The Crystal Cage (17 page)

‘I should have sent a message, Mr Royde. I apologise again. I regret that I will not have the time to visit Hyde Park. However, my husband is sure to take me in the next few days and I will communicate through him any further ideas that I have.’

So stiff, so formal. She was hardly the same woman. He took a breath and tried to match her formality.

‘That will be most helpful, Mrs Renville. I came this morning merely to ascertain your wishes and also to show you these.’

He drew his portfolio from out of the battered leather bag that had done him service since he first left Dorset and extracted a small number of sheets. He was careful to choose illustrations completed since he met her, those most redolent of her home region. ‘I believe you expressed a desire to view some of my designs for decorative tiles.’

She was clearly surprised. This was something she had not expected. But she was also intrigued.

He went on as smoothly as he could. ‘Naturally I would not wish to interrupt your morning, but if you would care to look through them at a more convenient time, I am happy to leave them with you. A servant perhaps could be entrusted to return them to Mr de Vere’s office.’

She had begun slowly to leaf through the pages as he was talking.

‘These are from your portfolio?’

‘They are. I was wondering if you thought any might suit the design we have agreed.’

He made sure the ‘we’ was there. She leafed through a few more sheets, clearly engrossed. He waited without speaking, watching her every fleeting expression. At last she looked up.

‘These are wonderful.’ She was suddenly animated and the stiffness dissolved. ‘They remind me of Verona. They are the colours of Lombardy.’

‘I fear they may not be entirely right for the Renville pavilion, but I am happy that you like them.’

He looked anxiously at her. He no longer cared if his tiles were used or not, all he wanted was that she speak to him, respond to him, stay with him.

‘I cannot be sure, Mr Royde.’ The familiar furrow appeared on her brow. ‘I would need to see them
in situ
and with the materials we have selected.’

That glorious ‘we’ was back.

‘I am on my way to Hyde Park with the materials and have a hansom waiting outside. I will do my best to judge correctly whether or not to use the tiles.’

She walked to the window and looked out. The horse was shaking its head impatiently and the jarvey yawning into his hands. She turned round to Lucas, her face wearing an unreadable expression. He hoped it might mean she was reconsidering and decided to take a chance.

‘If you
could
spare just a short while—we could be there and back within the hour—I would welcome your opinion. I am far too close to the designs and need an impartial guide.’

For a moment she looked torn. ‘I am not sure I can claim to be that.’ Then quite suddenly, ‘But I will come. For just an hour,’ she reminded him, and rang the bell.

‘Please fetch my cloak, Martha, and make sure Cook has luncheon ready for noon. I shall be returned well before then.’

Martha’s expression gave nothing away, but the sharp slap of her footsteps as she disappeared to find the cloak expressed her displeasure.

An hour was all he needed. An hour to have her near, to feel her body close, to feel her soul walk with his. His heart’s familiar thud had begun once more, but he knew that he must be vigilant, watch his every word, his every movement, for nothing now must mar their time together.

Chapter Nine

He was careful to seat himself in the far corner of the hansom and allow her as much space as possible. It was enough to have her sharing the same seat, to smell again the faint perfume of jasmine, to steal gazes at the shapely, erect figure beside him. He noticed that today her hair was fastened behind her neck in an intricate coil but wisps escaped here and there, soft tendrils that he longed to seize and curl around his finger.

‘Are you still very busy at de Vere’s?’ she asked politely. It was an attempt to break the uncomfortable silence that was building between them, and he wondered if she was feeling the same irresistible urge to touch.

‘We are, Mrs Renville,’ he replied, equally polite. ‘Mr de Vere has intimated that he wishes me to lead a new and substantial project once my work on the Exhibition is complete.’

They fell back into silence again. Her eyes were downcast, studying with intensity the embossed pattern on her long kid gloves, and he hoped that she was feeling some sadness that their association was nearing its end.

‘And how are your children?’ He needed to keep talking and make this visit unexceptional, as though they had never exchanged more than a formal handshake.

‘They are well, thank you, Mr Royde. They will be returning home shortly.’

‘You must have missed their young presence.’

‘I have. They are very precious to me.’ Her voice was unusually heightened.

‘They are beautiful young girls. You are very lucky.’ He did not know what else to say.

‘So I tell myself every day. God has been good in giving me my two darlings.’

There was something not quite right. Her tone was too solemn for what had merely been a courteous enquiry. He half turned, trying to snatch a glimpse of her face, and saw a small trickle of a tear making its way slowly down one creamy olive cheek.

‘I am so sorry, Mrs Renville.’ He blurted the words, thoroughly discomposed. ‘I had no intention of causing you upset.’

With a visible effort, she pulled herself together and wiped away the tear. ‘Of course you had not. I am being foolish, but you see…’ and in a sudden, astonishing breach of her privacy, she rushed out, ‘I have recently been told that I am unable to have more children.’

He was shocked but also gladdened, not only because she would bear no more of Renville’s children, but because she had confided in him. Something so private, so personal. His physical closeness had made her emotional and in turn she had made him her confidante.

‘Your daughters, then, must be even more precious to both of you,’ he managed to offer.

‘They are.’ She began to pleat the silk of her dress, carefully fold by fold. Her continuing agitation was clear. ‘Edward loves his children dearly,’ she asserted and then in a voice that was hardly audible, ‘but a son to continue the business would have been a blessing.’

He said no more. She had been surprisingly candid, and he was appreciative of her trust but had no wish to probe the marital relationship. Her inability to provide Edward Renville with a son go some way towards an explanation for the man’s coldness towards his wife.

The carriage had reached Hyde Park and was making its way through the partly completed south entrance. ‘This must be the Prince of Wales Gate,’ Lucas decided. ‘I believe it is to be the main entrance for the Exhibition and should be finished in the very near future—the road, too, I trust.’

They were travelling along a heavily rutted track and being bounced from one side of the cab to the other. He longed to have the right to reach out and hold his delicate companion safe from injury. But he did not have the right and remembering his earlier trespass, he stayed his hand.

‘Just look, Mr Royde.’

She was clinging to one of the hansom’s creaking doors and almost leaning out of its window in her eagerness. Her eyes shone.

‘Just look at that,’ she repeated.

He did look. This was his first visit to the Exhibition Hall and though he had seen plans of Paxton’s design and read any number of newspaper descriptions, nothing had prepared him for the sheer scale of the giant glass structure. No wonder commentators talked about the building being six times the size of St Paul’s. At one side of the entrance he saw an enormous store of prefabricated cast iron units waiting to be welded together on site. On the other side thousands of huge glass panes were stacked, ready to hang on the iron framework. No wonder the building was being erected at such incredible speed. The design was brilliant in its simplicity.

Lucas helped his companion down from the cab and turned to pay the driver. A shaft of sunlight momentarily burst through the lowering March sky and illuminated the zigzag layers of glass sheeting already in place. He felt Alessia beside him draw a wondering breath.

‘It is like a giant concertina,’ she said, looking about her and wrinkling her brow in a way he had come to love, ‘but made of diamonds.’

Even half-covered in scaffolding and with the noise of the workmen’s hammers and saws pounding in their ears, the Exhibition Hall was magical. ‘It is magnificent,’ he agreed. ‘I can understand now why
Punch
has named it the Crystal Palace!’

A team of horses pulling a Pickford’s van with yet another consignment of iron columns drew up close to where they were standing, and he took the opportunity to suggest they walk inside the building.

‘I remember that you said it was large, but I had no idea just how large,’ she confessed.

‘Nor me. I read somewhere that Paxton has made it exactly 1851 feet long in homage to the year, but even for an architect that figure is difficult to visualise.’

They had walked only a few paces when a bank of turnstiles stopped their progress. Lucas sidestepped to a small wicket gate and held it open.

‘Come this way, Mrs Renville. As exhibitors, we may pass freely.’

‘But have people already visited? I had not expected that.’

‘They have been turning up since last September, I believe, to check on progress. But since the exhibits started to arrive, members of the public have been banned.’

Once in the Hall itself, they paused to take stock. The glass roof rose two storeys above them, but a cross passage or transept arched even higher to skim the top branches of three majestic elm trees. A large semicircular clock a few feet away was designed to blend with the curved glass roof and beyond the clock, a glass fountain shaped like an immense crystal chandelier stood waiting for the waters to flow. For a long while the pair stood side by side, slowly adjusting to the monumental scale of their surroundings.

‘I am so glad they did not destroy the trees,’ Alessia said finally.

‘They would not have wished to add to criticism of the building by doing so, I imagine. There has been much disquiet that so much glass is likely to shatter in hail or be blown away by high winds.’

‘But the building is safe?’

‘As houses—literally. They have had soldiers marching and running and jumping together across the galleries above and nothing has moved, cracked or otherwise failed. We shall be quite safe!’

They made their way along the wide middle passage with its two rows of large rooms on either side. It looked for all the world like a church nave, Lucas thought, with its lines of pews radiating outwards. At the centre point of the passage a double spiral staircase led to the upper floor. This storey was narrower with just a single row of rooms and balconies running along one side of the building.

‘Are you disappointed?’ He had been studying his companion’s mobile face.

‘A little. The ground floor appears so grand and it has that elegant clock and the splendid fountain. When you mount the stairs, perhaps you are expecting more of the same and instead it is…a little less imposing,’ she finished on a deflated note.

He glanced around at the line of spaces demarcated either by cloth or by wood walls. ‘I have to agree that in its unfinished state, it fails to send the pulse racing. But the Exhibition is oversubscribed and we should be in good company. This upper gallery will house the smaller objects on display.’

He knew well that Renville must have paid a very large sum for the privilege of renting this currently drab area. No doubt he had had to twist a few eminent arms as well, since he had been a late convert to the idea of displaying his wares.

‘Look up, Mrs Renville,’ he said hoping to console her, ‘Is that not a sight worth seeing?’

Together they looked towards the ceiling and followed the iron and glass walls soaring ever higher and then curving inwards to meet at the apex of the arched transept. ‘If the passage below us is the cathedral’s nave, this is its dome.’

The Renville space was found without difficulty. It was well positioned near to the middle of the building and its walls were made of cloth rather than wood.

‘That will help.’ Lucas walked slowly around the space. ‘We will not have to destroy too much before we can build again. And these pillars—’ he pointed to the few cast iron columns already in place as supports ‘—they are indeed so slim that my hands reach around them. They will not quarrel with our marble.’

‘We might even be able to use them in our display.’

‘That would certainly make the building a part of the Renville space rather than the other way round.’ He pulled out a roll of papers from the battered satchel and spread them on the floor. Together they began to mark out the area, adjusting the plans slightly here and there to take account of actual shape and dimensions.

Alessia had come to rest at the centre of the pavilion. ‘This is where we should have the…bench.’ She blushed brightly, unable to give the seat its true name.

To allow her to recover, Lucas made himself busy unpacking the parcel of materials.

‘We have a range of colours from which to choose.’ He was stacking the bolts of silk and gauze to one side. ‘I wonder if we should saturate the space in one dominant hue, gauzes and all—that would gain impact—or whether we should go for a softer, more diffuse spectrum.’

‘I’m not sure. Perhaps we should first decide on the final position of the pillars.’ She was thinking hard and quickly forgetting her earlier embarrassment. Soon she was moving around the area, marking out the location of each marble column and then moving different coloured silks between them, planning, deciding and then replanning, until she had in her mind exactly how the room should look. Lucas did not interrupt. He was happy just to watch her and know that she was happy, too. Her face was flushed and her eyes sparkling by the time she had finished.

‘Should we repair to the tea room?’ he asked. ‘I believe something temporary has been established on the floor below. Then I can make a note of the modifications we have agreed.’