The Glassblower's Daughter

By Frances Clarke

Greta's life is carefree until the abrupt disappearance of her elder sister, and all her courage can't save her from the sinister shadows that engulf her. Even when she finds a way out betrayal and treachery threaten her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frances Clarke
• Release date: Nov 16, 2010
• ISBN: 9781458185174

Frances Clarke

I'm busy preparing another collection of stories plus working on my second novel which is set in Southampton and opens as the 2nd world war begins. Come and say hello on my Facebook page or Visit my blog. I try to keep a page going on that which documents how hard I am finding it as I go along! The web address is www.francesbookpage.blogspot.com

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The Glassblower’s Daughter

Frances Clarke

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Frances Clarke

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Part 1. Garden Of Paradise – 1955

The Woman In The Bottle

It caught her eye the minute they went through the swing door into the workshop and she pounced on it; a pretty, shining thing like a snapped off twig made of glass. Between the big machines the floor was strewn with oddments of balsa wood, flitches of dust and other, less perfect glass shapes. Can I have this?

Naw, hen, yon’s sherp…..... but she clutched it up against her chest, a’richt, let’s see if yer daddy can smooth it for ye. He rasped the broken edge of the glass twig with a file then rubbed it with emery paper.

I won’t be bored today, she said, as he tested it on his thumb then handed it back to her. When he smiled she said, what is that smell?

And he said: propinol. Still smiling he put on his lab coat.

So she said: Where have Mummy and Deborah gone?

A’ve telt ee they’re awa tae the hospital, the special hospital. Keek in, a’ll mak ee yer very ane glass bubble.

Greta watched her father as he blew. His cheeks reddened. His lips pressed the tube. The tube dangled in a long loop from his mouth. Black hair stood out over the strap of his goggles and his whiskers caught the light. She thought of him standing at the washbasin in his vest, shaving; raking off cream. He was handsome. The mask hid his eyes. Her bubble grew. When it was the size of a tomato he put his flame back in the holder and got the bubble on the end of a metal stick. Yer very ane, he passed it to her. On the end of the rod the bubble swayed.

I’m going to look after it and take it home. She went to her father’s bench and sat down on her box.

Weel, if ye dinnae mind stayin’ as still as a wee mouse the hale day. He began to whistle as he fixed a big glass tube to his machine.

You can hold it for me if I want to move, she said.

Her father gave a shout of laughter. Dinnae you be touching ma condenser, mind now, he darted his finger at her with such an abrupt shift of his arm that she looked over her shoulder thinking the condenser might have crawled forward to peer over the edge of the bench.

Listen! Harold’s voice. His bicycle clips missed his pocket and clattered to the floor and he shook a green and cream thermos flask at her, making a slushy tinkle of noise. She kept her eyes on her bubble. Harold had teeth that tilted forward, hanging out of his mouth. He smelt of something horrible but she didn’t know what the smell was.

Fall in, quick march, where do you think you’ve been? called Wilfred, appearing from the grinding room. You’re late.

Listen, persisted Harold and shook the flask again.

Wilfred winked at Greta.

Greta liked being at her father’s work. Good-natured Wilfred and Harold with their Leicester accents were a change from the familiar Scottish of her father. Mrs Primrose up in the office spoke so posh the men called her ‘the duchess’.

I dropped my bike on the ramp and it rolled out of my bloody saddlebag, complained Harold.

Mind your language, Wilfred winked at her again, a little mouse is sitting over there. Greta liked Wilfred. He called her ‘the faculty mouse’ and though she didn’t know what ‘faculty’ was; the name sounded nice. Wilfred’s face was young, but oldness had caught up with him in patches. The top of his head was bald but hair grew in clumps above his ears. She had wanted to watch the wings go spinning round so he had worked the glass turbine for her.

Her bubble reflected everything. Wilfred got the bench burners roaring and the bubble showed a sea of lavender flame tipped with golden waves. The pale flames that stood up out of the hand burners were like feathers curved in the rounded surface. She could see parts of her face reflected and the sky behind her through the window. She wanted to feel the bubble. Without breathing, she touched it with her fingertips.

And then it was floating down. It landed on her knee, reflecting the navy pleats of her pinafore dress. The metal stick fell out of her hand. Sudden silence descended as her father threw the switch that stopped his rod rotating. Greta curved her fingers to slide them under the bubble, to coax it into her hand. Wilfred came to fetch a clamp from the cupboard, his head crimson from the heat. The bubble sat on her palm. Look Wilfred.

That’s a regular crystal ball, said Wilfred, You can see the future in there.

Rubbish, scoffed Harold. His rounded shoulders drooped over his lathe and his neck poked forward out of his overall collar like the neck of a tortoise. Wilfred was different. Greta liked his big, gentle eyes and his shiny head. The things Wilfred said were like stories. Maybe Wilfred could tell her when her mother and Deborah were coming home.

Her father was whistling a song off the wireless. Step we gaily, on we go, heel for heel and toe for toe; step we gaily…The jaunty words danced in her head. Wilfred clashed clamps in the cupboard. The bubble stirred on her palm. It was so light that all she could feel was its warmth. They never lost their heat. Wilfred.

Yes, Pet.

Heat is their skin, she said. Her father’s lathe hissed and the rod began to rotate.

Go and watch Your Dad putting on the side-arm, Wilfred closed the cupboard.

The glass on her father’s rod was glowing deep orange. He directed the violet points of his burners at the glass and turned them up to roar out in golden flames. The glass was like syrup. Any minute it would begin to pour. There was a hiss and a thud as the rotation stopped and then the row of burners went back to violet points and he lifted the hand jet. In his other hand was a black cone on a stick and he poked it into the red mound, holding it there while he blew. He was making a hole. The glass he was getting rid of swelled into a bubble. He took the tube out of his mouth and pointed at the bubble. Noo where does this yin gan?

In the flash, said Greta.

Aye, he knocked it off and she watched the pieces float down to join the sparkling layer on the floor. He picked up the side arm and heated the mouth of it. When its rim was red, he heated the rim of the hole in his big tube. When they both glowed red, like two open mouths, he pressed them together. Together they sagged into the softened wall of glass. He pressed them and pulled them and shone the flame on them until he was sure they were joined and then he slammed on the rotating rod and round it all went, the red gone, the gold fading to transparent and the new side arm sticking out like a little waving limb.

Her bubble lifted and she put her hand over it, pressing its wobbliness until it cracked open and became warm, curved pieces to scatter in the flash.

At lunchtime her father lifted her up and she ruffled his hair with both hands to get rid of the indentation in it where his goggle strap had pressed. There you are, Daddy, she said.

Haud the snap; he passed her the tin. Inside was her jam sandwich, wrapped in greaseproof paper. Her father had cheese and piccalilli. Ere ye gonnae gies a hawnd making ra tea the nicht, he said as he shouldered through the swing doors with her. His lab coat smelled of machine oil. He had bought a gas cooker - "Fer yer Mammy gin she comes hame"and every day they were trying out recipes from the little cookery book that had come with it.

As they went down the steps into the darkness she hid her eyes against his neck. Above their heads was an overhead pipe lagged with sacking. Once, he had shone a torch to show her. The humps of sacking frightened her. She felt his hand over her head. The humming of the basement engines was all around them now. Her father turned the corner. It’s a braw sunny day oot here onyway. He kicked the door open, spring sunshine flaring round them as he put her down.

Ask me questions. It was her favourite game. She had tried with Wilfred and Harold but not any more because they asked what have I got in my sandwiches? How much is a tin of elbow grease?

De’ve ee ken the kind o glass yer Daddy uses?

Bora-silicate, she said.

Boro, he corrected her. Ony mair?

Soda glass.

Aye. And fer whit would ah use soda gless? He stopped in his tracks to light a cigarette, cupping his hands around the match as he carried it to his mouth.

Windows.

Super! Aye. Yer a canny wee lassie.

Can I blow that out?

Aye. He held the match down for her. She blew. They crossed the road to the cemetery. Gravestones tilted over as if the ground had heaved up and flung them sideways. Greta sat by her father on a bench and they ate their sandwiches.

Is it a long way to the special hospital? She gripped his face with her hands. He didn’t look pleased. She knew it wasn’t the same hospital as the one near their house. Can we go and see them? His face twisted away from her hands. Birds sang in the graveyard trees. Can we?

Naw we cannae dae that.

But why?

The pages of his newspaper snapped as he opened it up.

Why can’t we go?

He lit a cigarette but didn’t let her blow out the match. She leaned her head against him then slid down to pick the daisies and celandines that grew in the uncut grass around the old graves. When she heard him folding up his newspaper she ran back with her flowers and he lifted her so she could put her cheek next to his face. He scraped her with his whiskers to make her laugh. That’s ma bonny wee lassie, he said, Pit doon yer wee bunch o’ flowers, ye cannae bring they in ma lab. He hugged her and she let the flowers fall, breathing in the lovely warm smell of him; aftershave, tobacco and some other part that was just him.

During the endless afternoon she sidled into the grinding room up to Wilfred’s elbow: what’s that, Wilfred?

Wilfred jumped. The grinding wheel went round.

What is it?

Carborundum powder: two hundred grit.

Wilfred…

Yes?

Do you know where Mummy and Deborah have gone? Wilfred’s goggles pointed down. The grinding wheel went round.

Greta went back into the glassworking room sniffing in the smell of propinol. With her colouring book on her knee, she sat on the floor by the annealing oven and coloured in a fairy’s dress with a pink wax crayon. Bored with that she put on a Perspex mask and a pair of the big asbestos gloves the men used. On tiptoe at her father’s bench Greta stared at the condenser. It was like a bottle, and inside it was a shape that looked like a lady made of glass. Greta stared hard. It was a glass lady who was trapped inside a bottle; and out of her head… What’s that curly tube? asked Greta, but Harold passed by and didn’t answer. The glass tube curled up from the lady’s head, coiling round and round, until it reached the top of the bottle. But there was no opening at the top. The giant gloves fell off her hands and Greta reached out for the condenser.

Whit are ye daein? Her father was back.

Nothing, she said.

Jist ye dae yer colourin’. He picked up the condenser and hurried out. The telephone rang.

Answer it Harold, Wilfred’s voice was loud above the roar of his lathe, don’t stand gawping, you daft ha’porth.

The phone stopped before Harold got to it. He looked at Greta. See this? Harold proffered a round white biscuit. She drew back from his tortoise face and tried not to breathe in his awful smell or look at his teeth. Tell me where Deborah is. Tell me when she is coming home again. Tell me why Mummy took Deborah and not me as well. As she reached out for the biscuit, he snatched it backwards. No; tell me what it is first; he said.

A biscuit?

Tisn’t a biscuit! It’s glass.

No it isn’t, she said.

Yes it is.

No it isn’t.

Yes it is. It’s sintered glass.

I don’t care.

How old are you? Harold asked.

I’m five.

And you don’t know about sintered glass, he teased.

Deborah’s gone to the special hospital.

So you said.

Do you know what she’s got?

She comes home in a few weeks. Here… he gave her the sintered glass.

How long is a few weeks?

Too long, if you ask me. Why don’t you go and help Mrs Primrose up in the office?

Harold - Get over here, shouted Wilfred and Greta ran to her colouring book as if he had shouted at her.

Fairy Tales

Weeks and months went by. Summer became autumn and autumn merged into winter. There was frost on the window panes every morning by the time they came home. Deborah had a new hairstyle, short; puffing around her face like a dark chrysanthemum. Maybe that was why her father was angry but Greta liked it very much. Her mother’s hair was the same but she smelled as if she had been keeping her clothes next to the Vim under the sink. She lifted Greta up and held her so tightly that Greta squeaked. Do you like the new cooker? she clamoured, desperate to have them eat their tea; made to another recipe in the little cookery book.

What’s this? her mother tilted the plate.

Shamrock Savoury. Greta glowed with pride. Her father had made fried bread and she had spread the pieces with fish paste and helped arrange three slices of hardboiled egg on each to form a shamrock. Her father had added a dab of chutney in the center of each slice of egg.

Dad cooked and I helped, said Greta turning to Deborah.

And Deborah lifted Greta and said: sit on my knee to eat yours. Pass her plate to me so she can reach. I’m not letting go of her.

Everything went back to normal except that now there were the arguments: Deborah and their mother; Deborah spraying lacquer. What’s the sense of doing that to your hair, their mother demanding, after that expensive perm?

Deborah snapping: It’s my head Mother; I can do what I like with my hair.

And instead of answering, her mother made a noise as if she had accidentally cut herself with the bread knife.

For Christmas, Greta had a walkie-talkie doll with chestnut plaits whose eyelashes were jutting fringes of real hair. Inside her open mouth a red tongue was about to touch two baby teeth at the top. "Mama," she said, in a cat’s voice, when Greta laid her down. The voice came from the small of her back where she was drilled with a pattern of holes like the telephone receiver at the glassblowing lab. Greta called her Pearl, which was Deborah’s middle name.

Look, this is the Devil, Pearl, Greta held out the picture at the front of the Edgar Allen Poe book, he’s sitting on the laird’s coffin. What’s a laird, Mummy?

That’s a desperate book. Her mother, knitting Greta’s new jumper in some tan-coloured wool Brother Isidore had brought round, tutted sharply; put it away.

Edgar Allen Poe, chanted Greta from behind the sofa, as amused as ever because ‘Poe’ meant ‘potty’ as well. She lay on her tummy next to the bookcase. It was her favourite place. As well as Edgar Allen Poe there was an incomplete pack of playing cards, her game of Snap, copies of the Readers’ Digest that Wilfred passed on to her father and a book, from a jumble sale, her mother said, which Greta loved. The pages of the book were fibrous and soft and had black and white pictures; among them a sad postman, an awkward bridge and the one Greta looked at the most which was a big lady lying down with no clothes on. Why was she bare like that? Her flesh looked so pocked and goosepimpled that several times Greta had dug her nails into it, convinced the lady could feel it. The nail marks were retained in the thick padding of the paper. Deborah had read the title of the book to her: The Artist Van Goff.

Pearl fell forward onto the picture of the Devil. Greta sat her up again. Are you scared, Pearl? I’ll read what it says at the bottom: ‘Twas the foul fiend in his ane shape, sitting on the laird’s coffin… Greta couldn’t really read it but Deborah had told her the words.

In March, for her birthday, they gave Greta her own book: Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales and at bedtime, Deborah, with sensational dramatic expression, read her the stories. By June they had reached The Garden of Paradise with the four winds telling tales of polar ice and walruses, of dromedaries and sandstorms. In order to find his heart’s desire, the man had to cross a high white bridge. Read me that bit again, Greta said, gripping Deborah’s moving finger as it traced the words.

Lions and tigers, perfectly tame, sprang like cats over green hedges, repeated Deborah.

Can we go there?

But Deborah went on reading.

Soon Greta clamoured once more: Read that again!

You will come, said the Fairy, to where the tree of knowledge of good and evil stands. I shall sleep among its branches. You will bend over me. But if… here Deborah paused, then slowly continued … you touch me, her voice dropped low, Paradise will sink beneath the earth and be lost…

He won’t do it will he?

…The sharp wind of the desert will blow, said Deborah implacably, the cold rain will drip from your hair and sorrow and care will be your lot.

He won’t do it will he? Greta was weeping, undone by the image of such dreadful loss.

Greta, it’s a story, don’t cry; Deborah said, and her doom-laden tone had vanished and her arm went round Greta, her face laughed down and she used the edge of her skirt to dab the tears. We’ll stop now. See – nothing. The book snapped shut. Sweet dreams, and Deborah kissed her and was gone. Hot as a boiled potato, Greta kicked her covers off. The summer evening light was rose-pink through her red curtains and she pictured the high white bridge and the tame tigers. If only she could go there. All summer Greta made Deborah read and re-read the mysterious story to her.

It was September by the time they began on The Wild Swans and Greta became acquainted with Princess Elise and her brothers. Don’t call me Greta, she said, I’m Elise.

Why? Her mother was impatient and uncomprehending which made Greta shy so she shrugged as she had seen Deborah do. She had begun to read the book to herself; slowly deciphering the words. One bit said: Elise was too good for magic to have any power over her. Greta dug her fingernail into the paper so that a crescent marked the place.

"Can we go to the sea?"

No, it’s too far.

Elise goes to the sea and finds the swans. Elise gets carried by swans.

Swans?

The swans are her brothers; she’s looking for them; they’re by the sea.

Nonsense. Knives and forks jangled into the drawer. The cat flitted out from under the table, tangling in her mother’s feet. Damn you, cat, she cried, suddenly furious, I’m fed up with Deborah reading you that book. It’s giving you ideas.

I want brothers, stormed Greta. In the doorway stood Deborah, silently pulling hideous faces at their mother’s back.

"Tell her we’re reading Bunty, she said that night, while she was showing Greta how to play Patience. Her hands layered the cards into place. She’ll be at work. She won’t know." Deborah had left school and started a shorthand and typing course. A smell of cigarettes clung to her.

To save her brothers, Elise took a vow of silence and wove shirts out of nettles. Greta cried. Behind the garden shed were plenty of nettles and she let them sting her hands to see if she could bear it. She couldn’t. By November they were nearing the climax. Elise was to be burned as a witch. Her nettle shirts were taken with her to the stake. Greta! came a shout, what are you up to?

Greta gave a guilty start, caught in the act of trying to bind herself to a garden fork that she had thrust into the centre of her father’s bonfire pile. One minute her mother was rapping on the kitchen window, the next minute she appeared by Greta at the bottom of the garden. Get off that. What have you done to your poor doll? Pearl stood with her legs rammed into a pile of soil to keep her from falling over.

She’s the wicked archbishop, Mummy. Leave her.

Is this game something to do with that book? Her mother straightened up sharply, gripping Pearl. Greta’s hand sneaked into the pocket of her gabardine mackintosh. Folded in there was the nettle shirt she was going to throw over her princely brothers. It was a leaf she had picked from the last marrow plant; its dark palm as rough as the cat’s tongue. It was the same colour as nettles. What are you playing? Her mother persisted.

Guy Fawkes, said Greta.

Well don’t. You’ll wreck your Daddy’s bonfire. Pearl’s getting filthy, look at her legs.

She’s my doll, Mother; I can do what I like with her legs.

The secret game continued. Greta sat at her mother’s dressing table and stared into the mirror as she brushed her hair. Pearl; now the king; spoke in a deep voice: is it true Elise? Have you been gathering nettles among the witches? To ensure silence Greta pressed her lips together so tightly that they went into her face, leaving a line like the scar on Deborah’s stomach and she burst out laughing

Questions tormented Greta before she fell asleep at night. To weave nettles was agonising enough, but to have to keep silent and not explain why, even though helpful people surrounded her, was terrible. And God; where was he? Elise prayed to God but he never helped her, only made things worse. Why did he let the wicked queen turn the brothers into swans? And couldn’t he have led the hounds away from Elise until she finished the shirts?

A Tale of Hidden Treasure

Deborah went out more and more. Don’t get in my way, she warned Greta, who had come into the bedroom with her drawing book.

Greta sat on Deborah’s bed. I made up a poem, she said, holding out the page.

Deborah,who stood brushing her hair; angled her body away from the mirror to read it out.

"Humpty Dumpty lived in a shed

Humpty Dumpty fell off the bed

Humpty Dumpty had a sore hed

Humpty Dumpty was ded,"

she intoned and both of them burst out laughing. What a lovely poem, Twig.

I’ll make it longer, said Greta, sucking her pencil. From the radio in the kitchen The Archers music floated up. What rhymes with dead?

Deborah pointed at the pictures sellotaped onto her wall which were all of ladies wearing bridal gowns that Deborah had cut out of the papers Wed? She rested one foot on the chair as she eased a stocking over her toes and unrolled it up her leg. Tread? she suggested, Fat-head? Greta laughed. The net flounces of Deborah’s petticoat were frothing round her wrists as she fastened her suspenders. Can I do one? asked Greta.

No, I’m in a hurry. Deborah dropped her skirt down over her head; a lasso of sky-blue gingham, her elbows like porcelain jug handles behind her as she fastened the zip. She dabbed White Fire scent on her wrists. It was Friday so the rest of the house was full of the smell of grilled herrings. Pass the nail file, Deborah said; and after a while, Reach me that compact.

Greta gave up on the poem. Are you going dancing?

No; Deborah drew lipstick along her stretched lips and Greta’s moved in a copy of the shape Deborah’s were making; the flicks. Deborah compressed her lips, printing coral bows together.

Sing me the fountain song, said Greta.

"Three coins in the fountain… the lipstick twisted back into its golden case. Each one seeking happiness… into the pointed shoes went Deborah’s toes. Thrown by three hopeful lovers… stiletto heels raised clear of the rug. Which one will the fountain bless…" as Deborah's husky voice finished the song she twirled and Greta watched the flaring circle of skirt and the gorgeous peony of petticoat.

Do it again, she said. Her pencil fell to the floor and her laughing sister spun. Can I come with you to the kennels tomorrow? Deborah had a Saturday job and Greta longed to work there too. Can I come, Deborah?

Maybe, Deborah buttoned her cardigan; out you go, you know the rule, Greta knew the rule. She skipped out onto the landing and leaned over the banister looking down. Deborah followed, closing the door and began to descend the stairs. You are NOT to go in my room when I’m not there! Deborah had made her say I promise. Halfway down the stairs Deborah looked back up at her. Bye, Twig, she called.

Greta sat on the stairs and peered between the banister rails to watch her sister swish into the kitchen. Only Deborah called her Twig. She heard the two voices, Deborah and her father. Bumpety-bump she progressed, on her bottom, a stair at a time, all the way down and waited. Deborah, gloves on, came out of the kitchen shrugging on her coat and when she opened the front door, Greta stepped forward to hold it.

Damn, said Deborah, it’s raining. She grabbed her umbrella from the hallstand and raised it as she stepped out onto the pavement and set off. A gust caught the umbrella and Deborah shrieked and ran a few steps.

You’re flying, Greta called and the thought of her sister lifted into the air made her laugh as she slammed the door. The letter box made a friendly clang.

In the sitting room, the chair by the window was Greta’s vantage point for watching the street. She put her head under the lace curtain, pressing her forehead against the glass. At the bus stop Deborah furled her umbrella. The bus came. As it drove past the window towards Wexford Street, Greta saw Deborah inside, reaching up to the silver rail and walking towards the back as if she was trying to come home even though the bus was taking her away.

The glass was cold against Greta’s forehead. Deborah had gone; her mother was at her part-time cleaning job at the off-licence, her father was listening to the radio then he would do the crossword in his Reader’s Digest. She could smell the smoke from his cigarette. Greta crept upstairs into Deborah’s room. Her heart was beating harder and harder making her open her mouth to breathe. It was frightening but she longed to see Deborah’s treasure. The floorboards dug into her knees as she knelt in front of the dressing table. The