The Hot Floor (3 page)

I reached in to grab the last two paperweights—more of my wonky efforts—and nearly jumped out of my skin when Shannon’s unusually deep voice boomed behind me.

“Ah, you’re here, Josh. Marvellous. Take a seat, and we can get started.”

I turned and tried to smile. Shannon looked as severe as ever with her scraped-back hair, grey trouser suit and serious expression, but as far as I could tell, she seemed happy enough.

I sat myself down on my favourite bench, Liam leant back against the work surface, and Shannon paced back and forth in front of the main furnace, which we left on twenty-four-seven. I tried to concentrate on the soothing low rumble of the flames inside and the hum of the control box—the soundtrack to my working life for the last three years.

“Josh, we’ve called you in today because there’s something important we need to discuss about the future of Sulis Glass.” I squirmed on my bench as Shannon spoke. Her presence didn’t feel like a good omen, as she only handled the business side of things, leaving the craft entirely to Liam and me.

I glanced over at Liam, but he was as calm as ever. He often told me you needed to have a certain “c’est la vie” attitude to be a master glassblower. Pieces would always go wrong—would get overblown or lopsided—it was just the nature of working with a tricky beast like glass.

I expect he needed that attitude being married to a woman like Shannon too.

I tried to gather some of that calm to myself. “I’m not losing my job, am I?” There, it was out, and my voice hadn’t even gone all squeaky like it usually does when I’m nervous.

“Of course not,” Shannon said, sounding a little irritated. “And I hope you’re not planning on taking your skills elsewhere either.”

I shook my head vehemently, relief pouring slowly through me like molten glass from the end of an iron.

“Good, we’re going to be needing you as one of our more experienced staff members. We’re aiming to expand operations.”

I looked around our tiny studio. It had once been a lockup industrial storage unit on the outskirts of town, and while the ceilings were high enough to dissipate the heat, our hot floor wasn’t any larger than a couple of regular garages. The rest of the space was taken up with the packing and dispatch area and our miniscule office/break room.

“We’ve taken out a lease on another premises, Josh,” Liam cut in, as if he could read my dismayed vision of trying to fit anyone else into the space.

“Oh yeah? Where?” I gulped. It had better not be too far out of town, as I didn’t have a car.

“It’s a spot down Bathwick Street. You know the bridge there?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I only live around the corner.” I had to cross the Avon using Cleveland Bridge every time I went to the launderette. It was a strange old thing, with towers built into it at either end on both sides, like gatehouses, each with their own row of neoclassical columns facing the incessant traffic. One of them had been turned into a stonemason’s studio, but the rest had been boarded up for as long as I could remember. Certainly for as long as I’d lived in Bath.

“We’ve got a ten-year lease on the old toll house opposite the fire station,” Shannon continued. Could she read my thoughts or what?

“But they’re tiny!”

“The top floor might be, but it’s plenty big enough for a small showroom,” Shannon insisted. “There are two floors below and a gorgeous wrought-iron spiral staircase joining them all together. The middle floor will be our office and break room, and the bottom will be the hot floor.”

“How are we going to fit everything in?” I looked around at the furnace, the glory hole, the iron warmer, the lehr, the benches. We had a hell of a lot of equipment, and you need space to make glass safely.

Liam chuckled. “You look like we’d just suggested you stick your head in the furnace. It’ll be cool. Plenty of space. They extended the ground floor back when it was used as a workshop, building boats, or so the guy said. You’ve got five hundred square feet to stretch out in.”

I was determined to find objections. “What about getting everything down there? We can’t exactly carry the lehr down a set of spiral staircases.”

“Don’t stress, man. There’s a driveway leading down there off the side road, so we’ll be able to get all the big stuff in through the doors at the bottom.”

I tried to remember if I’d ever really looked over that side of the bridge and down at the base of the tower. Probably not, come to think of it. That was the trouble with living in a city with world-heritage status like Bath. After a while, your vision became glutted with all the amazing buildings and you stopped noticing them. Maybe the human mind could cope with only so much beauty before it shorted out.

Maybe that was why I turned into such a drooling idiot around Rai and Evan.

But I couldn’t afford to think of them now, because Shannon was still talking. “Not only is Sulis Glass going to be expanding into retail, but we’ll be opening up the hot floor to small groups so they can watch the glass being made. I’ve been researching other studios that do it, and apparently people spend on average five times more on glassware when they’ve seen a demonstration.”

“People will be watching us work? Isn’t that going to be dangerous? I mean, I think I’d get distracted.”

“You’ll be fine, Josh,” Liam said, sending one of his gentle smiles my way. “You’ll soon find you tune it all out, and we’ll be getting an assistant to help us both so you can concentrate on making pieces of your own.”

“An assistant? You mean I’ll be a proper glassblower?”

“You already are.” Liam pointed at the paperweights.

“But mine are all wonky,” I protested.

“You’re much too hard on yourself. This is excellent work for someone who’s only been doing this a few years.”

“Of course you are,” Shannon butted in. “Your work sells just as well as Liam’s does.”

I didn’t like to point out that she sold my pieces only to the less fussy outlets and at a discounted price, because she had a point. I’d never seen any unsold glass hanging around for longer than a week or two. The demand was clearly there for Sulis Glass’s trademark swirly coloured pieces.

And then I thought about the implications of what they were telling me. “We’d be able to get loads more done with an extra pair of hands.” Although much of the simpler glassware we produced could be made by a single glassblower, you could make everything so much quicker and easier with a helper, as I’d found out on the occasions when Liam deigned to be my assistant for a few hours.

Liam nodded, his lips curving up into his moustache. “Your skills are going to improve faster than you’d ever believe. You’ll be fine, even with an audience.”

A grin broke out over my face, even as my stomach fluttered with nerves. I wasn’t good at change, at meeting new people and being the centre of attention. But if all that had to be put up with in order to get more time blowing glass? Well, then, you could count me in.

“You’d better tell me all the details,” I said.

Shannon and Liam exchanged a knowing glance, both of them smiling secretively. For a fleeting moment, I could understand the bond between them, and then Shannon switched back into business mode and began quoting the figures.

In the end, I had to race back into the city centre to get to the farmer’s market before it closed. The place was heaving, and some of the stalls were already stripped bare, as if a flock of gannets had descended, a few crumbs all that was left of their wares. I watched a seagull loitering around with a gleam in its eye as I queued up to buy overpriced organic three-seed bread, local honey, and vegetables still covered in mud. I reckon it must have been the mud that made them so bloody heavy.

Still, I lugged them back across the city, avoiding most of the main tourist spots by taking the route up Charles Street, cutting down by the theatre and through the maze of pedestrianised back streets before crossing the sea of humanity that was Milsom Street in summer. Cars were backed all the way up the single lane, their occupants roasting under the merciless May sun. Around them wove a combination of single-minded shoppers and meandering tourists, all staring up at the buildings around them and suddenly stopping in the middle of the pavement as they spotted some new sight they just
had
to capture on camera.

Normally, it wound me up something chronic, but today I was still buzzy, floating on the idea of being a fully-fledged glassblower with an assistant of my own. Well, okay, a shared assistant—and Liam had said we’d have to let them have a go at learning the ropes too, so I’d still have to assist occasionally. I didn’t mind that one bit, though.

So long as the person he hired wasn’t a total nightmare, it should be fine. I wondered if Shannon would agree to letting me sit in on the interviews. Then again, I’d probably feel like an imposter in a situation like that. No, best not ask.

As I cut through the tiny arcade that led into the Broad Street car park, my thoughts turned to the evening ahead. My very first invite to Rai and Evan’s for the night. Well, okay, for a few hours in the evening—I wasn’t going to kid myself they were planning on jumping my bones, no matter what luscious thoughts Denise had planted in my head.

No, it was going to be wine and conversation, probably, which was exactly the kind of situation guaranteed to bring me out in nervous hives. Literally, sometimes. I’d suffered major heat rash the time I had to go to a gallery opening with Liam and Shannon. Since then, they’d let me off going to any more of those kinds of things. Funny, that, because I never got a heat rash on the hot floor.

By the time I’d stomped down the Paragon, over Walcot Parade and down the steps to my least favourite traffic lights, I’d managed to work the fear of God into myself. My hands bloody well shook as I unlocked the front door, and I half contemplated leaving Stella’s groceries outside her door with a note.

But, no, what kind of a coward would I be if I couldn’t even deal with a little old lady?

I rapped on the door with my sweaty fist and heard a hoarse call from within. It seemed to take an age for Stella to make it to her door, but when she finally opened it, she gave me a huge smile with crooked, coral-lipstick-stained teeth on show.

“There you are, at last. Joseph, isn’t it?”

“Josh, ma’am, Josh Carpenter, from the top floor.”

“Yes, Josh, of course. How terribly forgetful of me. My mind’s like a sieve these days. Come on in.”

As I followed Stella into her flat, the first thing to hit me was the scent of geraniums. The whole of the tall sash windows in her living room were covered with them, and their apple-sharp tang filled the air. Dappled sunlight shone through the green screen and played across the hulking furniture. A huge armoire crowded in next to an inlaid chest. Persian rugs littered the floor, and uncomfortable-looking sofas with carved wooden animal feet loomed by the windows.

“You’ve got so much stuff in here,” I marvelled. It didn’t look like junk-store furniture either. I knew enough about design to guess that these would be highly sought-after antiques.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, well, I had so many favourite pieces I couldn’t bear to let go of when I moved here. I’m afraid it is awfully cluttered, isn’t it?” Stella frowned for a moment, but she soon crinkled up into a smile again. With her henna-red hair, wild makeup and pink kimono, she fit in better than I ever would have expected. Like her, the room conjured up the bohemian aristocracy of a bygone era. I felt my shoulders ease as my body relaxed.

“I like it,” I said, surprising myself to realise I did. “It suits you. Eccentric but stylish.”

“Oh, you are a sweet young thing, aren’t you?” Stella must have been a good foot shorter than my six foot one, but she still made me feel like a five-year-old when she reached up to pat my cheek. “Would you be a dear and put those bags in my kitchen, please? My wrists can’t manage anything heavy these days.” She lifted up an arthritic claw and glared accusingly at it. “You wouldn’t believe what beautiful hands I had when I was younger, and so nimble too. I used to crochet myself the most marvellous garments, and now they’re no better than that hook Abu-what’s-his-name has. Probably not even as much use as that. At least he can open letters with his.”

I put the bags down on top of the ancient, yellowing refrigerator and looked around the cramped kitchen. Stella’s flat was laid out exactly the same as Denise’s, but hers obviously hadn’t been renovated since the original 1970s conversion, when the former family home had been subdivided. I spotted exposed wires in the flex of her kettle and frowned.

“This doesn’t look very safe,” I said, carrying it through into the living room. “Do you want me to fix it for you?”

“Oh, I don’t want to be any bother. I’m sure you have plenty of things you need to be getting on with.”

“Not really.” Sad but true.

“No girlfriend waiting for you, then?”

I felt my cheeks flush as I shook my head. Stella tilted her head to one side and squinted.

“Boyfriend, perhaps?”

“No! I, uh, not anymore.” I gulped. I might be technically out, but I really hated this part of it, when I got to find out whether someone was going to treat me differently once they knew. “He left me. Kicked me out. That’s why I moved in here.”

“But that was at Christmas, wasn’t it? Yes, I remember it now. Something’s obviously still working up here.” Stella tapped her head. “What a terrible cad, kicking you out at Christmas. We used to have a word for
those
kinds of men when I was a youngster,” she said darkly.