Garlands of Gold (10 page)

Before he left at the end of the evening his mother drew him into the neighbouring music room to speak to him on his own.

‘Now,’ she said as soon as she was seated while her son wandered over to the clavichord. ‘I want you to tell me the identity of the young woman who has captured your admiration and perhaps your heart?’

He raised the lid of the instrument and ran the fingers of one hand along the ivory keys. ‘I have nothing to tell you,’ he replied easily.

‘But whose likeness did you capture in the ship’s figurehead?’

He compressed his lips in sudden understanding of his mother’s probing. He waited for a moment or two before he closed the lid again and turned to face her. ‘So that is why you made this visit!’

‘I knew the young woman must be someone special to have inspired you. So naturally I was eager to meet a future daughter-in-law.’

He shook his head. ‘Then your visit is in vain, Mother. There is a lovely girl well known to me, but she is out of my reach. Somebody else is pursuing her with every chance of winning her. So that is the situation and now this discussion is closed.’

She knew him well enough not to attempt to question him any further. He had the same stern expression now as his father when a limit had been reached.

‘Very well, dear son.’ She rose from the chair in a rustle of silk. ‘I’ll say no more, except I shall hope that one day you will meet a well-born young lady and win your heart’s desire.’

‘I thank you, Mother.’

Saskia did not see him leave that evening, but two days later she was informed that an arrangement had been made by Grinling for his mother and Mistress Henrietta to view some of his latest work on a day when he would not be at the Royal docks. He was renting a small cottage in order to have a workshop for private commissions away from the industrial site.

‘You shall come with us, Saskia,’ Mistress Gibbons said to her. ‘You make excellent little drawings and I want you to draw my son’s workshop and copy whatever we shall be viewing today. The drawings will enable my husband to see what Master Grinling is achieving here in England. It will also be a splendid record to have when we are back in Rotterdam again.’

Saskia did not think that anything she put down on paper would do justice to Grinling’s work or his surroundings, but she kept silent, not wanting to risk this unexpected opportunity to spend some time in his presence. Inwardly she was filled with excitement, but she kept her composure and Mistress Gibbons did not notice the flush in her cheeks.

In the coach Saskia sat opposite the two ladies, a straw basket containing her sketching materials on her lap, and they set off through the city streets into the countryside. It was no more than two miles to Grinling’s thatched cottage, which was situated at the edge of a wooded glade and in the middle of a grassy stretch of meadow. The remains of a pebbled path curved to the door from the road, a little stream flowing gently nearby.

The cottage itself was old, a wattle and daub building covered with once-white plaster and it had a slightly crooked chimney stack at one end. Its state of disrepair caused Mistress Gibbons to frown disapprovingly before she had even alighted from the coach. Yet Saskia saw that the cottage had an unusually high and wide window that showed signs on the plaster of having replaced a much smaller one. Remembering how Grinling had told her it was essential that he had good light for his work, she saw that in spite of the window’s small panes it would give him what he needed. The view that he had from it was of the road and more woods beyond.

There was a glimpse of movement in the cottage and then he was at the door, holding it wide with a smile to match. He was in his shirtsleeves with a leather apron that looped around his neck and tied behind his back.

‘Good day to you, ladies,’ he greeted the arrivals, giving them a bow. ‘Come in!’ Then, spotting Saskia, who was following his mother and her cousin, he bowed again, his eyes holding hers as they exchanged smiles. ‘You are most welcome too, Saskia. I believe your coming to England will fulfil your destiny.’

His mother glanced at him impatiently and compelled his attention again. ‘What nonsense are you talking?’

Unnoticed by either of the two ladies Saskia had caught her breath at his words, for in his mention of destiny surely he meant that he believed as she did that their futures were linked. Indoors she glanced quickly around, but there was no sign of her carved likeness. Perhaps it had been put out of sight again, but this time it would have been to avoid any confrontation with his mother during her visit, for she most surely would have questioned him about it and objected strongly to a display of her maid’s profile.

‘As I arranged with you, Grinling,’ Mistress Gibbons was saying, ‘Saskia will make as many drawings as I shall need to show your father all aspects of your work. Not only here in this place, but in the workshop at the Royal docks where you are employed.’

He raised an amused eyebrow. ‘I’ll have to see what can be arranged. The workshops there are not under my jurisdiction.’

‘Of course it can be arranged. Cousin Henrietta knows one of the top officials in charge. Nobody will notice Saskia sitting quietly in a corner.’

‘I wouldn’t wager on that,’ he remarked drily. ‘Pretty girls are scarce there.’

Saskia smiled to herself at Grinling’s compliment. It was clear that he had become totally fluent in English, but again she thought it was strange that his Dutch accent should remain so thick upon his tongue. Yet in her opinion, it could only add to his attractiveness to women.

His mother was not listening. She stood looking around with a disparaging air. ‘Couldn’t you have found something better than this awful place?’

Saskia wondered why often the most devoted of mothers could alienate themselves from their children by forever finding fault. Yet Grinling seemed remarkably tolerant.

‘I needed somewhere quiet and peaceful that was within the limits of what I could afford,’ he replied, ‘and, apart from enlarging the window, I haven’t had to spend anything on it. So now let me take you on a grand tour of my property.’ His eyes were twinkling. ‘We’ll begin here in my place of commissioned and non-commissioned work, mostly the latter.’

What had once been the cottage’s living room was well set out with a work-surface fitted sturdily under the window for maximum light. Lying on it and securely fastened was a large rectangular slab of wood, its gouged surface showing that it was a relief carving currently being worked on from the back. The walls held neat rows of even more tools than had been in his home workshop in Rotterdam and two old chairs offered seating. The only other furniture was a narrow table.

A door led into a tiny kitchen and Mistress Gibbons swept through it, even her skirts seeming to rustle with disapproval, and her cousin followed her with Saskia close behind. There was an open hearth where a small cauldron was suspended over some cold ashes on the hearth and an ancient table stood against the wall with a few shelves above it on which was some assorted crockery, a couple of tankards and several knives, forks and spoons sticking upright in a jar.

Saskia, looking out of the kitchen window, saw there was a pump nearby and the back door, which stood open, had a porch to it. At the end of a grassy patch was a stable with one stall that housed Grinling’s horse and she guessed that a door at the side of it led to a privy.

Upstairs there was just one large attic bedroom taking up the whole space under the eaves. His mother climbed the flight of stairs just high enough to be able to see into the room that had a small-paned window looking towards the road and another that faced the stables behind the cottage. There was a single bed, a chair and a cupboard as well as a stack of woods, some partly carved, which he said he was preparing for a future project. A finished carving, propped against the wall, was of the stoning of St Stephen, which Bessie herself would not have wanted, but she supposed there was always a market for religious themes. Most of all she was aghast that he should be occupying such miserable premises.

‘You don’t sleep in this ramshackle place, do you?’ she demanded in disbelief.

He helped her descend again. ‘Only if I have been working here until very late, otherwise I’m at my lodgings near the docks.’

‘Nevertheless I still want Saskia to include sketches of this place. Its wretched state will enable your father to see how you are living without a proper home for you to enjoy whenever you are at leisure. Now let us see what you have been making.’

Henrietta opened her mouth, about to remind her cousin that he was for ever welcome at her house whenever he was free from work, but she closed it again, for Bessie would not listen in her present disagreeable mood.

The most important commissioned piece Grinling had to show them was a recently finished overmantel enhanced dramatically by a decorative carving of fish, dolphins, lobsters, oysters and other sea-creatures with a ship in full sail at the top in a handsome swirl of waves, all of which were fashioned in pale lime wood and seemed almost luminous against the much darker oak of the design’s setting.

At the sight of it his mother’s attitude changed completely and she threw up her hands in delight. ‘That would make the perfect gift for me to take back to your father!’ she exclaimed, going forward to examine it closely. ‘I must take him something he will like very much to compensate for my absence. Naturally I’ll reimburse you, Grinling. We can get it shipped home and it can be installed in his office where he receives the East India shipowners and the captains of the silk-bearing vessels and all other businessmen.’

Grinling shook his head firmly. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mother, but I cannot let it go. It is a specially commissioned piece.’

‘So who is the person that is so important that he or she comes before your own parents?’ his mother demanded dangerously.

‘Robert Harting commissioned it.’

Involuntarily Saskia jerked up her chin. She had not heard Robert’s name for a long time, and had not realized until this moment that the memory of her encounter with him in the library was still very vivid in her mind. In contrast Mistress Gibbons received her son’s information with a happy smile and a flick of her gloved hand.

‘Oh, he is an agreeable young man. He will stand aside to allow you to please me.’

‘No, Mother,’ Grinling replied on a sterner note. ‘It’s been designed for a new house that Robert is building for a gentleman, who is as much involved in shipping as my father. It is as I told you in one of my letters. Robert is getting plenty of work.’

‘Then if this gentleman’s house is still being built you could carve another for him,’ Mistress Gibbons insisted, still with a smile on her lips. ‘I simply must have this one for your father.’

Grinling gave a disbelieving laugh and shook his head. ‘Have you no idea how long it takes to carve a piece like this, Mother? Even when several carvers are involved? Remember that I have been working on it by myself. The measurements were fixed in Robert’s architectural plan for the house before a single brick was laid! That’s how it has to be when a special feature with such intricate carving in this size is required. It is to be collected in a day or two as the grand drawing room where it is to be installed has been ready long since, the building of the house having taken as long as the carving itself.’

She regarded him coolly, thinking that he had turned out to be as stubborn as his father. She hated to be crossed in anything, which lay at the root of many clashes she had had with her husband throughout the turbulent years of their marriage.

‘Are you saying that Robert’s wishes come before those of your own mother, who bore you in the midst of indescribable physical suffering?’

‘In this case, yes.’

Her eyes flashed, but although she pursed her lips in suppressed fury she said no more on the subject. Once again she had recognized that intractable Gibbons streak of pig-headedness that she had failed to crush out of his father and she would not humiliate herself any further. With a show of indifference that hid her burning anger she looked at some religious portrait medallions of the saints that he had taken from a shelf to show Cousin Henrietta.

‘Are these portrait medallions a Catholic commission?’ she asked coldly, being fiercely Protestant to the core.

‘Yes,’ he replied easily. ‘They’re for a cardinal who lives in one of the grand mansions along the river.’

‘They are quite splendid!’ Cousin Henrietta enthused, her admiration genuine. She was afraid she was sounding too effusive, but it was only because she was embarrassed by her cousin’s attitude towards Grinling. She thought Bessie should be grateful for such a fine and talented son, a blessing that had been denied her in her childless marriage. But she had a god-daughter, whom she loved dearly and who filled the gap in her life whenever she came to stay.

‘And what is that?’ Mistress Gibbons was asking as she pointed to the large rectangular piece of wood on the bench that was in the process of being carved from the reverse side.

‘It is another of the religious carvings that I’m presently working on in the hope of a sale one day.’

Mistress Gibbons was no longer interested. She was too annoyed with him for being so stubborn and denying her wish.

‘We’ll go now,’ she said crisply, ‘or else we shall have little time for shopping.’ Then she seemed to remember that Saskia was present and turned to her. ‘You have brought all you need for your sketching?’