The Silver Touch (39 page)

As time went on she half expected Peter to relent, knowing what it must mean to him to deny a talented woman her full potential, but he remained totally unbending in his attitude. Anne-Olympe polished meticulously day in and day out, as well as carrying out other minor tasks that any apprentice could have done at the end of his first year. She polished the articles made for the forthcoming exhibition and, having no quarrel with silver, took immense pride in making every piece look its sparkling best before it was wrapped in chamois and placed in its own rosewood box.

‘Your exhibits will excel above all the others, ma’am,’ she declared enthusiastically. She could not bring herself to address her mother-in-law in any other way, for there was a barrier between them that quashed a more familiar term. It was as if this great craftswoman and her second son had joined forces against her for a reason entirely beyond her comprehension. Frequently Hester was at least communicative but Peter avoided speaking to her except when necessary. When she had made the announcement that she and Jonathan were expecting a baby, he actually turned away and went from the room as if he were deaf and neither wished to know or hear what she had said. Sarah, who had been present at the time, had stared after him with one of her eerie looks before coming forward to offer her felicitations. Efforts to make a friend of Sarah had not been successful, but at least Peter did not stop his wife visiting Number 84 even if he never came himself.

The long-awaited exhibition drew near. Peter would handle all enquiries and deal with the business aspects, which would keep him in London for the week. Sarah, nervous of being without him, was to stay with Letticia and Richard at their home. Letticia, who never had patience with anybody’s moods, was determined there should be no temperamental nonsense under her roof.

The workshop was left to Linney’s charge and on the eve of the exhibition Joss and Jonathan unpacked the articles Hester had chosen to show. Stands draped with velvet stood ready. She had either made or worked on almost every piece, only the large tureens, coffee-urns, dishes and wine-fountains coming from her sons’ hands.

As the articles were unpacked, all but the heavier pieces were handed to her and these arranged at her direction. The rest she placed herself. First came an epergne. Entirely hand-raised, it was a splendid centre-piece for any table, the baskets on each of the branches petal-fluted with a band of hand-piercing, festooning on the central base and legs. There was a set of goblets that relied almost entirely on their lovely lines for impact, their only decoration a bead mount on the base and a complementary mount on the top of the stems, another characteristic that was fast showing itself in her work. Teapots had become larger since drinking tea had first become fashionable and she was showing several sets in the octagonal style that she also favoured in mustard-pots and cruets. Her coffee-pots were belly-shaped with their own cream jugs and sugar-vases, often on trays, and the beautiful curves of the handles of her pairs of sauceboats spelled out her name to those already familiar with her work.

She set her favourite small articles out on tables by themselves. They made up the type of work she had always preferred and showed her versatility. There was a shell snuff-box with a flush lid and several other charmingly fashioned boxes. There were handsome little salt-cellars, some oval in shape, and all fitted with glass liners that showed off with a sapphire glow the pierced decoration at which she was a master. Besides a range of wine labels was a wine-strainer with a gadroon border that was unusual for her, but she was experimenting with it while continuing to use feather-edge decoration on her flatware, as a range of her spoons, knives and four-pronged forks showed, together with marrow scoops and the soup ladles with the round bowls that were typical of her. Taking pride of place was a snuffer tray, similar to the design that had been all-important to her as the climax of the year’s work, and she had given it the extraordinary flow of motion for which she aimed in all her pieces. With the wing-like theme of its gallery it looked as if it might take off into the air from the crimson velvet on which it lay.

When all was ready, she stood in the middle of the chamber and rotated slowly to view it all. Her thought went back to that day long ago when Jack Needham had taken her to the Goldsmiths Hall and her eyes had been opened to the extent of the full beauty of silver.

As she had anticipated, James was the first to arrive at the exhibition next morning. He came through the open double doors, which were flanked by strong-armed beadles for security, and beamed all the way across the chamber as he approached, olive-green coat-tails swinging, his cream brocade waistcoat well expanded.

‘What a day this is!’ he greeted her, pressing her hand fondly as he kissed her fingers.

‘I’m glad that you of all people should be here.’

They strolled together as he viewed the displays. Between praising certain pieces he liked best, he outlined something to her that he had been considering for quite a while.

‘I’m thinking of reopening my old home again in Bunhill Row. I need to relax more than ever these days at the week’s end and the journey to my other country seat is long and gets more tedious every time. What say you to my idea?’

‘It’s excellent!’ She felt that the house needed its rightful owner again, apart from the pleasure of seeing James more often. The last time the mansion had breathed with movement the closed and shuttered windows had kept a secret. She had had to tell him of the Thornes’ disclosure that William and Sarah had made use of his home. For her sake, he had been remarkably tolerant over it, but he had been thoroughly displeased. Although he had waived aside the responsibility she felt on her part for leaving the keys where they could be borrowed and duplicated, she had insisted on paying for the repairs to a chair knocked over in a romping game and the replacing of a cracked pier-glass. Her own servants had laundered the bed linen and put other matters to rights. ‘I shall look forward to your return, James.’

‘Then everything is settled.’

Not long after Christmas when the roads were hard and frosty, a band of servants returned to the Esdaile mansion to put it to rights and take up residence in preparation for their master’s coming. When James arrived he did not know how he had been able to live away from it so long, particularly since his quarrel with Hester had long since been healed and enriched into a loving friendship that he valued above all else. Irritated by much of the mansion’s artificial splendour, he installed workmen to restore the old rooms again to their original state. When it was done he invited Hester for supper and there began for them a pattern of peaceful evenings in each other’s company during which they played backgammon, chess or cards.

These times with her were in sharp contrast to the busy life he led in the city, civic responsibilities ever with him, and he went less and less to his other country seat, for his sons by Mary were now in business with him and she never missed him in the least. It was a totally amicable arrangement. Whenever he and his wife met they were always pleased to see each other and invariably had a jovial ale-drinking session together. When they parted it was always without a backward glance from either of them.

As Hester had foreseen, fame came quickly to her as a result of the exhibition. The Church, with its long tradition dating back to early mediaeval times of commissioning beautiful silver, became her patron. Joss was soon in his element producing chalices and salvers, candlesticks and other altar pieces to his mother’s designs. Although Hester made some of the pieces herself when these ecclesiastical commissions came in like a flood-tide, she continued with her policy of letting her sons do the work they liked best. As was to be expected, Jonathan always elected to make the most ornate dinner services or anything else of elaborate design when Hester had to comply more with a client’s wishes than she would have wished. Yet her fluid lines carried those pieces through and retained an honest beauty that a less masterful designer would not have managed to achieve.

Anne-Olympe gave birth to a son who was named after his father. Not even able to polish during the last month of her pregnancy, she made her own plans as to how it should be in future. On the north side of the house was a large garden room, little used for its poor location in relation to the sun, and in a
fait
accompli
when Jonathan was in London for three days she had it made into a workshop. It had everything she needed from benches to a charcoal hearth. Unable to touch any money of her own, all she owned having become Jonathan’s upon their marriage, she had called on her father to finance her. His opinion of his son-in-law had deteriorated somewhat and he was willing enough to conspire against him, letting her have some seasoned stakes and many other items from stores in his own workshop.

‘Now you’ll be a goldsmith again,’ he said with pride in her as they viewed the finished workshop together. ‘I’ll send you all the work you want.’

‘No, Father,’ she declined firmly. ‘I could never work in competition with the Batemans, not even for you. This is to be an extension of their workshop. Here I shall do whatever work they allow me while at the same time I’ll be near my baby. It is how Hester managed when she was my age.’

‘Do you want me to stay until that husband of yours returns?’

‘No. I’m not afraid of him.’

‘Does your mother-in-law know why workmen have been here?’

‘She may have guessed from the hammering and banging but she never comes here uninvited.’

‘That’s a mercy! I could never have lived next door to your mother’s mother because her nose would have been into everything.’

Jonathan came home with a nosegay of flowers for Anne-Olympe, full of smiles and more satisfied with the social aspect of his time in London than in the business he had conducted. He had enjoyed his escape from the domesticity of married life and hoped that Peter, who ran the Bateman enterprise with keen efficiency, would send him again when the need arose.

‘I’ve something to show you,’ she said, inhaling the scent of the nosegay as she led the way to the rear end of the house.

His jaw dropped at the sight presented to him. ‘What the devil — !’

Then, as she explained, whatever anger he might have felt quite evaporated. Already burdened with the sense of guilt that most men experience when they return home after being unfaithful to their wives for the first time, he felt almost bound to give in to her in this matter. ‘Well, I don’t approve of what you’ve done,’ he stated heavily, ‘but I accept that you will never be completely happy if I don’t support you in this move. I’ll see you get all the work you want from the commissions received.’

She threw her arms around him in a kiss, scattering petals from the nosegay, the flowers’ perfume hiding another that clung to his clothes. In his own mind he began to see that her dedication to work could be to his advantage and he laughed as he swept her up in his arms, his desires renewed.

Hester was relieved when shown the new workshop. It was the perfect solution to keeping Peter and Anne-Olympe apart. They hardly needed to see each other any more. She admired her daughter-in-law’s bold action for it came close to what she might have done in similar circumstances, but she could not quell the hostility in herself that came from knowing what this young woman had done, all inadvertently, to Peter. He was a changed man. Even in grief his good nature had stayed open and kindly towards others, but now he could be quickly irritable and was intolerant towards Jonathan at all times. Only with Sarah did he retain the same endless patience that she had never managed to destroy.

‘I insist on Peter seeing my workshop.’ Anne-Olympe’s mouth was set determinedly. ‘He has made it clear he doesn’t want to visit my home socially but he would force himself to go to an enemy’s premises if business made it necessary and that is my claim to half an hour of his time.’

Not all her bitter words were repeated to Peter but he agreed to go anyway, choosing a time when he was sure Jonathan would be there. Instead, he found himself alone with her. In her triumph at getting him there, which seemed a kind of victory to her in the mostly silent battle that was waged between them, she almost danced ahead of him around the workshop, her lovely profile showing this way and that as she indicated what she wanted him to observe, the tangle of her jet-black curls spinning about in a measure of its own. In her pride in her new possessions, she was not aware that he looked only at her. The last thing he expected was that she should stop dead in her tracks and turn with a swirl of her striped silk skirt, almost catching him unawares. He hardened his face in the nick of time.

‘I forgot to show you an old chasing hammer hanging by the door. My father thinks it dates back to the twelfth century and he has given it to me.’

‘What a magnificent gift. I should like to see it.’

She darted across to take it down from the wall and hand it to him. ‘It has a good feel to it.’

He nodded, weighing it in his hand. ‘Centuries of our skill have become absorbed into this tool. Would you allow me to use it one day?’

‘Keep it as long as you wish.’

He shook his head quickly. ‘I’ll not take if from you before you’ve had a chance to use it.’

She took it back from him and held it to her. ‘Then you’re going to give me work. Did Jonathan persuade you?’

‘There was no need of persuasion and in any case I always make up my own mind on anything that concerns the business.’ He nodded at her surroundings. ‘You have the space here and the facilities you need without over-crowding the main workshop. In the morning I’ll send Linney across with the discs you’ll need for an inkstand.’