Alchemy (29 page)

‘An easy mistake to make in woods at night. There would have been lights from my client’s car, a torch, a fire. Possibly, even a lantern.’

‘What was the nature of the ritual, Ms Green?’

As I understand it, it was, is in honour of a mother goddess.’ Always mention mothers if you can squeeze them in. As I’m sure you know, sergeant, many ancient religions have worshipped a mother goddess.’ I don’t add – and very nasty some of them were too – thinking of Cybele and Kali, Medusa and even Diana on an off day. Not to mention that old sourpuss Juno. ‘Getting in touch with nature, like ramblers and the Green Party’ I must be careful not to ramble on too much myself.

Perry is looking tight-lipped and sceptical. ‘But what do they do? What exactly was going on, Ms Green?’

‘I believe you light a fire and cast a magic circle around it. And then you say a few prayers.’

‘And what do you make of all this?’

‘Well, between ourselves, sergeant, I think it’s all a bit theatrical, for my taste. But I can’t see any harm in it for others or really that it breaks any laws, except perhaps trespass and that’s a civil offence. From the point of view of the owners I think they would be ill-advised to follow it up publicly. All sorts of people might get the idea that their woods were a suitable place for goings-on of a less innocent nature.’

‘We haven’t established yet that it was innocent.’

‘I can assure you it was.’ And I believed it too. Foolish and naive perhaps and potentially harmful for those who might rely on it for emotional or physical healing, but then thousands of people were now into alternative therapies. It was only that Gabon’s lot called themselves witches, that raised centuries old superstitions and alarms. And, who could say that if you believed enough, you couldn’t, in some cases, alter the body’s chemistry, stimulate the immune system or set the serotonin flowing?

‘We’ll keep this a bit longer until we decide how to proceed. Sign for it, please.’ Perry pushed the robe to one side and produced a daybook. I signed and gave my address.

‘You aren’t local?’

‘No, as you can see I have a practice in London.’

‘How come you’re his solicitor then?’

‘I’m acting for him in another matter.’ I risk a question of my own. ‘The member of the public who reported the incident that led you to investigate, can you give me any more information on that? What time was it reported for instance?’

Perry consults his records. ‘It was an anonymous call at II.41 p.m.’

‘Did anyone follow up where the call was made from?’

‘It was a mobile. Number unknown.’

‘A pity. You could have asked them what they were doing out there themselves.’

‘I expect it was what we used to call a courting couple though these days it’s most likely to be with someone else’s husband or wife.’

Suddenly he’s weary of it all. This wasn’t the world he signed up to police. I sense a nostalgia for the old law and order that never was except in the tabloid imagination.

‘Too true,’ I say.

Perry closes the book. ‘You’ll hear from us, Ms Green.’

I’m being dismissed. I’ve kept Galton out of it and if it’s cost him an arm and a leg in taxi fares, that’s money well spent.

‘Just one thing: my client’s car?’

‘It’s in the police pound. He can collect it on payment of the removal fee.’

Galton is waiting nervously in the cab. I shake my head at him to stop him from asking questions and tell the driver to take us back to the station. Galton pays up without a murmur, adding a substantial tip.

‘Let’s have a cup of coffee in the station buffet where we can talk.’ The cafeteria has Mediterranean pretensions in its name and decor but inside it smells of stale dishwashers, and the coffee tastes of them too.

‘You haven’t got the robe.’

‘No. They kept it. I signed for it. They should let you have it back in due course as the police might say. I think there’s a strong chance they won’t prosecute. I’ve shown that we’ll fight it if they do and I hope I’ve done enough to persuade them to close the book on the whole incident. One thing worries me though. Can you remember exactly what time you all got there?’

Galton looks coy. ‘Midnight is, of course, the witching hour. We need about five minutes to get our clothes off. We don’t like to hang about too long without some activity. It can be
lather chilly until the actual ritual takes over. Then of course you forget the demands of the flesh. So we try to arrive as close to midnight as possible; ideally about ten minutes before.’

‘Is it necessary to be naked?’

‘Oh, you can’t really exchange the fivefold kiss without it.’

I decide to think about this later.

‘And that night?’

‘As usual, as far as I can remember. When I looked at my watch it was five to. Everyone was ready. The high priestess led them in the dance to the site. Then we performed a ring dance joining hands and the high priestess cast the circle. I had just lit the bonfire when we heard the noise of cars and saw lights. Fortunately they were still some way off. We didn’t know it was the police of course but I told everyone to get away as quickly as possible while I covered their retreat. I doubt if everyone got all their clothes on. They were only just able to get to their cars in time. Fortunately the site was between two roads and we had parked in a picnic parking spot on the opposite side from where the police were approaching. Otherwise we would all have been caught. I’d doused the fire, we always keep water to hand in case, and banished the circle. The police were crashing about in some bushes. I hoped they didn’t have dogs with them. I miscalculated. I thought I had just time to dress but they suddenly burst through and found me.’

‘So you would say you were there no more than fifteen minutes before twelve when the circle was cast? And you saw no evidence of anyone who could have called the police at 11.41?’

‘They would have had to be in a car like us and if we’d seen any such thing we’ would have aborted the rite. That happens sometimes. The goddess won’t manifest herself if there are strangers about.’

‘The police say you can pick up your car from the pound. Apart from that I would advise you to keep a very low profile. Keep your head down. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.
You might try a prayer or two or crossing your fingers. Whatever turns you on.’

‘I am grateful to you, Ms Green.’

‘Just try to stay out of any more trouble.’

He’s at least ten years older than me but I hoped he’d if not recognise at least respect the Marlowe voice of authority.

It’s a relief to get home, make myself coffee and sit down to think. Galton had, inadvertently, told me a lot more about what went on at their meetings almost as a kind of boast or a claim for the authenticity of their cult or belief or craft, whatever they called it. Yet there was something both creepy and hilarious in middle-aged men and women dancing about naked in the woods, no doubt blue and goose-pimpled and the dangly bits, male and female, shrivelling up with cold. There was probably a lot more he wasn’t telling me and that I didn’t need or want to know. It wasn’t relevant either for the Wessex case or this one since they’d been surprised before they could do anything much except get their kit off.

After all, a bit of open-air sex has a long and respectable history of hey nonny no, long before D.H. Lawrence turned it into an erotic version of the Chelsea Flower Show. There’s something liberating about it which is maybe why so many of the boys head for Hampstead Heath or Brompton Cemetery.

That day out with Helen clinging on to me as we zoomed into Sussex down the motorway was a kind of apotheosis that caught us up into rose-coloured clouds after which there was no other way but down though I didn’t know it at the time. But maybe she did. When we got back she wouldn’t come into the flat except to change and then asked for a cab right away.

‘All that fresh air is exhausting!’ It was a conspiratorial smile she gave and then a peck on the cheek when what I needed was to hold her hard against me and drown in her scent. ‘See you back at the firm. We’re out to dinner tonight with clients. I hope I can stay awake!’

I didn’t bump into her in the corridor next day by accident on purpose. And she didn’t ring down. That night I went home and played
Rosenkavalier
all the way through, burying my face in the gear she had worn the day before to see if I could detect any lingering scent of her and breathe it in but the smell of the leathers overpowered any there might have been. It was as if yesterday had never happened and perhaps for her it hadn’t. Perhaps I’d dreamt it all. And then the other Marlowe kept going through my head. ‘Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. Thy lips suck up my soul…’

Mine was no Faustian contract with a myth though. What I wanted was flesh and blood, a cheek to touch, lips to cling to, a presence not an illusion or a dream. Obsessively, I played a dialogue over in my head in which I asked her what we were going to do. I wanted her to leave James and come to me, but when I looked round at my flat and considered their glossy way of life and position as partners in Settle and Fixit my fantasy collapsed in a heap on the floor as reality let go of the puppet’s strings. I cast round for ways to set it up on its feet dancing again but it refused to be raised. Pinocchio would be tossed into a corner for firewood as the caravan rumbled on its way.

A ship there is and she sails the sea,
She’s loaded deep as deep can be,
But not so deep as the love I’m in,
I care not if I sink or swim.

Every love song of loss haunted me with the impossibility of what I yearned after. Could I make myself play it cool, enjoy what was on offer without hankering after more? I’d try. I had to. I wouldn’t ring. Let her ring me.

But after another day of silence I was desperate, arguing, pleading in my head, unable to concentrate on the brief I’d been
asked to prepare for James, unwilling to go down for a long session with a witness in one of our underground client rooms for work on their rambling statement in case I missed a call from Helen. And as I begged and pleaded like a convicted prisoner given a chance to speak in mitigation, I was also the judge pointing out that at no time had Helen led me to suppose what she was doing was any more than an experiment, something perhaps shed always wanted to try or read about but it wasn’t going to change her lifestyle. And I stood accused by my own ethos since I didn’t see anything morally wrong in fun sex, just that it didn’t really work for me. Besides I’d fallen in love but that couldn’t be helped either. Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad or something.

Then there was Rosalind: ‘Men have died and worms have eaten them but not for love.’ Was she really that cynical or just expressing a typical view of the times that men were the romantics while women had their eye on the main chance? But Olivia was in love though it was only with a dream ‘poor lady’. The whole country was a merry-go-round of thwarted desires set against the social need to marry, like the ordered landscapes of Austen’s England. Illyria is Arcadia, itself a dreamscape of perpetual summer and pursuit as if we were in sunlit Greece instead of our sodden island. I was running round my own hamster wheel of unjustified recrimination and need and I didn’t know how to get off.

Drew came over to my desk next morning and perched himself on the edge. ‘I think I ought to tell you. I’ve found a new job.’

I’d been expecting it but I was still shaken. ‘Oh, man, what will I do without you?’

‘The humiliating thing is they didn’t even try to make me stay or talk me out of it. Chalmers suggested I take my full holiday even though I’m only entitled to half. They’ve even waived me working out my notice.

‘“I don’t think we should require that of you, Drewpad. I
always think once one has made up one’s mind one should go for it.”’

‘The shits!’

‘That’s bosses for you.’

‘So where are you going?’

He grinned. ‘Geneva.’

‘Geneva!’

‘I’ve got a job with an international organisation, well it’s a sort of charity really that provides cheap legal advice and assistance for musicians in Third World countries or whatever they’re called at the moment, who feel they’re being suckered by the big media boys.’

‘That’ll make you very popular.’

‘I know, it should be fun. Somehow I’ll feel I’m getting my own back over the post-colonial rip-off merchants. My only worry is my mum but she says it’s my big chance and I’ve got to take it.’

‘Maybe you’ll find a Swiss maid who wants somewhere to keep her cuckoo clock.’

We had to toast his new life at the end of the week.

I’ll keep in touch,’ Drew said as we got steadily and sentimentally pissed, but we both knew the time and place that had called up and supported our workaday friendship would fade, driven out by new faces and demands. He was excited by the chance of such a big change with all it might bring while I felt even more apprehensive and lost. James Chalmers had summoned me to appear that afternoon.

‘I expect you’ve heard that we’re losing Drewpad, that he’s going on to higher things. That means you’ll be in charge of that office and take over his briefs. More money of course and we’ve got an assistant for you in view. I’d like you to get them up and running as soon as possible so that you’re still here to help me out in court. Helen said she had a fantastic day out with you. She’s gone to stay with friends for a few days. I’ll go
down and join her for the weekend. You seem to have given her a taste for the country.’

I didn’t know what to make of all this. It explained Helen’s silence but why hadn’t she told me she was going away? She must have known all the time we were together. And Chalmers? Was he just laughing at me or playing some little game of his or their own? Perhaps they really were an ageing wolf couple, swapping partners and stories to turn each other on as other pairs watch porn movies together. I felt repelled and angry and yet I didn’t want to let her go, to simply walk away.

On Tuesday I was due in court with James. ‘I’m sure you could handle this on your own but the beak and the clients like to see a man in charge. It’s different in the States, of course. Even big media corporations there are used to a woman up front but we’re still more traditional here, even in the field of media law. After all Butler-Sloss is only allowed the Family Division. A woman’s place is still in the home even on the bench. Those women who try to go beyond that get a very bad press, I’m afraid. It’ll be worse if they do away with the wig and gown and turn the court into a catwalk. We’ll start to get comments from the tabloids on what the judge was wearing instead of any attempt at serious reporting.’