Page 19 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
‘No,’ agreed Ivan. ‘And he told us he and that pale streak of tallow he’s married to are moving into the cottage in the New Year, putting you out of your home.’
‘It doesn’t really feel like my home now, anyway,’ I said. ‘Did Nat finish his inventory of the workshop while I was out, then? He said he was going to.’
‘Went through the place like a dose of salts,’ Ivan confirmed. ‘He wanted to know what was in the locked outhouse too, but we told him it was your personal property – all those tea chests full of Hartley Wood glass you bought when Williams & Gresham in Chorley closed down.’
‘I said there was only one key to the outhouse and you had it,’ Grant added.
‘Thanks, both of you,’ I said gratefully. ‘I paid for those with my own savings, though practically everything else in here will be part of the estate.’
I looked round the studio. ‘My sketchbooks in the cupboard and box of art material are my own … and my personal set of tools, of course, in the workshop.’
It was a rite of passage, buying your own pair of grozing pliers and then shaping a lathekin – the smooth piece of wood used to open up the leads to receive the pieces of glass. Then there was the sturdy oyster knife, a circle of thin metal nailed into a coronet on top of the wooden handle and filled with lead, which was used to tap in the horseshoe nails that held everything together until it was soldered. Ivan had helped me make that.
‘There are your experimental pieces of stained glass up in the loft,’ Grant reminded me, ‘and your college pieces and portfolios and stuff.’
‘Oh, yes, I’d forgotten those were up there. All the rolled-up cartoons and cutlines, too, though I suppose only the ones I did for personal commissions belong to me.’
I found I’d nibbled half the Chelsea bun without realizing it and hoped the sugar on top would wake me up a bit, because I was starting to feel dazed again.
‘I don’t know what’s going to come of us all,’ Ivan said ruminatively. ‘Nat don’t like me much, for a start … andIdon’t much like change.’
‘No, nor me,’ I agreed, and in my head I could hear Bob Dylan’s rather Yogi Bear voice singing that the times they were a-changin’. He sounded so melancholy that I’d have given him the other half of my Chelsea bun if he’d been there.
Father was so used to my presence that he did not think to introduce me and I don’t suppose Ralph Revell even noticed me – or if he did, he must have assumed I was a boy, with my cropped curls and slight figure enveloped in a sacking apron.
Later, Father told me that Mr Revell had been pleased with the windows that had already been installed – and so he should be, for they were all exactly as he wished, made to frame and enhance the enjoyment of the vista beyond the house, rather than impede any view of it.
8
Sketchy
I’d worked on for a bit after Ivan and Grant had gone home, but there’d still been no sign of Nat and Willow when I returned to the cottage, so I assumed they were eating out again.
I had one of Molly’s healthy home-cooked ready meals from the freezer, a lentil and vegetable curry with rice, though I barely tasted it because all my thoughts were on the funeral tomorrow.
It was a hurdle I had to get over, but at least I’d put my own stamp on the proceedings, now I’d thrown off the semi-acquiescent daze I’d been in when I first arrived home.
The old Angel, who let no one walk over her, had bounced back.
I was in the sitting room, sifting through the mail that had piled up while I was away, with the TV twenty-four-hour news channel on for company, when Nat and Willow finally returned. They must have heard the TV and I hoped they might have left me in peace. But no, after a few minutes they both came in, and Willow was holding her copy of the cottage inventory in one hand.
I’d wrongly assumed that even they wouldn’t have the brass neck to start going through it on the night before the funeral, but Nat’s first words proved me wrong.
‘I’m glad you’re here, because we’re going straight off to London after the funeral tomorrow and there are a few things you’ve ringed on the inventory we need to query.’
I pushed the rest of my unopened mail back in the box I was using as a temporary in-tray and gave them a scathing look. ‘Well, if you’regreedy and insensitive enough to think this is a good moment for that kind of discussion, fire ahead.’
Willow flushed and looked at me with pale, startled eyes. I expect she’d thought I was some weak push-over, but she was about to learn her mistake.
‘We only want what’s ours, there’s no question of greed,’ Nat said, scowling at me, which was not a good look. He was becoming more like a really badly smudged carbon copy of Julian, rather than the last lithograph off the block.
‘There are several valuable items you’ve marked as yours, including some furniture?’ fluted Willow.
‘Yes, my granny left me those and I don’t recall either you or Nat being mentioned in her will.’
‘There’s no call to be sarcastic,’ Nat snapped. ‘And your grandmother lived in a council house in Formby – what would she be doing with valuable antiques?’
I looked scornfully at him. ‘She worked in an antique centre for years and her hobby, even after she retired, was going to auctions, house sales and car-boots. She had a good eye for quality and gave me the first sampler in my collection, an early Regency one.’
