Alchemy (15 page)

‘Therefore since there can be no sin in impossibility, hold me child and let me sleep in your arms.’ So I put mine about her and soon she slept indeed. Then was I able to withdraw my arms from about her for the flame I had not understood seared me again when our breasts touched and kept me from sleep myself, as also the fear that she might wake and wonder what
she did or that one coming in early might surprise us as we lay, with me in all my nakedness.

In the darkness of the winter night I could not tell how long we lay together but at the first touch of russet grey in the sky I rose softly and dressed myself. The countess lay still sleeping while exhausted nature replenished herself. I crept from her room and regained my own pallet where I lay trembling full dressed under the coverlet until I heard others stirring. Then I took myself to the kitchen for bread and half a pint of wine and to stop the chattering of my teeth by warming myself at the fire.

Only Joan the cook and a scullery maid were up and busy about the breakfasts, laying out chines of beef, mutton and coneys for boiling with gruel of chickens for the weaker stomachs.

‘You are betimes Master Boston.’

‘I could not sleep for the cold.’

‘You should have hot young blood to keep you from that, unless you have a cold heart or too many sharp thoughts in your head.’

When my shivering had ceased I made my way towards my lady’s bedchamber, staying my steps in the passage where I slept when I heard her call out for her ladies. ‘Bring me rags. I bleed.’

Swiftly I turned and made my way back to the kitchen. ‘A hot posset for my lady and the finest mancheate with a clean napkin.’ I placed all on a silver tray and returned to her chamber.

She lay back in her bed with her ladies about her, making no attempt to rise. ‘What have you brought me Amyntas?’

‘A little breakfast madam that shall gently soothe the stomach.’

‘I can scarce open my eyes, even though I slept like a child after the draught you gave me. Give me some bread and wine and then I feel I shall sleep again.’

‘Nature commends such rest madam after so much travelling by the way. It is the best physick.’

‘And for the pain in my belly what will you prescribe?’

‘Syrup of comfrey madam.’

‘Does my lady well to have such faith in one so young?’ the duenna asked. ‘Let me send to Wilton for one of your other physicians, more experienced in the healing arts.’

‘Let Master Boston try what he can do. When he has failed then is the time to send for others. Besides it is only a little ache that I have not felt these last three months. Perhaps I shall get with child again by a cloud or a shower of gold.’

‘You will need a man hid therein then my lady,’ said the duenna, and all the women laughed together.

‘Bring me your draught child and then all of you let me sleep. When I wake I have much to do.’

As I walked to the dispensary for the syrup I thought that my lady’s melancholy with which she had returned was much eased and that as yet she had no memory of what had passed that night. Nor would I dare to remind her of it. Perhaps she had thought it but a dream brought on by the brandy into which I had managed to slip a spoonful of poppy syrup at the bottom of her last cup, and now believed I saw the beneficial results of this in her greater ease.

When I returned she had raised herself against her pillows so that I could see through the disorder of her bedgown some of what had pleasured me the night before.

‘Shall I trust you truly, Amyntas?’ she asked, ‘for I believe you gave me poppy even though I forbade it. I had such dreams.’

‘Madam, I cannot deceive you. There was a very little in the brandy but only to give you rest as it has done. You know I would serve and preserve you with my life, and would die rather than any harm should come to you, in especial from my hand.’

The letter from Wessex has come by the next morning, this morning. Briefly I wonder why they’re so keen to sign me up, and decide it must be the hefty fee they charge postgraduates
just for a short summer course. The dean makes it clear that if all goes well I can stay on if I want, maybe for ever, at a price, gathering points towards an eventual elevation. I study the names of the heads of department to try to penetrate through to their owners.

Ranee Raval. English.

Daniel Davidson. History.

‘I’m in. But at a price.’

‘Well done. I think the expression is spare no expense. As I hope I made clear, Ms Green, I fully expected to have to pay. Tell me what you thought of the setup.’ Galton’s on a high because he knows that now he’s truly hooked me. I have to remind myself I can back away at any time. Or can I? We haven’t signed a contract yet. And I’m supposed to be the lawyer. I choose my words carefully.

‘It’s hard to say. Some things struck me as weird. The way they keep their theologs as if in a monastery. And the chapel without any altar and almost out of bounds to the ordinary students who’re expected to lodge in the town.’

‘Along with most of the staff, apart from a privileged few.’

Galton’s own address must be somewhere in the town I realise. I might even have passed it on the bus from the station. The thought makes me uneasy though I don’t know why. It adds to my feeling of having been watched while I was there.

‘Perhaps you could express an interest in their temple and get yourself into a service.’

‘I thought of that.’ I mustn’t lose the initiative in this conversation with Galton as so often happens. ‘They call them Gatherings.’

‘Ah yes, of course. How quickly one forgets. And the Revd Bishop, what did you think of him?’

‘Esau? Very hairy.’

‘And did you meet the secretary?’

‘Of course. The Molders was given the job of showing me round. Very apple pie and efficient. I imagine she lives in.’

‘Certainly. You mustn’t be deceived by that wholesomely efficient manner.’

‘If you think that then perhaps we should call it all off.’ Cue for a song.

‘No, no, of course not. It’s only that I feel so powerless, so unable to influence things.’ I realise it’s the closest Galton can get to an apology.

Later when he’s rung off I consider the power-freak side of Galton. He’s used to being in control, his every word hung on by eager, open-mouthed students. That’s how he got himself into this mess. Exercising power, believing he could say and do what he liked and get away with it. Did he give some of Amyntas’ steamier confessions to his students? Or are they only in the full part of the manuscript he says was stolen? Why don’t I want to ask him? Because he might lie in spite of my warnings, and I couldn’t trust his answer.

The students are all over the age of consent so exposing them to adult material shouldn’t be a sackable offence. That’s the ground he stands on. But is it an abuse of trust? Only if it can be seen as truly pornographic, obscene. But nothing has really happened in the memoirs, not as far as I’ve read anyway. Surely no one could accuse such a sad love story of being obscene in these days? No court would support such a judgement.

Suppose I wrote my own memoirs and published them: Confessions of a legal loner. Briefs and tarts. Inns and outs of the wig trade. How I played Cherubino to my countess. More like Bottom to Titania.

Once again I’d been left dangling, wondering if the call would ever come. Then Helen Chalmers’ secretary rang me with a couple of dates. I said either was fine. When she rang again it was the later one. I turned this over, wondering how to read it. Sometimes in hope, often in doubt as the week passed, expecting all along that her secretary would ring to say it was all off. Then it was the day. We would meet in the foyer at six-thirty for a
pre-drink. Helen was there first. I walked towards her on traditionally jellied legs hoping she couldn’t see them tremble under black velvet pants.

‘Very smart,’ she said. ‘What would you like to drink? There’s the stalls bar through there.’

‘I’ll get them. What will you have?’

‘Gin and tonic would be great.’

It was the usual theatre crush bar with nowhere to sit. I left her leaning against a mahogany shelf and fought my way through, got the drinks, ordered a repeat for the interval and struggled back. She had lit a cigarette and was looking about her.

‘Jim would hate this but not as much as the performance itself.’

‘I ordered the same for the interval. Is that OK?’

‘Perfect. It’s more civilised to drink wine but I find it makes me sleepy.’

‘I got a couple of programmes.’

‘Do you know the plot? If not you’d better read up on the first act.’

Doing as I was told I opened the glossy pages. It was sung in German with a famous Czech mezzo as the Marschallin, the older woman, to a young Austrian as Octavian, her lover. I just about got the first act under my belt before the bell rang to call us to our seats. Sitting next to Helen in the dark, my nostrils filled with her scent, the lines of her profile within my sideways glance against the darkened theatre and her arm touching mine, I couldn’t hear the overture for the singing in my ears. I didn’t want the distraction of the stage, simply to savour being so close beside her, but as the plot unfolded and the rich dark music poured into me with all the passionate yet creamy sweetness of an Austrian pineapple cake, I was sucked in, absorbed as an amoeba metamorphoses its prey. And I hadn’t realised from the programme and the unfamiliar names of the cast, that the Marschallin’s young lover, Octavian, was played by a woman,
not a drag role for lack of a castrato as in Handel but a deliberate choice of the composer or his librettist.

By the time of the first interval I had completely transposed myself and Helen into Octavian and the Marschallin and could no longer draw any distinction between the fiction of the stage and the reality of its two watchers. For there were only the two of us in the half light. The rest emerged chattering, laughing, comparing notes as we made our way to the bar.

‘Well, what do you think?’

‘It’s fantastic. The music. The voices.’

‘Even Baron Ochs?’

‘Even him. He’s not my favourite of course but maybe you need that element of lumbering danger to threaten the lovers. It’s very well sung. But the Marschallin, she’s brilliant.’ I heard myself trying to impress.

‘You haven’t seen any Strauss before?’

‘I told you I’m not well up on later stuff.’

‘It was carefully chosen. I thought this would appeal to you, more than some of his other pieces.’

Yet even as she was speaking I was hearing something else in my head, that variation Dryden and Purcell made on Shakespeare’s if music be the food of love, in Deller’s high pure counter-tenor.

Sure I must perish by your charms. Unless you save me in your arms.

Then the bell was calling us back I hadn’t had time to read the summary of the next act. We swallowed our drinks and fought our way back to our seats.

Suddenly the plot had taken a turn for the worse. Octavian, splendid in silver as the Rosenkavalier, was presenting a rose to a young girl and obviously falling for her and she for him.

At this moment Helen leant sideways towards me and whispered,
‘This is how you will leave me.’ At least I thought that was what she said but I was trying too hard to penetrate the German text as it soared on passionate cadences from the new lovers. I understood that Octavian was leaving the Marschellin for the vapid Sophie but I wanted, longed to understand every syllable of the change. By the final trio I was drowning in the Straussian melodies.

‘How can he?’ I asked in the next interval. ‘There’s no comparison between the two.’

‘Wait and see.’

I found myself impatient with the farce that opened the third act, with Baron Ochs’ pursuit of Octavian dressed as a maid. It was Viola and Olivia in reverse and I wasn’t in the mood for it. I longed for the Marschallin’s return but it was only to a dignified renunciation. Octavian hesitates. Surely he can’t leave her. For a few seconds when the music finally ceased and the lights went up, I couldn’t clap. I was like a child at its first pantomime, my disbelief not just suspended but sunk fathoms down.

I stumbled up the steps after Helen still blinking, unable to believe it was over and life would pick up where it had left off and go on again.

‘I’ve got the car round the corner,’ Helen said as we came out on to the pavement. ‘I’ll drop you home. Where do you live?’

‘Earl’s Court. But it’s out of your way isn’t it? I don’t want to…’

‘Not much. We live in Camden Hill. Only ten minutes or so away. I’ll go through Hyde Park.’

And because I didn’t want the evening to end, was still under the spell of the music, I found myself walking beside her round to the street where she’d parked, getting into what I saw was a smallish BMW and directing her, after we had passed under the shadowy trees of Hyde Park and over the Serpentine luminous
under a cold full moon, down Earl’s Court Road and into the side street of handsome square houses chopped into flats or harbouring grimly cheap hotels.

Helen stopped her car in a lone space at the kerb.

‘Thank you,’ I said knowing it sounded flat and lame. ‘It’s been terrific. And for the lift.’

‘Aren’t you going to ask me in? I could do with a drink. I take it you’ve got something drinkable in there.’

How could I refuse? Yet I dreaded her seeing what must be the comparative squalor of how I lived. My breakfast bowl and mug were still unwashed in the sink. Had I made the bed? I couldn’t remember.

‘It’s not very big or tidy. We could look for a pub or a wine bar if you want a drink.’

‘I want to see where you live, silly.’

I gave in. ‘OK. I think I’ve got a bottle of red. Only plonk I’m afraid. But you mustn’t look at anything too closely. I’m not a great one for housework.’

‘I never supposed you were.’ She was getting out of the car. I had no choice but to do the same. When had I last cleaned the place? Would there be whorls of fluff behind the bathroom door and in the corners of the studio that would dance like dervishes in the draught?

Deliberately forgetting my manners I opened the door and went in first. At a quick glance it didn’t look too bad. For once I’d chucked my clothes on the bed instead of on the floor. ‘Have a seat.’ I tried to sound cool as I pointed to the only armchair. ‘I’ll get the wine.’