And then, just a week ago, Olivia had hit him with the bombshell of her pregnancy. “Don’t worry, darling,” she’d said briskly. “I can deal with it. I know you’ve got problems with…” Her eyes, dark-lashed, flickered sideways to the photo of Molly that stood where it always did, on his desk.
And he realized what the dissatisfaction with his life was. He had achieved the material success he craved. Now he needed the personal fulfilment of knowing there was someone to carry on that success. He wanted a son, a proper son, not one with a lolling tongue and an incoherent voice, one that only a mother could love. He wanted a son he could be proud of. He finally understood why men of his age took up with younger wives. They achieved success with their first wives and raised a family with their second and it was an unfortunate trick of nature that prevented women from doing the same.
“You were late last night.” Molly came into the room, tying the cord on her dressing gown. Her hair was untidy and she looked pale.
“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate.
One thing that had been holding him back from the final decision was that once he’d asked her for a divorce, the company would lose Molly’s talents and – at a time when he was planning a major expansion – he would have to give a large part of his wealth to her. He had discussed this with Olivia who happened to be a lawyer specializing in the divorces of the wealthy and powerful. The company, she suggested, was his. Molly was an employee, not a joint owner and she had earned a good income through the years. As for her leaving, well, the company was more than the Molly Norman range of ceramics and anyway, Richardson’s had the copyright on the Molly Norman name and all the designs she’d done for the company over the years.
He could find and promote another designer. Molly was probably getting a little passé now, a little past her prime creatively as well as physically.
He’d have to get his lawyers on to it. He didn’t want a prolonged fight.
He realized he hadn’t heard what she was saying. “… start training Tim as an assistant today. He’s really very…”
“What?”
“Tim. He’s been with us for six months now. He loves the pottery – he knows the work – he’s helped me often enough and…”
A few months ago, she’d taken on a youth from some charity she was involved with that looked after people with so-called “learning difficulties”. The young man was another Dominic, another flat faced defective with a protruding tongue that stumbled and spluttered over the few words he could manage. The pottery needed a general dogsbody – someone to make the tea and sweep up, the kind of work he was fit for and there were grants available for companies who took these people on, so Anthony hadn’t argued.
But now Molly was planning to spend good money training this man, this Tim, as an assistant in the pottery, letting him load the kiln, even let him switch it on and keep an eye on the firing. “No,” he said.
He saw Molly’s puzzled frown. “I told you last week. I’ve already promised…”
He vaguely remembered her mentioning something. It was typical of Molly to drop something important into her general chat. She probably did it, knowing he wasn’t paying attention. “Then you’ll have to un-promise.” He saw her open her mouth to argue – she could be stubborn sometimes – and said, “I’ll see you later.”
He left the house, intending to go straight to the office. Instead, he drove to Olivia’s. It was time they made some decisions.
Tim Sergeant was cleaning up in the workshop. Every morning when he came in, he mopped the floor to clear up any dust that had settled in the night. At the end of each day he cleaned up all the dropped clay, all the spatters of glaze, all the wood ash and bone meal for the colours that Mrs Richardson used on her pots, leaving everything clean and scrubbed for the next day. Then in the morning, he came in early and mopped everything again so that the decks would be cleared (Mum) and ready for the beautiful things that Mrs Richardson made.
He liked the pottery in the early morning. It was quiet with no one to distract or confuse him. He liked the wheel with the seat where you could sit and make it spin with a treadle. He did that now, pretending he was throwing a pot and making it grow under his fingers like Mrs Richardson did. When he’d first started, he’d been afraid of the kilns, especially the big gas one. The first time he’d seen flames come shooting out of the little hole in the door, he’d gone away and hidden, but Mrs Richardson had explained the kiln was supposed to do that.
There were rows of pots on the table waiting to be glazed. At first, Tim hadn’t understood about the glaze. Mrs Richardson had shown him a bowl of pale sludge, and she’d dipped the beautiful, fragile bowl into it, then she’d swirled her brush along the side. It didn’t look like anything special to Tim. Just sludge.
But then it had gone in the kiln with all the other pots, and when it came out, it had been the most beautiful yellow, bright as the sun. “It’s like Mum’s canary,” he had breathed. “It’s magic.”
Mrs Richardson had laughed, but not in a mean way. She’d been pleased. “Yes, like canary feathers. You’re right.” After that, she’d let him help with the glazes. She’d taught him how to use the ball mill to grind up the materials, and he helped to mix the glazes she wanted to use, carefully adding the wood ash, the flint, the felspar, the bone meal, making something ugly that somehow, miraculously became beautiful in the fire.
And today was a special day. For weeks now, he’d watched her as she’d packed the kiln and closed the heavy door, sealing it shut by turning the wheel on the outside. He’d been allowed to turn on the gas tap as she wielded the flaming wand that made the gas ignite with a whoof. And she’d taught him how to keep checking the temperature gauge hour after hour as the heat crept up and up. “Red hot” she’d say, then ‘White hot,” as it reached the magic number: 1300. And the last time they had done this together, she had nodded to Tim and, not able to keep the grin off his face, he had turned off the gas. Then the kiln would have to be left for a day and a night to cool down. “I think you’re ready,” she’d said to him, the last time they’d fired the kiln together.
Today, she was going to let him pack it by himself. She would be there in case he needed help, but she was going to let him do it, and she was going to let him use the wand to light the gas and then she was going to let him watch by himself until the time came to turn off the gas. He wouldn’t be the cleaner any more. He would be Mrs Richardson’s assistant. He would be a potter.
He watched from the window as Mrs Richardson’s car pulled into the car park and went to make her a cup of tea in one of the teapots she designed. His hand hovered over the yellow one, but then he decided to use the one with the deep red glaze that was so fine and delicate that you could almost see the tea as you poured in the boiling water. He put a cup and saucer on the tray, and some biscuits carefully arranged on a plate.
He carried the tray through, keeping his eyes fixed on it so that it stayed level, and put it carefully down on the table in Mrs Richardson’s room as she came through the door. “Tea,” she said. “Just what I wanted. Thank you, Tim.” But there was something in her voice that worried him. She was frowning as she poured the tea as if she was thinking about something else. She needed to be left alone to work.
“I’ll go and finish sweeping,” he said.