Pandora(12)

She rings the bell, waits to be admitted by a shiny-faced footman. Inside it is warm, and the pleasant smell of beeswax candles is a welcome scent after the putrid air of the streets.

The walls are trussed up floor to ceiling with glass cabinets decorated with carved and gilded appointments, their contents bright and gleaming, filled to the brim. The cabinets near the entrance house the more everyday ware: sturdy goblets, large serving platters, silver-plated cutlery with ivory handles carved into hunting dogs and wild boar. Nice enough items to be sure, but it is those near the counter that have Dora’s heart fluttering.

Necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds and diamonds. Opaline glass, seed pearls, cut steel, a tray of Wedgwood Jasperware. Butterfly brooches, harlequin jewels. And there, directly in front of her, is a new piece, something altogether too glorious to be kept locked away.

On a deep blue cushion sits a tiara. Filigree patterning, embellished with round and pear-shaped rose-cut diamonds and at its centre a flower, its petals bursting out from its pistil like the rays of the sun. Dora tilts her head, stands on tiptoe, tries to view it from a different angle. Silver-topped, dosed back. As she moves, the diamonds glint and dance. They truly are exquisite. Dora presses her face close to the glass. If she looks very carefully, she can see her reflection in all their tiny facets.

‘Beautiful,’ she whispers.

‘Beautiful indeed.’

Mr Clements emerges from the back room carrying a tray of rings. A thin, bespectacled man with a thick mop of grey-streaked brown hair that he keeps tightly contained with a ribbon, he reminds Dora of a studious otter. He always wears colours in earthy shades, ties his cravat too tightly, looks as if he has been shoe-horned into his coat. He is one of the few gentlemen of her parents’ friendship circle she has maintained regular contact with, and from whom her passion for jewellery blossomed.

One particular year Dora’s mother, Helen, took her to Clements & Co. every week to admire his displays, and over tea and sweetmeats the jeweller would – for the purpose of documenting her finds – explain to Dora’s mother the difference between gemstones and paste, the best place to source turquoise, how opals came to be. While he and her mother spoke, Mr Clements would give Dora a tin of beads to play with. It was he who taught her how to tie a clasp and curl a wire, he who gave Dora her own set of pliers and cutters.

All the jewellery her mother owned had been made by Mr Clements. Gently Dora touches the cameo brooch at her neck, the only surviving piece from her mother’s collection – the rest Hezekiah sold before Dora even realised they had gone. Mr Clements had made the cameo from a cassis shell Dora found on the beach of Paphos. Simple but elegant, it depicts the regal profile of a woman wearing a wreath of grapes that falls over her shoulder. Her mother always let Dora play with the brooch before she went to bed; she used to turn it over and over in her tiny hands, admiring the etchwork, the coolness of it in her palms. Her mother was wearing it when she died.

‘Mr Clements.’

‘Miss Blake. How are you, my dear?’

‘Well, sir.’ She proffers the sketchbook with both hands. ‘I have brought more of my designs.’

The jeweller lowers the ring tray. She thinks she sees a look of restraint pass across his face but he has bent beneath the counter, exchanged his ring tray with a square of black velvet, and when he looks at her once more his face is open, affable.

‘Let’s see them, then.’

Dora sets her sketchbook down onto the glass counter and opens her reticule. Very carefully, one by one, she produces her designs. Three pairs of earrings – one drop, one torpedo, one ball – constructed of wire and seeds, carved wood and a marble, respectively. A bracelet in mock pinchbeck and garnet made from lace and glass beads, two brooches in the style of Vauxhall glass achieved with broken mirror shards, a ribbon-tie necklace of porcelain buttons she has painted to imitate agate.

She saves the cannetille necklace to last. Under the golden light of the candles she sees how well the blue glass pebble looks in its new setting. Two nights she laboured over that pendant, two back-breaking nights on her high and uncomfortable stool, but Dora is inordinately proud of it. With painstaking care she managed to coax the wire to form twenty small spiralled florets, the number of which matched identically on either side. It looks elegant, regal. It is the best work she has ever done.

As Dora produces them the goldsmith turns each piece this way and that, squints at the details over the rims of his spectacles, places them down carefully on the velvet, hums and haws. She is pleased he seems so fascinated, but she is not yet finished.

‘I know,’ Dora says as she opens her sketchbook, ‘these are crude in comparison to what would be produced in your shop. But you can see by my sketches what I was trying to achieve. Here,’ she adds, turning to the cannetille. ‘Gold and aquamarine. It would look well in either its pure form or paste, as long as the colour is right …’ When Mr Clements does not respond she rushes on. ‘I am happy to be guided by your expertise, of course. Add embellishments, if you will. Flowers would suit, feathers too perhaps if you were to pare down the—’

‘Miss Blake,’ he interrupts, the words escaping on a deep sigh.

Dora’s stomach tightens. The pages flutter from her fingers.

‘You do not like them.’

‘It is not that. My dear …’ He pauses, looks uncomfortable. ‘How might I put this delicately? I entertain you for your parents’ sakes, God bless their immortal souls. But …’ Mr Clements tries for a kindly smile. ‘Your drawings are, I must confess, quite charming for what they are but charming is all I can attribute to them.’