I Like Your Style: Mosaic Workshop Part Two
I worked on my own for about a year. After a while I hired Tessa. I was happy to have her. She was a qualified architect, and understood technical issues. She was paid by the hour. Money was tight, and life became increasingly difficult. ‘Let’s just split the funds when we get them’ she suggested, and we did.
We made a baptistery floor for a Catholic church in the north of England. Fixing it, we stayed with the priest. His house was bare and chilly. ‘Help yourself to breakfast’ he said. Rising early, we toasted two pieces of sliced white bread and made a pot of coffee. ‘ I see you’ve helped yourself to the expensive stuff’ he said disapprovingly. We felt ashamed.
We worked every day. The studio window faced the school opposite. When it was break-time my children waved from the playground. The house groaned with more and more materials. Fruit boxes of glass and ceramic of every colour filled the hall. ‘Don’t your children cut their feet on the splinters?’ people asked. ‘No’ I said.
Money got tighter. The phone rang. It was an architect working on behalf of an Australian tycooness. ‘She’d like to come to the house to see you’ he said. ‘That would be great!’ I lied.
The house was shabby. Two limousines pulled up. From one car, a uniformed man opened the door to a tiny, elderly woman on very high heels. From the other, the glossy architect emerged.
‘Well, Emma, I like your style!’ she said. And with those words, the marble mosaic floor for the penthouse of New York’s Pierre Hotel was commissioned.
‘I thought she’d fall down the holes in the floorboards’ I said to Tessa. ‘So did I’ she agreed.
We’d have to buy a noisy marble machine. What would the neighbours make of that?
Marble mosaic floor by Tessa, of much later vintage. Miranda in the workshop in Holloway Road. Fruit boxes still in evidence.
Glossy architects and tiny elderly women in high heels. Sounds like the stuff of which fairy tales are made. So happy this one has a happy ending. Keep writing.
Beautiful story Emma! The frugal priest and the tycooness (is this an invented word?) are quite the contrast. I look forward to your posts.
You are a total legend! You make things happen in almost impossible times and create beauty out of seeming chaos. I’m in awe!
Thank you both for your encouraging comments.
Tycooness is an invented word, and I apologise for the sexist overtones, but I think it gives a flavour of the experience in a way that ‘tycoon’ doesn’t.
Blimey Carole, I’m blushing! Really it’s dogged persistence and a refusal to face reality, though.
On the Silk Road
we love stories,
with yours we entered the 1002nd night.
oz
You exotic old flatterer, you!
That was a real cinderella story ,and even better for you it was no fairytale.
Did the princesses get to stay in the penthouse?
Sadly, not. But Tessa did get to visit!
With my first cup of java, I read a post that told of a daily stroll by a secret garden. My second cup ends with this delightful cinderella tale, beginning with meals of bread and ending with marble floors in penthouses. What fun!
Totally agree! What a delightful story. I await anxiously for the next installment!
Oh dear, I think you might be disappointed Virginia and Lynn. The next installment might be construed as depressing. Not the end of the tale though! Thank you for reading.
On the Silk Road
we love stories,
with yours we entered the 1002nd night.
oz