Alchemy (5 page)

One thing in especial I was glad of in our stay at Wilton in that I might find occasion to visit our old home in Salisbury and that churchyard of St Edmund’s where my father is buried. And now I think as I sit here writing this memorial, that if they should hang me as a witch I shall not lie beside him, my mother and brother in consecrated ground but be flung into a limepit to dissolve without hope of resurrection when the dead shall rise in the flesh. And yet I am innocent of any malicious practice which, if this is not made manifest, then I shall doubt of God himself as the atheists do since he has no power to protect the innocent.

The first night of our coming to the great house we did not sup in state for my lady was tired from the journey, the ways being very foul and rutted so that she and her ladies were bruised from riding in the coaches which swayed and jolted extremely. The countess went at once to her bedchamber and
said that she would receive only the chief steward until the next day. Then came in Mr Davys her steward to report, with gifts newly come from her brother Sir Robert in Flushing where there is much trade with the Indies. Among them, with some French wines, was a parcel of tobacco which she had requested from him, of the finest high Trinidad which my lady became accustomed to during the sickness of the late earl, her husband. ‘For nothing,’ she said, ‘would give him any ease but to take tobacco and I trying it found likewise and for the headache it is the only thing.’

She called at once for her pipe which Mistress Griffiths filled with a little of the leaf and laid a wax taper to it. My lady drew in the smoke very daintily and her face which before had been warped with fatigue softened at once. ‘Come Amyntas and try what it will do for you,’ she said. So I took my first breath of tobacco to the envy of her ladies who would try it for themselves but she would not let them suck on the pipe for she said their teeth were rotten and their tongues like goats. When I coughed a little from the smoke they laughed very much together and I saw that her speech which was sweet to me would do me harm with the other servants. The taste of it was of herbs blended together as rosemary and sorrel. It seemed to suffuse through my veins like a draught of spiced wine on a winter morning.

Mr Davys then handed my lady letters from several parts which she bade me open and read. Two were of little account but when I opened the third from Sir Philip her brother’s friend Sir Edward Wotton I found two sheets of paper folded small that seemed to have slipped between the pages by chance. First I read her the letter which was but a report of the queen’s health and the court’s progress towards London. There was no mention of the enclosures which raised my suspicion that they were not intended for the countess.

‘What more have you there?’ she asked. I unfolded the papers which were written in a different hand.

‘My lady some verses which I think have got in by chance.’

‘How so? What verses?’

‘They are inscribed “to my dear brother Edward”.’

‘Go on child.’

‘From his loving brother Henry. Some lines sent me in a letter by my friend the wit J. Donne, secretary to the Lord Keeper. Since he asked that no copies be made of them I send you the originals.’

‘This is done to raise his brother’s interest. Let us hear them.’

‘My lady, the first is titled “On his Mistress Going to Bed”.’

‘Young man’s bawdy. And the second?’

‘An heroical epistle. “Sappho to Philaenis.”’

‘Begin the first.’

So I read her:

Come madam come all rest my powers defy
Until I labour I in labour lie…

‘Enough,’ she said laughing, ‘it is as I supposed. Not to be read in company. Leave us.’ She waved her hand in dismissal to her ladies and Mr Davys and moved from the tapestried chair she had been sitting in to her daily couch, where she reclined in a smoky cloud like to some goddess on an altar wreathed with the haze of sacrifice.

‘The tobacco has made me easier. Go on. Begin the second. Let us see if that is meant for women’s ears and eyes.

‘Where is that holy fire that verse is said to have…’ I began not seeing as I read what lay in wait for me.

Plays some soft boy with thee, oh there wants yet

A mutual feeling that should sweeten it

His chin a thorny hairy unevenness

Doth threaten, and some daily change possess.

Thy body is a natural Paradise,

In whose self, unmanur’d, all pleasure lies

Nor needs perfection; why shouldst thou then

Admit the tillage of a rough harsh man?

Men leave behind them that which their sin shows,

And are as thieves trac’d, which rob when it snows,

But of our dalliance no more signs there are,

Than fishes leave in streams or birds in air,

And between us all sweetness may be had;

All, all that Nature yields, or Art can add.

‘What is this Philaenis: man or woman?’

‘I do not know my lady. The name suggests a man Philo, the teacher of Cicero.’

‘Read on and let us see. There were the brothers, the Philaeni who were buried alive to save their country.’

My eye had travelled down the page while she was speaking. I did not know how to continue but did not dare refuse.

‘Must I read it myself?’ she said, suddenly assuming the mistress who must be obeyed.

My two lips, eyes, thighs differ from thy two,

But so as thine from one another do;

And oh no more; the likeness being such,

Why should they not alike in all parts touch?

Hand to strange hand, lip to lip none denies;

Why should they breast to breast or thighs to thighs?

Likeness begets such strange self flattery,

That touching myself, all seems done to thee.

I faltered, feeling a throb begin in my loins and pass up through my stomach and thighs in a hot wave that I attributed to the tobacco I had smoked that now I thought reached down to those parts and caused this fever as if a hot poultice had been laid to them.

‘This is a woman to a woman. Give me the paper. It is
something near some words of my brother’s. Fetch me my
Arcadia.’

I went to the bag which contained the most precious things she carried always with her, that held her jewels and gloves, and those two books, the other being of the psalms, which she was never parted from.

‘It is in Book Two where he wrote of the love of Philoclea for Zelmane believing her to be an Amazon and not knowing yet it was the Prince Pyrocles in disguise,’ the countess said turning the pages. ‘Here it is. “First she would wish that they two might live all their lives together like two of Diana’s nymphs…Then grown bolder she would wish either herself or Zelmane a man.”‘ She read on silently for a little and then continued aloud.’ “It is the impossibility that doth torment me: for unlawful desires are punished after the effect of enjoying but unpossible desires are punished in the desire itself…thou lovest me excellent Zelmane and I love thee. And if she can love poor me shall I think scorn to love such a woman as Zelmane.”’

I’m reading slowly so as not to miss anything. What was Gilbert up to with this text? It seems harmless enough so far but then I’m not reading it as the Wessex people might. When I got back from my abortive trip today I rang the Gaos to see if they needed me and was glad to find they could manage with just Charlie, a young cousin from Hong Kong, studying English. He’s probably a would-be illegal and one day I may find myself defending him in some immigration tribunal but at the moment he’s safely enrolled in some language school or college. The Gaos have bought him a crap second-hand scooter he can’t go too fast on, and that isn’t worth stealing. I think he sleeps on a camp bed in the front part of the shop that becomes a hot house of green pads like bladderwrack, under the flashy canopy of my namesake the jade plant and the rubber plants that thrive to fifteen feet in the steam of a Chinese kitchen. Two of them
arch from pots inside the doorway making it like the entrance to some temple hung with scarlet fringed lanterns. It must be good for my stomach to have an occasional night off Mary’s tofu and egg fried rice. I munch on crisp cos lettuce and Fribourg Camembert I picked up from the stall in the Waterloo Road on my way home as the commuters scurried like a disturbed antheap into the open maw of the station.

Amyntas’ memorial hypnotises me. I’m the rabbit caught in headlights or stunned by the snake’s stare as I watch her falling for her countess and remember my own plunge into passion, the crazy roller coaster of it, a ride on the out-of-control merry-go-round at the end of Hitchcock’s
Strangers on a Train.
To take liberties with the bard: my mistress’ eyes were nothing like the sun, coral was far more red than her lips’ red. If snow is white why then her breasts were dun; if hairs are wires, gold wires grew on her head. I’m slipping into hindsight. At the time of course nothing was more shining than those gold wires.

How naff to fall in love at the office party even if it was on a boat, a shipboard romance of three hours up the river to Greenwich with its baroque enticements in stone a fine backdrop for corporate lust. My first outing with the comrades of Settle and Fixit. Somehow I hadn’t expected legal minds and loins to be as susceptible to booze and bonking as any works outing or accounts department communal thrash. And I expected nothing on board to be to my special taste. So when she beckoned me over and patted the padded bench beside her I went unsuspecting, careful not to let the boat’s movement make too rough seas in my glass of wine.

‘You look a bit out of things over there. As if you don’t know too many of these renegades.’

‘I’ve only been in the firm a couple of months.’ I heard myself sounding almost tremulous. Pity poor me. Not my usual style at all.

‘Helen Chalmers,’ she said putting out a hand tipped with
iridescent green fingernails. Her name was on the list of partners just before a James Chalmers.

‘Jade Green.’

‘Your parents must have had a sense of humour.’

‘My mother believed no one could forget it or shorten it.’

“You could be Jay or even J.G. She could be wrong. Mothers often are. My daughter tells me I’m wrong most of the time. I wonder where the wine’s got to? I don’t feel like tottering up that gangway for a refill.’

‘I’ll get us both one.’ I stood up.

She held out her glass and looked up at me, smiling. ‘Don’t forget to come back.’

That was when I fell overboard and went down for the first time. My heart began to thud and I seemed to be holding my breath without knowing it. No wonder we invented the image of Cupid’s arrow, plugging in tipped with adrenaline. The buzzing in my ears was like a flight of feathers. I hauled myself up to the next deck, the mess deck it soon would be if it wasn’t already, cupped my fingers round the neck of a bottle of claret and hurried back.

‘Someone tried to steal your seat but I shooed them away. Great that you brought the bottle.’

Later when we first made love I asked you how you knew.

‘Hadn’t I been looking for you all my life?’

It was a tease, a lying tease but it was true too. Many women turn over in their minds what it would be like to try it, just once, with another woman. Not seriously perhaps. Just for a laugh maybe and then back to the real thing. That’s what the researchers say anyway. All those articles in mags like
Cosmo
that no doubt once seemed so daring are run-of-the-mill soft porn now, offered on the internet every time you open your email or in the personal columns of respectable newspapers: ‘Women seeking women.’

The noise was growing all round us as the booze took hold
but we were in our own pocket of stillness, at least I was. You never told me. ‘How was it for you?’ But there aren’t any words; not reliable words in spite of all the poets have written trying to pin down that moment, to catch the butterfly in their net without breaking its wings.

The boat was turning at the smooth concrete sickles of the flood barrier. We were riding into the west into a dazzling sun that threw up sparkles from the water and drenched us in the luminous haze of a Turner. The river pushed against us as we turned, swaying little ship of fools that had become for me a voyage to Cythera, Venus’ island of loves. We were swayed against each other by our rocking horse as it rode the wake of another passing pleasure boat. You were trying to stand up, bracing yourself against the varnished ribs of the hull. I stood up too.

‘I suppose I should go and find Jim.’ The smile was almost apologetic. You looked directly at me still smiling. I held on to your look with my own eyes. ‘Let’s have lunch. I like to get to know new members. Where can I find you?’

‘I’m in Drew’s office.’

‘Drew?’

‘Drewpad Singh.’

‘I’ve no memory for anyone’s name. You’re Jay. I can just about hang on to that.’

I don’t know how I got home. In those days home was a studio flat in Earl’s Court among the last wave of nostalgic Aussies, and the new wave of Arabs who come over for treatment in the Cromwell Hospital. I walked a bit along the Embankment after we docked and then the wine hit me. I was looking for Embankment Station. The rest is a blank. The next morning when I woke I tried to put it all back together in sequence but it seemed something I’d dreamt, unreal. My clothes were hung over a chair. There was a half empty glass of red wine on the draining board in my slip of a kitchen. Had any of it happened? What had happened? I was rough with myself.
Don’t expect her to call. That was it. Just chatting up one of the juniors. Being kind. It meant nothing. If you bumped into her in the corridor she’d be embarrassed if she remembered at all.

I was ripe for disaster after an unhappy attempt to conform with a guy in Humanities at Sussex, a switch to law and aching after Zena who thought we were just mates, protecting each other from the sweaty socks and stewy underpants, when they wore them at all, of those colleagues we didn’t fancy, whose youthful necks were still aflame with fiery volcanic zits. At weekends I’d drift up to the Phoenix in Cavendish Square, rave the night away, sometimes ending up in a strange bed, learning new tricks, a rite of passage I felt entitled to. Chastity wasn’t an option as we neared the gay nineties. But heart and cunt stayed resolutely apart and one Saturday night the serpent scales came off my eyes and I saw the club scene for the frenetic search it was that could only end in tears after bedtime. When I moved to Settle and Fixit I’d been back just twice in seven years since I left Sussex and found myself a job and the studio flat. Grew up. Except that you never do, not inside. Zena had finally lost it to an ex-public schoolboy who already had his place booked as PPA to a rising Tory politician. He was too clever a lawyer to make the mistake of date rape but then he didn’t need to. By then she was tired of saying no and at least he bathed and washed his thin pale hair.