me what she’d discovered about Philip Russell.
‘The main thing that’ll interest you,’ she said, ‘is the link with Minster Glass. Did you know that Philip Russell eventually took over the business?’
I almost dropped the phone in astonishment.
‘I read it in a footnote somewhere. Reuben Ashe, who owned the firm, invited him to become a partner in 1885.’
‘But that means,’ I cried, trying to take this in, ‘that he might be part of my family.’ I explained how Minster Glass had been handed down through the generations, realising as I did so that I didn’t know whether my predecessors had been called Ashe or Russell.
‘That continuity is unusual these days,’ she agreed, ‘but, yes, it certainly sounds like it.’
‘Since we’re rebuilding practically from scratch, it’s going to be challenging to treat this as a strict conservation exercise,’ Zac told the vicar on Thursday. ‘We will use as much of the original glass as possible, of course, and follow ethical guidelines for conservation as often as we can.’
Standing in the workshop of Minster Glass, with the angel on the table before us, we might have been surgeons discussing where to make the first cut on an anaesthetised patient.
‘However, unless what you’re wanting is a pure-Victorian half-made window to lie in some museum vault, I’m going to have to fill in the gaps using new glass. And then we will fit it into a bronze frame which can be installed in front of the present
clear-glass window.’
‘Will that matter?’ I asked.
‘Not really. We can record which bits of glass are new, you see. And mark them.’
‘What do we know about the artist?’ asked the vicar, awkwardly hitching his bulk onto a stool.
‘I take it you’re asking whether the window has any historical merit?’
‘Yes. If he was an important figure–I’m not saying of Burne-Jones’s stature, but even someone well known amongst stained-glass experts–would we get ourselves in the soup if we filled in the gaps, so to speak? Have you managed to find anything out about Philip Russell, Fran?’
I’d already explained to Jeremy how Laura Brownlow’s journal might help document the creation of the window, but my contact from the Museum of Stained Glass had been able to tell me very little otherwise about Russell except for the connection to Minster Glass.
‘As well as the Virgin and Child window in St Martin’s, she could tell me about only two or three other surviving windows directly attributable to him.’ A Nativity window at St Helen’s in Brighton was one that she’d mentioned, an Annunciation at St Aloysius in Islington another. ‘But what is more important from our point of view is his connections to the business. He went into partnership with Reuben Ashe, the then owner, and eventually took over the firm, so he was undoubtedly responsible in some way for many more windows.’
‘That’s something your father might have known about…know about, I mean,’ said Zac, blushing at his error.
‘Yes,’ I said softly, smiling at him, ‘though I haven’t found any mention of it amongst his papers upstairs.’
‘What was his reputation as an artist?’ Jeremy asked me.
‘The woman at the Museum says he’s a little-known figure. But given how wonderful the Mary window is, surely he deserves better?’
‘So, would we all agree that his work is worth preserving?’
‘Definitely,’ said Zac and, ‘Oh yes,’ I replied, both at the same moment.
‘Mmm.’ We waited. Jeremy drummed his fingers on the table. Eventually he said, ‘I think we should do what Zac suggests. Restore it using new glass. I want to see that window back in the church. I’m sure we can move that cupboard to free up the other light. It’ll take time to talk everyone round, but we’ll get there.’ His eyes were bright with enthusiasm.
‘Good,’ said Zac. ‘Do you imagine that the light you speak of is the same size as its neighbour?’
‘I think so, but I’ll help you measure it if you come and find me tomorrow. I’ll be in the parish office, round the side of the hall, most of the morning.’
‘Is that OK, Zac?’ I asked anxiously. ‘Of course, if Amber were in, I’d come with you. But we haven’t asked her to come again until Monday.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Do you think I can’t manage?’ He wasn’t smiling.
‘Of course not,’ I started to say. ‘I just…’ He laughed and I frowned at his teasing.
Zac seemed happier that week. I’m sure the progress with our angel was partly responsible, but perhaps sharing his anxieties about his daughter had helped, too. I hoped so.
When Ben opened the door to me that evening, he was wearing an apron covered in little Hoffnung orchestral cartoons and an air of distraction. His hair was unusually ruffled and his face flushed.
‘You’d better come down to the kitchen, Fran,’ he said, after quickly kissing my cheek. ‘I’m at a crucial stage with supper. Are you any good with béchamel sauce? I can never quite get the hang of it.’
I followed him down to the basement where the kitchen was a scene of havoc. A celebrity cook book spattered with flour and grated parmesan was weighted down with a pepper mill at a recipe for Uncle Pepe’s Famous Vegetable Lasagne. A trail of ratatouille led across the floor from the table to the sink, where vegetable peelings floated amongst the dirty crockery. I stepped over a broken egg lying on the floor and inspected a saucepan of lumpy white goo on the stove.
‘Where do you keep the sieve?’ I asked, prodding at the sauce with a spoon.
Ben scooped up the egg in a tea towel and I watched with horror as he threw it, shell and all, into the washing machine. His only subsequent contribution to proceedings was to splash red wine into two huge glasses and amuse me with stories about his hectic day, while I strained the sauce of lumps and poured layers of vegetable, béchamel, pasta and, finally, parmesan into a waiting dish.
‘Do you always expect your guests to cook their own dinner?’ I asked, closing the oven door.
He laughed. ‘I’m sorry. I am hopeless, aren’t I? You don’t know how grateful I am.’ His repentant small-boy expression was so endearing that it was impossible to mind.
‘Where are we eating? I mean, should we set the table? Is there any salad or anything?’ Ben leaped up and delved in the cutlery drawer. Green salad and bread followed forks and spoons onto the kitchen table.
‘Et, voilà! Now, Fran, why don’t you take your wine upstairs and make yourself comfortable in the sitting room while I clear up a bit. Or have a tinkle on the piano, if you want.’
I protested but he waved me away. ‘No, I insist. You’ve done enough.’
Today, as I wandered up the stairs and down the long thin hall, I found myself assessing the layout of the place, which I’d been too distracted to do on my last visit. I tried to imagine how Laura’s home had originally been.
In converting the old rectory to maisonettes, I guessed that the developers had merely removed the old staircase and built a wall that split the property in half from front to back. Hence Ben had half the old hallway, half the rooms of the original house–all, of course, off one side of the hall, and his own street door. Presumably the other half, next door, was a mirror image. If there were any Victorian ghosts, I mused, they’d likely be seen walking back and forth through the dividing wall, wondering what idiot had put it there.
I peeped round the door of the front room to where the grand piano glinted ebony in the evening light. It was a cheerfully messy room with bare floorboards, the surfaces bestrewn with sheet music. An arrangement of wooden chairs and music stands suggested a recent chamber group rehearsal. On one wall Ben had hung an impressive array of framed degree and masters certificates. There were concert flyers and a couple of posters, too, advertising piano performances at well-known music festivals; the most recent, as far as I could see, from two or three years back.
I walked over to the piano to where a diary lay open on the top, and couldn’t stop myself peeking at it. Nina’s name appeared several times among the scrawled entries and I flipped the book shut, disconsolate.
I put my wine glass on a table and sat down on the long stool. The piano was beautiful, a Bechstein, kept in immaculate condition. I tried a few chords, then sight-read a hymn from the book propped up on the music rest. The descant was fiddly in the final verse–Angels help us to adore Him–but I staggered on until I became aware of Ben standing in the doorway, arms folded, listening.
‘Come on, you play something,’ I said, getting up and pulling some music at random from a huge pile on a little table. ‘Piano’s not really my thing. Look, here’s some Ravel. Do you know this one?’
It was Jeux d’Eau, a sparkling, impossibly difficult piece that’s meant to sound like running water. As I opened it and swapped it for the hymn book, I noticed a name pencilled on the cover. Beatrix Claybourne. It lingered in my mind because of its old-fashioned elegance.
‘Haven’t tried this piece for years,’ said Ben. But he launched himself into it confidently and ignored the occasional wrong note as he plotted his way at speed through the hemi-demi-semi-quavers. By the time he’d finished we were both laughing.
‘OK, so that one needs a little practice. Can I play you something else?’
‘Is there anything you’re rehearsing at the moment?’ I asked him. ‘For performance, maybe.’
‘I’m accompanying Nina,’ he said. ‘It’s an important solo outing. Only a small music festival in Suss
ex, but it’s well regarded. Schubert and Brahms.’ He started to play from memory a lovely flowing sonata of Schubert’s, the plaintive melody tapping deep emotion. When he came to the end we sat quietly for a moment.
A delicious herby smell was creeping into the room. Shortly afterwards, the oven-timer began to beep rudely.
‘How is your dad?’ Ben asked me as we were eating, and his face showed concern as I told him about my visit that afternoon–that there had been no change. I felt I could confide in Ben.
‘It sounds odd, Ben, but I feel closer to him than I have for years. We’ve not always had an easy relationship, but now I can sit and tell him what I’ve been doing and how I feel about things–and, this time, he can’t change the subject or leave the room. That’s what he used to do, if I said something that made him feel uncomfortable. He has to listen. If that’s what he’s doing–listening. I can’t always be sure. Perhaps he is far away in some other place.’
‘They say it helps the patient though, don’t they? To talk, stimulate them. You don’t mention your mother. Is she…?’
‘She died when I was tiny,’ I told him.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said, looking dismayed.
I was used to people’s reactions. Sometimes they were embarrassed, didn’t know what to say, and I found myself reassuring them. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It was nearly thirty years ago. I can’t remember her at all.’
‘Still, growing up without a mother…that’s a tough call,’ he said.
‘What about your parents?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I don’t get up to Herefordshire to see them very often,’ Ben replied, offering me more salad. ‘My sister Sally lives locally so she keeps an eye. I go a few times a year, for Christmas usually, but I suppose that’ll be more difficult with my organist duties. Sally looks out for them. I’m lucky really.’
‘It’s a shame though, if the job stops you from visiting them.’
‘To be honest, we’re not that close. I was packed off to boarding school at seven and got used to looking out for myself.’ He pushed his plate away, his expression stony-faced.