by Rachel Hore
‘You’ll carry on getting paid, of course,’ I said, secretly hoping the finances would stand it, ‘until we work out what’s happening. How long it’ll all take to redecorate and so on.’
He looked hard at me. ‘You definitely want to keep it all going?’
I’d spent the small hours thinking about this, and when I woke this morning I had felt certain. ‘Yes,’ I said firmly. ‘Even though Dad won’t come back.’ We had to be honest about this now. ‘I want to run the business, with you as manager if I’m away.’
I watched his face and was glad to see some of the tension drain from it.
I touched his hand. ‘I’ve got to go back to the music for a bit, Zac. I hope I won’t need to be too much abroad, because of Dad, but it’s difficult to promise. I have to take what’s given me, you see.’ Learning that my mother was a musician had somehow strengthened my resolve. My music was a part of me and I didn’t want to ever let it go.
‘But Fran, do you think I could carry on using the workshop now, I mean? Keep the business ticking over? It would be important for custom.’
‘I’m not sure it would be very nice,’ I demurred. ‘And it might be dangerous. Anyway, at some point you’d be in the way of the workmen.’
‘There’s another thing I wanted to ask you,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘If you were refurbishing, there are things we could do–to modernise. I’m sure all the electrical work and stuff will have to conform to regulations anyway, but we could bring everything up to date. Get new equipment.’
I felt suddenly nostalgic for our little bow-windowed shop with its worn wooden fittings and tiled porch. ‘I suppose so, Zac, but I loved it as it was.’
‘We could keep that look, Fran, but have a modern workshop, with great lighting.’
I knew he was right. Instead of seeing it as a tragedy, we could view this as an opportunity. But I wasn’t ready for that yet. ‘Let’s talk about it more,’ I said, ‘once we hear back from the insurance company.’
It was hard to escape the feeling that, just when I’d been remaking my life, getting used to managing the shop, putting down roots, it was all being taken away from me. Well, I’d fight for it. I’d get it back. Minster Glass was Dad’s. And I would make it mine, too.
While we were finishing our coffee, the door behind the counter opened and a man came in. I watched him as he greeted the waitress, who paused long enough in her conversation to take his order. He was slim and neat, slightly round-shouldered, with an unremarkable face and short gingery hair. He pulled his wallet out of his jeans but the waitress waved him away and started to grill bacon, the phone still clamped to her ear.
The man turned round and I realised I knew him. Our eyes met and recognition dawned in his.
‘Hello, didn’t we…?’ he said.
‘You were there the other night,’ I interrupted, getting up.
‘The fire. I’ve been to look. It’s terrible. Are you all right now?’ He came nearer and peered at me anxiously.
‘I’m fine. Zac, this is—’
‘Larry. Larry Finnegan. I live upstairs here.’ So this was the mysterious lodger Anita had sometimes mentioned. No angel at all. I burst out laughing, imagining Amber’s disappointed face.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asked, so I explained.
‘Me, an angel? Now my ma back in Killarney would think that a miracle. No, I’m no angel. Off to work, I was, and saw the place ablaze, and you sitting there like you’d fallen out of the sky.’
‘I suppose I had, in a way.’
The girl, still talking, held up a plate with his sandwich on it and he went and fetched it to our table.
‘Terrible about the shop,’ he said to both of us. ‘I’m so sorry for you.’
‘Lucky you weren’t burned in your bed, Larry.’
‘Lucky I wasn’t even in it. Sorry I had to run off after. I would have been late for work and you seemed in good hands.’
‘You work nights?’
‘On the reception desk at the Hyde Park Hotel. But I’m starting a management course soon, so I won’t be a night owl much longer.’ There was something gentle, easy and charming about him.
‘So this girl who believes in angels…’ he said.
‘Do you know her? She works in the shop.’
‘Would that be the lovely dark one?’
‘The other lovely dark one,’ said Zac, smiling.
‘Yes, that’s Amber,’ I said, frowning at Zac.
‘We’ve never been introduced, but she’s a fine-looking girl,’ Larry said solemnly. ‘And my ma would approve of the angels.’
‘I’ll send Amber in with your coat then, if you’ll tell me when’s a good time,’ I said, and his friendly face creased up with mirth.
‘You do that,’ he said.
The vicar and his wife couldn’t have been kinder. Sarah Quentin had clearly been brought up with the idea that good food cured heartache, for tonight there were huge helpings of steak and kidney pie, and a crumble made with apples from the vicarage’s solitary fruit tree. When I told them about Larry, the vicar was highly amused.
‘He makes me think of our patronal St Martin, giving his coat to a beggar, don’t you think so, Sarah?’
‘Are you calling me a beggar?’ I asked. ‘Well, I suppose I’m homeless, for the moment at least.’
After supper Jeremy slipped his napkin into its ring and said, ‘I’m taking a service at eight. A memorial service for All Souls Day, when we remember the dead. The singing’s rather lovely. Perhaps you’d like to come, Fran?’
So I went and sat at the back and indeed, the service was beautiful, with Ben’s little Sunday choir singing excerpts from Fauré’s Requiem between the readings. I found it hard to concentrate though, thinking over everything that had happened and all that I’d discovered about my mother. I vowed to speak to Jeremy about that.
‘How are you?’ Ben asked me afterwards, coming up with his arms full of robes and hymnbooks, his brow furrowed with concern. It gave me a lump in my throat just to look at him.
‘Still in shock, I think. Thanks so much for helping me.’
‘Not at all. I wish I could do more.’
So do I, I wanted to say. We both looked at the floor and shuffled our feet.
‘Thank you again, Ben, that was very moving,’ said Jeremy, emerging from the vestry. ‘Now, Fran, I wanted to show you exactly where I thought the angel could go.’
He told Ben he’d lock up, then led me into the Lady Chapel. The coloured glass was dark and lifeless without sunlight streaming through it. He showed me the ugly old cupboard that had been built in front of the third window. ‘We can have this taken out, you see. Perhaps re-site it on the other side of this wall, if anyone insists. Then, Bob’s your uncle, we can hang the angel in front of this window.’
The window he indicated was, as far as I could tell, of exactly the same dimensions as the one the angel had fallen out of.
‘I know it’s a silly thing to ask now, but do you think that the colours will go well with the Memorial window?’ I wondered.
‘We’ll have to look at it again in daylight,’ mused Jeremy. ‘Bring Raphael in here and put them side by side.’
‘It had better work out,’ I said. ‘Zac will kill me otherwise.’
‘I’m positive it will,’ said Jeremy, laughing.
The church was empty now. Even Ben had gone.
‘Jeremy…’ I faltered.
At the same time, he said ‘Fran…’ He looked at me enquiringly. ‘You first,’ he prompted.
‘I found something today. I need to ask you–it’s about my mother.’
‘Of course. Let’s sit down here, shall we?’
‘I found some papers in the flat. A programme for a concert my mother was in and some obituaries of her. I hadn’t even realised that she was a musician.’
‘A very fine contralto, I believe,’ he said. He looked troubled, I thought, as though mentally wrestling with something. In the quiet darkness, though her
features were hidden, I became aware of Mary in the window; sensed her calm joy.
‘I need to know more about her, Jeremy.’
Finally, he seemed to decide.
‘Since our previous conversation on the subject of your mother,’ he began, ‘I have thought deeply about the matter. I have considered your father and what he would want. In the end, I went to see him last week and sat with him and asked his permission to give you a letter he wrote, and which he meant you to have in the event of his death. I cannot honestly say that he heard me and understood, and I certainly can’t say that he assented, but I felt a kind of peace after that. I know, because he told me a few months ago that he intended to pluck up the courage to talk to you, so I do believe that I am doing as he would have wanted.’
‘A letter. You never mentioned that before.’
‘No. Perhaps I should have done, but I wasn’t sure until recently that he would wish it. Let me explain. Back in May, your father came to see me in a troubled state of mind. He said that he had something on his conscience that he wanted to confide in me and which he needed my advice about. I think the talking itself, handing the burden of his knowledge over to another human being, helped him immensely. He felt guilty, you see; a deep guilt that froze him up inside. Those are the words he used, I remember–“frozen up inside”. He said he felt he had wasted his life because of this.
‘It took some perseverance on my part to make him say more. As you know, he is a very private man and uncomfortable with the language of emotions. I think he felt particularly regretful about you–that he had never given you enough of himself. The past was always with him, you see. He could never allow himself to move on, to concentrate on the things that matter in the here and now. Especially you.’
‘Oh Dad!’ I cried out. ‘Jeremy, why did it take him so long to see this?’
‘It’s very sad, isn’t it? I tried to reassure him about his fathering, Fran. Bringing up children is hard, very hard, and there are many things I regret doing or not doing with regard to my own girls. But I had my wonderful Sarah, where he had no one to help him bring you up, my dear. And, if you don’t mind me saying so, I look at you and think, Well, he did a pretty good job.’
My smile must have been mournful, for Jeremy patted my arm in a reassuring fashion before going on.
‘Before I give you the letter, I’d like to explain something of your father’s frame of mind when he wrote it. It might help you understand him better.’
I nodded, so he continued.
‘Your father referred frequently to some secret matter which I discerned to be at the heart of his trouble. He questioned me persistently about what sins I felt might be unforgivable. I tried to explain that there is no sin God would not forgive the truly repentant sinner. But he could not accept this, said that surely saying sorry was not enough, that one must somehow earn forgiveness by a sort of spiritual hard labour. And that it was all far too late anyway.’
Here, Jeremy shook his head. ‘Of course, I told him that true repentance meant turning away from his old state of mind and being willing to be reborn in the Spirit, that following the Way of the Cross was no easy option. I urged him first towards confession, when he was ready, as that was the first stage: to acknowledge and understand what one had done wrong, to let the dead weight of it fall away. And finally, one day, he began to take this step. He told me about your mother and the circumstances of her death.’
Jeremy seemed to run out of breath here, and closed his eyes as though to recover strength. I waited, a perverse part of me not wanting him to go on. My mother’s death. All I knew was that she had died in hospital after a road accident. Suppose whatever it was I was about to learn changed everything unbearably. I almost got up and walked out.
As though sensing this, Jeremy opened his eyes and said to me, ‘She was beautiful, your mother, heart-stoppingly beautiful. He showed me a photograph once…’
‘I know,’ I said icily, for it still rankled that Dad had never shown me.
‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes steady, meeting mine, ‘of course you do. Sarah is right. You do look very much like your mother in that picture.’
‘Do you think that was part of the problem?’ I said, it occurring to me for the first time. ‘That I reminded him too much of her?’
‘There might be an element of that, yes, but more importantly, he feared that you wouldn’t forgive him for what he’d done, which was to take your mother away from you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He felt responsible for her death, Fran.’
Now I was almost sick with fear, but I couldn’t take the uncertainty any more. ‘Jeremy,’ I said, ‘where is the letter? I must have it.’
‘Strangely enough, Fran, I have it with me.’ He drew an envelope out of his inside pocket and passed it to me.
Frances Morrison, it said on the front. To be opened in the event of her father’s death.
With the smallest of hesitations, I opened the envelope and unfolded the thick wad of paper I found inside. It was dated 1st July 1993, four months earlier.
My dear Fran,
If you are reading this letter, it is because I have failed finally and for ever in my duty to tell you things that you have a right to know. As I write this, I pray you never have to read these words; that instead I will have found the opportunity and the courage to say them to you face to face and can destroy this letter. But I still fear to tell you in person, my dear daughter, because I fear to lose whatever love you have left for me. I fear to lose your respect. I fear rejection. And I fear all these things precisely because I love you so much. You might not believe this, coming from your dry, grumpy old dad, but it’s true. From the very first moment I held you in my arms, I wanted to protect you from all harm, to give you everything a father should. I could not predict that I would fail you so badly and so soon.
For a moment the words were a blur of tears and I had to stop reading. Dad was finally saying all the things I needed to hear. ‘Jeremy,’ I said shakily, holding out the letter, ‘can you read it to me, please. I can’t seem to…’
‘Of course.’ He took the letter, angled it so that it caught the light, and after he found his place, read aloud in his clear, expressive voice.
‘“I’m proud of you, Fran. Despite my mismanagement you’ve grown up beautiful and talented and independent. I know we’ve drifted apart and bitterly regret my stupidity, my lies and evasions. I miss you and long for you to come home. When we speak on the phone, why can I never manage to forget my pride and ask you to visit? Pride and guilt and grief have imprisoned me for too long. Jeremy has made me see this. But maybe it’s all too late. All I can do now is to tell you the truth, the truth I should have told you years ago, and to beg your forgiveness.
‘“I will start by telling you how I met your mother. It was at a Christmas concert at a church in North London. She sang that old German carol “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen” with such deep emotion that I was entranced. She was particularly beautiful that night. She wore a long black dress, shot through with crimson that matched her lips. Her hair was pinned up on her head and sparkled with jewels.
‘“After the concert the singers mingled with the audience for mulled wine and mince pies. Angela stood among a group of her friends, joining in their conversation, but looking a little tired. The musician friend I’d come with caught me staring at her and offered to introduce us. She seemed even lovelier close to and had such a beautiful smile. I managed to produce some vaguely intelligent comment about the music and found her so easy to talk to, so confiding. We conversed for some time, about Bach and about her career. I discerned from one or two passing comments that she wasn’t entirely at home in this cultured, well-heeled crowd. Her father worked as a clerk for Suffolk County Council and securing her training had been a real struggle. She aroused in me both protectiveness and admiration. Later, when I left, I found her on the steps of the church looking lost. I hailed a taxi for her, but we ended up sharing it, since
Westminster was only a step beyond Pimlico where she had a room in someone’s house.
‘“By the time I stepped out of the taxi at Minster Glass I had her phone number carefully written on the concert programme in my breast pocket.
‘“We began to meet regularly. Angela’s training was based in London at this time and I went to hear her whenever she performed. At other times, we visited art exhibitions together, or the opera. I tried to share with her my love of church architecture, art and stained glass.
‘“Before long, I found myself, for the first and only time in my life, deeply in love. And I could hardly believe my luck when she told me she felt the same way.
‘“Our courtship was the most wonderful time–full of art and music and the excitement of discovering each other. We were a couple of innocents. We didn’t think about the hows and wheres of the future, just the why: that we wanted to be together. She was a very passionate person–quite impulsive and vital. She also had a fragile side that showed itself in lapses in confidence, and I was glad to be there to help her. I tried to be strong and reassuring; was proud that she seemed to lean on me.
‘“We got married the Christmas after we met, quietly at her parents’ church in Ipswich, with her younger sister as bridesmaid. My parents both being dead, there was only my father’s Aunt Polly there for me, and the musician friend who’d introduced us acting as best man. We moved into the flat above Minster Glass.
‘“At first, we were terribly happy together. I worked in the shop all day while she went off to rehearse. In the evenings I would go to hear her sing. She had a voice like an angel. Angie, my angel. Once she gave me a tie-pin of an angel; lapis lazuli set in gold. I have it still…”’
‘So that’s where it came from,’ I burst out. I rummaged in my handbag for the little brooch I’d rescued from the workshop floor.
‘That’s it,’ Jeremy said, taking it from me, holding it so it gleamed in the candlelight. ‘He carried it with him always.’