The Glass Castle

by Violet Winspear

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked. ‘I can offer you some Scotch, for though I don’t normally drink whisky I had a cold a few weeks ago and one of our Temple barristers insists that there’s nothing like whisky in hot lemon to help cure a cold.’

  ‘A pinch of Eastern spices in the toddy would have been even more efficacious. Yes, please, a Scotch and water would be welcome.’ Edwin Trequair was gazing around the lounge as he spoke, so intently that Heron wondered if he had expected untidiness or a lack of taste. She was intuitively neat and had inherited from her mother a liking for nice things, and it gave her a sense of satisfaction that Trequair could not be critical of her small but tasteful flat.

  ‘That’s a rather nice painting.’ He stood looking at the arrangement of bluebells and buttercups in a brass can, executed in oils so that the blue and cream and old-gold blended in a soft blur of colour. ‘So you don’t go in for the hard-line modern school of painting?’

  ‘No.’ She handed him his whisky, to which she had added a small dash of water. She guessed that he still found the English evenings rather cool and she wondered if he meant to return to the tropics in due course. Not that she meant to ask him ... she wasn’t that interested in him. ‘I like a painting to be representative of what it is, so long as it doesn’t resemble a birthday card. Did you notice my tulip painting in the hall?’

  ‘No.’ He took a swig of his drink. ‘I was too busy noticing you. Tonight you look like your mother—’

  ‘What?’ She stared at him with astonished eyes. ‘How would you know that?’

  ‘Quite simply and easily, so don’t bristle like a cat with her privacy invaded. I saw the painting of her at your uncle’s house. She was very lovely and it’s a painting any discerning man would like to have. I offered to buy it—’

  ‘How could you!’ Heron could have hit him, for he said it so very casually, as if money could buy anything that its owner desired.

  ‘How could I not?’ he drawled, his eyes expressionless as they dwelt upon her indignant face. ‘It was there in a library your uncle and his wife never use, surrounded by a lot of calf bound tomes, and so I made him an offer which he accepted with alacrity.’

  ‘I—I don’t believe you!’ Heron felt incredibly shocked that he should want her mother’s painting, and she could not believe that Uncle Saul would part with it.

  ‘Why should I lie to you?’ A tiny glint of mockery came into Edwin Trequair’s eyes. ‘Not everyone has your sense of the rightness of things, and I believe your mother and Saul’s first wife were much alike. He may have felt that it was diplomatic to dispose of the portrait to me. I truly have it, Heron, and now it graces the library at my house, and I do read books.’

  ‘You’re quite unscrupulous, aren’t you?’ Heron sought a word that must scratch the hard soul of the man. ‘Uncle Saul would never have dreamed of selling the portrait if you hadn’t tempted him with money. I believe you search out people’s weaknesses and make use of them!’

  ‘It’s one way to be successful in life,’ he said, finishing his drink. ‘The ballet begins at eight, so we should be on our way to the restaurant. Are you wearing a wrap?’

  ‘Yes.’ She spoke shortly and was half-inclined to tell him what to do with his tickets for the ballet, but when she saw his eyelids droop with a lazy menace over the dark-blue of his eyes she turned on her heel and went into the bedroom. There she replaced the pearls in their case, for they were the ones her mother was wearing in the portrait and it would seem, if she wore them tonight, as if she were trying to look like a reflection of Ruth. Suddenly it seemed more strange than whimsical that he should wish to hang a painting of her mother in his library at the Glass Castle. A tremor of curiosity ran through Heron ... she had known as a schoolgirl that her mother was the sort of woman whom men worshipped, as they worship the Madonna. Collecting at the occasional parties at Memory, distinguished men of the arts and big business, who came like moths to the flame-hair and pale beauty of Ruth Brooks.

  Heron swung her cloak about her shoulders and tried to recall ever seeing Edwin Trequair in those far-off days. He would have been quite youthful then, and Heron had had the oddest feeling the night of Sybil’s party of something vaguely familiar about Trequair ... an intonation of the voice ... a misty recollection of the lean hardness of body. Now, as she picked up her bag and rejoined him in the lounge, she felt curiously like a schoolgirl again, on the fringes of the drama of life and love. Someone untouched as yet by the emotions that awoke desire, or adoration of another human being.

  She felt terribly young and vulnerable in that moment, yet the silver-grey cloak that enwrapped her was like a fine armour against him. Her hair was like flame against the silver, and her eyes were tempestuous, large and grey and filled with the nightlights of the city as they left her flat and he indicated the taxi-cab that stood waiting for them. He held the door and she stepped inside and sank back against the black leather. He joined her and the cab moved forward into the stream of traffic flowing into the West End.

  ‘How London has changed,’ he said, gazing from a window. ‘The old risqué glamour has given way to a risky ride in a blur of exhaust fumes and noise. It has become like any other city ... Tokyo, New York, Paris.’

  ‘And you know them all,’ Heron murmured, sitting cool and straight in her silvery cloak, with about twelve inches of black leather seat between her and her escort.

  ‘I’ve seen them all,’ he corrected her. ‘You have to be born in a city to know it.’

  ‘And which one do you prefer?’ she asked him.

  ‘Paris.’ He said without hesitation. ‘Despite its modern spoliation it still retains a certain flavour ... a tang of wine and dark bread and love in long filmy stockings. Do I shock you, Heron?’

  ‘Do you intend to, Mr. Trequair?’

  ‘I’m really going to insist that you call me Edwin. The use of my first name will help you to relax with me, for right now you’re sitting as tense as if about to visit the dentist.’ As he spoke he closed the gap between them with his lean, dark-coated figure. ‘I took you for a young woman who likes honesty, and yet you don’t like it, do you, that I’m frank with you? That I treat you as an adult instead of an adolescent, and it would be easy enough, for there are twenty years of living and experience between us. I’m going to challenge you to a frank response—if you dislike me so much why are you with me right now?’

  ‘Because I’m hungry,’ she said with sudden flippancy. ‘I suspect that you enjoy good food and I’ve had a few rushed lunches just recently. I’m sure you won’t offer me a cheeseburger, or a pie and Coke.’

  ‘Is that what you live on, young woman?’ He stared down at her in the flicker of the neons, invading the interior of the cab and playing their brash colours over her face. ‘You work all day and most of the evening and you live on cheeseburgers? No wonder you look half-starved.’

  ‘Thank you. No one could accuse you of being over-gallant.’

  ‘Would you prefer to be flattered? Very well, Heron, you have a rare, unaware glamour which has nothing to do with the fashionable dress you’re wearing. It’s inherited, like your bones, your hair, and your Celt white skin. You have a lack of coquetry which doesn’t set my teeth on edge. You are not entirely happy, but happiness goes in leaps and bounds. If, indeed, you were your cousin Sybil, then you would not be with me right now.’

  ‘Yet she’s considered to be much prettier than I, and much livelier.’ Heron looked at him oddly. ‘How do you know I’m not happy? I have all I want, all I need—’

  ‘Nonsense.’ He didn’t cut at her with the denial but almost whispered it, as if it were an endearment. ‘One day, Heron, when you fall in love, you’ll wonder how you could make such a statement.’

  ‘Love isn’t everything—’

  ‘It isn’t love if it isn’t everything.’ And as he spoke the cab pulled into the kerb and there was a discreet glow of lights etching the name of the restaurant, and a uniformed porter stepping forward to ho
ld open the door of the cab as they emerged from it. There was without a doubt a glamour to the moment and Heron was aware of it as she entered Guilbert’s in her silver cloak, the tall, distinguished figure of Edwin Trequair at her side. She felt her pulses quicken with the subtle excitement of the place, for this kind of evening out was rare in the life of a working girl. She allowed her cloak to slide off into the hands of an attendant, and she was pleased she had treated herself to the silk jersey dress in such a chic style, for it made her feel good as she walked with her escort to their table. This was close enough to the orchestra for the music to be heard, but not so close that their conversation would be drowned.

  As soon as they were seated the menus were handed to them, and Heron felt the look which Edwin Trequair directed at her, and when she glanced over the edge of her menu she saw the sardonic lift to his eyebrow.

  ‘The appetizers look good,’ he said, and a smile hovered way down in his eyes. ‘Matje herring, langoustines, caviare, smoked salmon, mountain-smoked ham, vineyard snails. Am I tempting you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted, and realized how very hungry she was, having skipped lunch to go hunting for a dress, and having merely blunted her appetite with a coffee and doughnut at her desk that afternoon.

  ‘Then we’ll have the hors d’oeuvres cart brought to the table and you can have a selection of everything.’ He beckoned the waiter and made his request, and when the sommelier appeared at his other elbow he ordered a wine called Blue Nun. ‘It’s excellent with caviare,’ he said blandly.

  Heron took the hint, but this time she felt amused by his irony rather than annoyed by it. She glanced in the direction of the orchestra and felt a stirring of pleasure in the music and in the atmosphere of Guilbert’s, with its gold-shaded table lamps, its Edwardian decor, and aroma of good food. She knew that men were looking at her, though her gaze was upon the flare of blue flames as crepes suzettes were tossed in a silver pan at a nearby table. She would have been very naive if she hadn’t known that when she took the trouble to contrast a jewel-coloured dress with her hair and her skin she came alive, like a flame, and was a different person from the neat and efficient Temple Court clerk.

  Suddenly she was very curious about her effect on Edwin Trequair and she shifted her glance to him and felt an immediate jolt of the pulses as, she met his eyes directly upon her. She had to speak and the words were more provocative than she meant them to be. ‘What are you thinking, sitting there, staring at me with your Siamese-cat eyes? They are exactly that enigmatic blue colour, and so oddly out of place in your sort of face. You should have dark eyes.’

  ‘Why?’ he murmured. ‘I understand that Lucifer had blue eyes.’

  ‘Is that who you are?’ She gave a breathless little laugh. ‘Well, I shouldn’t be surprised, the way you’ve descended on a quiet seaside town and set all the tongues wagging. Are you planning a Black Mass in the near future?’

  ‘And if I were, witch, would you come to dance for me in your white skin?’

  ‘No, I’d lock all my doors and draw all my curtains and make sure I had a bulb of garlic in the flat.’ She dared his eyes, which were so secretive and mocking and aware of devilish things. ‘I don’t altogether trust you, Mr. Trequair. You make me feel—’

  ‘Like a mouse?’ he drawled. ‘A white mouse hungry for a little Brie, but quivering with suspicion as she pokes forward her pretty nose to take a bite.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m foolish to be suspicious of you,’ she said, flushing slightly. ‘When I saw you at Memory last Saturday night I had the feeling that you’d been there before—no, I don’t mean as a guest of Uncle Saul’s but years ago, when the house belonged to my parents. I felt that you were—’

  ‘An intruder?’ he murmured. ‘Someone from the past daring to return to shake a little dust out of old memories?’

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I’d be naive if I didn’t know why you now have my mother’s portrait in your house. She was very beautiful, and she was faithful to my father, and other men remember that sort of woman. I believe that someone once dubbed her the Madonna and said she had hair and eyes exactly like the original.’

  ‘Yes, blue eyes,’ he said, ‘but not like mine. The religious blue of chapel windows, so speckless that they seemed to let in the sunlight. Yes, she was a beautiful creature, and she has passed on some of that beauty to you, Heron. The slender, wilful, flamy side of it; not the angelic side that made men feel soothed of all care in her company. She was very serene compared to you, all the dangerous little spurts of fire drawn out of her into that wonderful Titian hair. She was truly Titian to look at, but you as yet are unfinished, unfledged, a heron with untried wings.’

  ‘And who are you?’ Heron resented his unsparing frankness, which left her feeling stripped of the sophistication which her jade-coloured dress had provided. ‘The man who plans to teach me how to fly?’

  ‘The hawk and the heron.’ He quirked an eyebrow. ‘Interesting, to say the least—and now comes the hors d’oeuvres cart to provide us with another interesting occupation.’

  The waiter brought it smoothly to the side of their table and on the white-covered surface of the cart there was a colourful and varied selection of appetizers, including a pot of glistening dark caviare, a gourmet appetizer which Heron had once tasted at a wedding and which she had rather liked.

  ‘Dare I mix it with herring and ham?’ she asked.

  ‘Why not, in this age of democracy, when pop stars collect medals from the palace, and dukes of the realm have to turn their castles into holiday camps.’ Edwin’s smile was the very essence of irony, and he nodded at the waiter to supply them with a taster of everything, while the sommelier uncorked their wine and poured a little into a stemmed glass. Edwin tasted that, nodded his approval, and then sat back lazily to wait for the serving to be concluded.

  Heron shot a glance at him and decided once again that he was the most self-contained and certain man she had ever met. He said whatever it pleased him to say, and he flaunted convention with such suavity that he made Heron wonder just how far he meant to go with her.

  The waiters left them and picking up her fork Heron began to eat her food. There was an exquisite edge on her appetite and the food was delicious ... it was five minutes at least before she raised her head and found her host regarding her so intently that she paused with her burdened fork halfway to her lips. ‘You’re really ravenous, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘How often in a week do you go without a proper meal?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t starve myself to be fashionably thin, but often the time seems to rush away and a coffee and a bun have to suffice. But I make up for it at the weekends.’

  ‘What, with double helpings of coffee and buns?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she protested. ‘I can cook, you know. I’m very independent and quite good at looking after myself. You’ve been out of England so long, Mr. Trequair, that you have no idea how emancipated we women have become. We can actually manage our lives without needing the support of a man; we can actually think for ourselves without getting the vapours.’

  ‘Drink your wine,’ he said casually. ‘Yes, I’ve heard all about the revolution of the sexes, and I’ve seen some of it for myself, but I’ll refrain from a comment about it. Mmmm, this caviare is good.’

  ‘It’s terribly expensive.’ She took a sip of her wine, and noticed the glint of gold at his white cuffs, and for the first time she wondered how wealthy he was, and what it felt like not to count the cost of dining de luxe and living in a house like the Glass Castle. It had none of the quiet grace of Memory, but there was a fantastic sort of charm about the place, perched high above the wilder part of Jocelyn’s Beach, with its glass turrets letting in all that sky-water light. It might have been dreamed up by the brothers Grimm, and Heron felt sure that Trequair had bought it in a sardonic mood and was ironically amused by all the speculation that went on about him, and his house.

  ‘Most women like a man to be lavish with his money,’ he draw
led. ‘In which case I shall choose the main course of our meal and you can choose the sweet. Agreed?’

  ‘Overruled,’ she said drily. ‘What are you going to order?’

  ‘Canard au Riesling, with small baked potatoes and sprouts, with gravy, as you are not a young woman who starves herself for the sake of her figure.’

  ‘Sounds divine,’ she said, smiling into her wine. ‘You’re the absolute tuan besar, aren’t you? I bet from a boy you’ve had all your own way and never known a setback in your life!’

  ‘Wrong,’ he said crisply. ‘I’m as self-made as the wool-merchant who built the Castle in which I live. Tell me, what do you think of my Castle?’

  ‘It’s unbelievable,’ she replied. ‘Built as if from the drawing of a child, and yet if the wind blew it off its perch Jocelyn’s Beach would never be the same again. When I was a schoolgirl we used to call it the castle of the ogre.’

  ‘And never has that description been more appropriate, eh?’ He looked so directly at Heron, and read her mind so easily, that the relief of the waiter’s arrival was acute.

  Mr. Edwin Trequair was not an easy man to be with, and yet Heron had to admit to herself that she felt a sense of stimulation in his company; a tingling of acid drops, the sting of fine cold sea-water, and the buzzing of wasps in the apple orchard of Memory, where she used to hide away as a child from the occasional wrath of her father. He had not been an easy man, but after the loss of her mother he had been far worse ... an empty man.