Page 53 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
‘Couldn’t you just stick the fragments of the original panels to a piece of clear glass, with resin?’ he suggested, interested. ‘I’ve seen whole windows made like that in churches – appliqué glass, they call it, don’t they?’
‘They do, and it had a real vogue at one time. The effect could be quite stunning, but there turned out to be a drawback. When the windows were exposed to outside temperatures, the glass and the resin tended to expand and contract at different rates. It wasn’t unusual for pieces of glass to drop off and fall on the congregation.’
‘Bit of a drawback,’ Lulu said, laughing. ‘Maybe the old techniques are best!’
‘They’re certainly what I prefer to work with. I know a lot of glass conservators use resin these days, but even the best yellows after a time.’
Carey had been lost in thought but now suddenly exclaimed, as one seeing a vision of Paradise: ‘You’ve got broadband!’
‘Yes, all of Halfhidden has it now,’ Cam said.
‘I wonder if it could extend to Mossby? If I’m stuck with dial-up much longer, I’ll go stark, staring mad.’
‘Talk to the people at Moel Farm – they’re about to get it, too,’ suggested Lulu, and then our table in the restaurant was ready, so we swapped phone numbers and went in, feeling we’d made new friends and opened up some interesting possibilities.
On our return to London I threw myself back into my work and, most particularly, into my ideas for the Mossby hall panels. I was pleased with the final design, which featured the roses so beloved of Miss Revell, and I had already sought out a plantsman specializing in these blooms, who had dispatched to her what he assured me was an unusual rose, as a thank you for her hospitality. To me, it had looked like a small bundle of thorny twigs, but I was told this is the most propitious time of year for the planting of roses.
Mr Revell was not long in following us back to London and approving my designs … and that was not all: to my total surprise I found myself caught up in a dizzying, intoxicating, whirlwind courtship, which ended with his asking Father for my hand in marriage.
My normally logical thought processes deserted me and so, I fear, did my common sense. I had fallen in love with Ralph, as I now called him, but yet I also loved my work and knew that I could not be truly happy unless I was engaged in it.
However, when I explained my feelings to Ralph, I found he perfectly understood me, for he immediately suggested that he turn the disused small mill at Mossby into a workshop. What is more, he promised to have it ready by the time we married in the New Year, if Father would lend him some of his men to set it up.
He told me it was to be my wedding present and I felt truly I had found a soulmate. We had been friends first and out of that had grown love.
If I occasionally felt that what was happening was quite unreal, or that I couldn’t bear to leave London, my friends and especially Father’s workshop, I also felt swept up in the train of something pulling me inexorably along, aided by Aunt Barbara’s enthusiasm for the match.
Miss Revell sent me a chilly, formal note saying how delighted she would be to welcome me to the family and thanking me for her gift.
It was evident that it would take more than the present of a few roses to make her love me like a sister.
20
Good Will
On my way to breakfast next morning I went into the nursery to check out the stained glass Carey had mentioned the previous evening and found the top panels of the windows glazed with charming scenes from Aesop’s fables: ‘The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse’, ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’ and ‘The Lion and the Mouse’. There was a beautifully worked embroidered hanging on the same theme, too.
I went down the backstairs to the kitchen and found Carey leaning on to the long table, doing leg exercises, like a ballet dancer limbering up forSwan Lake.
Fang was sitting upright in his basket watching him with an expression of faint astonishment.
My hand delved into my bag for my phone, but Carey said evenly, ‘If you film me doing this and put it on social media, I’ll kill you.’
‘Just checking for messages,’ I said quickly. ‘Anyway, I’m not on social media and you know I wouldn’t do a thing like that!’
Carey stood upright and stretched himself. ‘There, that’s the last one. Some of them you can do lying flat, so I get those over with before I get up in the morning.’
‘Good idea,’ I said, then began rummaging in the fridge to see what there might be for breakfast. As I buttered toast and Carey poached eggs, he told me that his mother had called him early, waking him up.
‘Mum has even less idea than I have about the time difference between wherever she is in the States and here. She’s on location somewhere.’
‘She didn’t say where?’
‘I’m not sure she knew.’
When her husband died, Carey’s mother had reverted back to being Lila Carey – which is where he got his Christian name from – and was now based permanently in the States, co-starring with her best friend, Marcie, in the long-running cosy crime TV series.
‘I told Mum about Julian and that you’d moved in here. She sends you her love and says she hopes you’ll stop me doing anything stupid.’
