by Rachel Hore
Laura felt a bolt of anger shoot through her; she picked up her skirts and ran for the steps. This so startled a great flock of pigeons that they wheeled up suddenly, and she had to put up her arms to shield her face.
I don’t want to hear about Marie any more, was what she was telling him. He merely grabbed her, pulled her back.
‘What did you do that for?’ he asked angrily.
‘Oh, I felt like it,’ she replied, as gaily as she could, but she meekly allowed him to take her arm once more.
‘You might have been hurt,’ he said, gently now, as though he were correcting a child. ‘And now I must tell you some news.’ His eyes were sparkling. Not more Marie, she briefly prayed, but it was something else entirely. ‘I showed those stories of yours to my friend at Millner’s. And he rates them, my dear. Can’t publish them himself, he says; not his sort of thing. But he advises you to send one or two to Alfred Loseley at Ladies’ World. Thinks they’re right up his street, especially the one with the dead flowers and the destitute wife.’
Laura looked at him, speechless, joy and fear taking turns in her mind. A real publisher liked her stories. But suppose the magazine editor did not? Or suppose he did, and they were published? How would her parents respond? Not that they seemed to have spare energy to think about anything but their own troubles at the moment.
‘Do you think I ought to send them to Mr Loseley?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ll consider the matter,’ she said haughtily. Then she smiled at him. ‘Thank you.’
Laura’s parents might be too wrapped up in themselves to notice their daughter’s doings, but her sister was another matter.
When Laura arrived home that afternoon it was to find Harriet there on an impromptu visit. As Laura handed Polly her coat and gloves she could hear laughter from the drawing room, and was amazed to realise it was her mother. She peeped round the door to see Mrs Brownlow on the sofa, holding baby Arthur who, now a lusty four months of age, stood bucking, testing his strong legs on her lap, crowing with joy. He turned his head to stare round-eyed at Laura when she entered the room, then stretched his mouth in a gummy grin.
‘Laura, where have you been?’ Harriet asked, jumping up from her seat to hug her.
‘Just out for a walk,’ Laura said. ‘No Ida today?’
‘She’s out of sorts. I sent her down to the kitchen to sit with Polly.’
‘I hope she’s not unwell.’ They all looked anxiously at Arthur, who was now sitting on Theodora’s lap.
‘Best keep her away from him in case, Harriet,’ said Theodora, trying to keep her voice even. ‘Who’s my precious one?’ she whispered into Arthur’s neck and laughed delightedly when he gave a sudden loud crow, which turned to a wail and soon it became apparent he was hungry. Theodora went down to speak to Mrs Jorkins about warming a bottle of milk.
Harriet walked round the room, gently jiggling her baby son to soothe him. ‘Where did you go, Laura?’ Her voice was stern.
‘When?’
‘Just now. I saw him out of the window. The glass man.’
‘Oh, Mr Russell. We walked up to the Abbey, that’s all.’
‘Why didn’t you take Polly?’
‘She was too busy here. Harriet, don’t lecture me. I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘But you know what Father said. You should be careful.’
‘Not you, too. Harriet, I’m acting perfectly properly.’
‘Mother says you’ve been to the workshop. Alone.’
‘There are other people around. Don’t fret so.’
‘Rough working men, no doubt. Laura, there’s trouble enough here without you dragging the family down further…’
‘I know. I tell you, I’m doing nothing wrong. He’s a friend, that’s all.’
At that moment, they were interrupted by their mother’s return with a bottle of milk and soon the only sounds were Arthur’s contented gulps.
A day passed after that and then another day with no word from him. Laura was miserable. By the third day, when her mother asked for her company visiting the hospital, she snapped, ‘Can’t one of your ladies take a turn?’ then immediately felt guilty and apologised.
‘I’m going mad,’ she told herself. Russell irritated her with his presence and diminished her by his absence. What was she to do?
Then, finally, came a letter. She took it from the tray in the hall before her parents saw it, went straight upstairs to read.
My dearest Laura,
Mary is painted, her infant and the cherubs almost done. I have only the surrounding details and borders to complete now. I find it healing, painting a mother and child, nay, not any mother and child, not even Marie and our son, but the mother of the world with Our Saviour. It is an honour and I feel very humble.
He hadn’t forgotten her. But once again his thoughts returned to Marie.
Chapter 26
In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists
‘It’s Lisa. It must be Lisa. She wants to get at me.’
Amber arrived just after Ben had gone and was deeply distressed to see the broken window.
‘You can’t go around randomly accusing people,’ I said rather wearily. ‘It happens to shops all the time.’
‘I know it’s her. She hates me.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know why. I’ve never done nothing to her. I…I get up her nose without even trying. It isn’t fair.’
‘Life rarely is,’ I said automatically. Certainly Amber hadn’t had a good deal so far. This job was probably the first real opportunity anyone had given her, and so far, fingers crossed, it seemed to be going well. She had a natural facility for working with glass and plenty of artistic flair. It was indeed a shame if someone spiteful was trying to ruin it all.
‘Amber, is there really any evidence to suggest that Lisa would have left the hostel late last night and come and thrown a paperweight at our window? If there is, of course, I’ll pass the information on to the police, especially as they might have got fingerprints…’ Though I somehow doubted that whoever had committed the crime had been daft enough to have left any prints on their missile. ‘But otherwise…well, it could make life much worse for you if you accuse her of something she didn’t do.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Amber, looking miserable. In addition to being shocked by the window, she felt responsible. I knew it was the way of the very young to relate everything to themselves, but even if, as I thought unlikely, Lisa had done it, that could hardly be construed as Amber’s fault.
‘Can you discreetly ask around? Find out where she was last night?’
‘I can’t ask her mates, can I? They’d want to know why I’m interested.’
‘Just ask whoever was on duty then. It’s a pity it wasn’t Jo. She’d know right away.’ Jo had been at choir last night, of course, and went straight home afterwards.
‘Effie and Ra, they were on. I can ask Ra. He was on reception so he saw everyone go in and out.’
‘You’ll have to ask him in a clever way then, so he doesn’t get suspicious about why you’re asking.’
‘OK, I’ll think of something.’
‘Remember that even if Lisa was out late it doesn’t prove anything, Amber. She’s free to come and go.’
‘No, but it would look strange if she went out at eleven o’clock on a Monday evening.’
‘Clubbing? A late-night job?’
‘Yeah, I suppose so.’
We broke off to serve a customer, and then the glaziers arrived, so we had to hastily dismantle the window display–miraculously undamaged–then move into the workshop, out of their way. I helped Amber with the next stage of the windows she had designed for the Armitage children. They were coming along beautifully. With Zac’s help she had cut out the pieces of glass. Now, as we tried to ignore the terrifying hammering and crashing that came from the front shop, I showed her how to stretch lo
ng floppy strips of soft lead, by securing one end in a vice and pulling on the other. The stretching made them more straight and rigid–easier to cut up and use. Zac or I would have to solder everything together for her, because it was important to do it neatly and, like any beginner, she was still splodging about with the melted metal. However, she was excited to be involved in the project as much as we could allow her.
‘I used to help my mum make Christmas decorations,’ she volunteered, as we started to fit the glass into the strips of lead. ‘She couldn’t leave the flat to work, you see. So that was her job, all year round, even when it was Easter. Every week this bloke came with boxes of stuff–you know, glass beads and gold thread and tinsel–and she’d have to thread it all together. He took away what she’d made the week before. Sometimes, if she wasn’t well or her fingers were very stiff, I stayed home from school and helped her, because she was worried about losing the money.’
This wasn’t the first time Amber had alluded to her childhood. I thought it sounded a lonely one–just her and her mother in a dreary high-rise flat on Commercial Road, surrounded by out-of-date Christmas decorations. But she spoke of it wistfully, as though it were a lost time of happiness.
‘What about your dad?’ I asked.
‘I never knew him,’ she said. ‘They met in the doctor’s surgery. It was before she got the multiple sclerosis. Mum says meeting him was the most romantic thing ever to happen to her. He held the surgery door open for her and she ended up being given a lift home in his boss’s limousine. He was a chauffeur, you see. He was Egyptian.’
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘that explains your lovely black hair.’
‘Yes. Amber was his mum’s name. Things didn’t work out though, because he missed Egypt, and when he went back Mum wouldn’t go with him. She found out he already had a wife. It wouldn’t have been a problem there because you’re allowed to have more than one wife, but Mum wouldn’t stand for it. So she had me all by herself.’
My head was beginning to spin at all of this. I asked her if she had ever heard from him. ‘Never,’ she replied.
‘Do you mind?’ I enquired, thinking of Zac and his Olivia, but she insisted she had no curiosity about him.
‘He can’t have been very interested in me; never sent us any money or anything. He was just some bloke…’
‘Who happened to be your father.’ Maybe there’d come a time when she was older, had a child of her own, when she would want to know more about him; about the half of her that was Egyptian. I studied her sweet heartshaped face, those thick-lashed brown eyes shining softly in the glow from the light-box, and almost envied her lack of concern. In contrast, my family secrets swirled in my mind like a great malevolent maelstrom.
‘How is your dad now?’ asked Amber, and I could sense those eyes steady upon me as I soldered together the delicate pale circles that represented the boy’s toes.
‘He’s holding his own. The doctors won’t really say how much better he’s likely to get. Damn.’ A blob of solder splashed like a tear on the glass.
‘It must be so hard for you,’ she whispered. ‘Specially not having your mum and that.’ She reached out and touched my arm. And with that little gesture she told me that she really understood about Dad. She’d been through it herself with her mother. She couldn’t know precisely how I felt, but she could guess, and that was comforting.
For a while we concentrated on the job at hand. I allowed Amber to fit some of the glass into the grooves in the lead strips, while I continued with soldering and daydreamed about Ben, going over everything he’d said and done the previous evening and wondering if he cared. He had had to hurry off that morning, still muzzy after the late night, but had promised to ring.
‘Do you enjoy this, Amber?’ I asked after a while.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘This is what I’ve always wanted to do–make beautiful things, ever since I was small. Mum always said the decorations I made were the best, the neatest, so I knew I’d be good. But then she passed away and I had to go and live with Gran and look after her, and then I messed up my exams.’
‘You might be able to get on a course to supplement the training here,’ I said vaguely. ‘Evening classes or something.’ Perhaps Zac would know.
‘I’m not good at writing stuff,’ she said, her eyes clouding with anxiety. ‘Do you think that would matter?’
‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘But you can get help for that, can’t you? You’ll be all right.’
By the time Zac returned at lunchtime, carrying a square package wrapped in newspaper, we had a lovely new shop window and the glaziers were gone. Amber and I had finished about half the panel and were happily chatting about angels again. Apparently it was Amber’s gran who had got her into the idea of angels, and we were having fun trying to diagnose who my Zodiac angels might be, though I had to admit that I didn’t take any of it seriously.
‘It’s not that I don’t believe you, Amber, about you seeing an angel. It’s just that…’
‘…you don’t believe me.’ She smiled and I was forgiven.
‘There might be some other explanation, that’s all. How did you get on?’ I asked Zac, who looked tired and fed up as he put on his overall.
‘Oh, a bit frustrating. David found me some glass for the border, but the gold stuff’s more difficult. He’s sending some off to a glassmaker in Hungary he thinks might give him the right match. I hope it’s not pricey, but we’ll have to wait and see.’
‘Are there other bits of Raphael you can do in the meantime?’
‘Yes, I’ll get on with some of the painting and firing. But it would be best to have all the pieces in one place first.’ He caught sight of our work on the Armitages’ little boy. ‘You’ve both done well this morning.’
‘Haven’t we? And what’s more, Amber’s worked out that Ambriel and the archangel Uriel are my birthsign angels. And Uriel’s also the angel responsible for stained glass. Isn’t that amazing?’
‘We can work out yours if you like, Zac. When’s your birthday?’ said Amber.
‘August the third, but I shouldn’t go to the bother.’ Zac must have realised he sounded unkind because he added gently, ‘I’m really not into any of that. I was brought up to rely on myself.’
I wasn’t ‘into it’ either, but on the other hand I couldn’t agree with Zac. With Dad ill, waiting to find out which way the tide would turn, I was learning that I couldn’t rely on myself as I used to. There were all these new people around me–Zac and Jo and Amber and now Ben, even the vicar and his wife–all becoming a part of my life whether I wanted them to or not. How quickly I was putting down roots.
I went to clean up the rest of the mess and to rebuild the window display. Last of all I hung Dad’s angel carefully back on her hook and, stepping outside, checked the result. She wasn’t quite straight. Inside again, I knelt down to adjust her slightly, and saw something I’d not noticed before. Woven into the carpet of flowers at her feet, so cunningly that it looked like foliage, was a little swirly symbol. It was a Celtic knot. The same knot that, according to Laura’s journal, Philip Russell had used. How strange. I remembered the panel that Dad had been working on when he collapsed and the penny dropped. Dad must have always known about that knot. It was in the family, after all.
Much later, when I’d almost given up hope of hearing from Ben, I picked up the ringing phone.
‘Fran.’
He had only to say my name in that teasing tone.
‘Ben,’ I replied, in that same tone, and we both laughed.
‘How are you today?’ he asked.
‘A little weary,’ I said, ‘but much better for hearing from you.’
‘Good. I wondered if you’d like to come over this evening?’
‘There isn’t much of it left.’ It was already nine-thirty.
‘I’ve only just got in from work. A little soirée at the school tonight. Pupils’ concert, you know.’
‘Oh? How did it go?’
‘Very wel
l. The parents seemed pleased and, let’s face it, that’s the main thing.’
‘That’s certainly one way of looking at it.’
‘So you’ll come?’
‘Yes,’ I said softly, and it was what I’d wanted to say all along.
‘Thanks again for rescuing me last night.’
‘Damsels in distress are my speciality.’
‘You were very gallant and masterful.’
‘Thank you. Window’s all fixed then?’
‘Mmm.’ We stood in his kitchen and I took a large gulp of the rosé he poured me, which was so strong and sweet I was downing it like fruit juice.
‘Heard anything from the police?’ Ben was running his finger around the rim of his glass.
‘Not a dicky bird.’
‘Well, since whoever it was didn’t steal anything, I’d forget about it. Kids, probably.’
‘I don’t like it though, Ben. It’s not just a shop, it’s my home, and I feel under attack. Amber thinks it’s a girl from the hostel, but I don’t know. It could be anyone.’
‘You poor thing.’ He hugged me quickly with his free arm.
We were heading upstairs into the sitting room when Ben said, ‘Oh, I forgot. A date for our choir meeting. Let’s go and find the book.’ I’d half-hoped he’d dropped the matter, but I couldn’t back out now.
In the music room I sat at the piano whilst he perused his black diary. There was a book of duets on the stand and I tried muddling my way through the lower part, whilst he muttered to himself. ‘Tomorrow–no. Friday’s church choir practice, then I’m away for the weekend…damn, there’s a colleague’s soirée after choir, that’s no good. It’ll have to be Tuesday.’ He turned to me and said, ‘I’ll get back to you when I’ve asked the others, but why not pencil in early evening Tuesday.’
‘Fine,’ I said.
Tutting at my carelessness, he removed my glass from where I’d balanced it beside the keyboard and sat down next to me.