The Chymical Wedding

by Lindsay Clarke

  The next day, Edward came late to the library in an untypically gloomy mood. As I worked at my translations, I heard him mutter and grunt at his desk. He seemed fixed in a dour, obsessive concentration that defied approach. It was a hot day. Through the tall leaded windows the bright span of water flittered and shone. It felt absurd that we should be indoors poring over papers when we might have been out there, basking in dappled sunlight, bathing in the lake. I was restless, sticky under the armpits, for the first time a little bored. Laura was more on my mind than Louisa. What was she doing? Had she begun to resent my usurpation of her role as Edward’s collaborator? Our silence about her was ridiculous. I made up my mind to broach the issue over lunch.

  I suggested that it was a waste of a glorious day to eat indoors. Why didn’t we make a picnic by the lake? “Might as well,” he agreed. “I’m getting nowhere here.” When we had eaten in silence, I asked him what the trouble was.

  “I sometimes think Sisyphus had an easier task,” he said without humour. “Just when you think you’re on to something, it all unravels.”

  “Do I detect the voice of the demon Doubt?”

  “I don’t know. Take no notice of me. I had a bad night.”

  I smelled some recurrence of the tension between him and Laura and looked for a way to open the subject. “It’s a pity that Laura didn’t just ask Louisa what her secret was – when she saw her, I mean.” It had been intended lightly but Edward was not amused.

  “I’d rather you didn’t joke about that.”

  “You really believe that she saw her?”

  “I know she did.”

  I sat in silence, waiting.

  “And Ralph knows it too. There were details to her description she could have known no other way.”

  “I’m impressed.” I caught the dubious lift of Edward’s brow. “It was only the one time?”

  “There have been other experiences.”

  “Such as?”

  “As you clearly don’t trust them, there seems little point in going into them.” His tone was final. A cold silence came between us. After a time I said, “I’m sorry. My flippancy… habit of a lifetime.”

  “Not a lifetime. Merely a trick you learnt in college. As a child you would have known better.”

  “Before my star-fire dimmed?”

  Edward saw that he was teased, and smiled. “Only your brain is dim. But I imagine even that is bright enough to recognize an extraordinary woman when it sees one.”

  “No argument. Tell me about her.”

  “Laura can speak for herself.”

  “Except that I don’t get to see much of her.”

  The web of lines around Edward’s eyes wrinkled in a frown. “Your tone would seem to imply that I am some sort of Bluebeard who keeps her incarcerated. The fact is, she is busy.”

  “At what?”

  “Her own work.”

  “Which is?”

  Wisdom teeth have been more easily drawn. A long moment passed before he sniffed and said, “She is a potter.”

  “Really? I’d no idea. She has a wheel at the Lodge?”

  “She doesn’t work with the wheel. Her pots are hand-built. She makes her own glazes from vegetable ash and fires them in a small wood-burning kiln we built together.”

  “A sort of practical alchemy?”

  “Precisely.”

  I began to realize how inadequate my picture of Laura was; that I had made no room in my thoughts for an independent life of her own, let alone one as earthed and pragmatic as the potter’s craft. No wonder I’d seen so little of her. She was busy, making, while Edward and I ballooned through the intellectual stratosphere with nothing to show for our efforts but an increase of paper. I was intrigued by what we were doing, but no one would ever eat or drink from it. It lacked substance – almost as much as had my fantasies that Edward was deliberately keeping us apart. I said, “I’d very much like to see some of her work.”

  “I doubt she will let you.”

  “Why not?”

  “It is a private matter. No one goes into her studio. I have seen little of her work myself, and she won’t thank me for mentioning it. Most of it she destroys.”

  “But why?”

  “Because she has no wish to add to the sum of things in the world unless they answer. To her dream of the real, I mean. It is very exacting. Also I am quite certain she would wish me to say no more about it.”

  “So Louisa isn’t the only one with secrets?”

  Again Edward did not smile. “There is much in Laura’s world that is private. It is a matter of protection. She is best understood as a refugee. Her confidence is… fragile.”

  I tried to marry this judgement with the memory of the sturdy young woman I’d seen joking in the glade; who had come breezily into The Pightle telling me to water the plants and daring me to a duel of wits with Edward; who had seemed so certain of me over against his cautious vacillation. Fragile was not the first word that would have occurred to me, unless I had overlooked something vital – something which, I remembered, Bob had noted.

  As for Edward – it was clear that I’d stumbled onto sensitive ground. He was staring at the lake, regretful perhaps that he’d said too much not to say more. “There have been… difficulties in her life.”

  No further question was invited, so I said, “It must get pretty lonely out at the Lodge.”

  “She likes it that way.”

  But I remembered her asking whether I didn’t go crazy on my own at The Pightle. “Not all the time, surely? I mean, the other night – she seemed to cheer up then. You’re sure she doesn’t need company?”

  “I’ve tried to tell her that. But she’s working very hard right now. Perhaps too hard. Now that you’ve freed her a little from my demands, you see…”

  I saw that I might, in more than one way, have been used.

  “Don’t misunderstand me. She’s very much with us in spirit. What you saw the other night… it happens, yes. We get tired and sometimes we take it out on one another. But…” He turned to look across at me. “We mean a great deal to each other.” There was an appeal in his eyes, almost a throwing of himself upon my mercy. “I helped her through a bad time, you see. One that involved disturbing experiences of her gifts… They weren’t understood. Which is why she still prefers not to speak of them. No one understood their importance until…”

  “She met you.”

  “Yes.”

  His eyes shifted away again. I wondered whether he was not, after all, overprotective. It wouldn’t be the first time that a man had lovingly supported a woman through crisis only to discover that, when she was strong again, his own need was to confine her in a dependent role. There were gentle ways of playing Bluebeard too.

  “I wouldn’t want you to think it’s all one way,” he resumed uncertainly. “For me… Well, when we came together… It renewed my own sense of meaning. I had been preoccupied with the alchemical vision for some time, but it had become words, ideas, a mere prejudice in favour of the angels, if you like. But Laura was what I could only think. What I have to struggle for again and again is instinct with her. She makes it real for me. Sometimes I think to her cost…”

  Something wondering and recapitulatory in his tone brought to mind the way I had often spoken of Jessin her absence: odd, I thought, the way men tended to prize their partners more highly when they were elsewhere; almost as though the idea of relationship was more satisfactory than its practice. Neither of us had been prepared for this sudden release of feeling; Edward seemed embarrassed by the confession, I embarrassed by his embarrassment, and regretting my earlier ungenerous thoughts… Embarrassing too, the recognition that my interest in Laura remained less innocent than I’d persuaded myself. Edward clearly adored her; I had no wish to hurt him, so perhaps things were best as they were – he and I working alone. But my heart dipped at the thought.

  In the meantime Edward had been thinking too. This was the first time he had shared anything personal with me, a
nd that he could let the mask slip a little was a measure of his growing trust. A shy smile hinted that he did not entirely regret it. Then he slapped his thigh, stood up, leaping from embarrassment to action. “But you’re right, dammit. She needs to get out of herself. We all do. We should do something together. We should go to the sea.”

  I looked up in amazement at the abrupt shift.

  “That’s it.” He clapped his hands together. “Come on.”

  “But if she doesn’t want to leave her work…”

  “I’ll seduce her. I’ll charm her from the tree. Great God, I’ve become a bore. I’ve forgotten how to laugh. I need to dance again.” He did a sprightly two-step, twirled, and was off across the lawn, shouting, “Come on, Darken. On your feet. Thalassa! The sea, the sea!”

  Friends then, the three of us – me sitting in the back of the old Countryman as it rattled along, Edward at the wheel singing Verdi as though he’d just found the key to the Hermetic Mystery, if not that of the aria he’d chosen, while Laura, who had taken some persuading, groaned and laughed beside him. We headed for the north Norfolk coast, careering through the bright afternoon until Edward parked by a staithe where a creek coiled across a salt marsh, and we all piled out. The mastheads of beached yachts tinkled in a stiff breeze. It was a place of sea-pinks and oyster-catchers, where small birds dusted their wings in fennel and made the air smell of aniseed. Mud-bound tide posts staggered out into the creek, and out across the flats a marram-fastened line of sand dunes concealed the distant sea. Edward was the only one of us who had been here before. Clearly he loved the place.

  He struck out on the diked path that sheltered a cornfield from the sea wind. It was the still afternoon of a weekday in term time, and we had the world to ourselves.

  After a long walk we came out between the dunes and were staring at the sea. The tide was far out over a wide plain of sand but you could see its many colours silvering towards those reaches where sky and horizon misted together. The expanse of beach was so denuded of any trace of the present century we might have stepped out onto a distant planet. Again I wondered at Edward’s way of making me feel like the useless son out of a folk tale who had stumbled by chance into the hollow hills. I stood with the breeze flapping at my collar, watching the spindrift sand, promising that one day I would write about this place. When I turned, I saw Edward dancing on the shore.

  “He really needed this.” Laura was standing a little behind me, smiling as the wind tousled her hair.

  “He said much the same about you.”

  “Then he was right. He usually is… in the end.”

  “About everything?”

  “About what matters.” She glanced across at me, flicking the hair from her face. “What about you?”

  “Oh, I’m usually wrong.”

  She caught my smile. “Dumb-bell! I mean how are you?”

  How was I? Glad to be here. Feeling good about the air and sea. A little sad suddenly. I said, “Fine. In better shape than I was.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Also slightly cross-eyed over those texts.”

  For a second she was puzzled by the change of tack, then smiled, wrinkling her nose. “They’re really weird, don’t you think?”

  “I’m surprised you think so.”

  She shrugged, looked out to sea again. “They’re Edward’s thing, not mine. I can’t read them – not for long. They pile up on me. I mean, they’re so dense – the language, the symbols. Like an Austrian church – too full of stuff. I like things simple.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. I was beginning to think it was me who was dense.”

  But she ignored the joke, looked out across the dune-land expanse, the wide acreage of sand and sea. “They go on and on about Nature, but just look at it. No clutter. Nothing superfluous. Just light and air, changing all the time, moving through places that words won’t reach.”

  “But unaware of itself? It needs us to give it voice.”

  “Maybe that’s just our need. It has voices of its own – the necessary sounds. Not like all those books. It’s my guess that Louisa came to feel this way – that that’s why she burned her book. I think she might have done it without regret.”

  “Does Edward know you feel this way?”

  “I’ve never said it before. I’m not even sure what I mean. Perhaps that’s why we sometimes find it hard to talk about her. I have a feeling for her, that’s all, and it frustrates him.” She gave a little snort and smiled across at me almost mischievously. “He claims I have unfair advantages.”

  “Your gifts?”

  “Just being a woman, I think. He says he has to go bat-fowling for what I take for granted – whatever bat-fowling may be.”

  “If it means stumbling about in the dark, I sympathize.”

  “But then,” she added, “he has a way of finding the right words – when he’s sure of his ground, I mean. And it’s like magic – everything suddenly takes shape, makes sense. I can’t do that.”

  “He’s a poet,” I said, “ – whether he’s writing or not. Do you know why he gave up?”

  She shook her head. “He won’t say, and I’ve learnt not to ask. I know there’s a lot of darkness there and he won’t share it. I think he thinks he’s protecting me, but…” She faltered there, shrugged.

  “And you find that frustrating.”

  “Not really. But it makes me sad. I’d rather have him like this.” She smiled across to where Edward still frolicked on the sand. “I’m glad you’ve helped him back.”

  “I wasn’t even sure he liked me at first.”

  “That was never true. But he didn’t trust you. I remember after that first night at the Hall he said there was something unnerving about you.”

  “Unnerving?”

  “If I remember right, he said, ‘There’s something unnerving about such energy so unaware of itself.’ Something like that. It might have been ‘power’.” She thought about it, trying to recollect, then shrugged again. “I told him you were someone who was too used to getting his own way, and probably still dumbstruck that you hadn’t got it. Was I right?”

  Her breezy smile left little room for more than a grin of agreement. “Something like that… though I wouldn’t have thanked you for saying so.”

  “But I didn’t know you were a big dreamer then. So we were both right.” She looked away, not coyly but with an elusive smile. “The fact is, he likes you very much, and I’m really glad you found each other. It makes my life a whole lot simpler.”

  Which was not, in that moment, quite what I wanted to hear, but it was so transparently sincere I had to accept it. After emerging from one three-way wreck so recently, I reminded myself, it would be crazy to look for anything other than simplicity. After a moment I said, “How’s your own work coming?”

  “Edward told you about that?”

  “A little, but he was very discreet.”

  She wrinkled her nose, sighed. “I’m building towards another firing, but it’s slow… getting things right… not getting in my own way. I’ve been too close up against it. I needed a break as much as Edward. Look at him.”

  I looked up and saw Edward jumping up and down, performing an elaborate semaphore with his hat.

  “He wants us to play. Come on.” She ran down the dune, calling, “Okay, I’m coming.”

  I watched smiling as they owled and pussy-catted along the beach. Then she snatched his hat and teased him with it, threatening to throw it in a runnel of seawater among the banks. Edward chased her, shouting, “Rescue, Darken – this trollop has hijacked my hat.” I joined in on Laura’s side with Edward as pig-in-the-middle, windmilling for the hat that sailed like a frisbee between us, until we collapsed, panting with laughter, then stared in silence at the sea.

  Laura collected seashells, looking for forms and colours she might work into her pots. She found a shapely length of salt-stained driftwood with a whorled grain. It was water-logged, half-buried in the sand and surprisingly heavy, but she ins
isted that we bring it back to the car with us. She needed it. It had value.

  We had tea in a still half-deserted seaside town, and when we came out of the café, Edward produced from his pocket a tomato-shaped ketchup-holder which had taken Laura’s fancy and amused Edward with its outrageous farting noise. Neither of us had noticed him pocket it. “Steal for you?” he answered Laura’s astonished protest. “I’d do time. I’d swing for you, my dear. I’d willingly die.”

  On the way back we stopped at a pub where Edward regaled us, and disturbed the landlord, with hilarious anecdotes of raffish nights around Fitzrovia as a young man. They were elicited by my questions about his earlier career, and most of them seemed new to Laura, for she laughed with unfeignable gaiety, her head at moments held in helpless tears against his chest. “What are you grinning at, Cambridge?” he demanded – he’d given me the nickname after some reference I made to my own past; it was an affectionate pan of coals for my head – “It’s perfectly true. And I should know. I made it up myself.”

  “I was grinning,” I said, “because I was thinking how lucky I am to know you two.”

  “Lucky he calls it! Such a privilege comes only as the gift of Providence. And if you don’t believe me, ask a Bushman. ‘There’s a dream and it is dreaming us,’ they say. Know a thing or two, those clever little buggers. Damn sight more than that boor behind the bar. I’ve had enough of this particular sip well. Let’s go.”

  They dropped me at The Pightle door. I heard them laughing still as the car pulled off down the lane. A little to my own amazement I found myself happy for them.

  Two or three weeks passed surprisingly quickly. Apart from the accumulation of translated index cards, Edward and I made little progress, but our humour was good. When he did show signs of depression, I could usually shake him out of it, and we took a schoolboyish delight in finding ways to disconcert Ralph’s snooty man, Talbot, who brought morning coffee and afternoon tea up to the library, and evidently disapproved of both us and our enterprise. Ralph looked in on us every now and then with awkward, undemanding enquiries about our progress, and received Edward’s sardonic remarks with a reticent grace. I was glad to be Edward’s colleague and friend rather than suffering the indignities he subtly laid on his patron. It must have been odd for Ralph, I thought, to feel like an intruder in his own library.