144 pages

English

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Cruelty of Beauty , livre ebook

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144 pages

English

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Description

A beautiful glassmaker. Two damaged men who love her. Set in exotic Bohemia and the wilderness of an English coast, this is a story of obsession and passion and fear... The Cruelty of Beauty takes the reader on a journey into glassmaking and its parallels with the fragilities and strengths of life.

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Romance

Informations

Publié par	eBook Versions
Date de parution	29 août 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781843966128
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Published in the

www.wendyholden.com Wendy Holden has asserted her

right under the Copyright, Designs and

Patents Act 1988 to be identified

as the author of this work. ISBN 978-1-84396-612-8 ePub ebook edition production

No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in or

introduced into a retrieval system

or transmitted in any form

or by any means electronic,

photomechanical, photocopying,

recording or otherwise without

the prior written permission

of the publisher. Any person who

does any unauthorised act in

relation to this publication may be

liable to criminal prosecution.

About the author

Wendy Holden has written more than thirty books, many of them international bestsellers, including her first novel,The Sense of Paper, published by Random House, New York;Born Survivors, the bestselling story of three young mothers who gave birth in the concentration camps; andMr Scraps, a novella about a dog caught up in the London Blitz. A former war correspondent, she specializes in the biographies of inspirational women and Holocaust survivors. She lives in Suffolk, England, with her husband and two dogs.

Author’s website

www.wendyholden.com

For the one whose vital light

has guided me through the labyrinth

and led me to the place I call

home – better than fiction and more

beautiful than words – his heart.

THE

CRUELTY OF

BEAUTY

Wendy Holden

WHINC

Contents

COVER

ABOUTTHEAUTHOR

DEDICATION

TITLEPAGE

DEFINITIONS

PROLOGUE

FIRE

SAND

LIME

SODA

OTHERBOOKSBYWENDYHOLDEN

GLASS:cup, beaker, tumbler, Brinking vessel, watch glass, hourglass, barometer, winBow, plate glass, optic, lens, lighthouse glass, spectacles, eyeglasses, contact lens, magnifying glass, monocle, telescope, periscope, microscope, spyglass, binoculars, prism, obsiBian, light bulb, looking-glass, mirror, cheval, speculum, reflector, beaB, Biamante, paste, glass slipper, crystal. Roget’s Thesaurus GLASS: A non-organic material, which has passeB from the fusion of its components to an amorphous state (thus avoiBing crystallization). The lack of crystallization means that the glass is always unstable at a normal temperature: internal molecular tension can leaB to spontaneous breakage of the finisheB object. However, if the components are carefully proportioneB anB heateB appropriately (very slow cooling anB reheating), this can be limiteB to acceptable extents in practice. Treccani, Italian Encyclopedia

PROLOGUE

“I SOMETIMES wonder how many breaths she squandered creating her pieces of glass. Her copper-coloured hair scraped back from a face flushed red from the heat of the furnace, she’d stand legs slightly apart, her body wiry under her dungarees, before leaning back and expelling one quick breath at a time down the shaft of her blowing iron. Holding the end with her thumb, she’d watch and wait for the bubble of air to reach the orb of molten glass that swirled and spun like a living thing. Swelling with each new puff, the evolution of every creation was like a mother giving birth to a child - breath by tiny breath. Even now, when I hold one of her progenies in my hand, allowing my fingertips to run over its iridescent surface – rock hard and unassailable – I imagine that her breath still trapped within, frozen in time. Like a fly in amber. Placing my mouth against it, I kiss the piece with the tenderness I wish I’d shown her in life; but the coldness against my lips only reminds me of death. Bitter at the thought, I fight the temptation to snap it in two and suck greedily at the tiny pocket of air she so recklessly relinquished. Instead, my hands trembling, I return it carefully to its rightful place in one of the cabinets I had specially made to exhibit the last remaining pieces of her work. Sitting alone before them in the eerie ultraviolet light that best sets off their strange luminescence, I am transported to the moment she gave each of them life. To a time when I was happy. Now, they are all I have left, these perfect bubbles of glass. Each one a single, crystallised breath of the only woman I ever loved. The woman I killed for love...”

FIRE

The state or process of combustion in which substances combine chemically with oxygen to give out bright light and heat.

“THE FIRST time I saw her was in 1983, fifteen years after the Prague Spring when anything had felt possible – until the day we realized as a nation that nothing was. She was leaning against an open doorway, the yellow light of summer on her hair. She didn‘t notice me a few yards away, all reason trapped in my throat. Born two years before that famous period of political liberalisation, she was chatting animatedly to her father – her true love. God, how I envied that miserable old man. Her fingers brushed his parchment skin cheek in that fond, familiar way yet he didn‘t even seem to register their touch. What I wouldn‘t have given to trade places with him, even with that telltale number tattooed on his forearm. I sensed from the outset that the only way to get close to her would be to ingratiate myself with him. Wherever he was, she‘d choose to be, and I might at least soak up a little of her essence by being there too. It wasn‘t easy. The old man was suspicious of me from the outset. Years of mistrust had marked his weakened heart. What, he asked, did an urban comrade like me know about the art of glassmaking? Why had I fled to the middle of a forest from the city of a hundred spires, when I had no knowledge or understanding of the craft and furthermore possessed – as he put it – the clumsy paws of a bear? I knew something, though – how to follow orders and to be obsequious. He recognised my type at once (he‘d seen it often enough in the camps) and reluctantly accepted that I‘d be a steadfast and servile underling. He was right. Nothing was too much for me. No matter how hard he worked me or how late, I carried out his instructions to the letter. He paid me a meagre wage, allowed me a supper of soup and potatoes with a few greasy cuts of meat, and let me sleep in an unheated storeroom. I rose at dawn to empty my piss-pot and wash in a basin of water so cold I had to crack the ice. On a stomach warmed only by coffee, I began each twelve-hour shift by ensuring the furnace was fed with endless supplies of beech, spruce, and birch that I harvested from the forest. I prepared the morning batch, stoked the glory hole, swept the floor of the previous day‘s fragments and blasted out the blowing pipes. I scraped the tools and cast-iron moulds with a metal pick and kept the annealing oven at a steady temperature for cooling the pieces the old man, and – latterly – his young successor made. The benefits of my job were beyond price – chiefly, the opportunity to breathe the same air as his daughter; to watch as he taught her his trade; to wonder at her ability to follow instructions, and listen to the peal of her laughter. Though she barely acknowledged my existence, I considered myself the most fortunate man alive. Then came the day that changed my life. Warm and still, the glassworks was full of wood smoke and the air hung heavy around us in an afternoon haze. The old man was resting upstairs in the first-floor apartment he sometimes used, his snoring muffled by the roar of the furnace, while his daughter practised a new technique. Still a novice, she didn‘t yet appreciate the care required when snapping off a new piece of glass from its pontil or that something so malleable could – in a heartbeat – become so brittle. I was standing next to her with a bucket of water ready to cool her goblet mould. Mesmerized by her eyes – so green I was temporarily lost – I didn‘t notice until too late that

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