Page 21 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
‘Yes, but we’ll try and struggle on without you until then,’ I added, and Willow gave us both an uncertain look before hauling her skinny frame up into the four-by-four and slamming the door.
‘If only this was all a bad dream,’ Molly murmured, as the noise of the engine faded into the distance.
But as the Queen song says, there’s no escape from reality.
Ralph Revell seemed to take a keen interest in the making of his windows, for he soon visited the workshop again. He much admired an interior leaded panel that was in progress for another customer, which had a design of tall, swaying red tulips against a background of light-green rippled glass.
This prompted Father to remember my existence and he introduced me to Mr Revell, informing him that I had not only designed the panel, but also cut the glass, painted it for firing and then leaded it up.
‘Is that not unusual in a young lady?’ he asked, looking at me with amusement and a keen interest that, being small and boyish in figure, I rarely invoked in young men.
‘Oh, Jessie can carry out all aspects of the business,’ Father said. ‘I’ve never managed to keep her out of the workshop and, indeed, she’s more useful than many of the men.’
‘Young ladies do seem much taken up with arts and crafts these days,’ he observed, giving me a very charming smile. ‘I think it is quite admirable – especially when they are as talented as your daughter.’
I blushed at this compliment, for Father was never fulsome in praise, even when I knew myself to have done a piece of good work. He was called away for a few moments on some matter of business and I soon found myself chatting quite easily to Mr Revell and telling him about the classes in drawing, design and painting I was taking.
When I said that, unlike my best friend, Lily, I had no skill in the more womanly occupations such as the embroidery and tapestry in which she excelled, he remarked that I was a much rarer creature.
I think he meant it as a compliment, but it seemed a strange way of putting it.
9
Alchemy
Molly made us sandwiches and tea, before popping home to fetch the supply of cardboard cartons, tape and large marker pens I’d asked her to buy for me when she did her shopping.
She and Grant were going to spend Christmas with their daughter and her family in Keswick, setting off after the workshop closed at noon next day, but Molly was worrying about leaving me on my own.
‘Why don’t you come with us?’ she suggested. ‘I’m sure Rosie wouldn’t mind in the least.’
‘Oh yes she would, because I’d be like the spectre at the feast!’ I said. ‘Really, Molly, I don’t even want tothinkabout Christmas. What I really need right now is a few days alone here in the cottage, to come to terms with everything.’
She looked unconvinced, even when I told her I’d be occupying myself by packing up my belongings and working in the studio, but I was adamant and in the end she had to accept it.
After she left I suddenly became overtaken by a kind of restless energy and so for the next few hours I went through the cottage like a dose of salts, scrubbing, polishing and generally expunging every last trace of Nat and Willow, so it was as if they’d never been.
Then I moved my things back into the front bedroom, while the cold late December air whirled in through the open windows and carried off the last lingering whiff of Willow’s obtrusively musky perfume.
Finally, boneless with exhaustion, I sank into Granny’s old rocking chair. The gentle ticking of Julian’s carriage clocks from the other roomwas soothing and the old house creaked, as if heaving a sigh of relief that the usurpers were gone.
In fact, the only evidence that they’d ever been there were fresh copies of the cottage and workshop inventories, with several things I’d marked as mine now highlighted in orange, with crosses next to them.
That was helpful: I’d make damned sure those were the first things that went into the storage boxes.
I was in the studio before dawn next day, then when Grant, Ivan and his grandson, Louis, came in, we carried on working till eleven.
On Christmas Eve we usually closed the workshop at that hour until the New Year and adjourned to the pub for an early turkey-and-trimmings lunch, but this time none of us had the heart for it.
Instead, Molly brought food in and spread it out on one of the tables in the studio, like a mini version of the funeral feast we didn’t have yesterday.
The future was an uncertain thing, but we were all agreed in our determination to finish the rose window as soon as possible. To that end, I intended painting, silver-staining and firing the last of the glass for it over the break, which would make a pleasant change from the packing.
By twelve, everyone had gone and I locked up and went back to the cottage to email my stepfather, Jim. I’d kept him and Mum updated on what had been happening and Jim was convinced I was being done out of my rights and wanted to engage a good solicitor to fight for part of Julian’s estate. But as I told him, I didn’t care about the money and I was moving on, both literally and figuratively.
He offered to bankroll me himself next and I gratefully but firmly declined that, too.
As soon as it was light on Christmas morning I drove to Crosby and walked along the beach, something I’d often done with Granny when I stayed with her during the school holidays. I don’t know what she’d have made of the tall Gormley sculptures of figures gazing out to sea, but I suspected she would have liked them.
