The Tower Room, page 27
‘It’s wonderful!’ cried Annabel. ‘By golly, Sarah, just look at the size of this room — and the worktops, and the cupboards, and the shelves, and loads of slatted ones for drying your pieces before firing — and adjustable easels for design work — and this marvellous, marvellous light!’ She flung her arms round Daniel and hugged him.
He laughed. ‘Then it’s been worth waiting for?’
‘I’ll say!’
‘And you, Sarah?’
She was starry-eyed, speechless, but her expression said it all. If only briefly her depression was eased. Then she said breathlessly, ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘You don’t have to. I just want both of you to work in an atmosphere you’ll enjoy.’ He couldn’t say that what he particularly looked forward to was knowing that she would be here in the abbey for long spells, closer than she was in the cottage on the other side of the lake. He could not pinpoint the moment when he had fallen in love with her, but he did know that he loved her more than he had loved any woman before, and he no longer reminded himself of the gap in their ages for there seemed none when they were together — which was always too briefly but, hopefully, would increase in the days to come.
He would also have the enjoyment of coming up here to see her at work and watch its development. Clive Bellingham’s diagnosis of the right field for her had been brilliant, but he thrust reminders of that young man aside.
He said briskly, ‘Weekly supplies of materials will be brought up for you. Similarly, all heavy goods will be carried down. You’ll be able to phone direct to any department in the main buildings — that’s being installed this week. This other door leads into the abbey so don’t be startled if I sometimes come in that way. My brother occupies the ground floor but you needn’t worry about disturbing him or him disturbing you. The stone walls and floors are thick, shutting out sound. Warm and serviceable floor covering for this room will be fitted before you move in. Only within the abbey have oak floors replaced stone and the walls panelled to make it more home-like.’
Home-like? he thought. Once it was, but no longer.
He said pragmatically, ‘Now I’ll leave you two to look around, unless you’d like to see the new buildings as far as they’ve got? Hobson and Le Fevre and the others are over there now.’
Sarah longed to stay. In this high, round room she felt near the skies, which faced her whichever way she turned. The moments when she had gazed at this tower across distant fields, awed and enchanted and wishing she could see inside, came back to her — and now she was actually here, capturing a dream. Slowly, she turned in a complete circle, unaware that Daniel was watching her until she finished up facing him. His eyes remained on her, and he was smiling. She had never noticed the curve of his mouth before, the gentleness of it, and the kindness, and the warmth, and something else she could not define but which someone more sophisticated would have recognised as the sensuousness of love.
The sound of Annabel’s voice echoed from the stairs, accompanied by her flying feet. ‘Come on, come on! I’m dying to see Jacques’ new quarters … ’. Then a pause and a break in her eager descent. ‘I hope they’re not too far away because I need to consult with him frequently. Come on, you two!’
Daniel called back, ‘They’re only a brief walk beyond the east paddock, close to the abbey side of the lake — handy for both of you.’
‘You’ve thought of everything!’ Annabel shouted, and her racing footsteps went on.
Reluctantly, Sarah moved toward the stairs. She wanted to linger in this tower room. She wished she could work on the models of young Ben here, but it was a strict rule that a free choice item to be submitted for a student’s final diploma had to be produced at the Design School in the course of normal work, along with stipulated examination pieces. Preliminary drawings and plans for the free choice item could be executed as part of homework, but had to be approved by a student’s tutor when completed. This morning they had not been going well, and now Sarah wanted to rush back to the summerhouse to retrieve them. She was convinced that in this room they would come to life.
Daniel sensed her hesitation. ‘What is it, Sarah? Are you wanting to stay awhile?’
‘More than that!’ All hint of her earlier depression had gone. There was a zest about her now. ‘To tell the truth, I was struggling with important sketches in the summerhouse this morning, sketches which have to be approved by the college before my free choice piece can be included in my final diploma exams. But here — in this room — I know I could produce them well.’
‘Then come back this afternoon. You’ll be disturbed by no one, but in such an unlikely event you can truthfully say that you’re here at my invitation. And encouragement,’ he added with a smile.
He held out his hand to help her down the twisting stairs. She had no need of it, but accepted it nonetheless, withdrawing only when they reached the foot. Outside, Annabel was almost dancing with impatience. Flinging her arms round Sarah, she whirled her into a jig, crying, ‘Isn’t it marvellous? Perfectly, perfectly marvellous!’
*
It was a couple of hours before the group had toured the layout of the new potbank, lingering in half-erected buildings and in ancient ones which had been there since the abbey had been built and were now skilfully modernised.
Jacques was excited and impressed by the new throwing quarters — brick-built and, like the rest, spaciously designed. They were also only a short walk from the tower via the east paddock and across a rustic bridge spanning a stream, then along a path skirting the west side of the lake, so contact was easy. ‘Wedgwood’s Etruria Works had nothing on this,’ Annabel enthused. ‘Aren’t you thrilled, Jacques?’ She slipped her arm through his. ‘I am. You deserve it so much.’
Her head accidentally brushed his shoulder and his hand touched her hair. Sarah saw it and felt their happiness and was pleased for them. She wanted Jacques to replace Bruce Frenshaw in her friend’s affections because she herself recalled incidents revealing unlikeable aspects of Bruce’s character — his quick desertion to avoid becoming involved in an embarrassing scene on that memorable New Year’s Eve, and his premature rejection of a lowly apprentice from his splendid Lanchester rather than be seen arriving with her at the potbank.
These pinpricks returned now, but more sharply, reviving the uneasiness Clive had left her with — his ill-concealed reluctance, not only to enter Mabel’s shoddy place but his shock on learning her identity and his unwillingness to continue to the hospital from the doctor’s surgery. ‘Did we really have to go there?’ he had said later. ‘Couldn’t we have left it to the ambulance men to take her?’ And throughout supper, she had sensed his desire to be gone, even more so later when faced with Kate’s news. Courtesy had made her accompany him to the door, but she had been longing to be alone with Kate, to hear more about her father and his childhood and growing-up years. Memories of him wrung her heart. In the night she had wept for him. That he had been illegitimate did not matter, but all that he had been denied and tragically suffered did.
She had wept quietly, so Kate should not hear.
*
When Sarah set out her drawing equipment in the tower room early in the afternoon following Daniel Frenshaw’s suggestion, and set Kate’s alarm clock for three-thirty to give her time to get home and change before going to the hospital to see her mother, the ambience of the place claimed her. As if inspired, she covered sheet after sheet of cartridge paper with pictures of young Ben, so lifelike that in her mind she could almost feel the smoothly textured clay which she would use to form the roundness of his cheeks and the chubbiness of his chin and the pertness of his childish nose. Studies of his sturdy limbs then followed automatically, for although she had planned to produce only close-ups of his head, she had a feeling that eventually she would produce lively statues of his romping young body.
Confidence replaced yesterday’s uncertainty; she became lost to time and the world. Even the distant thud of a door failed to disturb her, neither did the sound of footsteps far below until their echo became sharp, and rising, and then swift and staccato as they entered the room and stopped dead.
‘What the devil are you doing here? And how dare you use this room?’
It was Cynthia Frenshaw, looking elegantly dishabille in a casual dress which, partially buttoned up, looked as if it had been thrown on in a hurry, confident that she would meet no one. Her usually immaculate hair was ruffled and badly smudged lipstick had made a mess of her mouth. Not until later did Sarah remember these things, and ponder on them. Right now she was conscious only of frustration because this startling entry had caused her to jerk, making the charcoal she was using slither heavily across her drawing, ruining it.
‘Didn’t you hear me, Sarah Willcox?’ Cynthia stood with casually folded arms, hiding the unbuttoned gap.
‘I’m here at your husband’s invitation. As for what I am doing … ’ Sarah held out a handful of sketches. ‘You can see for yourself, Mrs Frenshaw.’
No ‘ma’am’, and no apology. Carefully plucked eyebrows rose. The tall, slim figure swept to the door leading into the private quarters of the abbey, but before closing it behind her, Cynthia Frenshaw looked back.
‘I don’t believe a word of it. My husband would make no such concession to an outsider.’
The door closed sharply behind her.
Twenty-One
Because her final exams were drawing near, Sarah had to turn her back on the sculpture she was producing secretly at home and which had aroused Clive’s passing curiosity. She found it hard to keep it under covers and to content herself with regular check-ups on its condition. The remarkable thing was that Kate never asked what the covers concealed, although she took a lively interest in everything else Sarah worked on, from the early exercises set in class and practised at home, to the lively animals she made for Pru’s children — inevitably broken if they managed to lay their eager hands on them before Sarah could get them biscuit-fired at the Design School, and that always meant waiting until there was a spare corner in one of the kilns.
But now the oncoming diploma exams obsessed her. As soon as the last bell rang for the day, she would cover her classwork and leave by a rear entrance to avoid any chance encounter with Clive. She had found a convenient spot in which to leave her bicycle so she could be off and away without hindrance. It was also far from the official bicycle storage for students, where he might possibly look for her. The time would come when she would be ready to talk to him again, but for the present there was nothing to say. She was sure he felt the same.
There she was wrong.
‘At last I’ve spotted where you hide your bike,’ his voice said behind her as she stacked textbooks into the saddlebag one day. ‘Cunning place, this, well away from all the rest, but not intended for students.’
‘I leave it here to avoid delay.’
‘Or to avoid me.’
‘Are you surprised?’
‘No. Disappointed. I’ve been wanting to see you. I hurt you, I know, but it was impossible to hide how I felt.’
‘I know how you felt — embarrassed and shocked. Not because your grandfather turns out to have been mine illegitimately, though that’s bad enough from the “respectable” point of view, I suppose, but because of my mother and my background and my upbringing, all so inferior to your own.’
‘Sarah — please — ’
She gave him a compassionate glance. ‘Don’t feel contrite, Clive. I still don’t like the way you felt but I do understand it because never in your life have you been poor, or mixed with people who were.’
‘But you’ve risen above it. I admire you for that.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ she murmured. Although she knew the patronage in his voice was unintentional, it jarred, but the gentle irony of her tone was lost on him.
He said confidently, ‘So now you must move in with me. Reject your past completely.’
She gasped. ‘You mean turn my back on my people? My grandmother? My mother? I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’
She put a foot on the bicycle pedal. He tried to waylay her and a momentary flash of memory winged back to a wet night and Joe Boswell doing the same thing. She said quietly, ‘Don’t delay me, Clive. I’m going home.’
‘I want you in mine. I insist that you move in.’
He uses that word ‘insist’ too often, she thought, but answered lightly, ‘Wouldn’t a situation like that be bordering on something like incest? Or does the wrong side of the blanket and skipping a generation make it acceptable?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Even first cousins marry.’
‘But we are not first cousins and marriage isn’t what you have in mind. What you’re asking me to do is out of the question because nothing could make me turn my back on my grandmother, whom I love, or my mother, whom I pity. When she married again I longed to get away. At that time I was too young to be able to, but eventually I did. That’s all in the past and I am well content with the present.’
He gave a resigned shrug. ‘A short while ago you suggested we should carry on as we were. Good friends, I suppose you meant. If you still want that, I’ll have to accept it, I suppose. For the time being,’ he finished under his breath.
‘It will mean accepting everything else — all that embarrasses you but is part of my life. You probably think it strange that a man as rich and as cultured as Daniel Frenshaw is the closest friend Kate and I have and that he doesn’t mind her illiteracy and her background. That’s because he likes her for the woman she is. A man such as he would never have treated her the way Joseph Bellingham did — using her and then discarding her along with a beautiful gown and a rare necklace, neither of which he was interested in keeping. They were nothing but stage props to him. Believe me, I would never wear that gown again but for the fact that Kate loves to see me in it.’
He answered impatiently, ‘All this has nothing to do with us.’
But Daniel has everything to do with it, particularly with me …
The thought halted her. When had she begun to be aware of Daniel as more than a respected employer? She could point to no exact moment because the change had been imperceptible, its roots deepening.
She said sincerely, ‘Clive, you know I appreciate all you’ve done for me, discovering where my ability lay and encouraging me and helping me and believing in me. I’ll never forget any of it and one day, I swear, I’ll achieve all you predicted for me and I hope you’ll be proud. But let’s face facts — we met at what was a crossroads for me and a crossroads for you. We’ve been important to each other but the story ends there because there’d be no happiness in moving on to a situation which satisfied one of us and not the other.’
He had no answer. This wasn’t the shy, immature, ignorant girl he had first met. Ruefully, he watched her cycle away. Just before she was out of sight she turned and waved. It’s over, she thought with a touch of sadness mixed equally with gladness.
He waved in return. I’ll get her back, he decided, confident as ever.
*
As she turned through Dunmore Abbey’s open gates Sarah was forced to draw aside to allow an arriving taxi to pass. She caught a brief glimpse of a woman passenger but felt no curiosity until, dismounting at the cottage, she saw the vehicle drive on round the lake and up the distant approach to the abbey. So a neighbour’s cottage was not its destination, as she had assumed, although the estate workers didn’t normally drive around in taxis. At the same time she thought how agog with curiosity Kate would be. Her grandmother took a lively interest in the activities of her neighbours, but the peak of her week was taking tea in the housekeeper’s sitting room at the abbey, and reciprocating on the woman’s free day. They were now firm friends, Kate respecting Hannah Bradley because she never discussed her employers and Hannah respecting Kate because she never asked questions about them.
Even at this distance Sarah had a view of the sweeping approach to the abbey and the taxi stopping at the wide front steps. Across the span of water she also saw a figure climb out. It was discernible as that of a stout, middle-aged woman who had some difficulty in descending and who then turned as if waiting for someone to follow. After a minute, a young girl emerged slowly. Even at this distance she seemed unwilling. In the same way she mounted the abbey’s steps behind the woman, who looked over her shoulder once or twice, seemingly urging her on.
Sarah turned and wheeled her bicycle to the rear of the cottage. Before going indoors she went to the wash-house and looked at her abandoned model. Her fingers itched to continue working on it, but she resisted. Tomorrow would be the first of three examination days. She had the technical side to swot up tonight because it would be the subject of the first day’s examination paper — questions on varied clays and their individual constituents, on the appropriate degrees of thickness and weight for modelling with earthenware, terracotta, china, stoneware and porcelain, on the avoidance of ‘undercutting’ on models intended for mould-casting so that the mould could be finally removed without dragging away projecting pieces of the work and ruining it, and finally on the correct firing temperatures for varied types of clay.
The second morning would be an oral examination dealing with the chemical ingredients for a number of glazes, their mixing and application, and the student’s personal choice of suitably blended oxides for colouring a range of unglazed articles placed before them. And the third day would be most crucial of all — the examination of ceramic models the student had produced in class, some being of set subjects and others of the student’s own design. From these, the finest work would be chosen for display in the building’s main hall, as Annabel’s had been and as Sarah prayed her portrait models of young Ben would be.
*
Kate was in a quandary. Determined not to bother Sarah at a time like this, she kept her disturbing news to herself. Mabel and her problems would just have to wait. To Sarah’s gratitude, familiar as she was with her grandmother’s attitude to her daughter-in-law since her marriage to Boswell, Kate made a point of visiting Mabel in hospital whenever Sarah was unable to, but now Mabel had been moved to the recuperative place beyond Hanley, too far for Sarah to visit in between working and studying, and beyond the physical ability of Kate to travel alone. But today Annabel had arrived unexpectedly and driven the old lady to and from the convalescent home — so typical of the lass, Kate thought gratefully. And today Mabel had felt well enough to talk and Kate was uncharacteristically silent all the way home.
