Page 7 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
‘We’ve already had this conversation, Angel,’ he broke in impatiently. ‘A break will do me as much good as it will you.’
A break from me, he meant, since he hated hot countries and had never been to Antigua with me. I felt hurt. We were both private people, but we’d lived and worked together in perfect harmony. In fact, my annual December visits to Mum and my stepfather had been the longest periods we’d ever spent apart.
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t already asked Molly to check on me every five minutes while you’re gone, because I won’t believe you,’ he added, with just enough of the ghost of his old, familiar smile to reassure me.
And of course I had done just that, though it still seemed wrong that I should leave him.
‘Julian, why don’t I cancel the flights and have a break nearer home?’ I said impulsively. ‘Or we could both have a little holiday in a hotel somewhere lovely, like Cornwall or—’
The smile vanished and I caught a glimpse of the alien, slightly dangerous fire of anger that the stroke had somehow lit inside his mind.
‘No, and we’re not discussing it any more,’ he snapped, and I turned away.
The only consolation was that this time I’d only be absent for a mere nine days, not the usual fortnight. What could possibly go wrong in so short a time? Especially with Molly, Grant and old Ivan watching over him for me.
When making a window, any details that needed to be painted on to the glass were applied in a vitreous enamel that fused with the surface when fired in a kiln. As I had some skill with the paintbrush, this became one of my earliest tasks.
At this time, the men Father employed tended to specialize in certain areas of the glassmaker’s craft, rather than having experience of the whole process, but this was not what I wanted. I was consumed by the desire to learn everything there was to know, from start to finish … Or as much of the process as Father would allow: for though he frequently forgot I was a mere female, he did draw the line at letting me attempt to blow molten glass into a cylinder that could be cut and flattened into a sheet, or spin great discs of it.
Nor would he let me help heat and mould lead to be milled into the long H-shaped strips called calmes that held the pieces of window glass together. Even then, though, I was unfortunately of small stature and slight in build, so perhaps he had a point.
3
Rum Punched
So there I was en route to Antigua a few days later, luxuriating in business class and with a glass of bubbly clasped in a hand somewhat battered, scarred and workmanlike from years of making stained-glass windows for a living. I don’t think I quite realized how emotionally and physically stretched and exhausted I was until I settled into my seat: it was if I were a puppet and someone had cut my strings.
My stepfather, Jim Dacre, wastotallyloaded, so he always insisted on paying for my flights. I suspected he was trying to make up for having married and removed Mum to the other side of the Atlantic when I was ten, after first depositing me in boarding school, like left luggage you might want to reclaim at some future point.
Since I’d already lost my childhood friend Carey the previous year, when his actress mother had taken him back to live in London after her husband died, the last vestiges of my happy childhood ended right there.
Up till then, we’d lived in a small Bedfordshire village and Mum taught art in a nearby grammar school. She took a casual attitude to motherhood, had a circle of bohemian friends, a busy social life and a succession of boyfriends. (My father died before I was old enough to remember him.) I thrived on a diet of casual affection and neglect, growing up to be self-reliant, happy and consumed by painting and drawing the world around me.
I suppose I might have felt lonely if Carey, who was almost exactly the same age as me, hadn’t lived next door. Mum said when Carey’sparents bought the pretty thatched cottage as a weekend retreat, it was the most exciting thing to hit Little Buddington since the Black Death. For although Carey’s mum was merely an aspiring young actress, his father was Harry Revell, the great Shakespearean actor. He was very much older than his wife and late fatherhood can’t have agreed with him, because Lila and Carey were soon living permanently in the cottage with Harry an increasingly rare visitor.
Carey and I were both artistic, fiery Aries characters and often struck sparks off one another; but at bottom, we were best friends right through infants and junior school. Mum and Lila had become friends, too, and the first time Mum visited her in London after the move – having parked me with the postmistress – she somehow hooked herself a rich, early-retired millionaire at a party and life as I’d known ittotallyended.
It wasn’t that I disliked Jim when I met him, but he’d been married before and had handed his business over to grown-up sons. He wanted to carry Mum off to the Caribbean where he was now based andIwas surplus to requirements.
So, I ended up in boarding school among strangers, my home was sold and, apart from a couple of weeks a year when I flew out to Antigua, I spent my school holidays with Granny in Lancashire, where she had a neat semi-detached council house in Formby.
Mum never came back, not even for Granny’s funeral. She had a fear of flying, though never in the Erica Jong sense, and, having got out there, stayed put.
Life based between a superyacht and a villa on a Caribbean island seemed to suit her perfectly … and the responsibilities of motherhood had never weighed heavily on her shoulders anyway.
I became withdrawn and solitary at my new school, for after losing Carey it seemed safer not to make new friends. Instead, I spent all my free time in my own little world, drawing and painting.
Then, with miraculous serendipity, Carey and I chose the same university and met on the first day of term. He was scanning the accommodation notices on the board and though the boy I remembered had turned into a tall, well-built man, the set of his shoulders and the blaze of his red-gold hair were unmistakable.
‘Of all the universities in all the world, you had to choose this one,’ I’d said slightly huskily.
He’d turned quickly, his gentian-blue eyes blazing with surprised delight.
‘Shrimp!’ he’d shouted, then swept me off my feet and swung me round and round until we were both laughing and dizzy. The lonely, unhappy years between nine and eighteen had dissolved in a tide of happiness …
‘Ice cream and cookies?’ suggested the stewardess brightly, breaking into my reverie. She seemed to have been programmed to offer the passengers something to eat or drink about every fifteen minutes and if I accepted everything I’d be so fat by the time we landed I’d have to be prised out of my seat with a crowbar. I closed my eyes, hoping she’d stop tempting me if she thought I was asleep.
And sleep I did, drifting off to the thought of Carey, always there at the back of my mind like a six-foot-four comfort blanket, spun from soft red-gold fleece. His leg was healing well and he’d be out of rehab any minute, so perhaps he could come and stay with us in the New Year. Julian liked him, even though they were chalk and cheese, and the company would perk him up no end.
