The Grenadillo Box: A Novel by Janet Gleeson Read Free Book Online

was nonsense. I was close as a brother to him and never heard mention of this person. The illness, I decided, was most probably a yarn spun by Partridge, for some reason of his own. Only I couldn’t fathom what that reason might be.
     
    P erhaps it was fortunate that over the days that followed I did not have long to dwell on my worries. It was impressed upon me almost every hour that the library must be finished in time for the dinner Lord Montfort was holding on New Year’s Day. Since this involved assembling a vast bookcase and the date was now only four days hence, my time passed in a frenzy of activity. I supervised the transportation of crates to the library. I ensured the packing mats and battens, paper and lay cord were removed without damage to the carvings on which Partridge had labored so painstakingly. Piece by piece I watched each segment emerge, marveling as I did so at the brilliance of the craftsman who conceived and so dexterously executed it.
    It is a commonly held misbelief, among those who have never commissioned furniture, that the proprietor of a great workshop must himself draw and cut and carve every object produced under his name. In truth the great London cabinetmakers—John Channon, William Hallet, William Vile, Giles Grendey, and of course, Thomas Chippendale, all of whom do flourishing trade in this golden age of cabinetmaking—have long since put down their tools. Proprietors are transformed by success into administrators and salesmen, their craftsmen’s skills forgotten. Their talent must be diverted into lavishing attentions upon patrons in place of tabletops. Thus, in order to supply the fabric of his trade, Chippendale relied upon a host of journeymen in his employ. Without workers such as Partridge, Molly Bullock, and I, scarcely a stick of furniture would have been made in his name.
    In this instance it was Partridge who’d created the finished sketches, Partridge who’d carved the most intricate parts and overseen the completion of the whole. Partridge, my friend and ally. I didn’t doubt that, if he could see me fretting over his whereabouts while I assembled his great masterpiece, he would have laughed and called me an idiot. But therein lay my concern: I hadn’t seen him.
    Yet have I learned how distance and time can shift our perception of almost anything. Over the days of frenetic work that followed, when I was removed from London and all that was familiar to me, I began to feel my fears were unfounded. Working in this great room, piecing together Partridge’s creation from the fragments laid before me, my worry diminished. There was nothing I could do about Partridge here. I would carry out my instructions to the best of my ability. By the time I returned to London, Partridge would surely have reappeared, doubtless rolling with laughter at some clever scheme he’d carried off.
    The library was a long narrow room that spanned the western limits of the house and had recently been redecorated in readiness for the new furnishings. The walls were freshly hung in crimson silk damask; a sumptuous flower-filled Axminster carpet, its pattern reflecting the stuccoed ceiling, lay ready to be unrolled. The ceiling alone had taken a dozen local craftsmen six months to complete. The long outer wall was centered upon a Carrara marble chimneypiece. To either side four sash windows gave onto a formal Italian garden. The view was generally considered delightful, one of the marvels of Horseheath, and in the summer season—according to Constance—numerous visitors came specially to walk in the gardens. To me, however, the marriage of Art and Nature seemed profoundly discordant. Walls of oppressive privet terminated in stifling niches; urns were filled with skeletal plants; and in the center a huge fountain formed the hub of an immense circular ornamental pond. And betwixt every path, white marble statues of nymphs, now frosted by winter, stood frozen in various stages of