‘Rather what I expected,’ said the vicar, who had been steadily making his way through his roast lamb. ‘I just hope Ben won’t be demotivated. He’s an excellent organist. We’re damn lucky to have him.’
‘Will you go to choir next term?’ Zac asked me in a quiet moment, after Jo and Dominic had gone.
I considered the question. I wanted to. I’d enjoyed the singing and the camaraderie. ‘Would you mind?’ I asked Zac.
I watched the emotions struggle in his face. It wasn’t easy for him to think of me seeing Ben, even in the distance up on his plinth. ‘You’d do what you want to anyway,’ he said finally, smiling. ‘But for what it’s worth, no, I don’t mind.’ He was saying,
I trust you
. I loved him for that.
‘I might not have time, anyway, what with orchestral commitments and dealing with the shop. I’ll try to though. I love the
Messiah
.’ I knew it backwards. Maybe it wouldn’t matter if I only went to some of the rehearsals.
The next morning, though the vicar had offered to drive us, Zac and I took a taxi through the early-morning darkness to the airport. It was the hardest thing in the world to watch him reach the front of the queue at the security gate, turn and wave one last time, and walk away into the crowds of the departure lounge.
Christmas was a tough time. No Dad, no Zac, no home. It was hard for the Quentins, too. They’d hoped for both their daughters to visit, but on Christmas Eve, shortly before Fenella and her fiancé arrived, a telephone call came from Miranda. She wasn’t coming. Jeremy and I sat at the kitchen table, he with his head in his hands, listening as Sarah begged and pleaded with her, offered for Jeremy to go to Bristol to fetch her, but she refused. Perhaps they could come and see her at New Year, Miranda said, but we all felt she was fobbing them off. After the call ended, Sarah cried and Jeremy comforted her. I glanced at the photograph of Miranda on the dresser, a happy, engaging child in school uniform; no hint there of the anxieties of anorexia to come.
I wondered how Zac was getting on, finding Olivia. At first we communicated regularly. Phone calls from Melbourne came, sometimes at odd hours of the night, when he sounded miserable and alone. Once, after he’d spent the evening with the Quentins’ friends, he sounded more cheerful.
It took a week for him to locate Shona and Olivia, and another week to be allowed to speak to Shona. It turned out that she hadn’t lived at her parents’ address, where he’d been sending his cards, for many years. The elderly neighbour who told him this didn’t know where she had gone, but informed him that she was married. Shona’s father had, he said, died two years before, and the widow had moved the previous Christmas to a smaller house on the other side of the city. Too soon for her address to appear in phone books, Zac discovered when he went looking for E. Donaldsons. So he tried phoning other Donaldsons on the list and finally, just before Christmas, he’d tracked down Shona’s uncle, given him his number at the little hotel where he was staying, and waited.
Down the phone late on Christmas Eve, Zac veered between sounding nervous and glum. He was to spend the following day with the Quentins’ friends, I was relieved to hear. But I thought about him all of Christmas Day.
A week passed while the Donaldson clan consulted one another, then Zac returned to his lodgings one evening to find that Shona had called.
Zac rang me at the vicarage just after Christmas with the news that he’d seen Olivia. I couldn’t make much sense of him, he was so overwhelmed, but I gathered some facts. Shona was married to a man who already had children of his own. It had been sensible to explain to Olivia as she grew up that she had a father in Britain, but that her mother wasn’t able to see him any more.
‘She didn’t try, Fran, that’s what’s so hurtful,’ he said. ‘She could have been in touch but decided not to. It was tidier that way.’
‘But she let you see your daughter today.’
‘Her mother persuaded her that it would be best for Olivia. That, otherwise, Olivia might one day find out how much I had wanted to see her and would never be able to forgive her mother. Shona didn’t want me to go to the house so the three of us met at a café for lunch. It was strange, so strange, seeing my daughter for the first time. Since she was a tiny baby, I mean. She’s still very like Shona, but the way she moves–you’ll laugh, but it reminds me of my mam. And yet they never met. How do our genes do that?’
‘No idea.’ I laughed. ‘What’s she like? As a person, I mean.’
‘Quite poised and serious. She listens to you very carefully. I felt like…I don’t know, a stranger she was being polite to. But I think she was pleased to see me. Shona’s very protective of her, but I’m allowed to see her again in a couple of days. I didn’t know where you take a child, but Shona’s suggested roller-skating. Let’s hope I can remember how to do it.’
I laughed at the thought of Zac stumbling around on skates. ‘Don’t kill yourself,’ I said, ‘for heaven’s sake. I need you back in one piece.’
‘You’ll get me back,’ he replied softly. ‘But I think my heart will be in two pieces, one half here with my daughter.’
I’d thought long and hard about that. Some women might have minded, but I knew what it was like to grow up without one parent. I was proud of Zac and what he was doing, and would support him every inch of the way.
I just wanted him to come home.
Jeremy and Sarah did go down to stay with their younger daughter at New Year, leaving me alone in the house. It proved a useful time. The builders were due to start work on
Minster Glass
on the first Monday of the New Year, and I still had things to sort out.
It was strange going upstairs into Dad’s attic after so long. Everything was just as I’d left it–the manuscript for his history on the desk, heaps of files and rolls of paper strewn around. I knew I had to tidy up.
The surprise came when I pulled open the desk drawers in a search for new elastic bands; the ones on some of the rolls kept breaking because they’d dried out. One drawer was stacked full of little engagement diaries, from the 1920s and 1930s, I saw. No time to look at those now. In another was a cache of picture postcards depicting stained-glass windows from around the world. Now which of my family had ‘Jim’ been, the person who’d sent them?
There was a ball of elastic bands in the bottom drawer, and there, too, I found a cardboard tube with a roll of paper inside. It was a family tree, meticulously written out in Dad’s distinctive handwriting. I opened it out flat on the desk, and there we all were, Ashes and Russells and Morrisons staggering down through 130 years of history. And it was as I had hoped. Laura, married to Philip, was my great-great-great-grandmother. Her son Samuel, born in 1882, had married Reuben Ashe’s granddaughter, so Reuben was my ancestor, too.
Dad had underscored the names of anyone who had actually owned
Minster Glass
and Samuel was one of them. Philip and Marie’s son John was not. In brackets next to his name, Dad had written
Joined maternal grandfather’s shipping business
. Maybe John had inherited that
palazzo
in Verona, too.
Laura had given birth to five children. All of them had survived to reach maturity, I was glad to see, but a different mortality was to strike their generation. Her third son died in 1915, aged thirty. It was impossible to tell from the simple chart how he died, but easy to believe it was at the front in France or Belgium.
I gazed around the attic, wondering what other secrets were hidden here. Maybe there’d be a photograph of Laura somewhere; if not with the business archives, somewhere else, downstairs. When I had more time, I’d search. And maybe one day I’d carry on writing Dad’s history of
Minster Glass
. I felt that’s what he would have wanted.
May the archangel Raphael accompany us along our way, and may we return to our homes in peace, joy, and health.
Catholic Prayer
‘Hold it up higher. Higher. There now, don’t move while I look.’
Amber marched outside and posed, head to one side, hands on hips, to make her judgement. A lifting gesture with her hands and Anita’s lodger Larry, teetering on a chair, raised the new angel another six inches on its chain. Amber frowned and signed again. Down half an inch, the angel swaying dangerously, and she nodded enthusiastically. He slipped the link over the hook above the window and stepped down with obvious relief.
‘She’s a hard woman to please, that Amber,’ he moaned, rubbing his aching arms.
‘Don’t think you’ve finished yet, Larry. When you’ve recovered there’s the champagne to unpack,’ I told him, smiling, and left him hefting bottles onto the table next to the glasses whilst I went outside to join Amber.
We contemplated the new angel with satisfaction. Amber had made her entirely by herself. In colour and design, as we had both agreed we wanted, she was similar to the one destroyed in the fire. But, of course, under Amber’s hands she had come out slightly differently. She looked younger, this angel, and more feisty than Dad’s 1970s’ version.
‘She’s beautiful,’ I told Amber. And now that she was in place, the shop was truly ready. I checked my watch. ‘Only half an hour till people start arriving.’
‘I’ll help Anita bring the sandwiches,’ Amber said. I watched her vanish into the café, thinking how assured she had grown over the previous couple of months. It was the beginning of February and she had been enrolled on a local college course for a month, spending much of her time on her special project, this angel. Her relationship with Larry was gentle, slow-flowering, but they were natural together, as happy as sandboys. Larry had recently begun his training in hotel management. I wondered what Mrs Finnegan back in County Kerry would think of a half-Egyptian girl for her beloved youngest, and crossed my fingers that Amber’s guileless charm–and her love of angels–would make everything all right.
I gave the window one more glance then went back into the shop to help Larry.
‘It’ll be a squash in here,’ I told him as he polished glasses with a professional flourish. ‘But we can always spill over into the workshop.’
‘Or out the door,’ he agreed. ‘It’s such a lovely day for a party.’
And it was. A beautiful, unseasonably warm Saturday. There had been frost on the garden when I’d gone out first thing, but this had quickly melted, leaving dew sparkling on the branches and shrubs. Now even that had evaporated and everything looked fresh.
The party for the reopening of
Minster Glass
was Amber’s idea, too. The builders had worked incredibly hard over the last five weeks, making good the structure, rewiring and decorating the whole of the ground floor, restoring the floorboards and fittings. Instead of the old musty whiff, the air was redolent with woodstain and fresh paint. The shelves were packed with new glass, the ceiling dotted with coloured lampshades, the walls sparkling with mirrors and glass picture frames. Like Amber’s angel, everything had been restored to look like the vanished old, but couldn’t stop itself looking new. I could live with that.
I was delighted with it all, especially the new lighting, and I hoped that Zac, when he came home, would be pleased with the workshop, with its smart shelving, state-of-the-art work-tables and machines.
If he comes home
, a little voice said inside me.
Late on New Year’s Day, he’d phoned to say that he’d decided to go travelling. ‘It seems crazy not to, now I’m here,’ he said, and although I was disappointed I tried not to let him know it. There was something different in his voice, a lightness I’d not heard before. He’d seen Olivia two or three times more over the holiday, he told me, and then, on the spur of the moment, he’d bought a plane ticket to Sydney.
A week later, a postcard of the harbour arrived, marked with a tiny cross on the skyline:
My hostel here
. A week after that a picture of Ayers Rock at sunset slipped onto the Quentins’ doormat. Finally, last week, a fleet of brightly coloured fish announced that he’d reached the Barrier Reef. Scrawled on the back was,
You won’t believe the amazing things I’ve seen. The landscape’s spectacular, the blue of the sea like light through opalescent glass. See ya, Zac xxx
.
I propped it up on the bookshelf next to the others, picked them up one by one and studied them. There was no mention of coming home. He hadn’t phoned for a couple of weeks, apart from leaving a message several evenings before, when we were all out. It said something about being ‘on the hoof’ and that he’d ring again. He hadn’t. I had no address for him except the Quentins’ friends in Melbourne. In the end I got fed up with wondering and wrote to them enclosing a letter for Zac. It was a newsy letter; I hoped the light tone would disguise how much I’d agonised over it. I reminded him how beautiful London was in the pale January light, told him I’d been asked to play the Vaughan Williams Tuba Concerto at a music festival in Birmingham the following month, that his friend David sent his best. Oh, and that the shop was nearly finished, and there was already a backlog of orders building. It didn’t feel right to plead with him to return. He needed space. But I prayed that thoughts of life going on here without him would make him want to come home.
I passed the letter across the post office counter and turned to leave. Suddenly I wished that I’d been warmer, that I’d begged him to get in touch, to come home. But it was all too late. I could only wait and see.
Now I opened the shop door to let Anita and Amber in with their trays of little sandwiches, then helped them lay everything on the counter next to the stack of paper plates and serviettes.
‘I’m so glad you’ll open again, dear,’ said Anita, brushing away my thanks. ‘It’s bad for business having a burned-out shop next door. This’ll be good for all of us. Oh, I don’t know how you can stand all these mirrors. I wouldn’t be able to get away from myself.’
I laughed.
‘They make it ever so sparkly and bright,’ said Amber, spinning round the room in a little dance.
‘Amber…’
‘Careful of the GLASSES,’ Larry yelled, just in time.
‘Look–guests!’ I said, spotting Jo and Dominic walking down the pavement towards us, hand-in-hand. ‘And there are the Quentins.’ Jeremy was cradling a vast bouquet.
‘Don’t worry, I’m always careful with the corks,’ Larry said, catching my anxious eye as he twisted the wire off a champagne bottle.
Soon the shop was full of people. Zac’s friends David and Janie brought their children, who soon went off to play in the garden. Ra came from the hostel. Everything had settled down there now. Cassie and Lisa had both been charged with offences to property and bailed. They had been sent to other accommodation. The vicar’s wife had visited them once or twice. Though accused of the worse offence, Cassie was so obviously remorseful there was a good chance that her crime would be seen for what it was–a thoughtless prank that had gone badly wrong. Lisa, though, was a harder case, had reacted aggressively to attempts to help her. ‘But she’s exactly the wrong kind of person to send to prison,’ Sarah sighed, and I had to agree.
‘Amber is so happy now,’ Ra whispered to me, sipping Buck’s fizz. ‘The change in the girl is astonishing.’
‘She’s easy to help,’ I said.
‘And lucky to find someone like you to give her a chance. That’s all some of these youngsters need.’ I smiled. Ra couldn’t have been more than thirty himself, but with his round wire glasses and earnest expression he seemed fatherly.
‘Fran, how are you? This is all simply marvellous.’ Mrs Armitage sailed up in a cloud of scent, her husband close behind. ‘I’ve been showing the children’s panels to all my friends, you know. You mustn’t be surprised if you get a few orders.’
‘Well, thank you,’ I said. ‘Amber will be delighted to hear that.’
Michael and Nina arrived shortly afterwards. ‘Sorry we’re late. Nina had a rehearsal,’ said Michael, shaking my hand. ‘She’s started work with a new pianist,’ he whispered confidentially, as Nina fetched them drinks. ‘Have you heard? About Ben, I mean.’
‘What?’ I looked around for Ben. After um-ing and ah-ing I’d decided to invite him, but there was no sign of him.
Before Michael could reply, we were interrupted. ‘An excellent party, Miss Morrison. The champagne’s superb.’ It was the bookseller, his wild hair carefully combed down for the occasion. He introduced himself to Michael and soon they were talking hammer and tongs about first editions of James Joyce, and I went over to speak to Jeremy, who was studying one of the lamps in the window. ‘Sarah has been admiring this lovely thing,’ he said, ‘and I was wondering whether it was a hint for me to buy it for her. Do you think she means it?’
‘I think it would look beautiful in your living room,’ I said, my mind working quickly. ‘But I want to make you both a present of it. To say thank you.’
‘Oh, there’s no need to do that,’ he said, looking embarrassed.
‘If Sarah really does like it, then I insist.’ I smiled, turning as Sarah came to join us. Jeremy explained and Sarah looked as excited as a small child.
‘Thank you so much. That’s so kind of you. But you know dear, we’ve loved having you.’
‘And I’ve loved being with you both. Now I’ve lost Dad, it’s like having another family.’
‘I know,’ said Sarah, hugging me, ‘and that’s how we feel about you, isn’t it, Jeremy? I’m so glad the shop looks so lovely and it’ll be wonderful to sort out your flat. Was it next week they were going to make a start?’
‘Yes, so I won’t be taking up space in your house that much longer.’
‘Take as long as you need to. You know that.’
‘Thank you.’
Jeremy cleared his throat. ‘I had a strange letter from Ben earlier. It’s…well, it’s a letter of resignation.’
‘Oh!’ This must be the news Michael had meant. I felt suddenly strange. ‘Why?’
‘He’s been offered some amazing job in the States, conducting a new orchestra. Boston, I think his letter said. It starts at Easter.’
‘Boston? Really?’ I couldn’t believe it. Not that he wasn’t talented, but he wasn’t known as a conductor. How an earth had he blagged his way into that?
Michael appeared and explained. ‘This chap from the Phil came to the concert and was impressed by Ben, apparently. He thought of him when an American colleague mentioned that they were recruiting. Put in a word for him. It’s connected with some college there, so he gets his accommodation thrown in.’ Michael laughed. ‘Always falls on his feet, does Ben.’
Lucky Ben. Once again, then, he was flitting on to the next opportunity, not ever really having to face the mess he left behind; going on undoubtedly to create more havoc. Part of me was glad. It wasn’t easy having him living across the Square, a constant reminder of my foolishness. And maybe with him abroad, Michael and Nina would have more of a chance together.
‘It’s a nuisance for the choir,’ I said.
‘Yes, and the church. Still, they’ve got a couple of months to sort it out, and there are always people around who can fill in for a bit.’
I moved on to talk to David, who hadn’t heard from Zac either; then, feeling slightly depressed, I introduced myself to a woman on her own who turned out to be a friend of one of our best customers. She hinted at the possibility of a big commission for some luxury flats she and her husband were designing out of a deconsecrated chapel. ‘The old glass is poor quality and a new design will make a splendid centrepiece to the common staircase,’ she said.
‘It sounds right up our street,’ I told her firmly. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
Quite who’d design it without Zac here, I didn’t know. But I couldn’t turn business away. Perhaps David would do it as a freelance job.
It was well after three before everybody left. Then there was just Jo and Dominic, Amber and myself clearing away. Larry had to go to work and Anita had returned next door. Finally there was just me, locking up the shop.
I stood there on the pavement, in my coat and beret, looking up at
Minster Glass
just as I had done a few months ago, on my return to London. How much had changed in that short time.
I’d lost my father and found my mother. I’d helped recreate a beautiful window and, in the course of it, discovered a whole story from the past about people who belonged to me and about this shop that was now mine. Whatever happened–whether Zac came home or not–I’d found my place in the world.
It was late afternoon of the following Tuesday, and I was in the living room of my flat piling papers and books into boxes in preparation for its decoration. The men had started with my bedroom, moving most of the furniture into Dad’s room. I’d just found an ancient address book of Dad’s and, following up a hunch, had turned to B for Beaumont. In my mother’s rounded handwriting, familiar from her inscription in the Edward Burne-Jones book, was written
John and Lily Beaumont
, followed by an address in Suffolk. My grandparents were dead, of course, and someone else would live there now. What was more useful was the name underneath, Gillian Beaumont. Dad’s letter had mentioned my mother having a sister. The address, a hospital nurses’ home, would be out of date, and if she’d married she’d have a different name. But maybe, just maybe, if I wanted to at some point, I could try to find out what had happened to her. It was an exciting thought, that I might have an aunt somewhere, even cousins.
While I was thinking about this I looked idly out of the window. The sun had disappeared now and the February afternoon was settling down into gloomy twilight. The bare trees shivered in a slight wind. There were two or three people crossing the garden. A woman in black high heels with a briefcase, her head held high; a shabby old man in a duffel coat limping along and, in the distance, a tall figure trudging under the weight of a rucksack.
My eye was drawn to the backpacker. He had untidy black hair and a beard, I saw as he came closer, and although he seemed dragged down by the weight of his burden he was walking quickly, eagerly. There was something about his gait that reminded me of Zac. But then, so many things reminded me of Zac. I watched him a moment longer and all the time a suspicion grew inside me until it became a certainty: it
was
Zac.