The Crystal Cage (33 page)

Chapter Sixteen

London, 1 May 1851

Lucas was awake before dawn. It was not a day to sleep. This morning the great Exhibition Hall along with its hundred thousand exhibits and seventeen thousand exhibitors would be formally opened by Her Majesty Queen Victoria. He felt a heady mix of expectancy and apprehension. The spectacle would be amazing, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and his would be a prime view. He would be helping to make history, and it was a sobering thought. But such history would be personal, too; he was building his future, ready to impress all who visited the Renville display, any of whom could be potential clients.

The exhilaration bubbling within belonged also to a lover. He was convinced that he would see Alessia today, even though he had received no message. The two weeks since his return from Southerham Hall had been burdensome. He had been plagued by contrary emotions, at first imagining that discretion was rendering her silent but then finding himself a prey to doubt. She was a woman in love, passionately in love. Was it likely that, free now from the tyranny of her marriage, she would not have found a way to meet? The days had passed very slowly, and slowly he had become alarmed. He could not think why she remained silent and shocking possibilities began to chase themselves through his mind.

But then reason had taken over. There was a simple and obvious explanation, he decided. She had returned to Wisteria Lodge. When she sent the boy to him, she had been desperate. She’d written that she had left the family home but given no address. He had assumed that she’d been too distraught to discover her whereabouts, but now he was sure it was because she had not yet found lodgings. Her letter had been stating what she intended to do rather than what she had done. The reality of her situation must have dawned, he believed, when the boy returned with his message and gave into her hand money for her expenses. The enormity of what she was proposing must have struck hard. In her letter she’d said that she had left her darlings, but Lucas was certain that she would never, ever abandon her daughters. Not when the moment came. Instead she had decided to follow his advice and appear willing to agree her husband’s arrangements, even to the extent of braving a temporary incarceration in St Albans under the gimlet eye of her mother-in-law. She would know that she could depend on him to come to her rescue. And if she had not yet left to live with the formidable Florence and was still at Prospect Place—and Lucas believed she was—she would accompany Edward Renville to this morning’s opening ceremony. And he would see her at last.

The Exhibition Hall was not to open to the general public until nine o’clock, but Lucas intended to be there well before eight, when, along with exhibitors, he would be allowed into the building. It was important that he ensure the Renville pavilion was perfect, and he was hopeful of reserving a good vantage point for himself from which to view the opening ceremony. Already as he walked from Holborn towards Hyde Park, the streets were filling. He could see that within the hour every square inch of pavement and grass would be jammed to capacity with visitors from all over the country and abroad. The streets were awash with different languages and different skins. The nearer he drew to Hyde Park, the denser the crowd grew. Many souvenir stalls and refreshment booths had set up business and were already attracting custom.

Crossing Park Lane to the newly constructed Prince of Wales Gate, he glanced down the road in the direction of Buckingham Palace. Guards lined the route that the Queen would take later that morning, ready to protect her should the crowds get out of hand. Always the fear of riots, he thought. But the crowd was good-natured, laughing excitedly, occasionally jostling each other but making light of any discomfort. He walked quickly across the park towards the immense building that had arisen in its southwest corner. A shaft of sunlight sent the crystal dancing like shifting diamonds caught in candle flame. A stiff wind had risen and the flags on the roof were blowing wildly. He walked on, hundreds of people on either side of him spread across the grassy slopes. Despite the overnight rain they had kept vigil, sleeping in the park to ensure their place from which to view the Queen. Many of them had brought picnics and were unconcernedly eating breakfast as one of a number of regimental bands tuned up nearby, their uniforms a splash of vermillion against the brilliant green.

Lucas joined the queue of those waiting to be admitted to the Exhibition Hall ahead of the public: not only exhibitors but members of their families, government officials with their minions and those charged with the overseeing of the building. Anyone in fact who could lay the slightest claim to be there was queuing for admission at the stroke of eight. Once inside he saw that in the weeks since he last visited, thousands of plants, banks of colourful azaleas, had been positioned along the nave while above large sheets of canvas had been placed over the glass roof to avoid glare and overheating. The curved roof of the transept stretching between north and south entrances had been left uncovered, creating the effect of a broad rectangle of sunlight driven through the middle of the building. In turn the sun’s rays hit the crystal fountain and beamed its reflections into every corner.

There was no sign of Edward Renville and no sign of his wife. They would arrive later, he thought, but now that he was actually in the building he and Alessia had both known so well, her absence made him curiously disinclined to make his way to their pavilion. It would seem wrong, worthless without her. Instead he wandered idly along the nave looking at the various stalls that had sprung up on either side. He stopped at a large souvenir shop. Among its many wares it boasted a stack of printed engravings of Joseph Paxton and of the Exhibition Hall, sheets of piano music featuring twelve different Crystal Palace Polkas, rows of mugs adorned with the portrait of Prince Albert and tiers of sweet tins and boxes of soap. A Post Office stood next door so that visitors could send letters or telegrams postmarked from the Great Exhibition. And the small restaurant where Alessia and he had drunk tea together had vanished, replaced by a vast cordoned area large enough to feed the thousands that would attend that day.

Eventually he walked back along the nave and up the staircase that he and his lover had used so many times. By now it was nine o’clock and the public had begun trickling through the turnstiles. The upper gallery was still empty except for exhibitors and for a moment he paused at the head of the stairs, looking down on the hive of people below, the mass of men’s hats and women’s bonnets swarming like bees. Tickets for the opening day were prohibitively expensive and only likely to attract the upper classes, but despite that, a slow-moving mass of humanity was already winding its way around the ground-floor exhibits, moving from stand to stand with a determined seriousness. Here and there, where a display was proving particularly popular, a bubble of people bulged into the nave.

He was finally at the Renville pavilion and looked around the display space with attention. Nothing was out of place; it was perfect. Emptily perfect. Not a trace of their love remained. And still there was no sight of her. A cough sounded behind him and he whirled around. Not Alessia, but Mr Dearlove, whom he had last seen the day he’d collected materials from the Renville warehouse, the day he had first kissed her.

‘Mr Royde, isn’t it?’ Mr Dearlove nodded in his direction and removed his hat, which he placed carefully beneath one of the love seats. It was a sacrilege Lucas tried to ignore.

‘Mr Dearlove,’ he said in as warm a voice as he could manage, ‘I am delighted to see you again. I imagine you are here to help customers appreciate the fabrics.’

Mr Dearlove nodded again but said no more. He was a man who rationed his words, his volubility saved for the silks he loved. People had now begun to drift into the space through the veils of jewelled coloured gauze, and Lucas forced himself to put on a smile and a welcome. Over the next few hours he seemed to do nothing but talk; explaining, describing, answering questions, many of them foolish. One excellent opportunity presented itself, a manufacturer entranced by the Italian tiles that were Lucas’s own speciality. If he could interest another half dozen such businessmen, the day would surely be worthwhile.
But not without Alessia
, a voice in his head whispered distractedly.

The opening ceremony was to take place at noon and to be sure of his place, he decided to make for the entrance a good thirty minutes beforehand. Here a space had been cleared for the Queen’s dais and an auditorium erected for the musicians, choirs and special guests that were expected. As he retraced his steps towards the central staircase, a heavy shower buffeted the glass walls with a sudden violence that sent people in the park scurrying for cover. It seemed to Lucas to signal the end of the morning’s bright promise. He shivered but kept walking. When he reached the rows of red velvet, he saw that most of the chairs had already been taken and was forced to squeeze past a number of stout matrons to secure one of the last seats. Then he wished that he hadn’t. Sitting elbow-to-elbow and jammed between two majestic females, he felt himself suffocating. Minutes passed and his frustration mounted. He was quite unable to see the comings and goings taking place around him and though he tried craning his neck at an extreme angle, he could not discover whether or not Renville and his wife had joined the gathering.

Guns firing in the distance and deafening cheers nearer to hand heralded the arrival of the royal party. Another stray beam of sunshine lit the entire hall as a diminutive figure alighted from her carriage and made a stately progress towards the assembled throng. Everyone stood and the National Anthem boomed. The Queen was resplendent in a pink silk dress embroidered with silver and studded with diamonds and with a matching headdress of diamonds and feathers in the shape of a crown.

Once the royal party had been accommodated, the audience resumed their seats and Albert took his place at the front of the dais. In a voice that lay bare his German ancestry, he read the formal address, setting out the purposes of the Exhibition and listing a mystifying array of statistics that had attended the planning and construction of the Crystal Palace. When he sat down, the Queen rose to reply briefly with praise for the splendid spectacle they were enjoying. A special prayer for the occasion was offered by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the massed choirs of St Paul’s, Westminster and St George’s, Windsor, sang a rousing version of the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

Surely that must be the finale, Lucas thought, but it was merely a pause in the official programme. Everyone remained just where they were while the royal party took a small tour of the Exhibition Hall, first to the north side and then along the southerly stands, before returning to the centre. The tour took no more than thirty minutes but trapped as he was, it seemed a prison sentence. When after half an hour the Queen mounted her specially prepared dais once more and declared the Exhibition opened, his sigh of relief was audible. A flourish of trumpets, mass cheering and waving of handkerchiefs and then another rousing chorus of the National Anthem and the Queen and her entourage were on their way back to Buckingham Palace. The semicircular electric clock dominating the entrance with its stately presence showed the hour as just past one.

As soon as he was able to extricate himself, he hurried back to the Renville display and was greeted by the thin, clipped voice he had come to hate.

‘Ah, there you are, Royde. At last! I imagined—evidently wrongly—that you would have thought it proper to remain in the pavilion.’

It was Edward Renville, alone. Which meant that Alessia must even now be sitting in Florence Renville’s drawing room.

‘I have been on duty since eight o’clock this morning, Mr Renville. I left only to see and hear the Queen.’ He wondered why he bothered to reply. He had no need to excuse himself and this arrogant man would in any case accept no excuse.

Renville tugged at the short bristles of his moustache. ‘Now you
are
here, you can be useful. There are several people anxious to discuss with you the process of design, though I am far from understanding why.’

‘It could be, sir, that they have an interest in architecture.’ With a great effort, Lucas managed to keep his tone measured.

The afternoon wore on, Edward Renville immediately assuming the role of master and quick to demote Dearlove and Lucas to menial status. He was there to meet his public; they were there to answer the questions he chose not to. Visitors were greeted by him with what Lucas scorned as false bonhomie, but his manufactured smiles were accepted happily enough by an undiscerning audience. More and more people came to view. News of the pavilion’s beauty and its daring design had by some mysterious process passed through the building and by late afternoon there was little room to move and the crowd was spilling out into the passage beyond.

Lucas was exhilarated. Renville’s deliberate discourtesy was as nothing. This was his design and clearly a success. He had never doubted it, but he hugged to himself the knowledge that his instincts had not lied. Several architects from eminent London practices paused to congratulate him and discuss his work at length. He was conscious of Renville’s scowl at the attention he was receiving, but he felt elated. Elated that at last his hard work and his mother’s sacrifice were to be rewarded. And this was real reward, definite reward, not plans in formation or dreams in the sky, but actual offers of commissions. This was his moment.

Then he saw her. More the shadow of a movement than a flesh-and-blood form. From behind one of the slender marble pillars a flash of blue dress, the very same that she had worn when first they had met. But now it carried the grime of the streets on its hem and hung limply from newly thin shoulders. The figure hovered on the very edges of the pavilion and he looked again, hardly able to believe what he saw. She was transformed: gaunt, bedraggled, starved even. Her face had a pallor that spoke illness and in her hand she clutched a white handkerchief that was ominously stained. She was ill! My God, what had happened? He remained rooted to the floor, unable to move or make a sound. What had happened? What had happened? The cruel refrain beat ceaselessly through every fibre of his body. Her eyes were staring straight into his, their brown depths huge in the ravaged face. The message was clear: come to me. He wanted to run to her side, to take hold of her, comfort her, kiss her, keep her safe. But at that moment Renville turned and she disappeared from view. He should run after her, but he could not. Her husband stood feet away. The pavilion was full. Too many people to witness a scandal in the making. The end of a career that was only just beginning.