by Rachel Hore
‘And under the lead here,’ he bent to indicate the bottom left-hand corner of the window, ‘I’ve painted Minster Glass. And there’s the piece with Philip Russell’s Celtic knot, so future generations can blame us if needs be.’
‘There’s nothing to blame us for,’ I said, shaking my head in wonder. ‘Zac, it’s beautiful, superb. Jeremy’s going to love it.’
He was fiddling with the camera again now, so my attempt to hug him got a bit confused. For a brief moment though, he hugged me back and I felt his breath in my hair, smelled the saltiness of his skin. I stepped back, both of us a little startled.
‘Thank you,’ he said, smiling. ‘I hope Jeremy doesn’t have the same reaction.’
Jeremy came that afternoon, walked around the angel several times and then finally said, ‘It’s magnificent. Thank you.’
During the following days, we had a steady stream of parishioners making a pilgrimage to the shop to see the window. They all agreed that it must be installed in the church. Now we had to wait for official permission.
I often found myself going over to study the angel, feeling the force of that calm, strong gaze. How close, I wondered, had Zac managed to get it to the original? Perhaps we’d never know.
Chapter 30
Somehow life is bigger after all
Than any painted angel.
Oscar Wilde, Humanitad
LAURA’S STORY
It was nearly the end of July when Philip Russell asked Laura to accompany him to the Grosvenor Gallery in New Bond Street, to see Burne-Jones’s sensational new painting: The Golden Stairs. She’d never been there before. At first, her attention was caught by the Sunday crowds and the olive-green rooms cluttered with furniture and ornaments, even before she contemplated the paintings.
As they stared up at the huge, glowing picture, Laura wondered at how ethereal, how spellbinding these barefoot women were, endlessly descending their mysteriously suspended staircase. Here was mysticism of a different kind from the awe she felt in her father’s church. What would James Brownlow think of it? She couldn’t imagine that her father would like or even try to understand this faintly pagan scene. But nor could she name the deliciously disturbing feelings the painting inspired.
Philip explained in a whisper about the faces–that one was Mr Morris’s daughter May, the girl in profile at the top Mr Burne-Jones’s own child, Margaret. Laura imagined what it must be like to be made famous in a painting. It was a form of immortality her father would definitely disapprove of, she decided.
From further down the room there came a ripple of female laughter. A tall woman in a flowing sage-green robe, all embroidered with birds and flowers, peeled away from a cluster of ladies around an Alma-Tadema painting, and Philip gave a little gasp. She was a real beauty this one, Laura thought, with that head of glossy dark curls tamed into a knot at the nape, fine sloe-black eyes, a long straight nose, perfectly moulded lips, and a lively expression. The woman’s gaze darted around the room and came to rest on Philip. For a moment she grew perfectly still, then she moved towards them. To him she said gently, ‘Philip, are you well?’ and placed a graceful hand on his arm. He seemed agitated.
‘Marie. Yes, I am quite well, thank you. This is Miss Brownlow.’ The woman’s eyes passed over Laura’s face and figure briefly, without interest. Laura’s cheeks burned.
One of Marie’s companions called out, ‘Mair, have you seen the King Arthur?’ and she murmured, ‘Goodbye, so nice to see you…’ As she moved away Laura noticed the row of iridescent buttons marking the languorous movements of her spine.
‘Was that…?’ she muttered, turning to Philip, already knowing the answer.
Russell nodded, tearing his eyes from Marie and blinking furiously as though waking from an enchantment. ‘My wife.’ He looked around wildly. ‘Now, there’s another work will interest you,’ he said, pulling her roughly into an adjacent room.
‘Don’t.’ She felt like a pet on a leash.
Everything was ruined. I want to go, I want to go, thrummed through her mind as she drifted past painted faces and landscapes, hardly registering artist or subject. She remembered the way Marie had dismissed her, a dowdy brown-feathered bird next to her own exotic plumage. When Philip suggested they leave, she dumbly assented.
They walked across Green Park, where mist was rising from the grass. Russell was plunged so deeply in thought that he answered Laura’s lame attempts at conversation with monosyllables.
On reaching Victoria Street he seemed to stir from his melancholy. ‘You haven’t seen my studio, have you?’ he said. ‘Some artists open theirs to the public and I’m wondering whether I should. Come and tell me what you think.’
‘I should go home. My father…’
‘Please, come with me. I don’t want to be alone.’ He patted her arm in a clumsy affectionate way that brought with it a heartbreaking sense of her brother Tom, and she relented.
‘Only for a minute then.’
‘It’s not far. Down Wilton Street, here, towards the river.’
He drew her past the railway station down into a maze of whitewashed terraces bathing in hazy late-afternoon sunlight. Caged birds sang by open windows. A little girl leaning on an upstairs sill waved to them. Laura waved back. Further on, from the depths of a drawing room, could be heard the opening bars of a Bach Prelude being played over and over again, the unseen pianist tripping up at exactly the same place each time.
In Lupus Street the houses were gay with flower boxes. Philip led her to the steps of number 13, then up a staircase to the top of the building where a huge attic with a north-facing skylight served as his studio.
Canvases of all shapes and sizes lined the walls. On a table a sketchbook lay carelessly open. She glanced at this, then at the small canvas on an easel under the skylight. Her dismay deepened. Everywhere she looked was Marie’s face. He could not possess his wife in person; instead he’d trapped her image, over and over again.
She backed away towards the door, reaching for the handle. ‘I shouldn’t have come.’ Her voice sounded too loud in the echoey room.
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I cannot advise you about opening your studio. Or…compete with your wife.’
‘My wife? What is Marie to do with you?’
‘Philip, she is everywhere. Look.’
He stared around the room like one enchanted, then stepped over to the easel and gently touched Marie’s painted cheek. He’d evoked her as some wild spirit, Laura thought–a river nymph, perhaps. His hand dropped to his side.
‘All this…’ she gestured to the portraits ‘…makes our friendship intensely painful to me. There is no room for anyone else in your life.’
‘I need you,’ he said, his voice harsh with emotion. ‘Even my old friends neglect me now. Don’t you, also.’
‘But you must see. You don’t really care for me, you care for her. I’m…someone you talk to about Marie.’
‘We talk about all manner of things. Laura, I’m dismayed that you find our friendship painful.’ He came to face her now, took her hand. ‘How cold you feel,’ he said, warming it in his. ‘I find I can talk to you without needing to think.’
She made a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. ‘That does not flatter me, Philip.’ She pulled her hand away.
‘Oh, I didn’t mean…I just meant that I feel at ease with you. Not constantly guarding my tongue as I am with…Marie.’
And yet you don’t notice me, not really. You don’t see me as you see her. You don’t draw me constantly, as you do her. These thoughts shouted in her head but she didn’t dare give them voice. To hide her distress, she picked up a little wooden bird from a shelf by the door, cradled it warm and round and safe in her cupped hands. This was what she was meant for: to comfort; not to disturb or excite.
When she was calmer she said, ‘Philip, you must learn to forget Marie. Not forget her altogether–I don’t mean that. She’s your wife and the mother
of your child. But you must learn to distance yourself from your loss. It’s been over a year. She won’t come back. You will drive yourself mad if you cannot accept this. Think of the damage you do to your son.’
His face turned to stone. For a moment she feared she had said too much.
‘I cannot forget her, as you ask. Any more than your family can forget Caroline.’
‘That’s different,’ Laura sighed. ‘Caroline is dead. We’ll never see her again in this life.’
‘At least she died in the full knowledge of your love for one another!’ he cried out. ‘You have that satisfaction.’
‘’Which makes us miss her all the more!’ Her own voice was raised now. ‘No, I don’t mean that,’ she added quickly, seeing his distress. ‘Only that you can’t compare the two losses. But I do know that our duty is to be thankful for what we have and to make the best of what we are given. And I think our angel will help us do that. When he is finished.’
‘He is finished,’ Philip said. He wandered back to the easel where Marie’s face looked out.
‘What did you say?’
‘I meant to tell you earlier. Your window is ready. You may come and see it when you like.’
‘Philip, that’s wonderful!’
‘I thought you would be pleased.’ He took the painting from the easel and placed it in a drawer. Then, with slow, deliberate movements he gathered up all the other portraits of his wife and piled them in a cupboard. Laura watched, amazed.
Closing the cupboard, he turned to her and smiled. It was a dazed, unhappy smile, as though at last he was struggling to wake from the spell Marie had cast.
Chapter 31
And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil…and his angels were thrown down with him.
Revelation xii. 9.
I’d have missed the story altogether if Jo hadn’t rung on 28 October, gabbling hysterically about a newspaper article. After I’d put down the phone, promising to ring back, I dashed out to buy a copy. The piece appeared on page 8–I spread the paper out on the counter to read it. There was an unflattering picture of Jo, emerging from the hostel, and a posed photograph of a stylish couple wearing huge rosettes and waving amidst a shower of ticker tape. Homelessness MP finds naughty love nest ran the headline.
‘Oh hell,’ I whispered. It got worse. ‘Why would he risk everything for such a Plain Jane?’ a friend of Mrs Sutherland was reported as saying. ‘A colleague describes Miss Pryde as “earnest and wholesome. A real do-gooder. The last person you’d expect…”’
When, heavy-hearted, I rang Jo back, her answermachine clicked on with its usual friendly message, so I started to say, ‘Jo, it’s me, Fran,’ and a man’s voice interrupted, a voice I recognised. ‘Fran. Kevin Pryde here. Good to speak to you. How are you? I take it you’ve seen the papers. We’re under siege here. Journalists, photographers, the whole bloody crew, if you’ll excuse my French. I’m trying to get rid of the bastards. Jo’s with Claire. Want a word?’
It was a relief that Jo’s parents were with her. Kevin Pryde, in his lawyer’s hat, had long experience of dealing with the media. Jo was too upset to come to the phone again, but I agreed with Kevin to visit later in the day. By then the feeding frenzy had abated somewhat, though I had to dodge a haggard-looking man outside who was speaking quickly into a microphone.
I sat on the sofa holding Jo’s limp hand. She wore a fixed look of horror, as though the sight of a ghost had sent her into a trance.
‘I’ve seen what they’ve written about me,’ she whispered. ‘Plain and worthless. A marriage-wrecker.’
‘They’re not interested in portraying you as you really are,’ I said fiercely. ‘They just want to sell papers.’
‘Hear hear,’ said Kevin, absently, from his watch at the window. ‘Sharks and vermin, the lot of ’em.’
‘I still think if we talk to that Mail journalist, Kevin, then at least she’ll present Jo’s version of events.’ Jo’s mother, who sat on the sofa close to Jo, was exactly as I remembered her, expecting everyone to be as civilised as herself.
‘Claire, don’t be naïve. They’ll mangle anything we say.’
Poor Jo. I remembered our conversation several Sundays ago, walking back from the Tate, when she had wished so fervently that she was beautiful. That must have been about the time when things started to go wrong with Johnny. Always so cheerful and positive, it turned out that Jo had a faultline running through her like the rest of us. She’d believed she would be happier if she was someone different.
‘I was happy before I met Johnny,’ she said brokenly now. ‘I wish none of it had happened.’
Jo went down to her parents’ house in Kent, and I started to think the whole thing was blowing over. But then, four days later, at Hallowe’en, the vicar called at the shop. He was carrying a copy of the Guardian and wore a sober expression.
‘Do you know how to contact Jo?’ he asked. ‘We can’t track her down. It’s rather important.’
‘Didn’t she tell the hostel? She’s at her parents’ house,’ I said. ‘I’ll find the number for you. Come through.’
I went to get my handbag from the office and he followed me into the workshop. As I riffled for my address book he stood looking at the angel. He touched the glass gently and rubbed his fingers, an absorbed expression on his face.
‘I hope he won’t be taking up valuable space here for much longer. I rang the Archdeacon yesterday to ask how the permissions procedure is going…ah, thank you.’ Jeremy took the scrap of paper I passed him with the Kent number on it. ‘I suppose you’ve seen this, have you?’ He laid his newspaper in the only clear space on the worktop and pointed to an article headed Homeless hostel. Allegations of MP’s corruption.
I scanned it quickly.
Following the disclosure of backbencher MP Johnny Sutherland’s affair with a hostel worker, a grants committee was yesterday trying to answer accusations that Sutherland had given preference to a quarter-million-pound grant to St Martin’s Hostel in Westminster, where his lover, Jo Pryde, is a careworker. ‘We’re not saying that St Martin’s doesn’t merit the grant,’ said Mary Coltrane, a spokesperson from the Home Office, ‘merely that the circumstances in which it is being awarded must be called into question. Any grants to St Martin’s are, for the time being, suspended pending further investigation.’
‘It is a bit grim, isn’t it?’ Jeremy said. I’d never seen him so low, not even when he delivered the news that the church wouldn’t pay to restore the angel. ‘There was a lot hanging on this grant. You can see why we’ve got to find Jo.’
‘They’ll need to question her.’
‘Exactly.’
Shortly afterwards, he thanked me and left. There was something dejected about the set of his shoulders as he walked back across the Square.
It was an odd day. Zac didn’t come in at all–his Noah’s Ark design had been chosen and he was meeting people from the church who were commissioning it. And Amber didn’t turn up as expected, which troubled me, as she’d always proved reliable.
At one point a skinny woman with a camera snapped a picture of the shop, but when I went out to challenge her, she merely smiled nonchalantly and marched away. A young Asian man in an overcoat climbed out of a taxi and poked his head round the door, saying that he wished to ask me a few questions about Jo, but I packed him off without even bothering to find out who he worked for or how he’d tracked me down.
In the late morning, I tried ringing Jo’s parents but their phone was constantly engaged. Then Dominic rang.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I got your number from the choir register. I saw the paper today, and I’m extremely worried about Jo. Do you know how she is? I don’t like to ring her myself in case I’d be intruding.’
‘I haven’t heard from her, but I’m sure she’d love it if you rang.’ I gave him the Kent number. ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything you can do, Dominic, being at the Home Office yourself?’
‘Nothing,’ he said shortly. ‘It would only make things worse if I started making enquiries.’
Imaginary tabloid headlines about corruption in the Home Office danced before my eyes. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘You’re absolutely right.’
‘I expect it will all come out in the wash,’ he said, sighing. ‘I only want to send Jo my warmest wishes. I’ll be in touch.’
‘How are things going with you, by the way?’ I asked before he could hang up.
‘We’re making progress, thanks for asking. We’ve found a residential home for Mum quite near my sister’s and a bed is likely to come up in the next week. So we’re deep in the awful business of getting ready. Then, when she moves we’ll have to clear out the house. No hurry there though.’
‘It must be a weight off your minds.’
‘Yes, and I think Mum is reconciled to going. The waiting’s awful though. She’s very unsettled.’
Unsettled, I thought, as I put down the phone. That’s exactly how I felt too.
Amber appeared in the early afternoon, agitated and out of breath. As she came into the shop, she looked behind her in a furtive fashion.
‘It’s Lisa’s mates,’ she said, closing the door. ‘I thought they were after me, but they’ve gone. There’s all these people outside the hostel. Blokes with cameras, and that snotty woman from the TV news. Effie went out and shouted at them, which didn’t help. Lisa’s so stupid. She’s, like, since I’m friendly with Jo, the whole thing’s my fault. That hasn’t stopped her tarting herself up and trying to get on telly though.’ Here she did a not very convincing impression of Lisa, thrusting out her chest and preening her hair.