The Glass Painter's Daughter

by Rachel Hore

  ‘He threatened me. Told me I must save my brothers and sisters from the orphanage and get the family together again or I’d burn in hell.’ Alfred Cooper resented the Brownlows, that much was obvious.

  A police officer was called to speak to Ida.

  At luncheon, Mr Brownlow told his wife and Laura, ‘The police say that Cooper ranted about how Mrs Brownlow killed Molly and the baby and took his children away.’

  ‘What rubbish!’ cried Mrs Brownlow, spreading her napkin on her lap. ‘The man’s too dissolute and intemperate to provide for his wife and children, and then he blames other people for the family’s misfortune. Nay, blames the whole parish, it seems. Well, now the man will be transported no doubt and it’ll be an end to the matter.’

  Laura picked at a thread on the tablecloth and remembered that foul hovel where the Coopers had lived. Just as she understood Miss Badcoe, now she wondered whether Mr Cooper had a story of his own. Yes, it could not be denied, he had failed his family. He had been threatening and violent, and that could not be excused. But what kind of upbringing had Alfred Cooper endured? What had made him the man he was?

  ‘What’s going to happen to Ida?’ she asked as she spooned her soup.

  ‘Harriet’s very angry about the theft of the food,’ said her father. ‘George wants her to dismiss the girl. Such a crime cannot be seen to be condoned. However, I have written urging him to reconsider the matter. Is a young girl with a soft heart to be condemned for obeying her father? Surely not. I’ve suggested that they give her some other punishment, but not throw her out on the streets without a reference. I hope George will see the way of mercy.’

  ‘I hope so, too,’ said Laura, sighing. ‘Some good should come of all this misery.’ What good could ever come out of her own terribly calumny, she could not for the moment conceive.

  And it was while she pondered this that, for the third time, Anthony Bond proposed marriage. Mindful of her family’s happiness and won over by his persistence, she promised him an answer at Christmas.

  In mid-October, as the leaves on the trees in the Square began to fall, a letter arrived from Philip.

  It is a month since our terrible loss and only now have I returned to my senses. I must see you, Laura.

  But she was resolved now. She wrote to him saying that it was best for both of them if they didn’t meet.

  Chapter 36

  It is not uncommon for angels to appear when people are on the edge of death.

  Gary Kinnaman, Angels Dark and Light

  After reading my father’s letter, I started visiting the hospital every day. Now that I knew Dad’s story and understood how he had always felt about me, I wanted to spend as much time with him as possible, in an effort somehow to bridge that gulf of silence between us of which he spoke. I told him how Jeremy had shown me the letter, that I wished that he hadn’t hidden so much from me, that I was glad I knew it all now.

  My feelings were, in truth, confused. Part of me was very angry with him, and the more I dwelled on it, the more I resented the way he’d ruled my whole life, blighting my childhood with his secrets and his guilt. But he was a vulnerable old man now, long in the dying, and it seemed inappropriate to burden him with my anger. I became quickly frustrated, too, that here we were with the truth finally naked between us, but unable to communicate to one another all our thoughts and feelings about it. We’d lost the opportunity to mend the wounds of the past, to fill the silences. In the end I could only whisper broken words of reassurance to him as he lay unconscious, telling him that I loved him and forgave him everything. Jeremy said that it was all that was required and I took him at his word. What else could I do?

  Zac sometimes came with me. I showed him Dad’s letter a couple of days after Jeremy gave it to me. We sat in the Quentins’ kitchen as he read it, under the baleful gaze of Lucifer the cat. When he passed it back, his face was troubled. ‘I never suspected any of that,’ he said. ‘Your father gave nothing away about himself.’

  ‘I’m so glad he found Jeremy to talk to,’ I replied, realising that Dad had almost left it too late.

  We were with Dad when he died, Zac and I. A Sister from the hospice called me at the vicarage one Friday morning in the second week of November to say that he was fading. I rang Zac to tell him I was on my way to Dulwich.

  We were there all day, and in that terrible time of waiting, phrases from The Dream of Gerontius flowed through my mind continuously. Dad probably wouldn’t be conscious that he was dying. But then, who really knew? Perhaps that important part of him, his spirit, was aware of moving forward into light and freedom. Perhaps he could feel our presence or perhaps he had already left us, was in the arms of a great angel who would bear him forth into eternity.

  As dusk fell outside, a flock of geese rose above the trees with a great whir of wings, crying mournfully to one another, off on their journey south. When I turned to look at Dad once more, I saw that he, too, had gone.

  Sitting next to me, Zac reached out and covered my hand with his. I leaned into him and wept.

  On Monday at choir we had sung the section about the moment of Gerontius’ death, when the priest and his assistants cry, ‘Go forth upon thy journey…Go in the name of Angels and Archangels.’ I could hear the chorus running through my mind now as I looked at Dad’s still face. We speak of the dead being ‘at peace’. But what if Dad was, like Gerontius, on a great dramatic journey beyond death? Maybe he wasn’t ready for peace yet, but I prayed that he would get there.

  Later, I spoke to Jeremy about this. He seemed to think the same as me. ‘Do you think he’ll see my mother again?’ I asked him.

  ‘Oh yes, I believe he will.’

  ‘They’ll have a lot to talk about.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘I imagine they’ll be quite cross with each other at first.’

  Jeremy smiled. ‘Yes, but this time I expect they’ll hang on in there and work it out.’

  There was only a handful of us at the crematorium the following Wednesday: me, Zac, Sarah, Anita, Mr Broadbent the bookseller and a clerk from Dad’s solicitor’s office. Jo couldn’t come and the organist wasn’t Ben, who had a heavy teaching schedule that day. Yet, despite our small party and the anonymous surroundings, Jeremy managed to make the service special and his sincere sorrow at the loss of a friend warmed us all.

  ‘Go on thy course, and may thy place today be found in peace,’ he said, as the curtains closed around the coffin.

  Afterwards, we gathered outside shivering in the cold and stared at our stiff flower arrangements lying on the grass. There was only one that was unexpected. It was a simple bunch of chrysanthemums from Amber. When I read her tender note, my eyes swam with tears. It said, May your angel carry you safely home.

  Chapter 37

  Now and then when the room was otherwise lightless

  A misty gray figure would appear to be seated on this bench in the alcove

  It was the tender and melancholy figure of an angel.

  Tennessee Williams, One Arm and Other Stories

  In the confused days after Dad’s death, Zac and I saw each other frequently. There was an enormous amount of paperwork to get through, which he helped me do, and if a day went past without us meeting he would ring to see if I was all right.

  Then one day near the end of November, he didn’t ring and I missed him. I remembered that when we’d met up the day before to go through some financial matters, he’d seemed pale and distant, so now I picked up the phone and dialled his number. It rang for a long time, then there came the sound of the handset being dropped and a muffled curse, before a hoarse voice stammered, ‘H-hello?’

  ‘Zac? Zac, it’s me.’

  ‘Wait a moment. Ouch.’ There was a shuffling.

  ‘Have I rung at a bad time?’

  ‘I was asleep. Sorry, couldn’t get out of bed. Flu or something.’

  I rang him again in the early afternoon after my orchestral rehearsal, and he sounded worse.

 
‘I’m coming round,’ I said, and ignoring his protests, made him give me his address. How funny that I’d never visited his home before, I thought, as I whizzed round the express supermarket for some emergency supplies.

  The name Burberry Mansions evokes an image of gracious Edwardian apartments like Jo’s parents’ place, but Zac’s home turned out to be in a shabby block on a Lambeth estate. I took the creaking lift to the seventh floor, knocked on the door of Flat 72 and waited for what seemed like minutes on the draughty concrete landing.

  Eventually Zac opened the door. He looked terrible, with hair like a bird’s nest, his pale face blotchy, his eyes unnaturally bright. The place smelled stale and felt overheated. I followed him into a living room.

  It took me a while to register what I was seeing. We were bathed in a veritable rainbow of light. Coloured glass hung against most of the windows. There was a panel of stunning roundels, blues and greens, all linked in a continuous pattern. In another, etched water nymphs swam across a dreamy river of brown and amber, where blue fish flashed; out of a leaded round pane hung from the ceiling, turning slowly, the silver outline of a stag appearing to step out of misty blue. I moved over to study a huge mirror above the mantelshelf bordered by a swirling abstract of ruby, gold and white glass, like desert sand, where little gold lizards and snakes played.

  ‘Dreamtime, that one’s called,’ Zac said, coughing horribly.

  ‘It’s…incredible. Zac–you’re shivering. Get back to bed at once.’ He stumbled slightly, so I helped him into the bedroom, which was dark, for the curtains were drawn across the windows.

  ‘Oh, don’t look at anything,’ he said, almost falling into the bed. ‘It’s a pit.’ Then he groaned as I ignored him and pulled a curtain back slightly, so I could see the room.

  He was right about it being a pit. Discarded clothes lay everywhere, the bed linen needed changing, and dirty crockery was piled on the bedside table and the floor.

  ‘Right,’ I said, a little uncertainly. The role of nurse was not coming naturally to me. Zac helped by being surprisingly biddable. I led him to the shower, hoping he wouldn’t collapse in there whilst I changed the bedclothes, found him a clean pair of pyjamas and located some paracetamol. Some kind of flu seemed the mostly likely diagnosis, so I gave him some tablets with a glass of water and tucked him up in bed before turning my attention to the kitchen.

  After washing up, I tried without much success to get him to eat mushroom soup with some bread and butter. Then, while he slept, I aired the rooms and tidied up, and ran a load of laundry through the washer-drier. He was still asleep when I left, so I propped up a note by his bedside promising to ring him in the morning.

  I visited every day until he was over the worst. On the second day I rang Zac’s doctor who said it definitely sounded like a serious bout of flu and offered nursing advice. For the first few days Zac mostly slept. When awake, he was dopey and rambling in his speech, but he let me help him change his pyjamas and comb his hair. He told me where to find his spare door key so I could let myself in.

  On the third day I met a North African woman with several small children on the landing outside the flat, who asked after him anxiously and offered to call in during the evening. The following morning I found she’d left a delicious-looking stew in the fridge and I tried some of that on him, but he couldn’t keep much down, so I ate it. It was miserable seeing him like this; to see the man on whom I’d leaned so much these last few weeks, who was normally so dignified, so self-reliant, forced to put himself completely into the hands of another person.

  I was relieved to realise that he wasn’t isolated. Apart from Etha next door there were phone calls from friends. Amber came with me once and on another occasion, when I appeared in the early evening and slotted my key in Zac’s door, a youngish man with thinning blond hair opened it and introduced himself as David.

  ‘You’re from the other stained-glass studio, aren’t you?’ I said, remembering the name. ‘I’m glad to meet you at last.’

  We sat on the living-room sofa and talked in whispers for fear of waking Zac; gazing all the while at the wonderful vista of the London sky, stretched out before us, between the bits of stained glass. We could see all the way to the tower of Big Ben, peeping above the high-rise blocks, and, beyond it, the gothic pinnacles of the Houses of Parliament.

  David told me how he’d got to know Zac; that Zac had come one day asking for some help with a commission for which my father didn’t have the right equipment. They’d become firm friends and Zac often spent time with David and his wife and children. Janie, David’s wife, was a flautist with the Philharmonic.

  ‘Zac’s a really talented guy,’ whispered David, as we looked around the room at all the beautiful glass.

  ‘I know,’ I said. I started to tell him about Raphael, then remembered that he knew it already because Zac had gone to him for materials.

  I wondered if David knew Zac’s background–about his daughter–but didn’t like to ask in case he didn’t.

  Best of all, he volunteered to come and help us with the new designs for Minster Glass and I leaped at his offer.

  ‘And you must come to lunch one Sunday when Zac is better,’ he said. ‘Janie would love to meet you.’

  It wasn’t until the sixth day that Zac’s temperature returned to normal, and another couple of days until he was strong enough to sit up in bed in his dressing-gown. He was sad and lifeless, his head full of cold, which he said made him half-deaf and stupid. He was still too weak to do anything much, not even to read. As time passed he grew stronger, but a sadness settled over him that didn’t seem to lift.

  ‘It’s the flu, Zac. It takes it out of you.’

  ‘S’pose so,’ he said, sighing, but I wondered whether it was more than that.

  By the end of the week it had become a ritual, travelling down on the bus to see him every day. I had been recruited to an orchestra, one of whose regular brass players had broken his arm, so there were rehearsals most days and I would come down to see Zac in the late afternoon as it began to get dark.

  Once, when I arrived, he had been trying to draw in a sketchbook but when I showed interest, he chucked book and pencil down on the coffee-table beside a pot of early hyacinths Janie had brought him.

  ‘I can’t concentrate on anything,’ he complained, yawning and stretching, but then he smiled and I realised with an odd pang that he was getting better. Soon I wouldn’t need to come. I felt suddenly bereft.

  To hide my mood I moved into the kitchen and started putting away the food I’d brought. Through the window I watched a seagull floating, motionless, as though faith alone held it suspended midair. I was reminded of myself. There had been so much change I lacked any sense of direction.

  ‘How’s the shop going?’ Zac asked when I brought him tea. He moved so I could sit on the sofa beside him. It was natural now to lean against him as I had leaned against Ben on the night the window got broken. Friends, at ease with one another; though Zac had never indicated more.

  ‘The work’s starting after Christmas,’ I told him.

  I liked being with him. His early awkwardness, when we were still acquaintances, I knew now to be shyness, with a good dose of concern for my father thrown in.

  ‘You were right about me and Dad,’ I said, a little sadly. ‘I wasn’t around for him enough, was I? You must have thought I didn’t care.’

  ‘He did know you loved him though,’ Zac said, squeezing my arm. ‘And it was difficult for you. He wouldn’t let anyone get close, would he?’ He sneezed suddenly and grabbed at some tissues. ‘I still feel dreadful,’ he sighed.

  He looked awful, it was true. His nose was swollen, his skin as grey as dishwater, his hair greasy and dull.

  ‘But you’ll feel a lot better soon, I’m sure,’ I promised him. ‘Right–I’ve got to go, I’m afraid. A big rehearsal this evening. The concert’s tomorrow night, so I won’t be able to come.’

  ‘I’ll miss you,’ said Zac, ‘but I’ve deci
ded–I’ve been here ten days now and I’m getting out of this flat tomorrow if I have to crawl. And Fran,’ he hauled himself up and came to see me out, ‘as soon as I’m up to it, I’m taking you out to dinner. Will you come?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. I would have hugged him, but just at that moment he sneezed again.

  The lift, for once, came right away and before I could get out at the bottom a fearsome-looking bunch of teenagers crowded in, so I had to shove my way through. Instinctively checking my handbag after this experience, I realised I’d still got Zac’s key. Damn. Well, I wasn’t going back up now. And I rather liked the idea of keeping it.

  Chapter 38

  Oh speak again, bright angel, for thou art

  As glorious to this night, being o’er my head

  As is a winged messenger of heaven.

  William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

  ‘The faculty’s come for our window,’ cried Jeremy on the last Saturday of November, as he hung up his coat and came to join Sarah and me at the kitchen table. He’d been down to the parish office to sort out a few things and had opened a letter from the Bishop’s office.

  Several officials had visited the church on different occasions to inspect Raphael, now propped up in the chapel, and the light against which it was proposed he be hung. Finally Jeremy had been given approval to dismantle the Victorian cupboard and move it, and to install Raphael.

  ‘We’ll just keep the existing plain glass,’ Jeremy said, stirring saccharine into his coffee. ‘So, Fran my dear, I’ll contact the carpenter about the cupboard, then perhaps you and Zac would like to organise the ironwork for the window.’

  Zac, now restored to health, and David and some men from the ironworks hung Raphael one morning towards the end of November, with the vicar, his churchwarden and me watching and making ourselves useful where we could. There was a hair-raising moment when we thought one of the measurements was wrong, but eventually all was made perfect. The bronze frame was welded to the wall in such a way that Raphael’s panel could be easily removed if need be. A final polish and we all stood back to look.