The Glass Painter's Daughter (28 page)

The first two weeks of October passed in a sort of limbo. The leaves on the trees in the Square fell, spinning, to lie like a gentle shroud, as I watched my father slip into a deep coma. I would sometimes trudge through them in the morning on my way to get milk or a paper. Later in the day, wind and rain and people’s feet would have reduced their delicate beauty to a slimy mush, to be scraped up by some passing street-sweeper.

In the first days after his arrival at the hospice Dad would sometimes seem to stir, though never to full consciousness, and when I recounted all the little things I’d been doing–how the angel was progressing, that Amber had been looking into part-time college courses for next term, that Anita next-door had become a grandmother–I could almost believe that he heard me. But as the days lengthened into weeks, he sank deeper into unconsciousness and I knew in my heart that he was beyond hearing.

Zac was the friend and colleague with whom I spent my days, but I was completely wrapped up in Ben. If Zac knew about Ben, which he must have done, he didn’t mention it. Instead he absorbed himself in our angel, and during that time, inch by inch, piece by piece, we continued to recreate Raphael.

Zac was lucky finding replica glass–the glassmaker in Hungary managed to match all the specifications, and while the gorgeous colours of autumn faded outside, inside our workshop they came to life.

‘There’s light trapped inside,’ breathed Amber, enraptured, as Zac held up the dazzling pieces one by one.

Yes, there was a kind of exhilaration about this task. We were piecing together a broken angel, but what we were creating wasn’t just a beautiful picture of glass and light. It was transforming, as if by a miracle, into something marvellous and life-affirming.

’Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.

William Thackeray,
The History of Henry Esmond

The second Monday of October, Jo missed choir again. I rang her the next evening, but she wasn’t home, and although I left a message, she didn’t return my call. Somehow I got too caught up in other things to try again and, since Dominic had undertaken to drop in on her with her copy of the choir survey, there wasn’t even that excuse to remind me. So when I picked up the ringing phone the following Sunday morning, my first reaction on hearing her croaky ‘Fran?’ was one of guilt.

‘Jo? Jo, is that you? Are you all right?’

‘Oh no, Fran, I’m not. I don’t know what to do.’

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked her. But instead of answering me she started crying, and I said, ‘I’m coming over to see you. Stay right there.’

She buzzed me into the apartment block and waited for me at the top of the stairs, a miserable heap. Had someone died, I wondered. I believed her when she told me she’d been awake crying all night, for her face was blotchy and swollen, her eyes, without her contact lenses, large and red-rimmed behind her glasses.

‘You’re going to think I’m awful,’ she said, throwing herself onto one of her parents’ sofas. ‘You’re going to hate me. I hate myself. I don’t know how I got into it. I’d never have thought I ever would, not me.’

I sat down beside her. ‘What on earth have you done?’ I asked, appalled at her distress.

‘It’s so awful, and there’s going to be such trouble. Oh, why did I ever let it happen?’

What could she possibly have done? Jo, out of whom goodness and innocence always shone.

‘Why don’t you start at the beginning,’ I suggested gently, passing her some tissues.

She gave a great shuddering sigh, then nodded and wiped her eyes.

‘It was back in June,’ she said, twisting the tissue into pieces on her lap. ‘The twenty-fourth. I’ll never forget the day. He came to look at the hostel.’

‘Who did?’

‘He’s an MP who champions the needs of the homeless. I don’t know if you’ll have heard of him–Johnny Sutherland?’ I hadn’t. ‘Earlier in the year, the church applied for some government grants to extend the hostel. Johnny was on the committee awarding them so he came to inspect us. I was on the team who showed him round and he was awfully nice and interested in it all. Asked some good questions, too, as though he really understood the problems we were dealing with. That was all I thought about him at the time.

‘Anyway, a couple of days later I passed him in Rochester Row. He was trying to hail a taxi, except there weren’t any free, and when I said hello, I was pleased that he remembered me. I suggested he try Victoria Station and since we were going in the same direction we walked together. When I got here though, we were still talking, so I invited him in. We only had coffee, but we got on so well, and he was awfully nice.

‘A week later, at the beginning of July, he rang to ask if we could go for a drink. He wanted some more details from me–you know, life behind the figures on the grant submission form, that sort of thing. And that’s how it started. During the evening he hinted that he wasn’t getting on well with his wife, and I encouraged him to talk about it, thinking I could be helpful just by listening. I felt sorry for him, especially because he has three children. It would have been a shame for the marriage to fall apart just because he didn’t have anyone to talk to.’

‘Oh Jo.’ How exactly like her to want to help. This time though, she’d fallen into a honey trap; the man in trouble, who apparently only needed the touch of a ministering angel to set him back on the straight and narrow.

‘We met several more times, and then…it was the most terrible shock. He said he wanted to leave his wife. Out of the blue, he said it, just like that. He told me that he’d fallen in love with me.’

‘What on earth did you say?’

‘What could I say? That I was very flattered and, of course, I liked him very much, but I couldn’t be responsible for the breakup of his marriage. I told him I couldn’t see him any more.’

‘I take it that you did though.’

‘Yes. He kept ringing and sending me flowers at the hostel–it was incredibly embarrassing. I don’t know what people there thought.’ But Jo had this stupid smile on her face as we talked and I guessed that she’d loved being, for once in her life, the subject of all this attention.

‘I only agreed to see him again in order to tell him to stop. But, of course, you can guess what happened.’

‘He didn’t stop.’

‘I believed him, Fran. I thought he was telling the truth. I know he was. He was genuinely unhappy with his wife, he was definitely going to leave her. Suddenly we were in love and it was wonderful. I’ve never felt that way before. And now I probably won’t ever again.’ She looked desolate.

‘Anyway, all the next month he kept telling me that once their family holiday in Tuscany was over, he’d sort it out with his wife. But he came back at the end of August and then the excuse was his daughter’s thirteenth birthday party; she’d be traumatised if he ruined that for her with his news. And so it went on. I love him so much and I thought that’s how he felt about me, too. I really, really thought it would all work out.’ And Jo started to cry again.

One of the world’s oldest stories, then. Despite all her high principles, poor old Jo had fallen for it.

‘But it hasn’t?’ I asked tentatively.

‘I can’t believe I’ve put myself through all this. Fran, it was so stressful. He could only see me sometimes. It was work this or the children that, and we’d make an arrangement and then he’d cancel. Or he’d give me five minutes’ warning and I’d end up changing my arrangements. I know, I’m a mug. I was like a cat on hot bricks. Every time the phone rang my heart would start pounding. I’d have gone mad if I hadn’t got my work, and I made myself go to choir this term most of the time. But perhaps it’s too late, I’m mad already.’ Her voice rose to a sobbing squeak.

‘You’re upset, and not yourself, but you’re not mad,’ I told her soothingly.

‘But you haven’t heard the worst yet, Fran. I was never allowed to ring him, but last week I hadn’t heard anything for days and I was worried. So on Monday I rang him at work. As soon as I said “It’s me,” and he hesitated, I knew that something was badly wrong. He came round here after work, and was acting strangely. He seemed in a great hurry and I could tell he didn’t want me to touch him. “Yvonne knows about us,” he said. “She confronted me and I had to tell her.” She’s threatened to leave him and suddenly he can’t cope with the idea. After everything he said to me, he doesn’t want her to go. He’s just…dropped me. He puts the phone down on me if I ring. He’s blanking me out. I really am going mad. I don’t know what to do. You’re the first person I’ve told.’

‘I wish you’d said something before.’ I was thinking about the past six weeks. Her vagueness, her unpredictability, suddenly made sense. All this because Johnny was treating her like a puppet on a string. Poor Jo.

‘I wish I had, but Johnny made me promise to keep things secret.’ I wondered if she’d enjoyed that aspect–the secrecy, the intrigue. Perhaps it was part of the excitement.

‘Why don’t you ask your parents for help?’ They’d give her a hard time, I thought–but surely they’d be supportive?

‘I can’t. Dad would probably go and horsewhip Johnny on the steps of the Commons! I nearly told Dominic the other night when he brought the questionnaire round–he could see I was upset and he was so sweet. I just said that a relationship had gone badly wrong. He made me some tea and talked to me until I cheered up a bit. He’s so nice, isn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ I said, with a sigh. Poor Dominic. He was clearly in love with her. But I was more worried about Jo.

‘I just wish Johnny would explain things properly. Why won’t he talk to me? I feel so powerless.’

Whatever the rights and wrongs of their affair, he was behaving very cruelly to her. ‘Do you think wanting to keep his family is the most likely reason?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. Probably. But he loved me, Fran. I know he really loved me. How can I get him back? What can I do?’ She looked so wan that I reached out and hugged her. She clung to me, starting to cry once more.

When she was quieter, I said, ‘Jo, I can’t advise you what to do, but it sounds as though he’s not going to leave his home. It’s going to be tough, but you might save yourself a lot of unhappiness if you accept that and let it finish now.’

It was as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘If only I could see him again and try to understand,’ she repeated.

‘Perhaps he can’t see you,’ I suggested. ‘Do you think his wife has forbidden him?’

‘I don’t know. Or it could be because of his job.’

‘Being an MP? Do you think he’s frightened your affair would affect his career?’

‘Maybe.’ She was round-eyed and earnest now. ‘Perhaps his wife has threatened to tell his Party, or to go to the papers about it.’

‘Or maybe he’s worried that you’ll go to the papers,’ I said, thinking this explanation more likely. Surely his wife wouldn’t want the affair made public. She’d instinctively protect herself and the children.

‘Oh no,’ Jo said, indignant at the idea. ‘Johnny knows it would be against all my principles doing something like that!’

Lucky Johnny, I thought bitterly. He’d get off scot free. Jo would never exact revenge. She was too good for someone like him.

Jo looked down at the bits of tissue in her lap and sniffed wanly. I gave her another hug and said, ‘We can’t sit around brooding. Let’s do something fun. Have a lovely lunch somewhere and lots to drink.’

‘You sound as if you’ve had practice,’ she said, blowing her nose.

‘Believe me, Jo, I have.’ If only she knew how often.

So Jo tidied herself up and we took a bus up to Trafalgar Square then walked to a restaurant near Covent Garden. After fancy cocktails and her favourite comfort food of pepperoni pizza, Jo started to cheer up.

‘I was out of my depth,’ she explained. ‘The uncertainty was awful. It’ll be a relief to get back to normal.’ Then she added, ‘But he was so lovely,’ and started sniffling again.

‘He can’t be that lovely if he’s made life so dreadful for you,’ I said, though with a sudden guilty thought of what I put up with from Ben. ‘Do they know at the hostel?’

‘They guess something’s up, but I’ve not explained,’ Jo said. ‘Do you know something? Amber’s been so sweet. I didn’t tell her what was wrong, just that it was a man, but she’s so…intuitive and kind, isn’t she?’

‘She is a very special person,’ I agreed, and I finally plucked up the courage to tell her about Ben. ‘I feel wretched burdening you with this now, but if I don’t you’ll think I’ve been hiding it from you. I’m going out with Ben.’

I needn’t have worried about upsetting her. ‘Really?’ she said, all round-eyed. ‘I thought that might happen. That’s lovely. I’m so happy for you.’

‘Thank you. I suppose I’m happy, too.’

She licked her pudding spoon and said, ‘I’m surprised you haven’t joined the adoring front row of sopranos though! You needn’t slouch at the back with me any more, hoping he won’t notice us.’

‘I can assure you I’ll be slouching at the back as usual,’ I said, laughing.

It was good to hear her joke, to see her eyes sparkle. Perhaps she hadn’t got in so deep after all and would recover quickly.

But I was wrong to think that the matter of Johnny was all over. It merely waited, underground, growing canker-like in the dark.

And it wasn’t long before
I
had to face the truth as well. That things were far from right between me and Ben.

Beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.

Matthew Arnold on Shelley, preface to
Byron’s Poems

One Monday, in the middle of October, Ben phoned before choir and said that he’d invited Michael and Nina over for supper the following evening. Would I like to come?

‘Are you asking me to cook?’ I said lightly.

‘Of course not! How could you think such a thing!’ He sounded genuinely indignant. But I turned up early and, sure enough, the kitchen looked like a bombsite. What’s more, Ben had just cut his thumb with a vegetable knife.

I calmed him down and sent him upstairs for a plaster, then sorted out our meal, deciding to fry the chicken before casseroling everything, or we’d be waiting for ever.

This was only the bad start to an increasingly difficult evening.

Nina and Michael arrived together, but it was clear that there was some tension between them. Nina, exuding fifties’ elegance in a wasp-waisted dress, sat stiffly in her seat, the nubs of her vertebrae visible through the cloth down her long back, and hardly looked at Michael or me, but shot little glances at Ben all the time. Michael couldn’t take his eyes off her, the misery plain on his face. Ben didn’t seem to notice that anything was amiss, while my role seemed simply to be the audience, watching the farce, whose plot I could never follow, as I moved to and from the table, serving the food, and feeling more and more uncomfortable as the evening progressed. From the conversation I deduced that something had happened, something I could guess at but didn’t like to admit.

‘Do you know who I saw at the Barbican last night?’ said Michael. ‘Bea.’

‘Really?’ Ben hesitated for the smallest moment as he brought his fork to his mouth. ‘How the devil was she?’

‘She looked very well. Her husband was with her–Ivan or Ian or something. Very charming chap. They’ve got a little boy.’

‘Mmm,’ Ben said. ‘Hardly ever see her name these days.’

‘Oh, she plays abroad a lot, she said. Gave every appearance of doing very well.’

‘And who is Bea?’ Nina asked brightly.

‘Old friend of Ben’s from music college,’ Michael said quickly.

‘Anyone for more Beaujolais?’ Ben asked. ‘Nina, you look as if you could do with some. Come on, don’t be coy.’

‘I’m fine, Ben, honestly,’ said Nina, putting her hand over her glass. ‘You know the effect that stuff has on me.’ She stifled a little giggle.

Michael looked at her sharply. ‘Perhaps she shouldn’t,’ he told Ben.

‘I will if I want,’ Nina said, and held out her glass. Michael frowned.

‘I’ll have some as well, Ben,’ I said. Perhaps getting tipsy was the best way to get through this evening.

They left early, Nina slumped at one end of the taxi seat, Michael at the other.

‘Looks like Michael’s pursuing a hopeless cause there,’ I remarked as Ben closed the door.

He merely shrugged. I knew it would annoy him, but the wine loosened my tongue. ‘I’m not sure that I’m her favourite person.’

‘Oh, why’s that?’ he said, throwing himself down in an armchair and yawning.

‘Oh Ben, you must see it.’

‘What?’ he said.

‘She’s mad about you.’

This time, instead of laughing and denying it, he merely said, ‘Oh that,’ in a rather dull voice.

I sat down in the chair opposite. Why did I feel cold, even by the fire? He started drumming his fingers on the arm of the chair as though conducting music I couldn’t hear.
1
-2-3-4,
1
-2-3-4. The clock ticked out of time so it sounded like 1-tick, 2, 3 tick, 4, 1-tick, 2, 3 tick, 4…until it started to drive me mad. I stood up.

‘I’ll clear up,’ I said.

‘Oh, leave it,’ Ben protested, but I started anyway, loading cutlery into the machine. After a moment, he came into the kitchen and helped by putting the odd thing away. He was whistling gently to himself. There was something faraway, unknowable about him that evening, and I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t seem unnatural.

Suddenly, he surprised me by putting his arm around me. ‘Stay tonight?’

But I was annoyed with him. ‘I shouldn’t. It’s a working day tomorrow.’

‘One of us always has an early start whatever day it is,’ he said carelessly. But he took his arm away and put his hands in his pockets. He looked sad, out of sorts.

It felt as though something was broken between us. I turned away, unable to face the thought. Ben wandered off and soon I heard the sound of the piano, played very softly. It must be one of the hymns for Sunday–his early-morning habit–but then a Chopin Nocturne started up, the dynamics of ‘quiet and forceful’ preposterously exaggerated.

I slipped upstairs to the loo.

He’d left the light on in the bathroom. There was a fresh smear of blood on the washbasin, and a box of plasters had spilled off the narrow wooden ledge above from when he’d cut himself earlier. I returned the little white packets to their container and, seeing the door of the bathroom cabinet half-open, reached up and placed it on the top shelf. As I did so, I knocked something: a small wooden bowl. I grabbed at it too late. It fell, its contents scattering across the floor.

‘Damn.’ I crouched down. Something glinted up at me in the weak electric light. I knew it right away. The fused glass I’d given Ben once when he visited the workshop. I held it up, admiring its beautiful peacock blue.

Downstairs, the Nocturne crashed to its end. There came a silence. I dropped the blue glass back in the bowl and picked up the other bits–some safety pins, a toothpaste tube lid, a pair of nail clippers, a buckle from a watchstrap. Gingerly I returned the little bowl to the shelf. It wouldn’t sit straight at first and I saw it was half-resting on something. I felt around and picked up two quadrilaterals of white-painted glass, each the size of a large biscuit. I examined their ragged shapes with dawning recognition. One had a pattern on it. I turned over the other and was shocked to see a pair of eyes staring at me. They were Raphael’s.

Downstairs, under Ben’s long fingers, a Chopin Ballade began to leap and sob.

I stood in the bathroom for what felt like ages, looking down at those two eyes that calmly stared back at me. My thoughts churned. Then I carefully closed my fingers over them, picked up the piece of peacock-blue glass, and walked slowly downstairs.

Ben was bathed in the glow of a single table lamp, his eyes closed as he played, completely caught up in the music. I watched the plaster on his thumb flash up and down as his fingers moved, felt the harmonies rampage through me. The lamplight softened the sharp angles of the music stands and glinted off the framed certificates on the walls. I leaned against the piano. Sensing my presence, Ben’s eyes opened, surprised, though he kept on playing. Finally he reached an exhausting but triumphant end and we listened to the chords die away.

I showed him what I held in my hand. ‘I found these,’ I said. ‘You took them, didn’t you?’

‘Oh God,’ he said, his face a picture of horror. ‘I completely forgot. Fran, that’s awful, I’m sorry.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It was that time I came into the shop and you gave me that lovely…’ I produced the piece of blue glass. ‘Yes, that,’ he said. ‘I took it as a sort of sign, you know. That you…liked me.’

‘I did,’ I said softly. ‘But the eyes–why? We thought we’d accidentally thrown them away or something. Zac spent days looking. Why on earth did you take them? I don’t get it. You must have known they’re important.’

He bowed his head and shuffled his feet on the piano pedals, his arms folded. To give him credit, he looked chastened. ‘I don’t know. It was a sort of joke, I suppose.’ He glanced up, met my eyes. ‘I was furious about the wretched window at the time, and they looked so silly, mocking, those painted eyes, in the pile of broken glass. I just picked them up and…took them. Fran, I’m so, so sorry.’

‘Ben,’ I said, trying to find the right words, ‘you shouldn’t have taken them, not even as a joke.’

‘I know, I know. I didn’t mean to keep them, but then…well, I forgot where I had put the wretched things. I searched everywhere. Where did you find them?’

‘In the bathroom cabinet.’

‘I can’t think why I put them there,’ he said briskly. ‘Stupid, really.’

‘You should have told me you’d got them,’ I said, and I could hear the whine in my voice. ‘Oh, never mind.’ I tried to be relieved that it was a joke, rather than a deliberate felonious act. But I couldn’t be. It was so casual of him.

He got up, gently lowered the lid of the piano and came around behind me, massaging my shoulders, burying his face in my hair, whispering that he was sorry. Despite still being upset I couldn’t stop myself tilting into him.

‘It was just a silly prank, darling, really,’ he said.

It was the first time he’d ever called me darling. Come to think of it, there had been no word of endearment between the two of us before. And now ‘darling’. But perhaps it was too late.

I couldn’t stay with Ben that night; pretend that everything was normal. Walking back across the Square, I tried to work out what I’d tell Zac about the theft.

In the end I told him the truth. ‘I think it was just a silly joke,’ I said, still wanting to defend Ben.

‘Very funny,’ said Zac gravely, turning the battered fragments in his palm. He wouldn’t look at me, but moved away to lay the pieces in their rightful place. I understood that in some way he blamed me. And I accepted that blame.

It took a chance meeting with Michael two days after the dinner-party to make me finally see sense.

I had left Amber in charge of the shop and walked up to St James’s Park for a change of scene. It was one of those cold clear days when you sense autumn segueing into winter, and I pulled my coat tightly around me as I loitered watching Japanese tourists photograph ducks skid-landing on the lake.

A man was sitting on a bench nearby. Leaning forward, bent over his paper as he ate a sandwich, I didn’t recognise him immediately. As he turned a page he looked up.

‘Fran.’ He folded his paper and rose politely, brushing the crumbs from his coat.

‘Hello, Michael. No power lunch with some Ambassador today?’

He laughed. ‘You’ve a somewhat over-glamorised view of what I do all day. I assure you, I’m just a paper-pusher.’

Despite the bright sunlight, the sadness of the other night still hung about him. He looked tired and ashen-faced, and I felt sorry for him.

‘Do you have time for a coffee?’ I asked.

‘That would be nice.’ We made our way over to the park café and sat at a table by the lake, warming our hands on our mugs. I asked him about his work and he talked for a while about government briefs and possible trips abroad, but then, inevitably, we moved on to Ben.

‘I’m sorry about the other night,’ he said, dabbing his upper lip with a handkerchief as white and crisp as his shirt. ‘You might have gathered that Nina and I were having a misunderstanding.’

‘Oh?’ I said. There was something about Michael, the way he pussyfooted around emotional issues, that reminded me of Dad.

‘Yes,’ he said, looking down at his handkerchief with an expression of bemusement. Then slowly he put it in his pocket. ‘I’m very fond of Nina. I told you, I think.’

‘I can see it,’ I said softly.

‘Oh.’ He smiled sheepishly. ‘Is it that obvious?’

‘It is.’

‘I thought…that she liked me, too.’

‘But she still prefers Ben.’

‘Yes,’ he said, his face almost crumpling.

‘And he…likes me.’

‘Quite. You know, perhaps I shouldn’t be saying this to you, but he’s always had this thing with women. This knack.’ He gave a dry little laugh.

‘I think I know what you mean.’ And now I felt so cold, I couldn’t sit there any longer. ‘Shall we walk?’

‘I’m sorry, I’ve offended you,’ Michael said, getting up too.

‘No, no, really, you haven’t.’ Part of me knew I shouldn’t listen to what he was going to say, that at some level I was betraying Ben. I should let him tell me about himself, not hear it from Michael. But I couldn’t stop myself.

‘He’s a golden boy, Ben is. Always has been. But you need to see, Fran, that he uses people.’

I was shocked to hear him say this. ‘I thought you were his friend,’ I said angrily.

‘I am. I’ve always been there for him, and I always will be. I’ve helped him out many times. You know, I used to lie for him at school, when he wanted to get out of Games or needed an alibi. Once, in the Sixth Form, he went to an Oxford college ball with a girl he’d met. Sneaked out of school overnight without permission. He made me cover for him. That sort of thing.’

‘Why did you do it?’

‘I was fond of him. He was a kind of wayward little brother–he’s always seemed younger than me, though actually, he’s three months older. And I was very fond of his parents and sister; they made me feel so welcome when I missed my own family so much.’

‘But surely if you felt you were an older brother you’d have acted more responsibly. Stopped him from doing these things.’ It sounded to me as if Michael, by allowing Ben to behave badly, had contributed to the problem.

Michael sighed. ‘Maybe I should. But part of me felt sorry for him. Ben was always outstanding at music, and never very interested in other subjects, especially sport. And it being a school obsessed with rugby and cricket he had a hard time of it from some of the boys. Sometimes there was violence. That’s why we became friends in the first place.’

‘You were bullied, too?’

‘Not for long–I learned how to deal with it. I was good academically, so I adopted the role of class nerd and helped other boys with their prep. We were unusually sensitive teenagers, Ben and I. But when he was upset, he came across as arrogant, which put people’s backs up.’

It still sounded such an unlikely friendship, but then Michael explained. ‘We kept getting thrown together. We were both in Magdalen House and shared a room in the Lower Fifth. Our parents met on Sports Day that year–mine were in England that summer–and I was invited over to Ben’s for the first time. It was the start of it all.’

At last I was beginning to understand this friendship. Ben hadn’t chosen it. It had happened to him. And yet they did seem close–like brothers who irritate one another but have stuck together anyway, though it was old experiences in this case, rather than shared blood, that bound them.