Page 86 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
‘That big roll of artwork and cartoons is my main concern – if you give me those now, then I might reconsider letting you keep the rest,’ he said magnanimously. ‘But I’m not going away empty-handed.Haveyou got them here?’
‘No, and I wouldn’t give them to you if I had!’
‘You’re a cheeky bugger, young Nat,’ Ivan put in scathingly. ‘She’s giving you nowt.’
‘You keep out it,’ Nat told him. He spotted the cupboards at the far end of the room and started forward. ‘I bet they’re in there – and there’s nothing to stop me taking my own property.’
‘I’llstop you,’ I said, leaping in front of him and furiously brandishing the dripping paint roller. ‘Unless you want to be striped like a zebra, you’d better shove off back where you came from.’
‘Garry – Vic!’ suddenly bellowed Ivan at the top of his voice. ‘Get in here, quick!’
From the way all the workmen piled into the room, I suspected they’d been listening, just the other side of the door: Vic, the electrician, and his mate, who were both necklaced in loops of cable, while the plumber, Garry, brandished an antique and dripping ballcock. His large and silent lad followed him in, carrying a huge spanner. They lined up on either side of me. It was like having my own personal A-Team.
‘Are you going peacefully, or shall I get my lad to put you out?’ asked Garry, making a sweeping and slightly threatening gesture towards the door, though I think he’d forgotten he was holding the ballcock.
Nat’s eyes swivelled from the large spanner to Garry’s face and hemust have decided discretion was the better part of valour. He slowly backed away.
‘I was prepared to be reasonable,’ he told me. ‘But you’ll be sorry, when you hear from my solicitor!’
After he’d gone, we celebrated our victory with tea, while Ivan gave everyone a potted history of Nat’s perfidy, which I hope made his ears burn. Then I went up to the house to wash and change, seeing as the paint from the roller had run down my arm inside my jumper.
The cleaners were just driving off as I arrived there, so everything was sparkling clean except me. I went up the backstairs to my room, but once I’d changed I came down the main one, where I found Carey sitting on a step, sanding the banisters, watched by Fang.
I sat down next to him and Fang clambered on to my knees and tried to lick my chin.
‘I’ve just had a frightful scene with Nat,’ I said, and while describing what had happened I found myself shaking with anger all over again.
He put his arm round me and gave me a hug. ‘You should have rung me – I’d have come right down, and sorted him out.’
‘It all unfolded so quickly, though it could have got nasty if I’d been there on my own.Andmessy,’ I added, thinking of the paint roller. ‘I don’t really think he’s got a leg to stand on – it was all empty threats – but all the same, I think I’ll give Mr Barley, Julian’s solicitor, a ring and run it past him,’ I said, and Carey agreed that was a good idea.
Mr Barley was quite horrified when I described Nat’s visit and his demands that I should not only return my recent cartoons and artwork, but my portfolios and sketchbooks too.
‘He said he had a new solicitor and I’d be hearing from him!’
‘I was aware that he was placing his affairs in someone else’s hands, but in any case, I would not have wished to act for him.’
‘I feel I’ve been scrupulously fair in only taking what personally belonged to me, both in the cottage and the workshop,’ I said. ‘He even wanted the artwork for two recent designs I submitted to competitions, but I’ve witnesses to prove that Julian was happy for me to take personalcommissions and enter competitions for windows that wouldn’t be made in the workshop.’
‘Most fortuitously, I can confirm that,’ Mr Barley said. ‘Julian and I had discussed how that aspect might change, should he make you a full partner or director in the company. He further mentioned it in a note to me, regarding the terms of his will.’
‘Then that must be conclusive? Nat has no entitlement to them?’
‘No indeed, though I suppose the portfolios and sketchbooks might be a grey area. Are they perhaps very personal to an artist?’
‘The sketchbooks are all very small – A5 – and date back to my early teens, so there are dozens of them. They’re more like visual diaries than anything, full of drawings, paintings, notes, cuttings, dried leaves, photographs of things I’ve found interesting … just reflections of what I was doing or thinking at any given point.’
‘A diary certainly wouldn’t belong to the workshop, so it’s an interesting point,’ he said. ‘Does anything in the sketchbooks directly relate to window designs?’
‘No, that’s not how it works, though things in them might inspire a train of thought that leads to a design idea.’ I paused, and then confessed, ‘I use much bigger sketchbooks too, sometimes, where I do more detailed work towards a particular window design. I always tear the pages out and put them in portfolios as I go along. But Nat will never need those because I’ve left behind the actual finished cartoons and cutlines for all the windows I designed for Julian.’
‘In that case, I think Nat would be foolish indeed to try and take legal action to recover any of those and I expect if he really has consulted a solicitor, then he will have been told so. However, do let me know if you have any further communication with him.’
I felt more relaxed after talking to Mr Barley and I hoped I’d heard the last of Nat, but all the same, I decided I’d keep my portfolios and sketchbooks in the studio at the house, except the most current ones, just in case …
Carey and I spent a quietly companionable evening in the house studio, where he added the day’s notes, observations and pictures to his laptopand I checked up online about what I had to do to register my workshop for business, health and safety regulations and insurance.
Of course, having worked with Julian for twelve years, I already knew quite a bit of this, but I’d never set up my own workshop from scratch before.
