The Glass Virgin

by Catherine Cookson

  At this point he stretched his arm wide and with his fingers stiff he flicked them against one of the eight arms extending from the candelabrum on the table. With a crack like the lock of a pistol closing, it snapped from its support, and when, with its lighted candle, it hit the table, the sound was as if the pistol had been fired.

  She willed her hand to be still, she willed the muscles of her face not to twitch, but the rest of her body was trembling.

  What he said was right. Her father had refused to compete with Cookson’s glass works, and he had been wise for the Cooksons had been a dynasty in glass from the end of the seventeenth century, whereas the Conway-Redford works had been established in Shields for only fifty years. Nevertheless, her father had been an artist in glass, a man who loved glass. He had not, as her husband did, visited the factory once a week, if then, but had ridden daily from the Hall the six miles into Shields for at least forty weeks in the year. He had known all his men by name, and had looked after them, the drunkards and the temperate alike.

  He had first taken her to the works when she was six years old and, fascinated, she had sat and watched a man sitting in a wooden seat blowing down a pipe into some hot liquid that was hanging from the end of it, and a short while later she had seen a beautiful red bottle born. Her father always gave his men the best materials; his sand came from the sandstone dug out of the forests of Fontainebleau in France and from Alum Bay in the Isle of Wight; not for him the sand from Wales, Bedfordshire or Lancashire. On other visits she had watched fine sand being purified still further, washed in water, burnt to rid it of impurities, then sieved to further purity until not a trace of iron, lime, alumina, chalk or magnesium was left. She had longed, when young, to be a boy so that she could handle the tools of the glass factory. But because she couldn’t make glass it wasn’t to say that she couldn’t learn how to make it, and with the encouragement of her father she steeped herself in the books relating to glass making down the centuries. She read of the Venetians, the Syrians, the French refugees who, flying from tyranny and taking refuge in this country, brought back to it the lost art of glass-making. It seemed to her now cruelly ironic that it was through her knowledge of glass that she first met Edmund Lagrange.

  Her father always spent two months of the year in London to give her mother ‘the season’ and also in order that she herself should become accustomed to high society, for although the family of Conway-Redford bore no title, the Redfords on their side could go back three hundred years, whereas on her mother’s side the Conway family was dotted liberally with titles of lords and earls, ladies and countesses.

  It was at the ball given for her eighteenth birthday in their London home that her father brought to her a tall, startlingly beautiful man and introduced him as Edmund Lagrange, someone else who was interested in glass.

  Edmund Lagrange was the third son of a prosperous glassmaker in Surrey. He could discourse on glass most knowledgeably; she was entranced with his knowledge, his voice, his manner and his face; oh yes, his face. That he should need and seek her company appeared to her as something that put all the miracles of the bible into a pale shade. She was plain and she knew it; she also knew that she was intelligent and men did not like women who used their minds, but Edmund Lagrange was different. When her father told her he had asked for her hand she fainted. When, after their London season, they returned home Edmund Lagrange followed and, from a friend’s house thirty miles distant in Cumberland, he courted her. He courted her for six months, and then they were married.

  There were a number of the Lagrange family present at the wedding, all of them apparently extremely happy at Edmund’s choice; relief would have been a better word to apply to the Lagrange family’s reaction, but they called it happiness. They were so happy that Edmund had settled down; they said it in dozens of different ways.

  It wasn’t until the honeymoon was well over that Rosina fully realised why the Lagrange family had been so happy that Edmund was settled, for she discovered quite by accident that he had been disinherited two years previously, that his father had made a public statement that he was not responsible for his third son’s debts. Disilusionment followed quickly; she was soon to learn that she had married an inveterate gambler, a liar, and a man who was in debt to the amount of forty thousand pounds, but it was two years before she discovered that her husband consorted with low women, that he was a frequent visitor to a certain brothel house in Newcastle, and that he maintained a woman in an apartment in Shields. She came upon this knowledge quite by accident. It happened that she had informed her husband that, in company with her mother, she was going to visit the cottage, as they called the ten-roomed house on the edge of the estate, to see how the renovations were proceeding, but they had only walked a quarter of the distance when a thunderstorm burst and they hurried back to the house. Having taken a short cut, they emerged on the south terrace and let themselves in through the French windows which adjoined her father’s study. Their entry must have been drowned by a clap of thunder; it also shut out from them the voices in the next room, until Rosina about to exclaim on the storm, heard her father’s voice raised in anger, saying, ‘You are an utter waster!’

  When she made a move towards the partly open door her mother’s grip on her arm stayed her, and in frozen silence she listened to her father’s denouncement of her husband.

  For months past she had tried to cover up her husband’s misdemeanours, at least those known to her. One thing she knew she must keep from her parents was that her private fortune, even after this short time of marriage, was now almost non-existent. Even so she forgave him his spendthrift habits; but she couldn’t forgive this. This dreadful denouncement spelt the end of her marriage, as she knew marriage, the end of her life.

  From that day the pattern of her existence changed. Her permanent occupancy of another room brought no objection from her husband, and when her father died six months later and her mother moved into the cottage he barely covered his jubilation.

  Her father, after providing amply for her mother, had left the remainder of his fortune to her, but with a proviso: she could not touch either capital or interest until she was thirty years old. He also left to her the pottery, candle and pipe works, but to these, too, he put a proviso; profits over a certain sum made by these factories were to go to her mother. The glass works he left her unconditionally because he knew that it would take all its profits to maintain the Hall and its commitments.

  It had seemed at the time that her father had made sure that for the next eight years her husband would have to work to afford himself the pleasure of gambling and his other pursuits, but John Conway-Redford had underestimated the misplaced ability, the cunning, and above all the innate knowledge his son-in-law had of his wife’s character.

  So it was towards the end of the third year of their marriage, and a full year after being deprived of his wife’s bed, that Edmund Lagrange brought home, late one night, a month-old baby.

  For some time previous to this he had been trying to get Rosina to sign a paper, which would help to ease his present desperate financial situation. All he required of her was a signature to confirm the sale of the pottery works, but no, she had remained obdurate. Of course, he could have forced her hand; all she had was his legally, but further pressure on her would anger her mother, and he did not want another set of provisos when she died, which he thought might be soon if the rapidity of her breathing was anything to go by. But on this particular night, drunk and frustrated, he had defied caution and, thinking up the greatest humiliation he could heap on his wife, he had brought to her a child that he knew was his. He had burst into her room at dead of night, awakening her from sleep, and almost flinging the bundle on to the bed he had cried, ‘My daughter, Annabella Lagrange. I’m bringing her up in this house. What have you to say about that?’

  The candlelight danced madly as he waved the heavy candlestick back and forward
and she had shrunk into her pillows away from him, away from the wriggling thing sunken deep into the eiderdown, and she stayed like that until, roughly pulling the shawl from the child, he tipped it on to its face, smothering its cries as he did so. It was then her hands automatically went to right it, but stopped before they reached it, and she brought them together and held them joined under her chin as she stared at this fiend of a man. She stared at him, her eyes not flinching from his drunken embittered gaze until the fact that the child was no longer crying drew her eyes to it again, and then her hands were flinging it over, lifting it, shaking it. She had never held a child in her arms in her life but instinct led her to shake the breath back into this one, and when short, hiccoughing wails told her she had succeeded she was further startled by her husband dropping the candlestick on to the bed table, then throwing himself backwards across the foot of her bed and laughing like a madman might laugh. When he raised himself he was still laughing, and between spluttering gasps he pointed his finger at her, crying, ‘You’ve got a daughter. What do you think about that? You, a virgin, have given birth to a child; because you’re still a virgin, aren’t you, Rosina? If you had ten men a night you’d still be a virgin, because you know something, you’re not a woman, your father didn’t beget a woman, he blew out a piece of glass. And now the glass has given birth; you’re a mama, Rosina, YOU’RE A MA-MA. You’ve got a little glass virgin.’

  He had gone reeling out of the room, leaving the child in her arms. She had still heard his laughter as he threaded his way along the gallery to the Old Hall which he had refurnished and made his own.

  And it was almost as he had said, she had given birth to a child, for from that night, try as she would, she couldn’t get the child out of her mind. And she did try. For the next two months she left it solely in Alice’s care, except for looking in on it at times, times when she thought she would not be observed.

  Then one day he informed her that he was going to take the child back to its mother, and her reaction had been as automatic as her heartbeat. ‘You can’t!’ she said. ‘I want her to stay.’ And knowing that anything she wanted he would do his best to deprive her of she had pleaded, ‘Please, please let her stay,’ and it was then that he knew that the object which he had used to inflict pain and humiliation on her would prove a weapon, the like of which no calculated cunning of his could have devised.

  As the years went on he used his weapon to better and greater advantage. If at times she proved stubborn he had only to put a pen before her and casually mention Annabella’s name and all went smoothly.

  But now, after seven years of signing her name, there were no more papers left to sign except those connected with the glass works, and if she ever signed the final papers on the works, Redford Hall would be no more . . .

  He was as aware of this as she was, and from time to time he made an effort which took the form of visiting the works daily for a week or so, harassing those in charge with the instructions to harass in their turn those under them.

  Left to itself and those who cared for it, the glass works went steadily on keeping up the same output each year, bringing in approximately the same income, which to a man of Edmund Lagrange’s taste was merely survival money, for he would like to have been known as another ‘Lambton of Durham’, ‘jogging along’ on seventy thousand pounds a year. But at this particular moment he was virtually penniless.

  He now came to the table and leaning over it towards her he demanded, ‘Have you any idea of the expenses incurred this year?’

  She swallowed deeply in her throat before she replied quietly, ‘As I haven’t seen the books this year, or for the last four years, you wouldn’t expect me to know the extent of the dues.’

  He remained in his bent position, staring at her, then growled, ‘Accounts, ledgers, they’re not a woman’s business.’

  ‘Then the expenditure is not my business either.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ His voice ended on a soft high note of enquiry; then he went on mockingly, ‘Then I’m going to do you a favour, I’m going to let it be your business. Why do you think I need eight thousand pounds, and now? Simply because that is the amount needed to meet the creditors. And let me tell you, it will merely pacify them, not pay them off. But if they’re not pacified, and at once, they will restrain . . . Now, my dear Rosina, will you make it your business?’

  Her hand went slowly to her throat. She had thought he wanted the money partly to erect a separate works about which he had talked for some years now. This was to be a glass works that used up broken glass, remade it and sold it cheaply. Numbers of glass companies resorted to this practice although it was forbidden by law. It was also an offence to use the waste from crown glass although this waste went a good way towards improving the quality of bottle glass.

  The restrictions imposed on the glass industry had irked her father, especially when in his time the Excise dues had been so high that to do good business meant bringing your firm to ruin, but on her husband, although now free of the Excise restrictions, they had a frustrating, almost maddening effect.

  But eight thousand pounds! What had happened to the firm’s profits? She drew her hand down over her flat breast until it came to rest on the silver buckle at her waist and she gripped this as if for support as she said, ‘The profits, what has become of them?’

  ‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’ He raised his eyes upwards but at the same time was aware that she had closed hers tight against his blasphemy, and at this point he warned himself to go easy with her. Yet he found it almost an impossibility to resist hurting her, taunting her, even when there was a big issue at stake, like now.

  He took out a scented handkerchief from the cuff of his coat and mopped his brow; then, walking back to the top of the table, he lowered himself down into his chair again, and, his voice calm, he said, ‘Men have to be paid, and everything is dearer, labour, materials, everything. Kelp has gone up, even the boat dues that carry it have been raised. Everything, I tell you . . . ’

  His voice trailed away and he leant his elbow on the edge of the table and rested his chin in the palm of his hand and with a good imitation of resigned calmness, he said, ‘If I haven’t the money by the end of the month, then I’m afraid it’ll be the finish.’

  A silence fell upon the room; it seemed to still the air. The candlelight ceased to flicker, the only movement was the grease leaving the wick and spilling in teardrops into the silver linings of the glass holders.

  He had his eyes deeply downcast, and he kept them like this, telling himself to have patience, to make no move, and he didn’t until the rustle of her gown told him she was rising to her feet. And then he, too, rose, and with the courtesy that might have been expected of a man who had partaken of an agreeable meal in the company of his wife, he went before her to the door and after opening it he stood aside and held it in his hand, like a lackey might have done, until she had passed through. He did not follow her for he knew that she would be making straight for her room. The door closed, he returned to the table and poured himself another large measure of brandy, which he drank in two gulps; then sitting back in his chair he pressed his lips tightly together and patted them with his fingertips.

  It was as good as done and he hadn’t had to dangle Annabella in a noose before her eyes. If she had proved more obdurate then he would have been forced to use pressure through the child. But today he’d had enough of Annabella; even the mention of her name tonight would have played on his nerves. That business this afternoon had shaken him. What if, inadvertently, she should let slip to Rosina what she had seen? No doubt Rosina would leave the house, even ask for a divorce, and he didn’t want that because his wife was the pipeline to the only remaining well, her mother.

  Rosina was well aware that he held gaming parties in his quarters, and if she suspected anything else she gave no sign, because she had no proof. He had been very circumspect, he considered
, about that side of his life, always making sure she was miles away before he entertained any female. It never crossed his mind to think that one of his staff might betray him. You did not cut off the hand that supplied your meat and drink and did both generously. But this cynical philosophy did not extend to Alice, because she, given the chance, would cut his throat and smile while about it. It was fortunate that she always attended her mistress.

  He went out of the dining room, across the hall, and into the drawing room, and there, sitting at a little desk near the window, he made a few notes. On a piece of paper he wrote down: Works, five thousand pounds. This, not eight thousand, was the sum he required to meet the outstanding debts of the business. But he had other debts equally important.

  He next wrote: GB, a thousand guineas.

  Boston would have to be content with that for the time being, the damned upstart. He either had the luck of ten devils or he was cheating. Yet what need had he to cheat, son of a got-up scissors manufacturer who had risen from the grindstone and was now lording it in a country mansion, aping the gentry, opening the doors of exclusive clubs with a millionaire’s key.

  The next entry on the paper read: Leighton, three hundred guineas.

  This entry brought a stir of excitement into his bowel because it was for the purchase of a new hunter. Leighton, damn him, wouldn’t let the beast out of the stable unless the cash was in his hand, and for the past six months he had wanted this horse with an intensity equal to that of his desire for a woman.