The House of Hopes and Dreams

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘But doesn’t Julian’s intention to provide for me set out in the will mean anything?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘No, the expression of intent has no legal validity, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Right … And Nat also said that my being a common-law wife didn’t give me any rights in law, either.’

  ‘That’s so. Indeed, I’m sorry to tell you that you have no legal claim on anything other than your personal goods and chattels.’

  ‘So Nat and his wife were quite correct, though they took great delight in telling me so, as if I was all out for Julian’s money,’ I said. ‘But our relationship was never about money. We loved each other and we adored our work. We were … very happy,’ I added, with a catch in my voice.

  Mr Barley looked uncomfortable at this sign of emotion. He gave a dry cough and said, ‘I suggested strongly to Nat that he himself should make some provision for you from the estate, but unfortunately he didn’t take kindly to the idea.’

  ‘No, I’m sure he didn’t, because I can see now that he’s out to get his pound of flesh for all his imaginary grievances. Though so far as I can see, my only crime was that I lived happily with his father for over a decade and looked after him while keeping the business running after his stroke.’

  ‘That’s exactly how I put it to Nat myself, but he was adamant. Of course …’ He paused and gave me a speculative look. ‘We could ourselves apply to have provision made for you from the estate, as a dependant, though there would be no guarantee of success, since you were also a full-time employee and there were no children of the relationship.’

  ‘I’d rather beg on the streets,’ I said adamantly. ‘And I don’t care about the money – but I thought at the very least I’d be entitled to a couple of months’ grace, while the legal side was sorted.’

  ‘In common decency, Nat certainly ought to give you time to get over your first grief and find somewhere else to live, but didn’t you say that they’d told you they were moving into the cottage in the New Year, when the workshop reopens after the Christmas break? They surely can’t expect you to have moved out by then?’

  ‘They’ve made it very clear that they do, and Willow had already drawn up an inventory of the contents of the cottage before I got back, so she could check I only take what belongs to me personally,’ I said bitterly. ‘Nat is doing the same thing right this moment in the workshop.’

  ‘It beggars belief that they should behave in such a vindictive way for no good reason,’ he said sadly. ‘Do you have anywhere to go to until you decide on your future – a relative, perhaps?’

  ‘No, there’s only my mother and stepfather in Antigua, though I could stay with Molly and Grant Long for a few days – that’s Grant from the workshop. I’ll have to pack over Christmas and put my things into storage until I know what I’m doing, and what Nat intends doing with the workshop.’

  ‘Since he immediately applied for permission to continue the business until the legalities are completed, it appears he intends running the workshop himself. This will obviously put you in a difficult position when he becomes, to all intents and purposes, your employer.’

  ‘I hadn’t really considered that aspect of it yet,’ I said. ‘Whatever happens, it’s my intention to finish off Julian’s final commission as quickly as I can. I was painting some of the pieces for it early this morning.’

  I paused and thought it through. ‘Nat won’t want me working there, but he hasn’t got an artistic bone in his body, so he’ll need to find someone to replace me. I mean, he can carry on making new windows in Julian’s style indefinitely, but it will all get very stale. He can’t very well accept new commissions as Angel Arrowsmith, though.’

  ‘Very true,’ Mr Barley agreed.

  I ran my fingers through my short, tangled mop of brown curls. ‘It’ll be best if I pre-empt Nat by handing in my notice when he comes back after Christmas, but for Julian’s sake, I’ll tell him I won’t leave until he finds someone else.’

  ‘Could you afford to set up on your own?’

  ‘No, not really, because I don’t have a huge amount of savings and I’ll need to rent somewhere to live, too. I mean, Julian paid me generous wages and also let me take some private design commissions, so I’ve got a little nest egg, only I tended to break into it whenever I heard of anyone selling up and putting their stock of Antique glass on to the market. Julian said I was like a squirrel storing up nuts against a rainy day – and here it is, a perfect storm!’

  I sighed. ‘I expect I’ll have to move away in order to get a job with another firm, probably somewhere down south. And I really don’t want to do that, because I love this area of Lancashire. This is where my grandparents lived and where my roots are, even if I wasn’t brought up here.’

  ‘Couldn’t your mother and stepfather help you in these circumstances?’ he suggested.

  ‘Mum doesn’t have any money of her own, and though I like my stepfather, I’ve never felt I had any claim on him, and he’s already forked out for my school fees and put me through university. No, I’ll find another job.’

  ‘I wouldn’t imagine you’d find that difficult, because Julian told me your work was increasingly in demand.’

  ‘I have had a couple of job offers from firms who haven’t realized Julian and I were a couple and I wasn’t just working for him.’

  I’d always valued my independence, which was probably why I hadn’t wanted to marry. I liked earning my own wages and in fact I more than earned them, for I worked longer hours than those I was paid for: you do, when you love your profession. Julian and I were never happier than when we were together in the studio, working separately, but attuned by our mutual passion for what we were creating.

  Mind you, that idyll had come to an end after Julian’s first stroke, though I counted myself lucky to have had those years.

  I sat up straighter. Time for decisions. ‘Thank you for making everything so clear to me and being so kind,’ I told him gratefully. ‘I’ll pack up my things over Christmas, put them into storage, then move in with Molly and Grant while I finish off the commissioned work and look for a new job. It will at least stop me thinking too much.’

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to help,’ Mr Barley said, getting up and shaking hands.

  ‘At least I’ve got it all clear in my mind and a plan of action. And now I’d better get back and make sure Nat hasn’t added my stock of glass to his workshop inventory!’

  It was still barely mid-morning and though I didn’t feel hungry – I was starting to think I’d never feel hungry again – I thought I’d better have something now because I had a couple of short visits to pay before my return to the workshop.

  So I had a large, warm and buttered cheese scone and coffee in the village café, while making a few notes before I set off to call on the vicar who would be taking Julian’s service tomorrow, followed by the undertakers. Nat was going to have one or two surprises …

  When I arrived home and parked at the side of the cottage, Nat’s car was gone and there was no one about. He wasn’t at the workshop either; there was just Grant and old Ivan sitting in the studio, finishing their lunch.

  ‘Have a Chelsea bun,’ Grant said, offering an old biscuit tin. ‘Molly baked them this morning and brought some down.’

  ‘Where’s Nat?’ I asked, automatically taking one and then wondering if I could actually eat it after my scone: they were quite big.

  ‘That Willow wafted in earlier and dragged him off somewhere,’ Ivan said. ‘Just as well, because he’d poked his nose into every corner of the place by then and his face was enough to curdle milk.’

  ‘How did you get on with the solicitor?’ asked Grant.

  ‘Mr Barley said Nat was right and he will inherit everything. I have no legal status because Julian and I weren’t married, so he can take over the house and business whenever he likes.’

  ‘Well, that don’t seem fair,’ Ivan said, running a gnarled hand through his thick thatch of silver hair. ‘An
d even if it’s true, he shouldn’t be throwing his weight about even before the burial. It ain’t decent.’

  ‘He may be legally in the right, but he doesn’t have to be so unpleasant about it,’ Grant said.

  ‘No,’ agreed Ivan. ‘And he told us he and that pale streak of tallow he’s married to are moving into the cottage in the New Year, putting you out of your home.’

  ‘It doesn’t really feel like my home now, anyway,’ I said. ‘Did Nat finish his inventory of the workshop while I was out, then? He said he was going to.’

  ‘Went through the place like a dose of salts,’ Ivan confirmed. ‘He wanted to know what was in the locked outhouse too, but we told him it was your personal property – all those tea chests full of Hartley Wood glass you bought when Williams & Gresham in Chorley closed down.’

  ‘I said there was only one key to the outhouse and you had it,’ Grant added.

  ‘Thanks, both of you,’ I said gratefully. ‘I paid for those with my own savings, though practically everything else in here will be part of the estate.’

  I looked round the studio. ‘My sketchbooks in the cupboard and box of art material are my own … and my personal set of tools, of course, in the workshop.’

  It was a rite of passage, buying your own pair of grozing pliers and then shaping a lathekin – the smooth piece of wood used to open up the leads to receive the pieces of glass. Then there was the sturdy oyster knife, a circle of thin metal nailed into a coronet on top of the wooden handle and filled with lead, which was used to tap in the horseshoe nails that held everything together until it was soldered. Ivan had helped me make that.

  ‘There are your experimental pieces of stained glass up in the loft,’ Grant reminded me, ‘and your college pieces and portfolios and stuff.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’d forgotten those were up there. All the rolled-up cartoons and cutlines, too, though I suppose only the ones I did for personal commissions belong to me.’

  I found I’d nibbled half the Chelsea bun without realizing it and hoped the sugar on top would wake me up a bit, because I was starting to feel dazed again.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going to come of us all,’ Ivan said ruminatively. ‘Nat don’t like me much, for a start … and I don’t much like change.’

  ‘No, nor me,’ I agreed, and in my head I could hear Bob Dylan’s rather Yogi Bear voice singing that the times they were a-changin’. He sounded so melancholy that I’d have given him the other half of my Chelsea bun if he’d been there.

  Father was so used to my presence that he did not think to introduce me and I don’t suppose Ralph Revell even noticed me – or if he did, he must have assumed I was a boy, with my cropped curls and slight figure enveloped in a sacking apron.

  Later, Father told me that Mr Revell had been pleased with the windows that had already been installed – and so he should be, for they were all exactly as he wished, made to frame and enhance the enjoyment of the vista beyond the house, rather than impede any view of it.

  8

  Sketchy

  I’d worked on for a bit after Ivan and Grant had gone home, but there’d still been no sign of Nat and Willow when I returned to the cottage, so I assumed they were eating out again.

  I had one of Molly’s healthy home-cooked ready meals from the freezer, a lentil and vegetable curry with rice, though I barely tasted it because all my thoughts were on the funeral tomorrow.

  It was a hurdle I had to get over, but at least I’d put my own stamp on the proceedings, now I’d thrown off the semi-acquiescent daze I’d been in when I first arrived home.

  The old Angel, who let no one walk over her, had bounced back.

  I was in the sitting room, sifting through the mail that had piled up while I was away, with the TV twenty-four-hour news channel on for company, when Nat and Willow finally returned. They must have heard the TV and I hoped they might have left me in peace. But no, after a few minutes they both came in, and Willow was holding her copy of the cottage inventory in one hand.

  I’d wrongly assumed that even they wouldn’t have the brass neck to start going through it on the night before the funeral, but Nat’s first words proved me wrong.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here, because we’re going straight off to London after the funeral tomorrow and there are a few things you’ve ringed on the inventory we need to query.’

  I pushed the rest of my unopened mail back in the box I was using as a temporary in-tray and gave them a scathing look. ‘Well, if you’re greedy and insensitive enough to think this is a good moment for that kind of discussion, fire ahead.’

  Willow flushed and looked at me with pale, startled eyes. I expect she’d thought I was some weak push-over, but she was about to learn her mistake.

  ‘We only want what’s ours, there’s no question of greed,’ Nat said, scowling at me, which was not a good look. He was becoming more like a really badly smudged carbon copy of Julian, rather than the last lithograph off the block.

  ‘There are several valuable items you’ve marked as yours, including some furniture?’ fluted Willow.

  ‘Yes, my granny left me those and I don’t recall either you or Nat being mentioned in her will.’

  ‘There’s no call to be sarcastic,’ Nat snapped. ‘And your grandmother lived in a council house in Formby – what would she be doing with valuable antiques?’

  I looked scornfully at him. ‘She worked in an antique centre for years and her hobby, even after she retired, was going to auctions, house sales and car-boots. She had a good eye for quality and gave me the first sampler in my collection, an early Regency one.’

  ‘Oh, yes, there are a lot of framed samplers about and some of them are very old,’ Willow said. ‘Are you saying they’re all yours?’

  ‘They certainly are, and I have the receipts for most of them to prove it. Julian gave me a few for my birthday and Christmas presents, too, but any gifts made to me are my property. I checked that with Mr Barley.’

  Willow, thwarted, abandoned that tack and pointed at the small display cupboard in the corner instead. ‘There’s that whole cabinet of Poole pottery.’

  ‘Julian and I collected that together from car-boot fairs, because we loved the shapes and colours, but if you feel I might be stealing away with something worth a few pounds, by all means cross it off the list,’ I said, then pushed back my chair with a grating noise and got up.

  ‘I don’t own anything else of any value, except my antique green jade earrings and necklace, which Julian also gave me. And if you want those you’ll have to fight me for them after the funeral, because I intend wearing them then – they match my dress.’

  ‘Green for a funeral?’ Willow said, easily diverted by my fashion faux pas.

  ‘Green’s a colour Julian loved: the symbol of spring and rebirth and renewal. He hated black.’

  I turned for the door and Nat demanded: ‘Where are you going? We haven’t finished going through the list yet!’

  ‘I suggest you stuff it up a place where the sun don’t shine,’ I said pleasantly, and went out.

  I felt in need of a breath of less poisonous air and shrugged into my coat before leaving by the kitchen door. My first thought was to walk round to Molly and Grant’s terraced house, but realized it was quite late and I didn’t want to disturb them.

  So instead, I took a walk round the deserted village green and then bypassed the cottage and made myself some coffee in the studio.

  I put it on my desk and then opened the cupboard where I kept my sketchbooks – years of them, with the dates they were begun and finished on the spines, going right back to my teenage years. I’d decided to edge the roundel of the angel’s head with an Arts and Crafts-style flower border and I knew I’d once drawn something similar … if I could put my hand on the right book.

  I’d left them neatly arrayed in rows in date order, but one glance at the shelves showed me that someone had rummaged through the lot, pulling them out and then leaving them stacked on top of others, or shove
d back in any old place.

  ‘You’d better pack all those up the minute they leave tomorrow,’ said Julian’s voice. ‘Otherwise they’ll insist they belong to the business and could carry on using your ideas after you’ve left.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that,’ I said, then realized I’d spoken the words aloud, because he’d sounded so close, so very, very near …

  ‘I wish I could take your sketchbooks when I leave, too, Julian – and leave I must. But we’ll make a splendid job of the Gladchester window first.’

  ‘I should hope so,’ he said, though his voice in my head seemed fainter, as if he were moving away …

  Perhaps I was going mad, having these conversations with Julian? But if I was, then it was a comforting kind of madness.

  To be honest, the funeral passed by in a blur, interspersed with bizarre vignettes, like Willow attired in dead black from head to foot, a tall, skinny raven of doom.

  They went ahead in the big, sleek hearse with the coffin, which I expect was meant as a calculated insult, though I was much happier following in the second car with Molly, Grant and Ivan. That was the complete cortège, though other friends and acquaintances, including Mr Barley, were already waiting at the crematorium. He and the vicar both came to say a few kind words as I got out of the car.

  To have the service in the crematorium was so not what Julian would have wanted, though ironically, the windows were of his making: sunny and hopeful scenes in the Garden of Eden, before the fall.

  ‘I was never entirely happy about that snake,’ Julian’s amused voice said very faintly. Then I sensed the empty space where he had been and knew he’d left me for ever, a second bereavement.

  The vicar’s eulogy, which now included a reference to me as his beloved partner and an anecdote I’d given her that illustrated just how special a person Julian had been, caused Nat and Willow to stiffen and turn as one to glare at me. I expect it was lucky that, unlike a wedding service, there was no point at which a member of the congregation could stand up and object to the proceedings. And by the time we were being wafted out of the building by a booming blast of Britten’s Noye’s Fludde, which certainly hadn’t been Nat’s choice, there was nothing they could do about it.