The House of Hopes and Dreams

by Trisha Ashley

  He gave another slightly twisted smile. ‘Anyway, I heard something on the radio the other day that set me thinking. It appears that if you die without making a will, it can lead to all kinds of problems and delays.’

  ‘But you’re so much better now that you really don’t need to think about that kind of thing—’ I began.

  ‘Yes, and I’m also twenty years older than you are, so the chances are I’ll die first, one way or the other, aren’t they?’

  This seemed to be a rhetorical question, so I didn’t point out that life was a lottery and you never knew when your number would be up. The Grim Reaper had his random moments.

  ‘I want to make some provision for you, but to be fair to Nat as well.’

  I have a tendency to live in the moment so I’d never given the future a lot of thought until recently, but I’d vaguely assumed that Julian’s only son by his long-ago marriage would inherit everything at some nebulous future date. I’d been building up a little nest egg from my wages and the occasional prize or commission, but it had stayed little because I so often broke into it to add to my magpie’s shiny store of Antique glass that was stashed away in one of the outbuildings.

  I didn’t have a lot of outgoings, because the cottage was Julian’s, as was the business. I was still an employee, though I took design commissions of my own sometimes, too, if they were to be made elsewhere.

  ‘You’ve always been fair to me, Julian,’ I assured him. ‘But Nat is your only son, so naturally he should inherit everything.’

  Nat had followed in his father’s footsteps and worked with him in the studio, until my arrival on the scene had led to an estrangement between them. I felt guilty about that and over the years I’d done my best to heal the rift.

  Julian had overheard Nat accusing me of being a gold-digger, muscling my way into the workshop by sleeping with the boss, and he’d told Nat that if he couldn’t accept the situation in a civilized manner, he’d have to go elsewhere. The upshot had been that he’d found Nat a job in London in a friend’s stained-glass workshop and he’d made his life down there ever since.

  I don’t think the problem was ever really about my relationship with his father, who’d been a widower for several years when we met, it was Nat’s realization that although he was a great craftsman, he hadn’t got a spark of originality when it came to designing windows and installations … and I had.

  ‘You haven’t thought it through,’ Julian told me, recalling my wandering mind. ‘The cottage has been your home for years and the business is becoming as much about you now, as me.’

  That was a slight exaggeration, but I was beginning to make a name for myself and there was a whole Angelique Arrowsmith section on the Julian Seddon website. I’d won a major competition a couple of years previously, too.

  ‘Besides, the cottage and business really go together, so I’m leaving both to you,’ he continued, not waiting for any comment. ‘Everything else – and there’s quite a lot of money invested – goes to Nat.’

  I knew Julian had inherited money from his mother’s family, not to mention what he earned himself – and his work was still as much in demand as it was when he blazed on to the scene with his first major commission, the spectacular Tidesbury Abbey west window.

  ‘But … if you must leave me something, couldn’t it simply be a small amount of money, enough to buy a tiny cottage with?’ I suggested. ‘And everything else to Nat. I’m sure that’s what he’d expect.’

  ‘He seems to have made a life for himself in London, but my investments would give him enough money to set up his own workshop, if he wanted to,’ Julian said. ‘I want you to carry on the business here, which is what you’ve been doing since the stroke anyway. In fact, we’ll change the name to Julian Seddon and Angelique Arrowsmith Architectural Glass as soon as you get back from Antigua, and I’ll make you an equal partner. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.’

  ‘I’m perfectly happy with things the way they are,’ I protested. ‘And we’re going to live to a ripe old age together, working and having fun like we used to. Look how much better you are now.’

  ‘I hope we do, darling, though let’s face it, I’m never going to be the man I was,’ he said. ‘I want you to have security if anything should happen to me, because there’s a whole bright future ahead of you, while my glory days are all in the past.’

  ‘From someone who’s just designed a spectacular rose window for Gladchester Chapel, that’s a bit rich,’ I said, and he laughed, like an echo of the old Julian.

  ‘Do change your mind about this will business,’ I coaxed him.

  ‘I know what I want – and what’s fair,’ he insisted. ‘I’ll get Mr Barley to draw up the will and then bring it over to be signed.’

  I was still deeply troubled, but he had that stubborn expression and I didn’t want to provoke him. I made some coffee and got out the biscuit tin, then changed tack.

  ‘Julian, I really don’t think I should have let you persuade me to go off to Antigua, leaving you alone,’ I began. ‘What if—’

  ‘We’ve already had this conversation, Angel,’ he broke in impatiently. ‘A break will do me as much good as it will you.’

  A break from me, he meant, since he hated hot countries and had never been to Antigua with me. I felt hurt. We were both private people, but we’d lived and worked together in perfect harmony. In fact, my annual December visits to Mum and my stepfather had been the longest periods we’d ever spent apart.

  ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t already asked Molly to check on me every five minutes while you’re gone, because I won’t believe you,’ he added, with just enough of the ghost of his old, familiar smile to reassure me.

  And of course I had done just that, though it still seemed wrong that I should leave him.

  ‘Julian, why don’t I cancel the flights and have a break nearer home?’ I said impulsively. ‘Or we could both have a little holiday in a hotel somewhere lovely, like Cornwall or—’

  The smile vanished and I caught a glimpse of the alien, slightly dangerous fire of anger that the stroke had somehow lit inside his mind.

  ‘No, and we’re not discussing it any more,’ he snapped, and I turned away.

  The only consolation was that this time I’d only be absent for a mere nine days, not the usual fortnight. What could possibly go wrong in so short a time? Especially with Molly, Grant and old Ivan watching over him for me.

  When making a window, any details that needed to be painted on to the glass were applied in a vitreous enamel that fused with the surface when fired in a kiln. As I had some skill with the paintbrush, this became one of my earliest tasks.

  At this time, the men Father employed tended to specialize in certain areas of the glassmaker’s craft, rather than having experience of the whole process, but this was not what I wanted. I was consumed by the desire to learn everything there was to know, from start to finish … Or as much of the process as Father would allow: for though he frequently forgot I was a mere female, he did draw the line at letting me attempt to blow molten glass into a cylinder that could be cut and flattened into a sheet, or spin great discs of it.

  Nor would he let me help heat and mould lead to be milled into the long H-shaped strips called calmes that held the pieces of window glass together. Even then, though, I was unfortunately of small stature and slight in build, so perhaps he had a point.

  3

  Rum Punched

  So there I was en route to Antigua a few days later, luxuriating in business class and with a glass of bubbly clasped in a hand somewhat battered, scarred and workmanlike from years of making stained-glass windows for a living. I don’t think I quite realized how emotionally and physically stretched and exhausted I was until I settled into my seat: it was if I were a puppet and someone had cut my strings.

  My stepfather, Jim Dacre, was totally loaded, so he always insisted on paying for my flights. I suspected he was trying to make up for having married and removed Mum to th
e other side of the Atlantic when I was ten, after first depositing me in boarding school, like left luggage you might want to reclaim at some future point.

  Since I’d already lost my childhood friend Carey the previous year, when his actress mother had taken him back to live in London after her husband died, the last vestiges of my happy childhood ended right there.

  Up till then, we’d lived in a small Bedfordshire village and Mum taught art in a nearby grammar school. She took a casual attitude to motherhood, had a circle of bohemian friends, a busy social life and a succession of boyfriends. (My father died before I was old enough to remember him.) I thrived on a diet of casual affection and neglect, growing up to be self-reliant, happy and consumed by painting and drawing the world around me.

  I suppose I might have felt lonely if Carey, who was almost exactly the same age as me, hadn’t lived next door. Mum said when Carey’s parents bought the pretty thatched cottage as a weekend retreat, it was the most exciting thing to hit Little Buddington since the Black Death. For although Carey’s mum was merely an aspiring young actress, his father was Harry Revell, the great Shakespearean actor. He was very much older than his wife and late fatherhood can’t have agreed with him, because Lila and Carey were soon living permanently in the cottage with Harry an increasingly rare visitor.

  Carey and I were both artistic, fiery Aries characters and often struck sparks off one another; but at bottom, we were best friends right through infants and junior school. Mum and Lila had become friends, too, and the first time Mum visited her in London after the move – having parked me with the postmistress – she somehow hooked herself a rich, early-retired millionaire at a party and life as I’d known it totally ended.

  It wasn’t that I disliked Jim when I met him, but he’d been married before and had handed his business over to grown-up sons. He wanted to carry Mum off to the Caribbean where he was now based and I was surplus to requirements.

  So, I ended up in boarding school among strangers, my home was sold and, apart from a couple of weeks a year when I flew out to Antigua, I spent my school holidays with Granny in Lancashire, where she had a neat semi-detached council house in Formby.

  Mum never came back, not even for Granny’s funeral. She had a fear of flying, though never in the Erica Jong sense, and, having got out there, stayed put.

  Life based between a superyacht and a villa on a Caribbean island seemed to suit her perfectly … and the responsibilities of motherhood had never weighed heavily on her shoulders anyway.

  I became withdrawn and solitary at my new school, for after losing Carey it seemed safer not to make new friends. Instead, I spent all my free time in my own little world, drawing and painting.

  Then, with miraculous serendipity, Carey and I chose the same university and met on the first day of term. He was scanning the accommodation notices on the board and though the boy I remembered had turned into a tall, well-built man, the set of his shoulders and the blaze of his red-gold hair were unmistakable.

  ‘Of all the universities in all the world, you had to choose this one,’ I’d said slightly huskily.

  He’d turned quickly, his gentian-blue eyes blazing with surprised delight.

  ‘Shrimp!’ he’d shouted, then swept me off my feet and swung me round and round until we were both laughing and dizzy. The lonely, unhappy years between nine and eighteen had dissolved in a tide of happiness …

  ‘Ice cream and cookies?’ suggested the stewardess brightly, breaking into my reverie. She seemed to have been programmed to offer the passengers something to eat or drink about every fifteen minutes and if I accepted everything I’d be so fat by the time we landed I’d have to be prised out of my seat with a crowbar. I closed my eyes, hoping she’d stop tempting me if she thought I was asleep.

  And sleep I did, drifting off to the thought of Carey, always there at the back of my mind like a six-foot-four comfort blanket, spun from soft red-gold fleece. His leg was healing well and he’d be out of rehab any minute, so perhaps he could come and stay with us in the New Year. Julian liked him, even though they were chalk and cheese, and the company would perk him up no end.

  The knot of tension and anxiety that had inhabited my stomach for so long was quickly unravelling, taking with it some of the guilt and relief about leaving Julian. Slowly I sank into a deeper sleep, only barely conscious of the stewardess’s voice suggesting, hopefully, ‘Pretzels?’

  I rang Julian that evening, sitting in a rattan chair on the shaded decking of Jim’s villa, which overlooked Falmouth Harbour. Nearby was a telescope permanently focused on his pride and joy – his vast and glossy superyacht. It might not be quite as super as some of the other floating palaces moored there, but to me it was still impressively enormous.

  I had the remains of a rum punch in my other hand and I wasn’t sure if I was suffering from jet lag, or Jim had ignored my request to go easy on the rum, but I felt limp and spaced out.

  I wasn’t too worried about Julian, because I knew Molly would already have popped in to make sure he was all right and had eaten something – and she wouldn’t take any nonsense. And then Nat was driving up to visit Julian next day – he would only stay at the cottage when I was away and had even booked into a hotel when Julian had his stroke, despite my urging him to stay with me.

  But this visit would be different, because he’d married two years ago and was bringing his wife, Willow, for the first time.

  Willow was a freelance graphic artist and I hadn’t yet met her, though I’d insisted Julian go down to London for the wedding, even though I hadn’t been invited. In the pictures she was tall, blonde, leggy and long-nosed, and reminded me of nothing so much as a heron. I did a little cartoon of her like that, standing on one leg … which I now remembered was lying around in my sketchbooks in the studio. I hoped Willow was not of an inquisitive nature.

  Julian’s voice on the phone, with that hint of a slur, still didn’t sound quite like him, but he brushed off my enquiries about his health.

  Then he added that I could call Molly off, too, because Nat and Willow had arrived a day early. ‘Or maybe I got the date wrong? Anyway, they got here a couple of hours ago.’

  ‘Oh? What’s she like?’ I asked interestedly, for he’d barely had a chance to speak to her at the wedding reception.

  ‘Girly and gushing,’ he replied. ‘Went into rhapsodies about the cottage, especially the oak beams and the old-fashioned kitchen.’

  ‘It’s not that old-fashioned, just comfortable. Shabby chic,’ I added vaguely. Molly was into all that upcycling and distressing furniture stuff and we’d acquired several of her pieces. ‘Anyway, Carey’s the expert on cottage makeovers and, if you remember, he said it was fine as it was, the perfect eclectic mix of furnishings.’

  ‘Willow said we should update it with a red Aga and a giant pink Smeg fridge/freezer. I think she said something about cement kitchen units, too, but I must have got that wrong, because it sounds so unlikely.’

  ‘Cement-coloured?’ I suggested. ‘All the interior decorators on TV programmes, except Carey, seem mad about grey lately. A red Aga is a total cliché, too, and there’s nothing wrong with our fridge or the freezer.’

  ‘She had a look at what was in both of them, before announcing they were vegetarians.’

  ‘Really? I can’t believe Nat’s turned vegetarian! But anyway, since we don’t eat meat, she can’t have found anything particularly awful in there, other than a bit of fish. If they want anything else, then they should have warned us.’

  ‘Well, she seems to have brought a lot of their own food with her, so I expect that’s why she was rooting in the fridge and freezer, trying to find some space among all the stuff you and Molly seemed to think I’d get through in nine days.’

  ‘And Nat and Willow, because we thought we were catering for three,’ I pointed out. ‘What are they doing now?’

  ‘Nat’s taken her to look at the workshop …’ He paused and then said, ‘I got Mr Barley to draw up that will, but
I’m not going to mention anything about it to Nat.’

  That was probably a good idea, because if Julian had stuck to his guns on his intentions and Nat found out, then the fat really would be in the fire. He’d expect to inherit everything and, really, I still thought he should. But while I didn’t want to look ahead to a time when it might be an issue, if it ever came to it, then I supposed Mr Barley would help me sort it out.

  Julian seemed reasonably cheerful, though he told me not to keep ringing him up after today, because I’d hear soon enough if he wasn’t feeling well. I was to relax and enjoy my holiday.

  Then we talked about the work in progress for a while – a big rose window is quite an undertaking – before Nat and Willow came back and he rang off.

  I thought about phoning or emailing Molly after that, but just then Mum came out on to the decking, her curling hair freshly rendered a shining but improbable chestnut brown, followed by a group of equally brightly dressed and tanned friends. It was like being surrounded by a flock of noisy parakeets.

  ‘Guess what, Angelique – we’re all going to sail to Anguilla tomorrow! Jim’s gone to make the arrangements, because they’re so fussy there about moorings and things,’ Mum said brightly, and wouldn’t hear of my staying put quietly in the villa. Jim’s superyacht would be one loud floating party and I was not, and never had been, any kind of party animal.

  Mum, Jim and several of their crowd went to dine and whoop it up at the Purple Conch and then returned in the early hours and kept up the revelry for ages, so my attempts to sleep and let my body clock catch up were doomed to failure.

  Next morning, hollow-eyed and functioning only because of large amounts of good American coffee, I hurriedly repacked my small case, and soon Jim’s yacht, with its deck full of inexhaustible revellers and one reluctant one, set sail for Anguilla.