Page 22 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
There were a surprising number of other solitary walkers, though most had dogs. Later, I knew, families would appear, intent on walking off their Christmas dinner excesses.
On my way back to the car, a message pinged into my phone from Carey, wishing me and Julian a happy Christmas. He was, as I expected, out of rehab and staying at Nick’s flat and they were about to go to Nick’s parents for Christmas dinner.
It was odd to think he knew nothing of what had been happening to me, but then Julian’s passing had made only the local TV news, plus one small obituary piece in the national press that Molly had cut out and kept for me. I longed to talk to him, but he too needed a respite from everything that had been happening to him, so I resisted the urge and instead wished him a happy Christmas back.
‘See you in the New Year, Shrimp,’ he returned. It would be time enough to tell him then.
At home the clocks busily ticked away the remaining hours of my old life as I packed fragments of it into the boxes, a task I continued over the next couple of days. It all took a lot longer than I expected.
And how odd and bare the cottage looked without my stuff in it, not like my home any longer, though I supposed that would make the moment I finally left much less of a wrench.
Having completed that task, on the Sunday after Christmas I started on the workshop, which I didn’t expect to take very long. But it was surprising how much that was personally mine was stored there and in the end I had to fetch a couple of old empty tea chests from the outhouse to take the overflow.
Into the boxes went my years of sketchbooks, the rolls of cartoons for private design commissions and competitions, along with a few small experimental leaded panels I’d stored in the loft. Nat had padlocked the cupboard the cartoons were kept in, but since the keys were hung in the office, that had been a pointless exercise.
My crazy magpie hoard of glass in the outhouse was still packed up – I’d only opened the tops of the tea chests so I could gloat over the contents – so they were good to go.
I’d finished the roundel with the angel head, giving it a bright flower border and a hanging loop, and that was carefully bubble-wrapped and stowed away.
Other than that, there was just my current sketchbook, the huge plastic toolbox with tiers of trays in which I kept my art materials, and my own set of tools, which I would need until Julian’s final commission was finished.
And now, everything else was out of the way, I spent the remaining solitary days absorbed in painting and staining glass.
Oddly, many people assume we paint the colour on to clear glass – but no, apart from any details added in dark vitreous enamel, the glass is usually coloured in the making of it – pot metal glass.
But sometimes one deep shade, like red or blue, is thinly flashed over a thicker layer of clear or pale glass. This means you can acid etch some of the top layer away, so you have two colours in one piece. And then you can vary it even more, because if you apply a coat of muddy ochre silver stain to the back of some areas and fire it in the kiln, by a kind of clever alchemy it turns into a clear bright yellow. Or green, if it’s painted over blue, orange if over red …
Pure magic.
I’d booked a small storage unit at a nearby depot and, once I’d got everything packed up, I engaged two men with a Transit van to move my stuff into it on the Wednesday after Christmas.
Luckily, Molly and Grant had come home the previous night and helped with a couple of the really heavy and awkward things, like the dresser and the tea chests of glass.
It looked a bit dismal in the cottage after that, with all the empty spaces and the memories, so after I got a brief message from Willow saying she and Nat were definitely moving in on Saturday the third of January, I packed my bags and decamped to Molly’s house, leaving my door keys – though not my keys to the workshop – on the kitchen table.
I’d already started sending out feelers to friends and contacts about a new job but, of course, right after Christmas wasn’t the best time for that.
Grant generously texted Nat offering to give them a hand with the move, but got a one-liner back saying, ‘No need.’
Gracious as always.
I avoided the cottage that day, going early to the workshop by way of the separate drive from the lane. I took out the last of the painted and stained glass that had been cooling in the kiln and stuck it up with blobs of plasticine on a sheet of plate glass over the window, so once the sky grew light enough I could see how well it looked: the last interpretation of Julian’s vision fused into the glass and ready to be leaded up.
Even though it wasn’t a work day, Grant came in later to see how the last panels were looking, and brought me a hot cheese and onion pasty from Molly.
He reported that a large removal van was parked by the cottage and in the process of being emptied.
‘I’m glad I’ve managed to get the last of the rose window panels ready to lead up,’ I said. ‘I wanted to do it myself and chances are that when the workshop reopens on Monday, Nat will put me in my place by telling me to sweep the floor, or something like that.’
‘I suspect you’re right, and though I know you’d prefer to stay long enough to see Julian’s last commission completed, he may make it impossible for you.’
‘Even if by some miracle he’s stopped being childishly vindictive, I really couldn’t work with him now,’ I said. ‘Though for Julian’s sake I’ll hang on till he’s found someone to replace me. Perhaps I’ll have had some response to my emails about a new job after the weekend when everywhere reopens.’
Stained-glass work was very specialized, but now I’d put the word out that I was looking for a move, I was sure something would turn up.
‘I saw Nat briefly and said you’d finished painting and staining the glass for the chapel and I was popping in to see if you needed help unloading the kiln, and he said he wasn’t paying either of us overtime,’ said Grant.
‘Nice. Not that I’ve ever been paid overtime, but Julian always gaveyou extra if you came in to see to the kiln, or we were working flat out all hours, didn’t he? Still, at least Nat didn’t come straight down and tell me to clear off!’
