Every colour in the paint shop is a lie. The pink goes on like a bruise and comes out of the fire a rose. The gold goes on gray. Thirza Cartlidge has never once been fooled by any of it, and in the winter of 1876 that gift is about to be worth more than her life.
She is twenty-six, she paints flowers on other people's china for fourteen shillings a week, and she is quietly buying back the twelve plates her father painted before the bailiffs took everything. Then the old colour-maker dies at his bench, the largest order in the works' history lands on the yard, and a woman is put in charge of a colour shop for the first time in the history of the trade.
But the fires have started eating the ware. Nine pieces here, twelve there, twice a week, and the wages of every woman in that shop docked for it. Thirza is certain it is not the fire, because she lights the fire.
Something is going out of that gate. And her name is on the paper that says it never existed.
Colour is a promise. Nothing else in this trade is.
Genre: Sagas
She is twenty-six, she paints flowers on other people's china for fourteen shillings a week, and she is quietly buying back the twelve plates her father painted before the bailiffs took everything. Then the old colour-maker dies at his bench, the largest order in the works' history lands on the yard, and a woman is put in charge of a colour shop for the first time in the history of the trade.
But the fires have started eating the ware. Nine pieces here, twelve there, twice a week, and the wages of every woman in that shop docked for it. Thirza is certain it is not the fire, because she lights the fire.
Something is going out of that gate. And her name is on the paper that says it never existed.
Colour is a promise. Nothing else in this trade is.
Genre: Sagas
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