Page 107 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
‘I mean, Carey showed us how it worked and it swung open, and there was this tall, dark figure with a white face and burning eyes, staring back at us,’ Sukes said.
‘What on earth was she doing in there?’
‘Cleaning, she said,’ Jorge put in. ‘But unless she was dusting the stone walls with her hands, I don’t know how.’
‘She grows stranger by the day,’ I said. ‘It’s beginning to get worrying.’
‘Jorge started filming her,’ Carey said.
‘Automatic reflex,’ he explained. ‘But she pushed past us without a word and went out of the front door.’
‘It was a bit … bizarre,’ Nick said. ‘Great bit of film, though – couldn’t have set it up better if we’d tried.’
We had a pleasant evening at the pub and then, while walking home, Carey took my hand, which was nothing out of the ordinary. Holding hands, putting his arm round me, casual kisses … I told myself that it was all part of his tactile nature and meant nothing more than it ever had.
Next day, after a couple of phone calls, there was a sudden change of plan and Carey went back to London with Nick and co. Apparently, there were things to sign, agents to see … and perhaps he’d meet up with Daisy, too? He hadn’t mentioned her since the party, but that didn’t mean he wasn’tthinkingabout her.
Anyway, it wasn’t any of my business. It was just as well I’d realized the change in the way I felt about him wasn’t reciprocated, before I made a fool of myself and ruined our perfect friendship.
‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ he told me when they left. ‘Will you be all right on your own?’
‘Of course! I’ll be far too busy with the window to even register you’ve gone, though Fang had better put his boots on and come to the workshop with me,’ I added, ‘otherwise, I might get so engrossed I forget to go up and let him out.’
Iwasso engaged with my work that I hardly missed Carey at all during the day. It was different in the evening, and Fang kept looking at me reproachfully, as if it was my fault he wasn’t there.
But he returned on the train next day, saying everything was settled, though not whether that encompassed Daisy, too. Perhaps he hadn’tfallen under her spell again and it had just been a random kiss. But it had served to remind me that if it wasn’t Daisy, he’d soon fall for another leggy blonde in the same mould.
Ivan and I had totally dismantled the Lady Anne window in his absence and over the next few days we cleaned each piece of glass.
Ionized water seemed much like any other.
There were thankfully no breaks anywhere except in the top panel. The cracks could be fixed with narrow ribbon lead calme – and so could the broken pieces of the sun, for the longest break helpfully ran along one of the spiky arms, making the mend less obtrusive.
‘We’ll need to trim the edge flanges a little bit to ease it in when it’s fixed,’ Ivan said, as we discussed it, ‘but that’s no great problem.’
‘That sun’s very odd when you really look,’ I said pensively gazing at it. ‘It’s more like a star … or a sparkling jewel.’
‘It all looks odd to me, what with these little bits of pattern and pictures painted in circles in the centres of the diamond quarries,’ Ivan said. ‘I’ve never seen owt like it: fiddly, I call it!’
My head was so full of my work that I was probably boring Carey senseless with it, though he neverlookedbored. He popped in occasionally to film a bit of the process, but otherwise was engaged in his renovations – stripping the wallpaper in my bedroom and prepping it for painting. He’d sold his uncle’s old car to a nearby garage called Deals on Wheels and put the money towards his own camera. I just knew he’d permanently add his new skills to all the others.
We’d settled back happily enough into our life together, immersed in our own affairs during the day, though each was interested in what the other was doing. Then, if no one else was staying, we’d often spend the evenings working in the studio. I was getting design ideas ready to submit for those two commission enquiries, as well as working on a series of sea-themed free-hanging roundels, so my book idea had been pushed temporarily on to the back burner.
It was idyllic: a temporary idyll, perhaps, but all the more to be treasured for that.
At last the glass was cleaned up and Ivan and I were ready to re-lead the three panels.
The wooden side and top battens for each one were nailed to the glazing benches, the wide calmes for two sides of the borders cut and laid against them – and we were ready to begin.
Soon, the only sound to be heard was the tapping in of the horseshoe nails that held each piece of glass firm, while we placed the next.
Ivan worked on one panel and I the other, at adjoining tables, though I reserved the top and trickiest one for last – and it was somewhat of a joint effort, with Ivan standing by like a nurse in an operating theatre, ready to hand me the right size of calme, a horseshoe nail, or the next piece of glass as I worked towards the centre. There, the narrowest of calmes held the broken parts together, within the original boundary of wider lead that defined the diamond quarry – and the sun (or whatever it was) became whole again.
I soldered all three panels with my new gas-cylinder-powered iron. Iadoresoldering – tinning the end of the iron, cleaning the lead joints with a wire brush, rubbing them with a tallow stick and then placing a neat round flat cap of solder on top of each. And this time, it was a real labour of love.
When they were finally completed, we carried them with great care through to the cementing room at the back of the building, because there’s a lot of bend in a glass panel before it’s cemented and allowed to dry out.
The thickly glutinous black mixture was brushed under the flanges of the leads, then a pointed stick run round the edge of each piece of glass to remove the excess. After that, whitening was sprinkled all over the panels to soak up the remains and then scrubbed off with a brush.
