Page 4 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
‘It’s not huge, but it’s a little bigger than I thought it would be. The Arts and Crafts houses were mostly built by the wealthy middle classes, and were more like overgrown cottages than anything.’
‘Well, it should be right up your street, anyway. And did you say it needed renovating?’
‘It sounds as if it’s been neglected lately,’ agreed Carey, and they looked at each other in sudden mutual understanding.
‘This could be just the fresh start you need – and a major opportunity for both of us,’ enthused Nick. ‘Carey Revell’s Mansion Makeover– a Raising Crane Production!’
‘It’s not a mansion,’ Carey objected, but his friend had the bit between his teeth now.
‘I can make a pilot – see who’s interested in a series – and I think there’ll be a lot of interest, because there’s the dual angle of you recovering from a serious accident and the whole unexpected inheritance thing … and then all the usual ups and downs of restoration, only on ahugescale.’ His dark eyes glowed again. ‘It could run to more than one series and it’ll give us both the break we need!’
‘I haven’t even seen the place yet,’ Carey cautioned him. ‘Hold on a bit!’
‘Doesn’t Angelique live somewhere quite near to this Mossby place?’ Nick continued, carried away on a tide of optimism. ‘If there are any windows to be repaired or replaced, that’ll be really handy!’
‘Yeah, I expect she’ll think just the same way you do,’ Carey said sarcastically. Angel – or Angelique, to give her her full and slightly ridiculous name – was his oldest friend. As students he, Nick, Angel and a couple of others had shared a house together.
‘My old gran used to say that as one door closed, another opened,’ Nick said, getting up. ‘She was right.’
Then he went off to deliver Tiny to Pooches Paradise, after Carey had rung and pleaded with them to house the dog, because last time Tiny had made himself unpopular by biting a staff member. They were going to charge double, and triple over the actual Christmas period.
He couldn’t tell them how long they’d have to have him after that. He assumed Daisy had already offered Tiny to all her friends and acquaintances before she’d dumped him, and he didn’t rate Tiny’s chances of being re-homed if he went to a dog rescue centre.
Carey decided to worry about that later. He got the photos of Mossby up on his phone again and an innate feeling that this washisplace – somewhere he truly belonged to – tugged at his heart, taking him totally by surprise.
It was ridiculous to feel that way, seeing as he’d never even heard of Mossby till that morning!
Or had he? Now he came to think of it, the name did stir up some very distant recollection …
His eye fell on the heap of mail Nick had dumped on the bed and he spotted a letter addressed in Angelique’s familiar scrawl and sent via his friend’s address, as all her letters had been since the accident. At least Nick had always remembered to bringthose.
He ripped it open, skimming the enquiries after his rehab progress and smiling at the small caricatures she’d drawn in the margins: himself wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy and one of old Ivan, who worked in Julian Seddon’s stained-glass studio, hobbling about with a slopping mug of tea in each hand.
She wrote that she was off to Antigua in a few days to stay with her mother and stepfather, who kept a superyacht in Falmouth Harbour, as well as having a nearby villa. Angel had always spent two weeks with them just before Christmas – he’d gone with her himself a couple of times, when they were students – but last year she hadn’t, because her partner, Julian, had been recovering from a stroke.
Carey thought Julian must be making a good recovery if Angel was leaving him to his own devices. Or maybe he had insisted, realizing she needed the break? When she’d been to see him in hospital last time she’d been in London on business, he’d been troubled by how worried and strained she’d seemed.
His conscience suddenly twinged: maybe he should have visited them when Julian first had the stroke, or even rung her more often since? But then, everything had been wiped from his mind by the accident, except recovering and getting out of hospital as soon as he could, preferably on two feet.
He smiled, wryly. Angel always joked that he only remembered her existence when he wanted her to work for free, making or repairingstained glass for one of the cottages featured on his programmes, but that was far from the truth.
Since she fell in love with Julian Seddon the summer after she graduated and moved to Lancashire to live and work with him, she might have left the centre stage of his life, but Carey was always conscious of her there in the wings. And he was quite certain she felt the same way about him.
Perhaps I should explain the events that led up to my first, unlikely meeting with Ralph Revell, which took place in my father’s glass manufactory in London, in early 1894 …
My mother had died early and though my aunt Barbara, who came to take charge of the household, did her utmost to turn me into a young lady, not even her best endeavours could keep me away from the workshop or stop my fascination with the whole art and craft of stained-glass window making.
My father was an intelligent man with a great interest in the arts and well acquainted with William Morris and his circle. Under their influence he had turned away from the modern trend of merely painting pictures on to ever larger pieces of glass, giving a dull, flat effect, and instead enthusiastically embraced the return to the purer artistry of earlier times. Smaller pieces of glass, made in the Antique way, uneven in thickness and containing irregularities, gave life, sparkle and depth to a window. The dark lines of the leading formed part of the design and there was need for only minimal overpainting.
I shared his enthusiasm and it became both my lifelong passion and my profession. My marriage turned out to be a brief, mistaken digression along the way, although in saying this, I realize I will be thought very unnatural. But so it was.
2
Clipped Wings
Angelique
Sunday, 7 December 2014
