The Glass Painter's Daughter (8 page)

An angel. Our broken window was definitely an angel. At last I had found a thread leading into the past. A thread which, if I pulled, might begin to unravel a story.

As I laid the letter carefully in its place in the unwieldy file, the whole thing slipped from my grasp. I caught it before it fell and shuffled the contents safely back inside, but a sheet of cartridge paper escaped and sailed down onto the floorboards.

I lifted it delicately with the tips of my fingers. Turning it over, I saw at once it was probably cut from a small sketchbook. It featured a rough pencil drawing for an arched window. A speculative study, I imagined, for it was covered with scribbled notes and figures that could only have meant something to the artist.

There were other sketches on the page. A young woman’s face in one corner, a sort of pattern in another. The pattern reminded me of something–Dad’s Celtic knot–and then I realised that was exactly what it was, a Celtic knot. The
Minster Glass
signature. As I savoured this find, my attention drifted to the thumbnail sketch of the girl. She was deftly drawn, vitality in the tilt of her strong square face, intelligence and humour in her direct gaze. Thick hair sprang back from her forehead. She wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but the bloom of youth was still upon her and there was something arresting about her expression. The artist had scrawled something underneath in his odd spindly writing.
Lana
it might have been, or
Laura
, then another word, something beginning with B. A note in Dad’s handwriting teased my memory. What was it he’d written in the margins of his notebook?
Who was Laura something
…? Of course, the name in the letter I’d just read. Brownlow, that was it.
Who was Laura Brownlow?
Dad had written. He must have seen this sketch, too, and wondered. So who was she? James Brownlow’s wife, perhaps? Or his daughter. And why had this
Minster Glass
artist drawn her?

I studied her portrait once more and her eyes seemed to stare into mine. As though she would speak, could tell me her story.

I replaced the sheet of paper in the folder and laid the folder on the heap of others. Where I should search now, I wasn’t sure. I was tired, anyway. Perhaps it would be helpful to return some of these files to their drawer?

I stood, stretching, stiff from hunching over the desk for so long, then went over to the lines of tall metal filing cabinets. The drawer labelled
1879–81
opened easily, felt light, and when I peeped over the top I saw why. Only the hanging files at the back of the drawer contained any folders.

I returned to the desk and arranged the folders there into date order, then took them over one by one to slip into their hanging files. But when I came to the one dated 1880, in which I’d found the Reverend Brownlow’s letter and the sketchbook page, it wouldn’t go. I laid it on the top of the cabinet and investigated the hanging file.

My fingers scraped on something hard–a book of some sort. I gripped it and pulled it out. It was the size of a slim hardback novel, and when I turned the pages I saw immediately that it was a diary or journal, completely filled with neat feminine handwriting. There was a name inside the front cover–and for a moment I couldn’t take it in.

It was the name I’d read before, the name under the sketch of the young woman, the name that had excited Dad’s curiosity. Laura Brownlow.
Who was Laura Brownlow?
At last it seemed I would find out.

The entries began in June 1879, but the first page had faded a bit and was hard to read. I sat down at the desk once more, and in the light of Dad’s lamp, began to decipher the even, sepia italics.

I turned the pages slowly, moved by the rawness of the writer’s grief. So Laura Brownlow must be the daughter of the Reverend James Brownlow, the man who commissioned the windows of St Martin’s. But she addressed her diary entries to Caroline, the dead sister in whose memory the angel window was made. Laura was writing to Caroline as though she still lived–or as though she believed she could reach her beyond the grave. How deeply she must have mourned.

I read on. The entries were sporadic as though Laura only wrote when she felt she needed to or when there was some notable event to communicate to Caroline. In June 1879, Laura was excited about their brother Tom’s academic success. In August she reported the placing of a memorial stone on the dead girl’s grave. In November came the thrilling news that their married sister Harriet was to give birth the following April.

But in the New Year of 1880, Laura began to write more regularly and at greater length, and soon I became completely absorbed in her story…

The angel in the house

Coventry Patmore

L
AURA’S
S
TORY

That chilly February morning, Laura hoped they would see the lion cub again. The walk to Westminster Hospital took them up Victoria Street towards the Abbey, and when they had passed this way yesterday, she and Mama had viewed a reedy youth with a broken nose and a mutinous expression dragging the poor beast around the perimeter of the Royal Aquarium. The cub, though only a little past babyhood, had looked confused rather than frightened. It dodged about on its rope, tripping over its too-large paws. The youth hauled it back while scowling and cursing at a handful of urchins who alternately made cajoling noises and shied pebbles at the animal from a safe distance.

‘Oh, the poor thing.’ Laura had made Mama stop to watch for a moment, touched to the quick to see this beast trapped in a life it wasn’t made for, no doubt forced to parade with the other lions in front of a howling crowd. Not, of course, that she had experienced the crowd. She’d never set foot in the Aquarium to see the circus or the freakshows, to skate on the ice-rink or gawp at the fish. ‘Third-rate entertainment for third-rate people,’ was how her pompous brother-in-law George settled the matter when she’d raised the subject at dinner yesterday evening–but she could imagine it all from the lurid headlines on the posters.

Disappointingly, the cub wasn’t there today. Perhaps an airing in today’s freezing fog was considered a step beyond the cruelties it commonly endured. If that was the reason, Laura was glad. Or maybe the lion troupe had simply moved on, taking the cub with them. She paused to accept a flyer from a shivering young boy: tonight’s entertainment seemed to be ‘Two Astonishing Aerial Acts’. No mention of lions.

‘Don’t dawdle, Laura, dear,’ Mama called, her voice dead-sounding in the icy air. ‘Here, let me take the bag.’ Laura gratefully passed over the heavy canvas grip and followed in her mother’s neat footsteps towards the next building which, with its ramparts and flags, always looked to her more like a castle than a hospital.

Visiting the women in the Incurables Ward of Westminster Hospital turned out to take twice as long as Mama had planned today, for after the usual Bible readings and prayers, one distressed young mother poured out her heart to Mama about her anxieties for her family, and another dictated to Laura a rambling letter of farewell for a sailor son she’d not seen in years.

Mother and daughter finally emerged just as Big Ben, wreathed in mist, struck a muffled eleven. Laura asked hopefully, ‘Will we still have time for shopping, Mama?’ Her mother had promised her material for a new serge dress to replace one four years old and worn almost to holes, but with most of the morning gone she already guessed the answer.

‘The dress will have to wait until another day now, I’m afraid, dear. We barely have time to call on the Coopers–and you must remember your father has invited Mr Bond for luncheon.’

Laura sighed, but seeing the two worry lines between her mother’s brows deepen, she stifled her disappointment.

They wove their way back through the crowds on Victoria Street, where brass plaques of architects and lawyers–one of these Mr Bond’s–shone at nearly every doorway, before turning left, heading south towards the river. Almost immediately they found themselves in a different world, where men loitered, as grey and grimy as the filthy street, and where a dismal cacophony arose, of wailing infants, arguing voices, and the banging of ill-fitting doors. The stink was indescribable. Laura always fancied her clothes reeked long after one of these visits to the slums of her father’s parish. To her, these back streets spoke of the most desolate regions of Hades in the book of Greek myths she had read aloud to her younger sister during the days of Caroline’s long illness.

As the two women picked their way through the muddy rubbish, a thickset lout lolling in a doorway called out something menacing, and Laura glanced at her mother for guidance. Mama’s head was held high, like a thoroughbred on a tight rein, but two angry red spots on her cheeks betrayed her agitation.

‘Come along, Laura,’ she snapped, leading her on, past a building site where some of the more dilapidated housing had been pulled down to make way for new, but where whole families had broken in and erected makeshift shelters for themselves. Past the ragged school through the broken window of which birdlike Miss Pilkington could be glimpsed pointing a cane at a tattered map on the wall. Down an even narrower, darker lane, through a battered door and up some steps into a tiny hallway that smelled of damp and rotten wood on top of other, more repulsive odours. Laura remembered to breathe only through her mouth as she followed her mother up another flight of stairs.

The door to the Coopers’ rooms was ajar, but Mama politely knocked and waited. A small girl peered out, fearful, before admitting them.

‘Hello, Ida,’ Mama said. ‘This is my daughter, Miss Laura. How’s your mother today, dear?’

‘Not good, mam, but she ate the broth you and the other lady left,’ the small girl said, peeping shyly at Laura. Mama had taken their maid, Polly, with her last time.

Her eyes getting used to the dingy light, Laura became aware that the room was full of children lying on revolting-looking straw pallets or sitting wrapped in ragged blankets on the bare wooden boards, hungry eyes staring out at the visitors. As for Ida in her filthy torn dress, Laura remembered Mama had said she was twelve. She would have looked puny for eight.

Mama handed Laura the bag and Laura brought out the parcels of bread and dripping packed by Mrs Jorkins the cook and handed them round to the children, who had hardly the energy to receive them. There was a flask of milk, too, which Laura poured into enamel mugs and administered to the smallest of the children. It was all too quickly gone. Next, she knew she was to ask Ida for help washing them, but in the meantime she couldn’t resist looking where her mother had gone.

Through the doorway of the second room, a woman with a mass of untidy red hair could be seen lying under a thin blanket on a mattress on the floor, her face flushed with fever. Mama was shaking out a fresh bedsheet and Laura helped her carefully roll the sick woman over so Mama could peel away the soiled bedding. Laura felt her gorge rise when she glimpsed the pool of fresh blood.

‘We must fetch the doctor to you, Molly,’ Mama said gently, then as the woman murmured something about the cost, ‘Don’t worry, we will take care of that. You must think of yourself. And the baby.’

Laura knelt by the littlest Cooper, a newborn boy who lay still in a wooden box next to the mattress, his skin sallow, his eyes roaming unfocused, as though searching for something he would never find in this derelict house he had been unlucky enough to get born in. She lifted out the child tenderly, remembering with a bittersweet pain how she’d once held her little brother Ned when he was a sunny, chubby baby, and her heart swelled with pity for this tiny silent scrap. The cloth that swaddled him was soiled. She called out to Ida to fetch water, searching in the bag for clean napkins.

After everybody was fed, washed and changed, they left, Mama promising again to send for the doctor.

‘Out looking for work, is what she always says when I ask,’ was Mama’s bitter answer to Laura’s enquiry about Mr Cooper’s whereabouts as they hurried home to Greycoat Square. ‘I’ve certainly never set eyes on the wretched fellow.’

Laura was shocked by the anger in her mother’s usually mild voice. They were both subdued after this visit but Laura thought that although her mother must be tired, she seemed less tense now.

‘Thank you for coming with me, Laura. You have a natural compassion and you see how much there is to do here in this parish.’

‘Yes, Mama,’ Laura sighed, immediately guilty that instead of glowing with satisfaction, she merely felt relieved to be on the way home. They passed a boy with a scruffy puppy on a string and she thought of the lion cub, confused, trapped in a world where it didn’t belong. Like the newborn Cooper, his eyes shining like starlight, whose visit to this earth might only be a short one. There seemed too much unbearable pain for anyone to deal with in this world.

Laura’s father was the Reverend James Brownlow and the family had lived for eight years at St Martin’s Vicarage in Greycoat Square, around the corner from the church in Vincent Street. The Square itself was a quiet, genteel place with a central garden where nurses pushed perambulators and children ran about the grass in summer. Amongst their neighbours were doctors, lawyers, gentlemen in trade, the occasional Member of Parliament, but many of these attended the more fashionable St Mary’s Church on the far side. St Martin’s, on the other hand, had been erected by public subscription some thirty years before to minister to the poor. It had been built facing away from the well-to-do townhouses of the Square, towards the slums of Old Pye Street and Duck Lane, now at last being cleared, but slowly, too slowly for the likes of the Cooper family.

As Laura changed out of her work dress, nose wrinkling at the dirty splashes and lingering smells, real or fancied, she glanced out of her bedroom window. A little boy was tripping along the path in the garden of the Square, hand-in-hand with his nurse. A boy with a burnished bell of gold hair, who laughed and tugged at the girl’s hand. For the second time that day she was reminded of Ned.

He had been about that age, only four, when he died. Now he was fixed in her memory as a bright laughing child who would never grow any older but who was as much a part of their thoughts as Tom, her elder brother, now away studying Theology at Exeter College in Oxford, preparing to follow in the steps of their father.

She watched the child until he disappeared from view then went to peer in her tiny looking glass (tiny because her mother disapproved of studying one’s appearance), beholding first one side of her head then the other, to replace the loose pins in her hair.

The house was quiet; it being a Friday in Lent and hence a day of fasting, a nasty smell of boiled fish was seeping up the stairs. On the landing Laura paused outside Caroline’s room, noticing that the door, normally kept shut, shivered ajar. She pushed it slightly and peered round, half-expecting to see her mother, or Polly with her duster, but there was nobody. She walked in, closing the door behind her, sniffing at the faint aroma of beeswax.

Within, all was as Caroline had left it. The bed was neatly made, the fireplace swept, the furniture dusted. Caroline’s array of childish treasures–a teddy bear, her doll with the white china face, a box of pretty buttons–lay on the chest of drawers. The sampler on the wall she had painstakingly stitched when she was eight gave her name and her birth date, 18 May 1861. Books, scrapbooks, a pressed-flower collection, were lined up on the bookcase. Fanned out on the lace dressing-table mat she’d knotted were the silver-backed hairbrush, comb and mirror she’d been given for her sixteenth birthday.

All appeared as though Caroline herself might walk back through the door.

But she would never walk through that door again.

Laura lay down on the bed, gingerly so as not to disarrange the bedclothes, and folded back the counterpane just a little way to press her cheek against the pillow. Eyes closed, she breathed in hopefully, but no trace of Caroline’s favourite violet toilet water remained. She let her breath go, mouthed ‘Caroline,’ and listened, but there was no ghost to whisper an answer.

It was a year now since Caroline’s death at nearly seventeen, a long, lingering death after years of a disorder of the blood that had taken her by stealth, reducing her from a lively, round-faced child to a pale willowy girl who never quite reached womanhood.

Little Ned, by contrast, had gone quickly. One day he had been racing around the rambling vicarage garden in Hampstead after the neighbour’s dog that had slipped through the fence, the next he lay sunk in a coma, a scarlet rash spreading like fire beneath the perfect lustre of his skin. Eight years ago that had been, and then their mother couldn’t stand to live in the house where he died, and their father had accepted this placement. James Brownlow had hoped that if his beloved Theodora absorbed herself in her other children and could devote herself to parishioners impoverished in body, mind and spirit, she would be healed of her sorrow.

Perhaps this might have worked, had not Caroline then fallen ill.

Laura felt a tear slip down her cheek, heard it drop onto Caroline’s pillow.

Deep down in the house the front door bell clanged and Mrs Jorkins called out, ‘Polly? Where is the girl?
Polly!
’

Then came the clattering of the door being unfastened and a man’s booming voice, and the clump of boots. Mr Bond had arrived. Laura pushed herself to her feet, wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand. She smoothed down the bedclothes then shut the door quietly behind her and went downstairs.

Anthony Bond, Papa’s solicitor and principal churchwarden, was a man of five and thirty, neither plain nor handsome, neither short nor tall, neither fat nor thin. Indeed, he was average in all visible respects. His straight brown hair and beard were neatly barbered, his movements were neither graceful nor clumsy. There was nothing arresting nor objectionable about him. One would pass him in the street without a second glance–and Laura frequently did.

Papa had, most unusually, invited him to lunch because he and Bond had some business to discuss in advance of a meeting with the church’s architect that afternoon. Laura felt sorry that their visitor must endure the Friday Lent menu, but as a concession to the presence of a guest Mrs Jorkins was today allowed to serve a white sauce with the obligatory fish and there would be damson jam with the semolina pudding.

When she crept downstairs, it was to find that Papa had taken the guest into his study. She stood for a moment, listening to the sound of their voices–Papa’s clear tones and Bond’s deep ones–rise and fall through the clatter from the kitchen.

The shut door was all too familiar. Since Caroline’s death Papa retreated to his study more and more. He was writing a history of the Church of England, he told them, but once when she was sent to fetch him for supper, she’d found him deeply asleep in an armchair. She’d picked up the book that had fallen from his grasp and turned it over. It was Cardinal Newman’s poem about the journey of a soul, open at the page where the dead man’s guardian angel bears his soul to judgement. She read the words of the angel’s song: