Page 76 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
‘I know. It’s because it does a left turn and backs on to the courtyard buildings behind. Come on,’ I said to the other two, ‘I’ll give you a guided tour before Carey turns up. He’s supposed to be getting his ladders out of one of the stables, though he might have got distracted by something else and forgotten. We’ll chase him up if he doesn’t come back.’
I turned to survey the room and said, ‘This room’s the biggest and they’ve obviously used it for drawing up cartoons and cutlines as well as leading-up – you can tell from the tables now I’ve brushed the dust off. The nearest one is smooth and well away from the other two.’
‘Plenty of room in here to do both,’ Ivan agreed. ‘That loft over the far end will be handy for storage and there are workbenches and a sink, too.’
‘Andthey’ve left the shelving for sheet glass and some lead calme storage troughs,’ Grant observed.
‘There’s more storage for lead calme underneath the big central table,’ I told him. ‘The leaded light maker who rented it in the thirties seems to have left a lot of his stuff.’
‘There’s an old lead mill in one of the back rooms, and a melting pot and ladle, too,’ Louis put in. His idea of a high treat had always been to help melt lead and cast it into blocks, ready to mill into new calmes.
‘You’ve got lots of storage drawers and big cupboards, but there’s been a mouse problem at some point and they’ve chewed up any paper they can find into confetti,’ Ivan said, opening doors in the far wall one after the other.
‘Shame, there might have been something interesting, like old cartoons or cutlines,’ Grant said.
‘Better put traps down just in case they try and move back in,’ Ivan suggested, and I shuddered at the thought.
‘I wonder if those electronic repellers work?’
‘I’ll google them,’ offered Louis. ‘See what the reviews are like.’
‘You’re worth your weight in lead calme,’ I told him, and he grinned.
‘It doesn’t need much doing in here, barring a good clean and painting,’ Grant said.
‘I’m going to have the walls white, to keep things light, but I want floor-to-ceiling corkboard on that stretch there, to the right of the door, so I can hang big cartoons up if I want to.’
‘Good idea, and you could do with some more adjustable easels over the windows to try the coloured glass against,’ suggested Ivan.
I led the way into the next room. ‘This is the office/studio/staff room – though I’ve got a big studio space up at the house, too, so I’ll probably do a lot of designing there.’ I opened the door to the chilly toilet. ‘All mod cons … almost. I need a plumber to put a little sink in and some heating everywhere. I mean, I don’t want to be toasty when I’m working, just not frozen.’
‘Those new electric storage heaters are good,’ suggested Ivan.
‘It’s a thought. And I’ll have a gas cylinder for my soldering iron, because I prefer that to an electric one. I’ll have to buy an electric kiln, though, because there’s no mains gas here.’
‘They’re more temperamental,’ Grant said.
‘Maybe, but there’s no alternative. I want you to help me choose one later – open or closed, I can’t decide.’
I explained where I thought I’d do the cementing and cleaning of the panels, with an overhead air filtration system, and use the smaller room off it for acid etching. ‘There’s a door in the room that backs on to the courtyard buildings, but it just leads out to a patch of gravel between that and the workshop. I’ll put a bench there in spring, so I can take my coffee out when I need a break.’
‘You’ve got it all worked out,’ said Ivan.
‘Not quite! I’ve still got a ton of equipment and supplies to get in, and an electrician’s coming on Monday before he starts rewiring the house. That’s going to be a major expense for Carey, but it has to be done and even he can’t persuade someone to carry out a job that size forfree … though maybe he’ll get a discount if the electrician gets a plug in the new TV series!’
‘Grant told us about the new series – sick!’ Louis said, though this seemed to be a term of approbation. ‘I didn’t know who Carey Revell was when I met him the day he came to Julian’s workshop, but I’ve looked him up. He knows how to do stuff like fell trees and carve stone.’
‘Yes, he does tend to go around soaking up practical skills like a human sponge.’
‘He hasn’t updated his website for months,’ Louis said, ‘but I saw online he’d had a bad bike smash.’
‘That was a few months ago, but his right leg was really badly broken and he was in hospital and rehab for a long time. Then they dropped him from hisComplete Country CottageTV series and hired an actor to present it instead.’
‘Molly and I watched it,’ Grant said, ‘but it’s just turned into another of those shows where they do up houses with cheap tacky stuff that will look even shoddier inside a week.’
‘Yeah, the ratings for the first show were crap,’ agreed Louis, who seemed to have developed a sudden interest in Carey to near-stalking point.
He and Grant went out of the side door to see if there was any sign of Carey and, once we were alone, Ivan said he was glad to see Louis taking an interest in something again, because he’d been so down after Julian’s death.
