Angels are intelligent reflections of light, that original light which has no beginning. They can illuminate. They do not need tongues or ears, for they can communicate without speech, in thought.
John of Damascus,
Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith
‘Did you know Dad was writing a history of the firm?’ I asked Zac’s back view on Monday morning, in between bursts of noise from the electric grinder. Having cut all the pieces for his sunrise window, Zac was filing rough edges.
‘He told me, yes,’ said Zac, pausing briefly in his task. He was no more friendly this morning than he’d been on Saturday, and it was really beginning to irritate me.
‘Has he been doing it for long? He doesn’t seem to have got very far.’
‘A few months maybe, I’m not sure.’ The grinding started up once more.
‘Zac!’ I said, raising my voice. The grinding stopped.
‘Mm?’ he said, without turning round.
‘Zac, do stop a moment and listen. I’ve been thinking.’ I knew I sounded nervous. ‘I will stay and help you here–at least until Dad gets a bit better. But I can’t leave my music for too long.’ My speech lacked conviction. I cursed myself, for I’d lain awake half the night settling all this in my mind.
Zac finally turned to face me, but as he was wearing safety goggles I couldn’t discern his expression. Suddenly he ripped them off, tossing his head to free the strap from his dark curls. His eyes met mine and I was shocked at the fury in them.
‘Then I suppose you’ll be off and we won’t see you again till kingdom come.’ His words were like a dash of cold water.
‘Don’t be silly,’ I snapped back. ‘Why are you so angry? You must see the sense of what I’m saying.’
‘You can do what you damn well like. It’s not up to me, is it?’
‘What’s not up to you?’ How dare he be so rude?
‘When you come, when you go. It’s just that your dad’s managed on his own for too long. He hasn’t been well for years.’
‘He hasn’t been on his own. He’s had you.’
Zac rolled his eyes and said, ‘You’re being obtuse, excuse my plain-speaking. I’m not talking about work. He needs family, Fran. He needs you. You should have been around more. I’ve tried to do my bit, keeping an eye on him, but it isn’t easy. It’s not my place to remind him to take his medication or to nag him to eat properly.’
So that’s why he was angry. Because he thought I was an undutiful daughter. Well, he was right to some extent, but he didn’t know the background. I should have explained it to him then, but I was too angry and too proud. I’d never really talked to anyone about my relationship with my father, not even my old best friend Jo. It was all too private, too complicated.
Instead I said in a low voice, ‘You don’t understand. What about
my
life, Zac? I’ve done what children do. They grow up, they leave, they make their own way in the world.’
‘Yeah, but they shouldn’t just abandon their parents. He had no other family.’ He glowered at me, his hands planted on the worktop in front of him.
‘Zac, you’re overstepping the mark. Anyway, you’re a long way from Glasgow. What about your parents, then?’
‘I’m sorry I spoke so plainly. My ma died a long time ago now…twelve years. My da’s married again, someone much younger. We don’t get on particularly well, Sally and me. She doesn’t like to think Dad’s old enough to have a son in his thirties, I reckon. At any rate, he doesn’t need me. It’s not the same thing at all.’
So his family life was as lonely as mine. Still, I reckoned he didn’t have the right to lecture me about my obligations.
I tried again to put my side. ‘Zac, when you’re a musician, you have to go where the work is.’ He had an answer to that one, too.
‘You had plenty of opportunity to come home and visit between jobs. Or, I don’t know, couldn’t you have played with orchestras in London? Whatever, you’ve rarely visited in all the years I’ve worked here.’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘You haven’t been back since the Christmas before last. And before that…I can’t remember.’
Nor for the moment, could I, but that was hardly the point. I was working. Or travelling. Doing the things you’re supposed to when you’re young and building a career.
At the same time, I couldn’t deny that when I had spoken to Dad recently, he had seemed a little frail. I knew I should have made more effort to come home. Zac was right. I’d neglected Dad in the same way that I had neglected my old friends. With that moment of revelation, desolation swept over me.
I said wearily, ‘I’m here now, aren’t I? Visiting him, looking after things. And as I told you, for the moment I’ll help you keep the business afloat…’
‘And what will happen if…
when
,’ he corrected himself, ‘he comes out of hospital and needs looking after full-time? You know, nursing and stuff.’
‘I…’ The thought panicked me. ‘Well, of course I’d stay and help him if I could. But I wouldn’t be any good at nursing.’ The thought of looking after a chronic invalid, especially in the shabby conditions upstairs, was horrifying. ‘Listen, Zac, I don’t know, OK? I’ll have to deal with that when we come to it. But we haven’t got to that point yet, have we?’
Zac sighed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘we haven’t.’ And suddenly the fight went out of him. ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said all that. I’m upset, that’s all. I hate seeing your dad how he is. In the hospital yesterday…He’s like a wreck of himself.’
‘I know.’ I could see the misery in Zac’s face and forgave him.
‘He’s been good to me, your dad. I suppose you could say he rescued me.’
‘Really?’ I asked, interested. Perhaps Zac saw a different side to Dad. Just then, the tinkling shop bell put a stop to further conversation. ‘Sorry, I’d better see who it is.’
‘Of course,’ he said, and returned to his grinding while I stepped into the shop to serve the customer.
It turned out to be a busy day, but just before five o’clock we managed to shut up shop in order to visit St Martin’s Church. Zac packed his toolkit and we set off together across the public garden to the opposite corner of the Square and Vincent Street. It felt companionable. Our discussion had definitely cleared the air.
‘Have you ever met this man we’re going to see?’ I asked him.
‘Jeremy Quentin? Never set eyes on the guy. Sounded all right on the phone.’
‘I don’t know him either, but his letter makes him and Dad seem great friends. It’s odd, isn’t it? What I think is that Dad must have been to see him about that history he’s working on. He stopped in the middle of writing a section about St Martin’s, you see.’
‘I didn’t know about their friendship either,’ he said. ‘Your dad’s never mentioned it. You know how secretive he can be.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I said feelingly. ‘Just think, maybe the history of those windows is up in the attic somewhere, waiting to be discovered. Oh, and did you realise Burne-Jones actually drew some designs for
Minster Glass
? Burne-Jones! Isn’t that brilliant?’
‘Oh, I know about your obsession with Burne-Jones,’ Zac said, his eyes glinting with humour. ‘Your dad’s mentioned that all right.’
I laughed, wondering what else my father had told this man. After all, for the last dozen years he’d been closer to Dad than I had. Zac had his secrets, too. What had he started to say this afternoon–about Dad rescuing him? I wanted to ask, but we’d already reached the church.
St Martin’s Church and its hall turned out to be linked by a lobby whose double doors onto the street were the main access to both. These doors stood open, and we walked through the lobby and right through the door that led into the back of the church. A deep peace stole over us as we passed from sunlight into gloom, the sounds of the traffic suddenly muffled. We lingered in the huge space listening to the echoey stillness, breathing the faint scent of incense that hung in the air. I wished I hadn’t worn high-heeled shoes for they clacked horribly on the tiles.
There was no sign of the Reverend Quentin, so we pottered about by ourselves, admiring the high, clear-glass windows of the nave, the pointed Victorian-gothic arches, the vaulted ceilings like great stone forest trees meeting overhead.
Memorials to lost soldier sons, to benefactors and previous incumbents decorated the cream-stone walls. Up ahead, the arched stained-glass window above the high altar drew us inexorably east.
‘That might be one of ours,’ I whispered to Zac. ‘Come on.’
Zac followed me between the carved choir stalls until we stood before the altar rail, gazing up. And were transfixed.
It was Kempe’s
Crucifixion
scene. Nothing unusual in the subject. But this was no bland, stylised tableau with a flaccid Christ, arms stretched as though in blessing. This communicated the full agony of the moment of death, the central figure hanging racked and exhausted. On one side, Mary His mother pleaded uselessly to a God Who didn’t seem to be listening; on the other St John gazed on in horrified pity, whilst below the plinth on which the cross stood, an hysterical Mary Magdalen was being hauled back, struggling, by bemused soldiers. The pale late-afternoon light fell on the passionate white faces. Emerald, ruby, blue and gold glowed with life. In full morning light this scene must blaze with drama. We stood for a long moment without speaking, gripped by it all.
The sound of the church door opening released us from our trance.
‘I’m so sorry to keep you both.’ The vicar’s voice, warm and vital, carried across the nave. He dumped a couple of books he’d brought onto a pile at the back of the church, flicked some light switches on and off until he was satisfied with the result and hurried down the aisle to meet us, a blue plastic folder poking out from under his arm. He laid this down on a pew.
‘There’s always something to upset one’s best-laid plans, isn’t there?’ he said, shaking our hands, his hazel eyes bright in his lively, creased face. ‘This time some girls from the homeless hostel, all up in arms about something. Fortunately Sarah, my wife, is dealing with them.’ He kept hold of my hand in both of his and looked straight into my eyes. ‘I’m most sorry to hear about your father, Miss Morrison.’
‘Fran.’ A whisper was all I could manage, moved as I was by the sadness of his expression.
‘Fran. I so value his friendship and it’s heartbreaking to think how interested he’d have been in my recent find. I particularly wanted to show him, you see.’
I wanted to ask him what it was, but he rushed on. ‘I’m so pleased to meet you at last, my dear. Edward has told me so much about you.’
He patted my hand several times in a comforting way then, recovering himself, turned to Zac. ‘Now, Mr McDuff, I suppose we must get down to business. The report, the report.’ He picked up the folder, extracted some papers from it and looked at each of us in a fatherly fashion over his glasses, as though about to deliver a sermon.
‘You perhaps know that Anglican churches are required to have a full structural inspection every five years. This is the report on the recent one. The architect has raised a question or two about the windows. I’d like you to look at the altar window first to determine its condition.’
He read out the architect’s general comments concerning wear and tear on the East Window, then he and Zac moved the heavy altar table forward. Zac stood on a chair behind it, from where he could examine the lower parts of the window, but it wasn’t high enough to see further up.
‘I meant to fetch the ladder. You wouldn’t give me a hand, would you? We’ll have to interrupt the Choral Society setting up next door.’ Zac followed him out into the lobby. I heard the door to the hall opposite open, a muffled echo of voices and a lot of banging and scraping before they returned bearing a long aluminium ladder.
A few minutes later, Zac called down from a rung halfway up, ‘There’s certainly some deterioration in the paint. See, here, by St John’s head. And down there, look at this soldier. You’re losing the details of one side of the face. But I’ve seen a lot worse than this. With luck we won’t even need to remove the glass.’
‘That’s the sort of news I need to hear,’ said the vicar.
When Zac had finished making notes in his pocket book, we pushed the altar table back into place.
‘The other windows are in here.’ The vicar opened the door to a small side chapel on the south side of the nave. ‘This is the Lady Chapel, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, of course,’ he said, bowing his head to the small altar’s simple brass cross. A wooden statue of Mary stood to one side. She had been badly damaged at some point; a crack ran across her neck.
We looked up at the two stained-glass windows here. I barely noticed the one in the south wall, beyond registering its morass of browns and yellows. But the other, over the chapel altar, was so lovely, so poignant, it took my breath away.
As I stared, the world around me seemed to vanish.
It was the most beautiful glass picture of the
Virgin and Child
that I had ever seen. The infant–and this wasn’t one of those misshapen painted babies that made one doubt whether the artist had ever looked properly at a child–stood on His mother’s lap, His chubby arms around her neck. Mary held Him gently, protectively. They gazed into one another’s eyes, their faces rapt, serene. Almost, but not quite, touching. She was so absorbed in her child, it was as though cherishing Him was all that she was made for. I remembered the Mary of the
Crucifixion
window. Her son–a grown man, but still her child for whom she would give up everything–torn from her, mutilated, brutally killed before her eyes. The contrast was too much. But there was something else the image stirred in me, some sharp longing for my own mother.
‘You all right, Fran?’ Zac asked, his fingers lightly touching my shoulder.
I turned, saw both men were looking at me, puzzled. ‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ I stumbled out finally.
‘Remarkable,’ agreed the vicar. ‘Such a shame about this…’ he went on and I tried to drag myself back to the technical details of the window. He was pointing at Mary’s robes, where something that looked like mould was growing on the other side of the glass, over the rich flowery pattern.
‘I wonder if we should try to halt this.’
‘Definitely,’ said Zac. ‘Very curious. I’ll need to study it from the outside, when I’ve finished here.’ This time he was able to survey most of the window from the lower rungs of the ladder.