I was working on an exquisite Famille Verte plate, its design based on the ‘The Three Kingdoms’ – I was applying a filler made with Araldite and talc to a bad crack that ran from the edge of the plate right through Guan Yu while actually decapitating poor Zhang Fei – when Beatrice asked me if I would mind being interviewed for a newspaper feature. A friend of hers who worked for a Sunday supplement was doing a piece entitled ‘Make Do and Mend Beats Chuck Out and Spend’. Beatrice had suggested to her that I might be just the right kind of artisan craft person needed for the piece, especially now I had my own studio.
I looked up reluctantly from my work. I was intrigued at the contrast between the gentle colours and the coarse caricature features of the male characters. Even the great heroes of the stories frequently had faces that even a mother might find hard to love, and great hulking bent bodies to go with those faces. In Europe the fashion was altogether different; for us it was all depictions of bland-faced knights and pretty princes whose flawless features were clearly meant to indicate a flawless soul.
‘I mean, the builders are gone, right?’ Beatrice said.
‘Builders are never really truly gone,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I don’t know. I was brought up to believe that the only times you should appear in the papers were for birth, marriage or death and possibly on receiving an honour from Her Majesty the Queen.’
Beatrice, quite reasonably, told me not to be a twit. ‘Think what a thrill it would give your godfather. Your poor old generous godfather? One minute you’re living your quiet little life where nothing exciting ever happens and the next, voilà, you’re a media star and all thanks to him.’
I shot her a mean look as I decided where to start with my objections. ‘First of all, one little newspaper article hardly makes one a media star. Secondly, for some of us “a quiet little life” is a blessing. Thirdly and,’ there I had to add, ‘absurdly’ because it made such a nice rhyme and nice rhymes are not as easy to come by as one tends to imagine, ‘I derive plenty of excitement from my work.’
Was it my imagination or did Beatrice look at me pityingly?
‘Well, I think our work is exciting,’ I said.
‘Of course it is,’ Beatrice said.
But in the end I agreed to be interviewed on the grounds that it would perhaps provide good bangs for Uncle Ian’s bucks.
The journalist, arriving precisely on time, was accompanied by a photographer. On my way to open the door I checked myself in the mirror. My hair was tied back. I was wearing a Liberty print tea-dress that the shop assistant had assured me was ‘of the moment’, although on closer inspection I felt it might be more of my grandmother’s moment. My make-up was OK although perhaps a bit too light on mascara, and in the sunlight I could see that pink and tangerine, in many cases a beautiful and underrated combination of colour, did not work so well if on the same face at the same time. There was no time to do anything about it now, though. They would just have to describe me as ‘interesting-looking’ or, possibly, ‘different’.
‘Isn’t this just the most perfect doll’s house?’ Edwina Perry, having introduced me to Jodie, the photographer, stepped past me into the hall.
‘And the location. I didn’t realise there was so much money in broken pots.’
‘There isn’t,’ I said.
I turned to Jodie, who was carrying two cameras, a tripod and what looked like a folded foil screen. ‘Let me give you a hand.’
Jodie said she was fine; she was used to lugging equipment around.
I was just about to make some coffee when the doorbell rang a second time.
It was Gabriel. He too was laden down, balancing a large cardboard box between his raised knee and his chin, while using his right hand to ring the bell. ‘I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’
I smiled in a welcoming way. ‘I’ve got a couple of people from a newspaper here at the moment but that’s fine. Come in.’ I had found that it was only within a marriage that showing basic good manners appeared to be a problem.
‘I nearly got run over by one of your neighbours,’ he said nodding sideways in the direction of the big black car being manoeuvred into a too tight spot. Jenny Howell was watching from her front door, frowning, no doubt as a warning to Jacob Bauer not to scratch her brand new baby Fiat. He didn’t. He was a good parker at least.
‘That would be Jacob Bauer,’ I said. ‘In fact he’s a colleague of yours. You probably know each other.’ I raised myself on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek, just beyond the corner of his mouth.
‘Jacob Bauer, sure,’ he said, putting the box down in the hall. ‘I know him.’
‘You look exhausted.’
As if to counter the suggestion that he might be human after all he straightened his shoulders and plastered on a smile. ‘I’m not exhausted, I just haven’t slept much.’ I noticed that he had nicked himself shaving and I stopped myself from reaching out to touch the cut.
‘What’s in the box?’ I asked instead.
‘Your pig. The Wemyss pig.’
I had asked Gabriel to look after my pig until I had somewhere appropriate to put him. My flat had not been the place for a large and valuable china pig painted all over with shamrocks.
‘Thank you. I would ask you to stay but . . .’ I made a vague gesture in the direction of the kitchen just as Edwina appeared in the doorway. On seeing Gabriel she did the kind of things women tended to do when introduced to my ex-husband: she touched her hair, pushed back her shoulders, slipped the tip of her tongue across her lips. Then she suggested that ‘my friend’ might like to join us.
‘This is Gabriel,’ I said. ‘He’s gay. Gabriel, this is Edwina. She’s a journalist.’
I made them all coffee while Edwina told Gabriel about the people who were going to be featured alongside of me for the newspaper piece. One was a ‘celebrity cobbler’ who actually mended shoes as opposed to designing them. It appeared he had been working away unobtrusively for thirty years at the back of his shop in Primrose Hill, deriving most of his income from making duplicate keys for home-alone teenagers and mugging victims, when one morning Jude Law was spotted bringing a pair of ankle boots into the shop. Not long after, a celebrity from Strictly Come Dancing brought in some Louboutins. Now the business was booming.
The third in our triumvirate of make do and menders was a woman who unravelled old unwanted knitted items and remade them as ‘colourful and imaginative throws, blankets and cushion covers’.
While Edwina and Jodie were arguing about where the best place would be for taking the first photograph, Gabriel asked me why I had said he was gay.
I shrugged. ‘It was the way she looked at you. I thought you were safer that way.’
‘How very kind of you.’ He looked around him. ‘It’s a great little house. Really beautiful. I didn’t like you living in that other place. It was damp.’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘It smelt damp. I never did understand why you wouldn’t let me help.’
I just shrugged and smiled. With Gabriel’s talent for nurturing and mine for screwing things up it was no wonder that, for a while, we had made a perfect couple.
‘I still think the kitchen is a good starting point,’ Edwina said.
‘Boring,’ Jodie said.
‘How about putting her here? She could gaze out across the street, framed by those floaty white curtains.’
‘Nah,’ Jodie said.
‘So anyway,’ Gabriel said to me, ‘Well done.’
‘For what?’
‘For having the courage to accept your godfather’s money and for creating this lovely home.’
‘You think?’
He nodded. ‘I do.’
My smile grew wider. It might be a somewhat absurd thing to get praised for but praise was in short supply in this world so I reckoned sometimes you just had to take it when you could.
‘I thought maybe the roof.’ Jodie said.
‘The roof?’ Edwina asked.
‘I’m sure there’s access.’
‘She’s a ceramic restorer not a builder. Why would she be on the roof?’
‘I was thinking Humpty Dumpty.’
I had been inching closer to Gabriel, wanting only to continue right on until I was pressed right up against his chest. Now I turned to Jodie. ‘Humpty Dumpty does spring to mind when you think of ceramic restoration. And it’s possible to get out on the roof but it involves ladders.’
Jodie said she’d have a look if I told her where to go. Edwina turned her attention back to Gabriel. ‘So how do you two know each other?’
‘We used to be married,’ I said.
She frowned. ‘I thought . . .’
I gave her a tragic look as if to say, ‘Need you ask why it didn’t last?’
‘Isn’t it great that you can be friends,’ she said instead.
Gabriel and I smiled bland smiles.
‘It was the most extraordinary thing to find that there was a studio here already just waiting for me to equip,’ I said. ‘It looks like just a lean-to, but it’s light and bigger than you might think.’
Once in the room, I pointed to the two trestle tables placed in an L-shape at the entrance. ‘That’s the reception area. Behind us, with the two sinks, is the wet area. And the bench and chair over by the window is my main workstation. I’ve used kitchen units because they tend to be the right height. I use a little fridge for storing materials like the silicone and polyester rubbers and, of course, the hydrogen peroxide.’
Gabriel, standing behind me, put his hands on my shoulders and I felt the heat of his skin through the thin material of my dress. ‘Of course, the majority of the chemicals are stored safely in the flameproof cupboard. And over there, behind the curtains, is my retouching area. That ugly thing on the wall is the vent extractor.’
Jodie had returned to say that she had gone off the idea of the roof. ‘There is a wall out at the back,’ I told her. ‘I can sit on the wall. For that authentic Humpty look.’
But for now she contented herself with some shots of me at my workbench while Edwina asked me technical questions. I found that I was enjoying myself. There were proper answers to be given to proper questions when talking about my work. Answers like, ‘No, we are conservators or restorers, but not conservationists.’ And ‘We only use gloves in the late stages of the process and then it’s to protect the piece, not our hands.’ And ‘Yes, that is indeed an old satay stick rolled in cotton wool. That way you get the exact thickness you’re after and also it’s much cheaper. We have a very tight budget at the museum.’ And ‘You just use water and ordinary detergent unless you’re removing old adhesives in which case you use acetone.’ And ‘Actually, it’s “sherds” not shards if you want to be absolutely correct.’ When I gave lectures to students of my subject, there was always a part of the audience who appeared bored out of their minds. It was possible that I was very boring or that they simply had those kinds of faces, faces that looked very bored, but you could never be sure, so it ended up being quite off-putting. But Edwina took notes and smiled and looked up and asked more questions and all the while Jodie was snapping her pictures. And it was all right to enjoy the attention because it was all for Uncle Ian’s sake, to show him what a positive effect his interest and generosity were having.
Gabriel had been out in the small back garden but now he stepped into the workshop again, wiping his feet on the mat. I gave him a cheery little wave. The kind he could have done with, I thought, back when we were married.
‘Shall I put my hair up, for some of the pictures?’ I turned to Jodie.
‘Why not,’ she said.
I twirled my hair into a rope and fixed it to the top of my head with a pencil. ‘Like this?’ I swung round
‘Great,’ she said. Gabriel was smiling at me; he always did like me with my hair up.
Edwina asked me if there was any real difference between the work I did for the museum and the work I did for private clients. I told her, ‘A museum is concerned mostly with conservation, the long-term health of a piece and you don’t usually disguise the mend completely. It’s about authenticity. Restoration is more about making pretty.’
Gabriel bent down, his hands on my shoulders, and I felt his warm breath against my bare neck. ‘I’ll be off but thank you for the tour.’
As he strode off, disappearing into the main house, Edwina and I both heaved a sigh. Then our eyes met and we exchanged a smile instead.
‘It must have been really hard?’ she said. ‘When did you find out?’
‘Find out? Oh, find out. Only recently. And yes, it was hard. But he’s such a great guy.’ I was struck by a thought. ‘You’re not going to write about this, are you?’
‘No, of course not. It’s not that kind of piece.’
We went back to talking about restoration and I felt comfortable once more, back in my world of broken things.
‘Say I’m dealing with a severely damaged vase. I haven’t got anything at that stage of the process here at the moment so you’ll have to imagine. The first thing I would do would be to make a drawing of each sherd on a piece of paper, positioning them in the correct order.’ I scrabbled around the drawer. ‘Here. You see this. It’s like an exploded view . . . It’s pivotal that each sherd is in true alignment, or as you near the top . . .’
A little later we moved upstairs to the sitting room, partly in order to have somewhere comfortable to sit while we finished off the interview and partly to give Jodie a change of backdrop.
‘Please, sit down.’ I indicated the sofa. I followed Edwina’s gaze. ‘The stains are just glue and stuff.’
‘I was just curious. Everything else in here is so . . . well, pristine.’
‘Edwina has germ issues,’ Jodie said. ‘Do you mind if I have a snoop round your bookcases?’
‘I don’t have “germ issues”,’ Edwina said, turning to Jodie. ‘Just because I don’t rummage around other people’s dustbins . . .’
‘Skips,’ Jodie said.
‘Skips, then.’ Edwina tuned back to me. ‘I’d love to be one of these people who find treasures in skips and bring them home and use them as plant stands and all that but I just can’t do it.’ She shuddered. ‘You see what people drop in other people’s skips. In fact I don’t really do car-boot sales or flea-markets either. I mean, “vintage” handbags, for example. People could have put snotty old tissues and all kinds of things inside . . .’
‘Told you,’ Jodie said. ‘She’s got issues.’
I gestured at the sofa. ‘I can understand that. Stains are personal things. Rather like children. Your own are fine but other people’s can be really disturbing. But the sofa really is perfectly safe. Actually, it comes everywhere with me. Well, not everywhere obviously. I don’t take it shopping or on holiday. But we have been through four moves together.’
Edwina asked me if I ever carried out what one might term ‘ordinary’ mending? I told her that I did. ‘Mainly as a favour to friends or when my own things meet with an accident. I feel as if I’m the last chance saloon for all these chipped teapots and cracked plates that not long ago would have been tossed in the bin or on one of Jodie’s skips. And people are changing the way they regard their possessions. It’s not just about saving money. They are mindful of what it is that’s gone into producing even the humblest item and they feel that it’s a kind of wanton wastefulness, a disrespect almost, to write something off without at least trying to save it.’
‘That’s exactly what this piece is about,’ Edwina said. ‘Make do and mend is becoming sexy. Caring for your things; polishing furniture until it shines; mending your cashmere, or is it darning? Anyway, looking after your stuff is no longer seen as being an anal-retentive fifties throw-back but a badge of honour. It shows you care about the environment, that you’re in tune with the planet.’
Jodie picked up a Daisy Makeig-Jones pot, looking at it as if it were a particularly deluded participant in a talent show.
‘You don’t like it?’ I asked.
‘Not really. I prefer artists like Brenda McMahon and Beate Kuhn.’
Edwina said, ‘I’m always fascinated by what makes people dedicate their lives to a particular line of work. So what was it that made you go for restoring porcelain as opposed to, say, picture restoring?’
Suddenly I felt tired. I had not slept well for weeks, years, decades, possibly. When I did sleep my dreams were raw and dangerous, leaving me drenched in sweat and with my jaws clamped as if I were trying to hold in water. Of course I loved my house on the hill, I just wished I were living there with someone other than myself. In short, I could not be bothered to give her a thought-out answer.
‘What attracted me to restoring porcelain?’ I repeated the question. ‘Well, I suppose it breaks easily.’