Page 59 of The Christmas Invitation
‘We haven’t really got time,’ I said quickly. ‘We don’t want to be late collecting Teddy.’
‘Oh, there’s plenty of time for a quick look,’ he said, then to my surprise, added, ‘I’dliketo show you what we’re doing.’
It occurred to me that there seemed to have been some kind of small but significant seismic change in Lex’s attitude to me since I last saw him in the studio. Perhaps he really had been so shaken by Clara’s portrait that he’d actually started seeing the real me again, the one he’d once known, rather than the alternative version he’d constructed over the years.
In fact, he now appeared quiteeagerto show me round, though Henry and Den elected to stay where they were, and after only a few minutes I’m certain Lex had entirely forgottenwho I was, because his enthusiasm for what he was doing was so great.
He showed me the finished pots and described where he’d learned to make each individual shape. The only thing they had in common was that they were all terracotta and large, some of themhuge.
‘I learned most of my craft in Greece,’ he said. ‘It takes about twelve to fourteen years of practice before you’re said to be an expert at throwing the biggest pots, so when I started up Terrapotter, I was really still officially a beginner.’
Many of the finished pots were decorated with impressed or raised designs, often very subtle: faces, sea creatures, swirls of seaweed, coral growths …
He’d taken something traditional and made it unique and his own, and I was deeply impressed.
‘I do most of the designing and make the moulds for decoration,’ he told me. ‘Al helps me throw the pots. It’s a two-man job for the biggest ones, because you throw them in two or three pieces and then put them together.’
‘That sounds tricky,’ I said as he led me through into another big area.
‘It’s the fun part!’ He grinned, a hint of the old Lex back again. ‘We have to buy the clay in. I mix three kinds together in a long process of washing and sieving out the grit and impurities, then put it through the pugmill a couple of times, before it’s ready.’
There was a lot of machinery involved, though all quiet at the moment: I supposed production had stopped for Christmas. ‘I can see you need such huge quantities that you couldn’t wedge it by hand, like they do in college,’ I agreed.
‘The blend of clay had to be trial and error too, before I got one that was right – not too porous, so water doesn’t freeze inside it and crack the pots in winter.’
I saw the big throwing wheels and then the racks of pots drying out in the chamber above the kiln, before they were fired.
The staircase up to that was fairly steep and I wondered how they got the pots up and down again, until I noticed a large old pulley-style hoist, like a sort of ancient dumb waiter.
‘Heat rises, so when the kiln’s firing its warm up here. There’ll be one final firing before we stop for Christmas.’
‘Can you leave all the clay and everything for a week or so?’
‘Yes, if it’s either in the tanks or wrapped in plastic to keep it damp,’ he said. ‘We’re going to load the kiln later, which takes a while. Al designed a really clever system of hand-pressed interlocking smaller planters that fill in the lost space around the big pots,’ he enthused. ‘You can add them on in any direction, or stack them, and they’re very popular in garden centres.’
Those did sound a clever idea, but I was sure Lex was the real original mind behind the business.
I liked the smell of damp sacking and clay. It took me back to art college where, apart from the scene with Al, I was mostly very happy.
‘That’s the kiln room through there,’ Lex gestured. ‘Tara has a small kiln of her own that fires very high, because she combines porcelain and silver in her jewellery. Her studio’s next to the office.’
‘Yes, Henry told me about her,’ I said, and if she hadn’t been Lisa’s sister I’d have been interested to see what she made.
By this point I was perfectly certain that Lex had forgotten I was anything other than a fellow artist who would appreciate what he was doing. Now he told me how sometimes, if things were quiet, he did a few random ceramic sculptures just for fun and they sold well in a gallery up in Halfhidden.
‘A painter runs it – he’s really good – and he only stocks artwork that’s first class. People come long distances to visit it and pay good prices.’
‘It’s strange you should mention Halfhidden because someone just told me about the village. It’s haunted, isn’t it?’
‘They’ve certainly made a big thing of the haunted trail around it and built it into a tourist draw. There are teashops and this gallery, and an architectural salvage place, too – not to mention an ancient Roman bath in the woods and a pub nearby called the Screaming Skull!’
He grinned again and the years fell away. He’d always had that dark, attractive gypsy look about him, a touch of devil-may-care, and it hadn’t completely been extinguished over time by the grief and guilt.
I found myself laughing. ‘Now I reallywillhave to go and look at this place, if the weather lets me before I go.’
That, unfortunately, seemed to recall him to the present and to who I was. His face sobered. ‘Let’s see what Al’s doing. He’s in here, but I warned him I’d be showing you round when I took his coffee in.’
‘Let’snot—’ I began, but he’d opened the door by then and there was Al, glancing briefly up at me from the bench.
