The Glass House

1861. Freshwater Bay

Their words still rang in Julia’s ears as she ran to the shore. Stumbling on a pile of tide-strewn pebbles, she put out a hand to steady herself against the breakwater and howled at the stars. How could she ever speak to the islanders again? All her plans had dissolved like dreams, leaving her defenceless. A silly, middle-aged woman, filled with the impotent rage of ambition. Only now could she see it clearly.

Moonlight bathed the damp sand along Freshwater Bay: a sweeping horseshoe curve that calmed the waves in the worst weather. A place of peace. The scene of her first encounter with the Society. How could she have trusted them? And the Signor; he had encouraged her all along, knowing she would be exposed. How had she been so foolish? All the visions in her head were nonsense. All her claims to Art, lies.

Placing her boots beside her, Julia sat to rest on the low wall behind the lighthouse and stared at the shimmering river reflecting from shore to horizon. Reckless of her to seek recognition in the first place; hadn’t she always been told it wasn’t natural for women to crave attention? Weary with sadness, she pushed her bare toes into the wet sand and raised them, watching the wells pool with water and merge again with the rest of the beach. Where was the footprint she had promised to leave on the world? She had carried the promise like a sword for most of her life and yet left nothing. No paintings, no words of any use, no brave new Art. Her only footprint would be transient, would fill with water and sand and simply disappear.

The calm sea beckoned her forward and Julia stood, stretched, began to walk towards it. A smooth surface prettily reflected with stars. It was much less cold than she’d expected and lapped gently around her ankles, welcome and comforting. Julia watched as the dark water swallowed her feet, then her calves. Still she walked, vaguely aware of the drag and swell of her skirts. Overhead stretched the low web of stars that wrapped her island, reminding her suddenly of India, the brightness of long hot nights and the yearning to capture the colour of skies. The sense of destiny she felt and the secrets she uncovered. It was a lifetime ago. A lifetime of making wings only to discover that she was never meant to fly.

Something flapped against her neck and she lifted her hand, touched the silk of her bonnet. Why had she felt the need to impress those fools with a ridiculous hat? Fumbling for the ribbons, she shook them free and threw the hateful thing behind her onto the sand. The tumble of her hair, long and loose, made her a child again. Mama’s Indian sunbird, soaring high above the world to see what others could not. A hopeful princess at a vicious party, with a long pink bow at her waist. They had laughed at her then, and laughed at her now. She was tired of trying to please. All she wanted was to sleep, to forget. Scenes from her life flashed past, too fast to catch and hold.

Julia walked as far as she could. When the water reached her waist, she leaned forward and gave herself to the sea, wanting only to be taken, imagining herself floating forever like Ophelia in her bed of reeds.

1822. Calcutta

‘Tell me what it means.’ Julia traced her finger around the outline of a pink circle, studded with dark blue marks.

‘It’s not for children, ma chère. One day you will understand.’

Julia stuck out her lip; Mama was the only grown up who thought she was too small to understand things. Papa answered her questions. He was fun, striding like a king in his crisp military dress and swinging her in the air. She flounced away from the wall and caught the edge of the table, knocking a silver-backed mirror and hairbrush to the ground. Mama flew across the room to scold her.

‘Seven years bad luck!’

‘It isn’t broken.’

‘Lucky for you. Seven years is a long time to be punished for mistakes.’

‘Two years more than Sarah.’

Mama‘s eyebrows closed in the middle when she frowned. Like monkeys before they attacked. ‘Sarah would never be so naughty.’

She was using her distracted voice, starting to move away. It was important to know. Scrolls and parchments covered the walls of their stilted house, as hard to understand as Mama’s mood. Julia tried again, tugging at her bangles. ‘Why are they painted like that?’

Mama stroked the thick paper, her fingers dragging over the curled edge, eyes focussed on something Julia couldn’t see. ‘It’s a science, ma chère. The stars hold your destiny.’

‘When I’m seven, will you tell me what it means?’ When Adeline was seven Papa had given her a pony he’d won in a game of cards. Seven was special, and it was soon. It was too exciting wondering what seven would bring. Mama shook her head slowly. ‘But I want to understand! Papa says I’ll only understand if I ask questions, but what’s the point if no-one will answer them?’ Mama didn’t like the way he always laughed at her charts. Julia gave her a sly look. ‘Shall I ask Papa then? Does he have signs too?’

‘Very well,’ she replied, rolling up the chart with a snap. ‘But you must have your own. I’ll ask the scribe at Pahor.’

The chart was delivered with a flourish by the scribe’s young apprentice, curled in a thick bundle of parchment and tied with grass. If only Mama would look at her so attentively. Whatever it meant it was pretty. Each of the symbols was painted in double colours, surrounded by a pattern of silver stars on a background of swirling lilac and indigo clouds. How wonderful to make such pictures. She would ask for paints for her seven present. Julia turned to the scribe’s boy, waiting patiently, and asked him in Hindustani what it meant.

‘Master says you will live two lives. One will be taken by waves,’ he replied in English, intoning in a flat voice as though reading from a script, his head bowed. ‘One will be broken by mirrors and glass. You must watch for them both.’ The boy raised his head, briefly catching Julia’s puzzled gaze before casting his eyes back to the floor.

With a stony expression, Mama took the chart, gave him a parcel wrapped in cloth and a wad of paper rupiah to deliver to the scribe. Then she ushered him out to the door, before retiring to bed with a headache. Was Mama somehow displeased? Paintings usually made her happy.

Julia searched all over, finally discovering the chart in her mother’s dressing room. It was inside a drawer, lying on top of a frayed yellow envelope containing two small white cotton caps and two dry locks of hair tied at each end with pale green string. Perhaps Mama was planning to make a doll for the special seven present? A doll with old dried hair? A horse would be better. Even one with thundering feet and a head that jerked on its reins like Adeline’s.

She brought her finds down to supper. But, as she held them up for inspection, a swift hand struck everything to the ground. What had she done to make Mama so angry today? Sudden tears blurred everything but the sight of the pear-shaped diamond on her right ring finger as it flew back towards her face. Fine-cut edges left a weal across Julia’s cheek the size and shape of a rosemallow flower. It still smarted the following week, when she and Sarah were taken to be schooled in Paris.

1827. Versailles

Julia’s birthday fell in high summer, when the scent of lavender in Grandmamma’s garden was strong enough to draw tears. A feast was spread on long tables, under the shade of the willow. Girls in muslin brought cards pressed with wild flowers. The number twelve was iced in sugar roses on a tall, white cake. She walked across the lawn to lunch feeling like a princess, hair loose at the back, a secret smile, a wide pink sash around her waist.

Afterwards, she hid in the washroom and wept. To think that she had spoiled such a perfect day by listening to the grown-ups! That coven of old women in jet-black lace and beads, always talking, crouched like spiders over their iced tea and four o’clock gin, crumbling madeleines between their pointing fingers. Yet, crawling along under the table to catch one of the kitchen cat’s new silver-striped kittens, she’d heard her name and stopped to listen.

‘I’m afraid it’s no use pretending we’re waiting to see how she turns out. Julia’s certainly not like her sisters.’

Her ears strained to hear the second, quieter voice.

‘Poor thing. So unlike her own mother too. Sarah’s the very image of her, but Julia…’

She stayed crouched below the table, breathing in tense, shallow gasps with the effort of remaining silent. A light breeze lifted the tablecloth’s edge, briefly exposing her left knee. Don’t let them notice. A sudden vision of Grandmamma’s fierce face brought the acid-sharp taste of tomatoes to her throat. Sarah had warned that too many slices of tart would make her sick.

‘You must admit that, given her heritage, Julia is something of a surprise.’

Another pause. The sound of glasses being filled. Then Grandmamma spoke. ‘She’s young. Young ladies do change. And she’s still quite the garcon manqué.’

‘She’s of age today. There’s nothing about her looks that will improve from here.’

‘And that figure! She’s as dumpy as a sow.’

Hot tears pricked the edges of Julia’s eyes. She would not cry. Not here, where Sarah would demand to know the reason and delight in sharing it among the guests. Grandmamma must surely contradict them? Dry grass prickled unbearably at her ankles.

‘Julia’s bright and intelligent. She will make a good wife,’ the old woman spoke slowly, precisely.

‘She’s unlikely to make a good mistress…’ the voice paused to accommodate a burst of laughter. ‘But perhaps she doesn’t care.’

Did she care? She didn’t want to. But her eyes were wet, her stomach churning. A scraping of chairs as the old women rose sent Julia scuttling along the grass to the other side of the table, where she stood and brushed the debris from her pinafore, glancing around to see if anyone had spotted her, before running into the house and upstairs.

Music carried from the garden, rising and falling in jarring snatches. It would serve them right if she threw a bucket of water from the window. They weren’t friends anyway, just boring little girls Grandmamma had gathered from neighbouring chateaux to fill out the day, just as she collected adults for her salon. Peering into the worn glass above the washstand, Julia examined her features with interest for the first time in her life. How had she never noticed she looked nothing like Sarah and Adeline, with their rose cheeks and delicate brows? Staring from the murk of the antique mirror was the colourless face of a peasant, with broad, rough features. Only the eyes sparkled, as though refusing to know their place. Slowly she turned her head from left to right, admiring her eyes with their heavy lids and deep amber-brown. From their depths flared tiny orange lights, like flames.

Noises mixed with the music—clattering hooves, the crunch of gravel under carriage wheels—signalling that the guests must be leaving. If they hadn’t missed her before, they would surely be looking now. Grandmamma would never forgive such inhospitable behaviour. Julia, embarrassed and ashamed, jumped up so quickly the wooden stool fell backwards onto the floorboards with a smack that echoed in the bare room. Hiding for so long, she’d missed everything: the dancing, the cutting of that wonderful cake, the girls singing her name as they crowned her with a headdress of gold paper. Such a wasted day. She set the stool straight and peered through the window. At the gates by the front of the house stood perfect Sarah, handing paper twists of sweets to the guests, holding their hands and bobbing down in a theatrical curtsey. Something glinted in the early evening sunlight. A crown: the crown of a birthday girl worn with the confidence of a real princess. For a brief moment she felt nothing but hatred for them all.

Grandmamma put it down to excitement, even after the fight for the crown. Patronising in that special way of elders and betters, no questions asked and the children sent off for an early bedtime. Julia hugged the lumpen body of her doll, Amina, dressed in a thin white handkerchief and sharp-tufted wings made from magpie feathers. Moonlight slanted across her sisters’ faces, lighting the delicate curves of their cheeks. Adeline still looked peaceful and kind, her mouth soft. Sarah’s lips were flatter, giving her smile a sarcastic edge, even in sleep. Her own neat wooden doll lay by her head. Cake crumbs stuck at the corners of her mouth and the sight brought another spike of anger. The birthday girl should know how the cake tasted. She would go down at once to see if any was left. Wrapping herself in Adeline’s silk gown she tiptoed to the door and felt her way along the corridor. No one would follow her even if they woke; Adeline wouldn’t want to be told off and that baby Sarah was still scared of the dark. Who would want to be like them anyway?

She should have confronted them when she had the chance. So what if she looked different to her family? The lights in her eyes were fierce as fire. This was how she should be. Strong. Beautiful as the flames in her eyes. Because beauty could be found everywhere, it could be captured and discovered, she could feel it. She could create it. And it was part of her, whatever those old women might say.

Ideas formed in her mind. Visions of the walls in the Louvre; the frescoes in the church at San Sebastian; the portraits in the Long Hall at school. Pictures of ordinary people, made beautiful with bright colours, threaded with light and tipped with gold. She would learn to paint! Already her head was filled with ideas. No one could prevent her from becoming an Artist. As an Artist she would have more beauty at her fingertips than her sisters could imagine, and such beauty would never grow old and fat like Grandmamma’s.

Forgetting the cake, Julia half-ran to the study and seized her short quill from the pot. Thank-you cards were stacked in the pile she had been made to start. Those that were finished were stamped roughly with the family seal and bright red beads of wax scattered the desk like a blood trail. Drawing the newly sharpened nib across the soft pad of her left hand she scoured a cut and squeezed it quickly onto the pages of her letter book, scratching thin red lines of script.

Until her twelfth birthday she had neither imagined growing up, nor considered what her future life might bring. Now she knew she would be an Artist. When she’d finished writing, she dried the ink, threw the blotting paper onto the embers of the fire and hid the promise in her reticule, drawing the strings up tightly.