The Glass Painter's Daughter (32 page)

What know we of the blest above but that they sing and that they love?

William Wordsworth

On Wednesday morning, the structural engineer visited and declared the building safe. I opened the door of my flat fearfully. The place stank, like the rest of the building, of smoke and damp. The carpet squelched in places as I walked through the first-floor rooms, but otherwise, amazingly, it was untouched by the fire.

The living room–the window of which I’d opened to effect my escape–had borne the worst of the water damage. Wallpaper sagged, the sofa was sodden and the carpet pooled water where I trod.

Upstairs in the attic, everything was as usual, though the appalling charred smell seemed to permeate everywhere. It seemed possible I’d never be rid of it.

I saw straight away that there wasn’t much point in me trying to clear up. My business today was a rescue operation.

The night before, as we washed up after supper, Jeremy and his wife had talked seriously to me. ‘We’d like you to stay with us,’ Jeremy said. ‘As long as you need to. I can’t imagine that your flat will be liveable in now.’ On that point he was certainly correct. It would feel like a derelict’s squat, I thought, looking round the kitchen. I’d probably catch some horrible ague from the damp.

‘Just until I can find somewhere of my own,’ I said, thanking them, ‘that would be lovely.’

‘Now both the girls have moved out, the house feels rather empty, doesn’t it, Jeremy? It would be nice to have another daughter. You can stay as long as you like.’

‘That’s so kind. Of course I’ll give you something for my keep.’ I hastily did some mental sums, wondering where the money was to come from. Nothing had really changed. All the time I’d been working at
Minster Glass
I’d not taken any wages; I’d been living off savings. Those couldn’t last for ever. I’d have to find work sometime. I hoped that Jessica at the diary service hadn’t forgotten my existence.

I looked round the flat now, wondering what to take with me to the vicarage. All sorts of things seemed essential–clothes, washing kit, my tuba, Laura’s journal, anything really valuable. I’d have to think of Dad, too, what he might need.

I started pulling clothes out and laying them on the bed, my nose wrinkling at the smoky smell of them. My small suitcase I’d lodged on top of the wardrobe. I lifted it down and stowed the more crushable items in it. When I picked up my rucksack from the floor I found it was wet. The small bag I used to take to the hospital wasn’t large enough. Did Dad keep any suitcases? I didn’t remember him using one, for he had hardly ever gone anywhere.

I went to his room. Being out of the way at the back of the flat, the carpet there was completely dry. Everything seemed undisturbed. A brief search of his wardrobe and cupboards revealed nothing useful. I knelt down and hunted under the bed. There was his document case. I’d better take that. Behind it glinted the metal locks of a suitcase. I reached under, fumbled for the handle and pulled. The case came out easily. A good size and–I brushed off the dust and opened it–empty. Just what I needed.

I bent to take another look under the bed. There was another, smaller case, tucked right in the corner so that I had to wriggle right under the bed to reach it. The edge of the metal bedframe scraped my back painfully. This other case snagged on the springs, moved reluctantly, but then I had it. It was actually an old-fashioned vanity case of French-blue leather. At first I thought it was locked, but the catch was merely stiff; it sprang open suddenly. I lifted the lid.

Immediately I caught a faint scent of that same perfume that haunted my deepest untapped memories. It rose as though by opening her case I’d conjured the spirit of my mother. In it I saw she had kept all her make-up, glass bottles of nail varnish remover and moisturiser tethered to the side, pots of eyeshadow and lipstick and ancient crusted foundation all wiped clean, snug in tidy compartments. I lifted them out, one by one, opening some, recognising familiar names, Revlon, Max Factor, though the colours, textures and smells belonged to another age. And here was her perfume:
Arpège
by Lanvin. I eased out the stopper and sniffed. It was still strong after all these years, but not quite the same as I remembered. Not quite as it must have been on the glowing, living warmth of her skin.

But for a moment I had something: the sensation of being held close, warm and safe. A woman’s laughter. A catch of husky lullaby, before the memory died.

My skin prickled. It was odd, looking round this room, to think that she had lived here, my mother. Had this been their bedroom? There was only the single bed now, though this was the biggest of the three bedrooms, so presumably it had been theirs. Not exactly glamorous. Had she minded?

As I lifted the lid to close the case, I saw a long slit in the ruffled blue lining. A pocket. My fingers slipped inside and met with paper. It was a programme, curled with age, for a choral concert at St Andrew’s Hall in Norwich in March 1963. On the front cover, the name Angela Beaumont leaped out at me. Feverishly I turned the pages until I came to the biographies of the soloists. And there was her picture, the same one now in my bedroom. I sat for a moment, deep in thought. My mother was a singer. My father had never told me. Or had he, and I hadn’t taken it in? I remembered once he’d said my musical talent wasn’t from his side of the family, but had he actually said it had come from my mother?

I read the biography.

Angela Beaumont (contralto) was a Foundation Scholar at the Royal College of Music, where she studied with Nerys Sitwell and gained several awards, including the College Song Recital Prize and a grant from the Princess Isabella Trust. She has performed extensively in oratorio and recital throughout the British Isles
…There followed a long list of the choirs she had sung with, notable performances she’d made and the recordings she had been a part of. It was an impressive list for a woman who must still have been only twenty-eight or twenty-nine, yet to approach the height of her career.

She never reached it.

I read the programme more closely. It included the Bach
Magnificat
, some Handel and Haydn. I imagined her, bright-eyed with the excitement of performing, leaving the stage to tremendous applause, packing up her make-up, brushing her hair, slipping the programme into her case before rushing off to the post-performance party or just to catch the train back to London and Dad.

How had Dad fitted into her life? Good old faithful Dad, back at home in his shop making beautiful things with his hands. Where on earth had they met, and what had drawn them to each other? My mother: lovely, vibrant. Dad? Well, I’d seen photographs of him as a young man in his graduate’s robes, or posing by a gargoyle at Notre Dame, on a tour of French cathedrals in the late 1950s: tall, serious, shy, handsome in a sensitive, cultured way. Perhaps now that Dad was so ill–dying–I would never know. The time had come to try to find out.

Dad’s document case lay on the floor beside me. With no more than a gentle protesting squeak of conscience I opened it and pulled out the folders one by one. There was his Will, which I scanned quickly. It left everything to me bar a generous sum to Zac. No less than Zac deserved. I was glad. The Living Will and Power of Attorney I knew about. I replaced these and picked up the next folder. It contained Dad’s driving licence and his passport, long expired now; a sheaf of papers on health-related matters, financial documents, share certificates and details of savings accounts. His talent for administration he’d applied to his personal life. All documentation relating to the business he must have kept elsewhere. I found his marriage certificate–and here for the first time I read the names of my maternal grandparents, John and Lily Beaumont; John described as a clerk. There was a history here I could discover.

I pulled out the remaining folders greedily, flipping through my old school reports and swimming certificates, the baptism certificate signed by some past rector of St Martin’s. All these I put to one side–they were mine, after all. And now there was only one folder left. I took it out, disappointed at its thinness. When I opened it, a number of newspaper cuttings floated to the floor. I picked one up. It was an obituary of my mother from the
Daily Telegraph
. I started to read it but my mind was so full I couldn’t take in any of it and had to start again. The information in it was familiar from the concert programme. It praised the richness and power of her voice and said she’d died in hospital after a road accident. Another, from
The Times
, compared her voice to Kathleen Ferrier’s, and others, from music publications, were almost as fulsome. There was also one in German from which the words
wunderbar Alt
–wonderful contralto–rose from the first line, though my language skills weren’t up to more than that. The sound of a woman singing played in my head, and I remembered my dream on the night of the fire. A coincidence, it must be.

I laid the fragile papers carefully back in the folder, replacing it in the document case, then checked that I’d looked at everything. I had.

But now I’d been fed a few crumbs I was hungry. I had to know whether there was anything else. My previous scruples about respecting Dad’s privacy were in shreds. Scanning the shelves, I took down a couple of box-files from amidst the art books, the novels by forgotten writers, and began to search. For what, I wasn’t sure; just anything about my mother.

Dad seemed to have kept everything–except what I was looking for. In one file were mementoes from his time at art college–scribbled notes from friends about meeting for tea, flyers for exhibitions, a rent book, little drawings on scraps of paper. Several battered photo albums I’d been allowed to flick through before, charted his childhood in sepia. There he was, aged about three, holding Granny’s hand, both wearing wool coats buttoned up to the chin. Here was Grandad in overalls, next to a newly made arched window in the workshop. Onward. There were other people, unknown to me–friends or relatives, perhaps.
Gerry and Cynthia
one 1960s’ wedding photo was labelled, the plump bride dimple-kneed in her short dress.
Great Aunt Polly/Cuckmere Haven
showed a perky old lady with a fox terrier on a leash, the white chalk Seven Sisters cliffs in the background.

I moved on, glancing through Dad’s stamp album, illustrated school projects, a box of certificates, including his stained-glass qualifications. In another box was a portrait of Dad as a young man, smiling self-consciously for the camera through the soft studio filter. He seemed so vulnerable, so untouched by suffering that I couldn’t help wanting always to picture him like this rather than as the old man who lay paralysed, ravaged by the marks of time and illness.

Finally my energy gave out. I’d found out very little about my mother and a great deal about my father instead. Perhaps that was how it should be, I thought, suddenly ashamed.

Just then, a van bearing the logo of our insurance company pulled up outside. Two men got out and came into the shop below, where I could hear them moving things around and talking. Slotting the final box back in its place on the shelf, I went downstairs.

We are never so lost our angels cannot find us.

Stefanie Powers in
Angels–Beyond the Light

Later, Jeremy helped me lug bags and boxes across the Square to the vicarage and we piled them upstairs in one of the spare bedrooms. After a bite of lunch I returned to the workshop, where I’d agreed to meet Zac. Together we moved Raphael to a locked garage then went for coffee.

It was a quiet patch in the café and, since it was Anita’s afternoon off and the young girl who served us was busy chatting to her boyfriend on the phone, we had the place to ourselves.

Zac looked tired and worn, as though he hadn’t slept. The fire had been a tremendous shock for him, worse than for me perhaps, because my livelihood didn’t depend on it like his did, and I hadn’t been going there every day for twelve years.

‘You’ll carry on getting paid, of course,’ I said, secretly hoping the finances would stand it, ‘until we work out what’s happening. How long it’ll all take to redecorate and so on.’

He looked hard at me. ‘You definitely want to keep it all going?’

I’d spent the small hours thinking about this, and when I woke this morning I had felt certain. ‘Yes,’ I said firmly. ‘Even though Dad won’t come back.’ We had to be honest about this now. ‘I want to run the business, with you as manager if I’m away.’

I watched his face and was glad to see some of the tension drain from it.

I touched his hand. ‘I’ve got to go back to the music for a bit, Zac. I hope I won’t need to be too much abroad, because of Dad, but it’s difficult to promise. I have to take what’s given me, you see.’ Learning that my mother was a musician had somehow strengthened my resolve. My music was a part of me and I didn’t want to ever let it go.

‘But Fran, do you think I could carry on using the workshop now, I mean? Keep the business ticking over? It would be important for custom.’

‘I’m not sure it would be very nice,’ I demurred. ‘And it might be dangerous. Anyway, at some point you’d be in the way of the workmen.’

‘There’s another thing I wanted to ask you,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘If you were refurbishing, there are things we could do–to modernise. I’m sure all the electrical work and stuff will have to conform to regulations anyway, but we could bring everything up to date. Get new equipment.’

I felt suddenly nostalgic for our little bow-windowed shop with its worn wooden fittings and tiled porch. ‘I suppose so, Zac, but I loved it as it was.’

‘We could keep that look, Fran, but have a modern workshop, with great lighting.’

I knew he was right. Instead of seeing it as a tragedy, we could view this as an opportunity. But I wasn’t ready for that yet. ‘Let’s talk about it more,’ I said, ‘once we hear back from the insurance company.’

It was hard to escape the feeling that, just when I’d been remaking my life, getting used to managing the shop, putting down roots, it was all being taken away from me. Well, I’d fight for it. I’d get it back.
Minster Glass
was Dad’s. And I would make it mine, too.

While we were finishing our coffee, the door behind the counter opened and a man came in. I watched him as he greeted the waitress, who paused long enough in her conversation to take his order. He was slim and neat, slightly round-shouldered, with an unremarkable face and short gingery hair. He pulled his wallet out of his jeans but the waitress waved him away and started to grill bacon, the phone still clamped to her ear.

The man turned round and I realised I knew him. Our eyes met and recognition dawned in his.

‘Hello, didn’t we…?’ he said.

‘You were there the other night,’ I interrupted, getting up.

‘The fire. I’ve been to look. It’s terrible. Are you all right now?’ He came nearer and peered at me anxiously.

‘I’m fine. Zac, this is—’

‘Larry. Larry Finnegan. I live upstairs here.’ So this was the mysterious lodger Anita had sometimes mentioned. No angel at all. I burst out laughing, imagining Amber’s disappointed face.

‘What’s so funny?’ he asked, so I explained.

‘Me, an angel? Now my ma back in Killarney would think that a miracle. No, I’m no angel. Off to work, I was, and saw the place ablaze, and you sitting there like you’d fallen out of the sky.’

‘I suppose I had, in a way.’

The girl, still talking, held up a plate with his sandwich on it and he went and fetched it to our table.

‘Terrible about the shop,’ he said to both of us. ‘I’m so sorry for you.’

‘Lucky you weren’t burned in your bed, Larry.’

‘Lucky I wasn’t even in it. Sorry I had to run off after. I would have been late for work and you seemed in good hands.’

‘You work nights?’

‘On the reception desk at the Hyde Park Hotel. But I’m starting a management course soon, so I won’t be a night owl much longer.’ There was something gentle, easy and charming about him.

‘So this girl who believes in angels…’ he said.

‘Do you know her? She works in the shop.’

‘Would that be the lovely dark one?’

‘The
other
lovely dark one,’ said Zac, smiling.

‘Yes, that’s Amber,’ I said, frowning at Zac.

‘We’ve never been introduced, but she’s a fine-looking girl,’ Larry said solemnly. ‘And my ma would approve of the angels.’

‘I’ll send Amber in with your coat then, if you’ll tell me when’s a good time,’ I said, and his friendly face creased up with mirth.

‘You do that,’ he said.

The vicar and his wife couldn’t have been kinder. Sarah Quentin had clearly been brought up with the idea that good food cured heartache, for tonight there were huge helpings of steak and kidney pie, and a crumble made with apples from the vicarage’s solitary fruit tree. When I told them about Larry, the vicar was highly amused.

‘He makes me think of our patronal St Martin, giving his coat to a beggar, don’t you think so, Sarah?’

‘Are you calling me a beggar?’ I asked. ‘Well, I suppose I’m homeless, for the moment at least.’

After supper Jeremy slipped his napkin into its ring and said, ‘I’m taking a service at eight. A memorial service for All Souls Day, when we remember the dead. The singing’s rather lovely. Perhaps you’d like to come, Fran?’

So I went and sat at the back and indeed, the service was beautiful, with Ben’s little Sunday choir singing excerpts from Fauré’s
Requiem
between the readings. I found it hard to concentrate though, thinking over everything that had happened and all that I’d discovered about my mother. I vowed to speak to Jeremy about that.

‘How are you?’ Ben asked me afterwards, coming up with his arms full of robes and hymnbooks, his brow furrowed with concern. It gave me a lump in my throat just to look at him.

‘Still in shock, I think. Thanks so much for helping me.’

‘Not at all. I wish I could do more.’

So do I
, I wanted to say. We both looked at the floor and shuffled our feet.

‘Thank you again, Ben, that was very moving,’ said Jeremy, emerging from the vestry. ‘Now, Fran, I wanted to show you exactly where I thought the angel could go.’

He told Ben he’d lock up, then led me into the Lady Chapel. The coloured glass was dark and lifeless without sunlight streaming through it. He showed me the ugly old cupboard that had been built in front of the third window. ‘We can have this taken out, you see. Perhaps re-site it on the other side of this wall, if anyone insists. Then, Bob’s your uncle, we can hang the angel in front of this window.’

The window he indicated was, as far as I could tell, of exactly the same dimensions as the one the angel had fallen out of.

‘I know it’s a silly thing to ask now, but do you think that the colours will go well with the Memorial window?’ I wondered.

‘We’ll have to look at it again in daylight,’ mused Jeremy. ‘Bring Raphael in here and put them side by side.’

‘It had better work out,’ I said. ‘Zac will kill me otherwise.’

‘I’m positive it will,’ said Jeremy, laughing.

The church was empty now. Even Ben had gone.

‘Jeremy…’ I faltered.

At the same time, he said ‘Fran…’ He looked at me enquiringly. ‘You first,’ he prompted.

‘I found something today. I need to ask you–it’s about my mother.’

‘Of course. Let’s sit down here, shall we?’

‘I found some papers in the flat. A programme for a concert my mother was in and some obituaries of her. I hadn’t even realised that she was a musician.’

‘A very fine contralto, I believe,’ he said. He looked troubled, I thought, as though mentally wrestling with something. In the quiet darkness, though her features were hidden, I became aware of Mary in the window; sensed her calm joy.

‘I need to know more about her, Jeremy.’

Finally, he seemed to decide.

‘Since our previous conversation on the subject of your mother,’ he began, ‘I have thought deeply about the matter. I have considered your father and what he would want. In the end, I went to see him last week and sat with him and asked his permission to give you a letter he wrote, and which he meant you to have in the event of his death. I cannot honestly say that he heard me and understood, and I certainly can’t say that he assented, but I felt a kind of peace after that. I know, because he told me a few months ago that he intended to pluck up the courage to talk to you, so I do believe that I am doing as he would have wanted.’

‘A letter. You never mentioned that before.’

‘No. Perhaps I should have done, but I wasn’t sure until recently that he would wish it. Let me explain. Back in May, your father came to see me in a troubled state of mind. He said that he had something on his conscience that he wanted to confide in me and which he needed my advice about. I think the talking itself, handing the burden of his knowledge over to another human being, helped him immensely. He felt guilty, you see; a deep guilt that froze him up inside. Those are the words he used, I remember–“frozen up inside”. He said he felt he had wasted his life because of this.

‘It took some perseverance on my part to make him say more. As you know, he is a very private man and uncomfortable with the language of emotions. I think he felt particularly regretful about you–that he had never given you enough of himself. The past was always with him, you see. He could never allow himself to move on, to concentrate on the things that matter in the here and now. Especially you.’

‘Oh Dad!’ I cried out. ‘Jeremy, why did it take him so long to see this?’

‘It’s very sad, isn’t it? I tried to reassure him about his fathering, Fran. Bringing up children is hard, very hard, and there are many things I regret doing or not doing with regard to my own girls. But I had my wonderful Sarah, where he had no one to help him bring you up, my dear. And, if you don’t mind me saying so, I look at you and think, Well, he did a pretty good job.’

My smile must have been mournful, for Jeremy patted my arm in a reassuring fashion before going on.

‘Before I give you the letter, I’d like to explain something of your father’s frame of mind when he wrote it. It might help you understand him better.’

I nodded, so he continued.

‘Your father referred frequently to some secret matter which I discerned to be at the heart of his trouble. He questioned me persistently about what sins I felt might be unforgivable. I tried to explain that there is no sin God would not forgive the truly repentant sinner. But he could not accept this, said that surely saying sorry was not enough, that one must somehow earn forgiveness by a sort of spiritual hard labour. And that it was all far too late anyway.’

Here, Jeremy shook his head. ‘Of course, I told him that true repentance meant turning away from his old state of mind and being willing to be reborn in the Spirit, that following the Way of the Cross was no easy option. I urged him first towards confession, when he was ready, as that was the first stage: to acknowledge and understand what one had done wrong, to let the dead weight of it fall away. And finally, one day, he began to take this step. He told me about your mother and the circumstances of her death.’

Jeremy seemed to run out of breath here, and closed his eyes as though to recover strength. I waited, a perverse part of me not wanting him to go on.
My mother’s death
. All I knew was that she had died in hospital after a road accident. Suppose whatever it was I was about to learn changed everything unbearably. I almost got up and walked out.

As though sensing this, Jeremy opened his eyes and said to me, ‘She was beautiful, your mother, heart-stoppingly beautiful. He showed me a photograph once…’

‘I know,’ I said icily, for it still rankled that Dad had never shown me.

‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes steady, meeting mine, ‘of course you do. Sarah is right. You do look very much like your mother in that picture.’

‘Do you think that was part of the problem?’ I said, it occurring to me for the first time. ‘That I reminded him too much of her?’

‘There might be an element of that, yes, but more importantly, he feared that you wouldn’t forgive him for what he’d done, which was to take your mother away from you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He felt responsible for her death, Fran.’

Now I was almost sick with fear, but I couldn’t take the uncertainty any more. ‘Jeremy,’ I said, ‘where is the letter? I must have it.’

‘Strangely enough, Fran, I have it with me.’ He drew an envelope out of his inside pocket and passed it to me.

Frances Morrison
, it said on the front.
To be opened in the event of her father’s death
.

With the smallest of hesitations, I opened the envelope and unfolded the thick wad of paper I found inside. It was dated 1st July 1993, four months earlier.