The Chymical Wedding

by Lindsay Clarke

“Where’ve you got to?” Edward demanded.

  “About 900, I think. But I’ve been stuck here for ages. It was going fine till I tried for a reduction. Then the temperature dropped and I can’t get it moving again.” She stood up, adjusted the strap at her shoulder, and smiled at me. “Hello. Am I glad to see you.”

  Edward crouched to his knees before the firebox and peered into the sickly blaze. “What’s the atmosphere like?”

  “Pretty soupy. See what you think.” Laura moved round to the side of the kiln – it was a roughly built cube of firebricks the colour of pale sand, with a bricked-up Norman door arch on one side and a narrow throat at the rear which led to a tall, cast-iron stovepipe wired for support to the studio wall and a bough of a late-flowering cherry tree across the yard. The whole thing had the odd appearance of a brick-built Mississippi steamboat beached and panting to get back to the lake. Laura removed a wedge-shaped bung from the wall and peered in. Sighing, Edward moved round to join her, muttering again that she shouldn’t have started the firing on her own.

  “Don’t give me a hard time,” she begged. “I’ve got troubles enough.”

  A hand at his brow, Edward squinted into the chamber. “Murky. Too much uncombusted carbon in there. Thought so from the firebox. You’ve choked it.”

  “I know I have, dammit. I needed more of the thinner timber, but I can’t fetch, chop and feed it at the same time.”

  “What did I tell you? Where’s the bloody hatchet?”

  “Edward, I’m not having you chop. Not after last time.”

  “Let me,” I put in.

  Edward glowered.

  “It’s his hands, you see. They’re not steady enough.” Laura shot a quick glance Edward’s way. “It’s stupid, Edward. You know it is. Look, what I really need is to have more of those old floorboards brought round. They’re tinder-dry. They should get it moving again. Would you mind?”

  For a moment Edward stood there, assessing her with a cold eye, then he slipped off his linen jacket, and looked at me. “Come on then. Give me a hand.”

  Together we brought round a pile of boards and I started chopping while Laura fed the slender faggots to the flame, and Edward tinkered with the loose bricks that controlled the air supply. It was hot beside the mouth of the kiln and I was soon sweating, but the air was bright around me, the narrow prospect of the lake still and cool in the distance. I pulled off my shirt and threw it beyond the woodpile. It felt good to be active again after the days cooped in the library’s shade.

  “It’s all a question of balance,” Edward muttered. “All the elements are here. They want to work together.” He stared suddenly at Laura. “You did remember to bless the kiln?”

  “Course I did. We just need a bit more breeze, that’s all.”

  “We could whistle for one, like sailors,” I said.

  “Or work for it,” Edward snapped. “We need to waft the air.” He looked about for a thing to waft with, saw nothing satisfactory, scowled and said, “I suppose I’ll have to find a fan of some sort.”

  Laura made a mischievous moue as he walked away.

  “He’s been in a bad mood all day,” I said.

  “I’m not surprised. We had one hell of a row last night. Look, it’s great of you to come. Edward and I would only have gotten in each other’s hair.”

  “My pleasure. At least I know how to chop – if I’m ignorant about everything else you’re doing.”

  “It’s very basic really. When the draught’s okay the flame gets drawn over the bag wall at the back of the firebox, then it sweeps round the arch of the kiln chamber, down through the pots into the throat and out up the chimney. That’s the theory anyway. I didn’t reach temperature last time. We had a real struggle, then Edward practically took his hands off. Disaster. But he might be right about this. Kilns are temperamental – if you get the balance wrong, you can feed it till you go blue in the face and get nowhere.”

  “What temperature do you have to reach?”

  “The glazes flux at 1,280 centigrade.”

  “That’s hot.”

  “Very hot. You’ll see the whole kiln shake before we get there.”

  “How will you know when you’re there?”

  “Give it another couple of minutes and I’ll show you. This is coming better. The wood’s just right.” When she was satisfied with the state of the blaze, Laura led me round to the side of the kiln, removed the bung and gestured for me to look in. I felt the heat hit my face as I stared through the opening with narrowed eyes. I saw two small spires through the spyhole, and beyond them the intense red haze of the kiln chamber. The atmosphere was less turbid than I’d expected from Edward’s description – a glowing, orange-red furnace of heat in which I could make out the shadowy profiles of two pots.

  “You see the cones? One of them will melt when we reach a thousand. The other goes at glaze temperature. But you can tell from the colour as well.”

  “I think the top of one’s bending a bit.”

  She pushed me aside, peered into the chamber. “You’re right. And the atmosphere’s cleared. We’re on our way again. Great! You’ve brought me luck. Come on, more wood, more wood. Let’s keep it moving.”

  I started to chop furiously again, the dry wood riving and splintering under the hand axe. Laura crouched beside me, feeding the fire with a smooth, regular rhythm, sweat shining at her shoulder blades, the T-shirt damp at her back. When Edward reappeared carrying a wicker carpet-beater, she called, “It’s all right. We’ve done it. We’re on the move.”

  He stood disgruntled, staring down at us. Again I felt his displeasure. I tried grinning up at him. “I think you’ve done it between you,” I said. “Made an alchemist of me, I mean. I’ve got the bug.”

  He nodded, smiling thinly, and fanned himself with the now redundant carpet-beater.

  “We’ll give it another quarter of an hour or so,” Laura said, “and I’ll try for another reduction. What do you think, Edward?”

  “They’re your pots,” he answered unhelpfully. Again Laura shot him an uncertain glance, then returned her attention to the fire. “Would anyone else care for a drink?” Edward asked.

  “I put some cans in the fridge,” Laura said. “Alex must be gasping. Me too. It’s a great idea.” Edward turned back to the Lodge.

  “Reduction?” I asked, pushing across another stack of faggots.

  “You cut off the air and starve the atmosphere of oxygen. The atmosphere has to find it somewhere, so it goes after the molecules locked in the glazes and that’s when the real magic happens.” There was a sheen of elation in her eyes, which had widened, sparkling, at the word magic. It was as though she herself were under a spell, transmuted suddenly to a higher pitch, animated and volatile – as the alchemists were altered by their work. Even with the soot stains on her skin – perhaps because of them – I had never seen her look so radiant. Her mouth was open slightly, the tongue damp at her lower lip, her whole face eager, capable of every challenge. I looked and saw nothing remotely fragile there. Then she was aware of my gaze, glanced away, blew a puff of air upwards at her face, pinched the T-shirt between her fingers and flapped it for draught. I returned my eyes to the axe.

  By the time Edward returned with a tray of beer cans, the fire was blazing with famished enthusiasm. I lifted the ring pull from the can and drank greedily, for the heat of the day and the kiln’s hot breath had parched my throat. More decorously, Edward lifted his can before drinking. “Here’s to a successful firing, my dear.”

  “I’m sure it will be. I can feel it.” She looked up suddenly where a shower of blossom swirled from the cherry boughs. “Even the breeze is getting up. It’s going to be all right.”

  “An extraordinary exercise of trust, don’t you think, Cambridge. To craft the pots so patiently from earth and water and then deliver them over to the mercies of fire and air.”

  “That’s what I love about it,” Laura said, “ – the risk, the trust.”

  “The unpredictabilit
y,” Edward added. “The surprise.” He turned to me again. “One never knows what the fire will do, and it has so many aspects. Look at the way this merry rage has risen from the sullen beast we found earlier. Consider the immense energies slowly eating out their heart up there” – he nodded upwards at the sun, dazzling westwards across the lake – “and the Pentecostal flame which brings the gift of tongues. Then there is the darker, unintelligible fire of the inferno, which burns and gives no light.” He grinned across at me darkly. “Nor should one forget the ignis fatuus, familiar as it is to us all.” He took a swig from his can, smacked his lips. “There is a story of a Japanese potter who was commanded by his Emperor to reproduce a marvellous glaze he had chanced upon as a mere hazard of the fire. He tried for years without success until finally, in utter despair, he threw himself into the kiln. When the pots were taken out… Of course, you bright boy, you have anticipated me… Yes, the Emperor’s command had been fulfilled. Which is why, of course, all artists burn.”

  Laura had no time for such abstractions. “Come on, Edward,” she interrupted. “Alex needs more planks. Would you mind…”

  “As my words appear to have lost their power to charm, I suppose I may as well diminish myself to beast of burden.”

  “Don’t try to carry too many at once.”

  “I am not yet a total incompetent,” he muttered, walking away. I chopped. Edward came back struggling with a load of planks, and I got up to help him. “I can manage,” he said brusquely, threw them down and went back for more. The pine boards snapped beneath the stamp of my foot. I swung the axe in swift rhythm, glad of the release it gave to the tension I felt building inside and around me. Then, when she judged the moment right, Laura shut down the damper in the smokestack, sealed the air vents, and the whole kiln began to throb and pant black smoke. “Look out,” she cried as tongues of flame blowtorched from the crevices around the bung and came licking back at us from the firebox. A dragon might have been suffocating there. It was hard to believe that this clumsy box of bricks was strong enough to withstand the pressure of its wings. The whole enterprise felt suddenly dark and dangerous. For the first time I began to recognize the power of the forces that Laura was summoning to her need.

  Fascinated, I watched the flames gasp for air, the carbon-black exhaust of smoke billowing from the chimney mouth, the throb of imprisoned energies. Laura stood, tall and lithe, glowing with sweat, listening to the growl of the kiln, hands clenched tightly at her sides. Edward came back, dropped the planks, and stared at the kiln as into a mirror of his own increasing frustration. For longer, much longer than I would have dared, Laura held us all there, sustaining the kiln’s turbulent rage, then said quietly, “Alex, take this glove. Go to the damper and open it when I give the word.”

  The damper was no more than a thin sheet of steel inserted into the stovepipe. I waited, feeling the heat thrown from the chimney, then Laura cried, “Now!” and pushed open the air vents with a fire iron. I pulled the damper out: it was glowing red-hot along its length. “Great God, look,” Edward shouted, “a pillar of fire,” and pointed upwards where a rush of living flame burgeoned from the chimney like a fiery tulip against the vivid blue of the sky.

  “That should have done it,” Laura whispered. Then more briskly, “Quick, we’ll have lost temperature. Keep the wood coming, Alex. We might just catch it right.”

  I had been working for more than an hour and my wrists ached from the continuous chopping, but I was filled with an immense exhilaration. The release of flame had swirled right through me. I was as much arsonist as alchemist now, swinging the axe gleefully, impervious to everything but the fire’s appetite. Never in my life had I done anything like this before. I remember thinking that this was what it was to be alive. Even the air I breathed – charred with smoke, sweetened by the scent of surrounding trees – had a different taste. It was the taste of spring at climax, of an afternoon in which, at the touch of the rising breeze, cherry blossom floated from the boughs in a frail pink torrent of petals that drifted through the shimmering heat-haze to cling at the sweat on one’s skin.

  Rapt in her attention to the kiln, Laura demanded finer and finer splinters of wood. She slipped them rapidly into the hot mouth where they were instantly consumed in a shower of sparks. Sweat was running from my temples, stinging at the corners of my eyes, and when I paused to wipe them, Edward shouted, “Come on, come on, give me the bloody axe.” I glanced quickly at Laura. “You need a break,” she said. “For God’s sake be careful, Edward.” Reluctantly I handed over the axe and made way for him, then stood, stretching my back.

  When I looked at my watch, I was amazed to see that it was well after six. I realized I was hungry and it didn’t matter. There was no way I could care about anything now till this kiln was fired. It would be done this time. If I had to sweat blood, it would be done. But it made sense at least to stretch my cramped legs, so I strolled down to the edge of the lake and lit a cigarette. Sunlight glittered across the water as though that too tingled with golden fire. I remembered what Edward had said about the presence of all the elements, wanting to work together, to meet and merge. And Laura – if she had been earth and water as she shaped her pots, she was now, like Cleopatra, all fire and air.

  Alive inside my skin, indifferent to the blister smarting in the soft crook of my thumb, I sensed the world changing round me – a sensation of risk, of things poised on a hot brink where anything might happen and never be the same again. I think I already knew then that I would not return to my job at the Polytechnic, for the security of that monthly cheque had lost all meaning. The job was a cage where the wild man in me fretted and chafed. I could step out between the bars, and a day like this declared every reason for the risk. Why settle for the predictable, it demanded, when nothing truly attuned to the precarious magic of being alive can ever be predicted? I thought about Marcus and Lily, how they would have loved it here – the lake, the kiln, the excitement of the firing. I released a long, tense breath, flicked the stub of my cigarette into the lake, and turned to look back where Edward and Laura squatted before the smoking kiln, for all the world the alchemist and his mystic sister, except that the roles were powerfully reversed, and – I realized suddenly – they were arguing under their breath.

  “They’re still too thick,” Laura complained.

  “Goddammit, I’m doing the best I can.”

  “Every time you fumble, I lose ten degrees. Look, give the axe to Alex. He knows what he’s doing with it. I don’t want you to hurt yourself. Before Edward could answer, she sprang to her feet. “Alex, I’m losing it. Can you come?”

  “It’s all right,” Edward growled. “Just have some patience, will you?”

  “It’s not me, dammit. It’s the fire. You know this last haul’s the hardest. I’m not going to lose it this time.”

  Edward looked on scowling as I came over. There was a long, hot moment in which all three of us were penned in a triangle of critical regard – Laura fiercely indifferent to everything except the health of her blaze; me awkwardly between, holding out my hand for the axe; Edward, old man suddenly, hating his years and his uncertain hands, humiliated, furious with Laura, resentful of my youth and profoundly unwilling to surrender the axe. He held it there like a weapon. For an instant I seemed to be staring into smoke. What I saw was scary enough to make me lower my hand.

  “Edward,” Laura said quietly, “be reasonable. Look, why don’t you go and get some food together? I can’t leave this and we’ll all be starving by the time we reach temperature.”

  He stared at her incredulously. Her gaze shifted away to where the fire craved fuel, then turned back to him again. “Please, Edward. I can’t cope with everything.”

  Ignoring me, cancelling me from the face of the earth, he glowered at her a moment longer through narrowed eyes, then let the axe drop, turned on his heel, and walked away. Laura called after him, half-reproachfully, half in appeal. There was no answer.

  Laura and I looked at one a
nother uncertainly. She pushed back her hair where it had slipped from the bandanna, then tried to shrug off the tension with a sigh. “Oh come on, let’s feed the fire.”

  I picked up the axe and began to chop. She crouched at the firebox, shooting the wood into its mouth as quickly as it came, then cowered back from the sudden heat as the blaze was roused again. “I’m not going to let him spoil it,” she muttered. “Not this time. This really matters to me.”

  “I think I know how he must feel.”

  “His feelings aren’t the only important thing in the world.”

  “He knows that. Let him cool off. He’ll be all right. I’ve seen him like this in the library – grim as hell one minute, chortling the next.”

  “You don’t know him like I do. He’s just impossible sometimes.” She sighed, shook her head and picked up more faggots. “Come on, fire, be sweet to me. We’re nearly there.”

  For the best part of an hour, I chopped and Laura fed the flame. We said very little – simply worked together, sweating, sniffing, aware of each other bent in crazy service to this marvellous beast she’d roused. Eventually she got up, removed the bung once more with a gloved hand, and stepped back as a tongue of yellow flame licked out at her. Then, shielding her eyes with her arm, she craned to peer inside. “Oh yes,” she cried. “Alex, come and see. It’s incredible.”

  I dropped the axe, wiped my temples and joined her where she held the incandescent bung away from her skin. For a moment I thought the heat from the bunghole might incinerate my brows, but when I squinted beneath an outstretched palm the sight stole my breath. What had been only a dense red glow when I first looked into the chamber was now a torrent of liquid flame. It swirled among pots that tingled and glimmered in a dance of fly ash. The first cone was melted to a puddle, the second was bending in obeisance to the blaze – as I felt myself to be, stooped there before the kiln, wanting to gaze and gaze, but the vision was barely supportable. In the instant before Laura replaced the bung, I understood how that ancient Japanese potter might have flung himself into those dazzling fountains. I turned to share the wonder of it, but she was gazing up at the bloom of flame surging from the chimney’s mouth, and beyond where the evening star glittered against the deepening blue sky. We stood together in silence for a long moment. Her lips opened in a half-dazed smile of speechless delight. She bit her bottom lip, brought her arms together at her chest so that her hands met at her mouth. “We’ve done it,” she whispered into the little cave made by her fingers. “We’ve really done it.” Then she was jumping up and down, turned suddenly, threw her arms around me, eyes tightly closed, squeezing me against her. I tightened my own grip, felt the soft blur of her hair at my cheek. Then her hands were at her back, unclasping mine. “Quick,” she said. “I’ve got to soak the kiln. We need to hold it here for another half-hour. Come on, before it drops.”