The Chymical Wedding

by Lindsay Clarke

  And what nonsense this made of Edward and me poring over the Agnew papers, of all high talk of reconciliation of the opposites. If the war became civil war before it went nuclear, if there were people prepared to shoot their neighbours in the name of efficient defence, what hope was there for a reconciliation across frontiers? It made nonsense of all values, this fear sizzling like radiation on the air. It corrupted thought. It corrupted everything.

  The meeting fragmented into small anxious groups. Neville Sallis stood up, looked down at me, shaking his head. “The whole point is it won’t happen. That’s why we need them. They’ve guaranteed nearly forty years of peace, after all.”

  He saw I was not about to ally myself with this attempt at public reassurance and looked away. The pregnant woman had heard him. Quietly she pointed out there wouldn’t be much satisfaction in that once the guarantee expired. Someone else asked whether he took such a low view of human nature that he thought we could only control our own violence by frightening ourselves into this frigid peace. I listened to the clash – the old, endless, point-counterpoint failure to meet.

  Nobody wanted it. Nobody in their right mind really wanted things this way. Yet here it was, an ultimatum to ourselves, a death’s head hoping against hope. I realized how little thought I’d dared to give to our bleak predicament. I wasn’t even sure that real thought was possible. Fear froze it. We were all scared, and what we were frightened of was us.

  That, at least, I could see clearly. It was no use thinking in terms of them, the potential enemy, them, the designers of this hideous programme of civil defence, them, the trigger-happy hawks of either side. George Hodgkiss had been right to stick with the first person we. This was us made naked to ourselves. We were all members of this demented dream. Nobody exempt. Why else had the authorities made Hodgkiss privy to their dreadful secrets if not because somewhere, secretly, they wanted us to know; they needed to share the shame of it? We were the matter. The evidence was in, the jury out, and this the treason trial of all time. Innocence was not an acceptable plea, and a judgement of guilty but insane would bring no commutation of the penalty. For a species that had also conceived of paradise it would be a miserable epitaph. But where, beyond such sardonic distancing, could you take these thoughts? For even as you thought, even as you made love, not five miles away the engines turned.

  I couldn’t bear the silent faces of those too appalled to speak. I couldn’t believe in the stratagems devised by others to take on the warlords. Not then. Not that night. I could only think that if my children demanded to know why things were so, I had no answer.

  I looked round, saw an open window overlooking the marketplace, moved and lit a cigarette. There was no structure to the meeting now. My move disturbed nobody and, listening to the debates, the shared anxieties, I knew I had nothing to add but my own portion of the gathering gloom.

  In the night above the marketplace, the Great Bear prowled. So many other galaxies, other planets, spinning indifferent to the pathos of it all. I remembered Edward telling me about the Many Universes Theory, and wondered whether it didn’t at least have a metaphorical value. So many worlds were possible – why this one then, this death-camp prospect on the future? If we were capable of such deep nightmare fantasies, we were also, by the law of contraries, capable of equal heights of exaltation. Blake had known it. The alchemists had known it. Edward, my friend whom I’d deceived, insisted on it. Why then did we deafen our ears to these visionary spirits, preferring the grotesque “realism” of our darker dreams? Why did I myself do that?

  I turned back to where people argued, fretted, planned. We were all trapped in a machine of our own making. We were all trapped in time, in this old room of history that must once have been the Saxburgh Assembly Room. Louisa must have come here in her day. And it was much older than that. Those chamfered beams were already raised before the days when Humphrey Agnew passed his task down time. I remembered his epitaph from Virgil, and saw how terrifyingly true it was: to enter hell is no problem – the door is ever open. It’s getting out again that comes hard. Hoc opus, hic labor est.

  Well this was hell now. We were well across the threshold. We could smell the fire.

  Afraid for my children, with anxieties about Edward and Laura swarming through my mind, scared of the future, I thought: God damn it, Louisa Agnew, if you had an answer to all of this why, in the name of all that’s human, did you burn it?

  But Louisa Agnew was long dead and gone. Back in the womb of time, of the Great Mother. Silent and cold as Gypsy May, that other ever-open door among the flints of Munding church. The lines were dead.

  12

  The Hanged Man

  At the first discovery that he did not greatly miss his wife’s company, Edwin Frere was a little ashamed. He would not permit himself to feel light-hearted, but neither were his experiments with grief a demonstrable success. It felt fraudulent to persevere with them; so he searched his heart and found philosophy. He and Emilia had suffered together and it had been managed badly. Each had been compromised by the inadequacy of the other; they might never have found room to move without this brief separation; and to recognize this was to admit failure, yes, but one that might be turned to good advantage. For on Emilia’s return they would begin anew. She would be fortified by the vacation; he would have recovered tenderness. The sad loss of that winter season would recede into the past. With the spring, with Easter, they would recommit themselves to their vows, and they would do it here, in Munding.

  In the meantime there was work to be done, and he applied himself to it, lavishing on his parishioners all the care he had been unable to show his wife. He was aware that their regard for him was tainted with a kind of pity, but if it eased communication, he could bear with that. Pity, after all, was not so far from true Christian love.

  With the arrival of Emilia’s first letter his mood darkened. The tone was formal, almost cold; her account of the restorative pleasures of life in Cambridge carefully worded to leave him in no doubt that his preference for rural seclusion had been, and still remained, a queer error of judgement. About events in Munding she expressed no curiosity other than a mild hope that all was well.

  The main burden of the letter reflected on her father’s condition. Emilia had not previously permitted herself to realize how sorely his spirits had declined on her removal from Portugal Place. His need of her now was very great, and it was a joy to her, therefore, that in seeking her own recovery she had found it in attendance upon him. They prospered together. Her main, indeed her only expressed anxiety was for the effect upon her father of a second departure.

  Frere read the letter many times and at each reading his foreboding grew. It took a number of drafts to pen a reply in which his worries were concealed, her hints ignored and the emphasis placed firmly on the good wishes expressed in the parish for her speedy return. And still the letter answered neither Emilia’s innuendoes nor his own qualms. When Eliza Waters next asked after his good lady, he found himself wishing that she would not enquire so persistently. Sometimes it felt as though the women of the parish knew more of his domestic life than he understood himself.

  He was yet more uncomfortable answering Miss Agnew’s enquiries in the church porch one Sunday morning after matins. She had failed attendance for two weeks now and he had become concerned that she might be ill. It had been a relief, therefore, to see her next to her father in their pew once more. Henry Agnew was talking to Mr Wharton in jovial vein as Louisa presented herself before the surpliced parson with apologies for her earlier absences. He was about to enquire into their reason when she took the conversation in another direction.

  “I understand that Mrs Frere is with her family in Cambridge?”

  “Ah, yes. We thought a brief visit might confirm her recovery.”

  “You have heard from her?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “And she is well?”

  “It appears so. Well enough… though there is some cause for concern in her fat
her’s condition, I believe.”

  “I am sorry to hear that. Pray send her my good wishes. And you, Mr Frere? You are keeping well?”

  The gaze was earnest. In this company, Frere was reluctant to mouth pleasantries that would fall vacuously on his ears, but it was his duty to ease the troubles of his parishioners, not burden them with more. “I was about to ask the same of you,” he said. “You are looking a little drawn, I think.”

  “I have been working very hard.”

  “In your den by the lake?” She nodded. Almost shyly. Un-typically so, he thought. “You do not find it rather lonely there?”

  “On the contrary.”

  “You have guests?”

  She smiled then, puzzlingly. “I have a host of companions.” She took in his quiz, smiling still. “Some of the noblest men and women who have ever lived… though few of them as celebrated as they merit.”

  What a sprightly mind dwelt in those tilted eyes! It had taken a moment to realize that she referred to the authors of her books. “Do I know their names?” he asked.

  “Some will be familiar – Zosimus? Synesius? Plotinus, of course.

  “Elevated company, Miss Agnew. I should be quite awestruck among them.”

  “I too, I assure you. Yet I find their conversation patient and provocative. One must try to rise to it.”

  “I trust you will not overexert yourself in the effort. The present has need of you too. You must endeavour to save some portion of yourself for we lesser mortals.” He hesitated, dared. “One wonders whether others might share some of your discoveries among the mighty even?”

  “That is my intention, Mr Frere. Perhaps you would care to read my little book when it is done?”

  “So that is what you are about? I shall eagerly anticipate the fruits of your labours. May one know how it is titled?”

  “In good time, Mr Frere, in good time. If all continues well, you shall have an inscribed copy in your hand in a matter of weeks.”

  “So soon? I am heartened to hear it. And then perhaps we shall see more of you about the village?”

  “Indeed,” she answered, “though should anyone have need of me in the meantime, they know where I may be found.”

  The remark was offered lightly enough, yet momentarily it discountenanced him, for he was aware of others waiting to share a word.

  Then, “Good day to you, Mr Frere,” she said. “I am pleased to have found you well,” and drifted away to join her father at the lychgate. Frere’s eyes followed her progress a moment before turning to smile down into Mrs Bostock’s iron gaze.

  The next day brought a further disturbing encounter. He had been in Saxburgh to visit Canon Ivory and was returning through the marketplace when a young woman accosted him. She stood in his way, holding a basket at her hip, smiling. “It’s Amy,” she reminded him. “Amy Larner.”

  Since Amy’s tearful departure from the Rectory, Frere had seen nothing of her. He had been touched to receive an ill-spelt note, thanking him for his help in finding a new position, one in which, he was assured, she was “enormus happy”. Later, on one of his visits to Emilia, Tom Horrocks had spoken well of Amy’s progress, but since then Frere had not spared the young woman a thought.

  He covered his confusion now, asked after her welfare, and was regaled with an account of the good woman for whom she now worked and her adorable children. “That’s a family of angels, Mr Frere. I count myself ever so lucky to be among ’em.”

  “I am delighted to hear things have proved for the best, Amy. Now if you will…”

  “I do hear that your good lady is in Cambridge now.”

  “Yes, that is so.”

  “They say she’nt been at all well.”

  Frere could not believe that Amy had any greatly charitable interest in his wife’s welfare. It was also to exceed her station to enquire as closely as she did. His brisk, though polite, answer was intended to convey as much.

  “Must be awful lonesome in that girt Rectory,” Amy Larner opined, undeterred.

  “With so many needs to attend to, a parson’s life is rarely lonely.” He might have added that there were times when he longed for greater privacy, but she spoke again.

  “That weren’t what Parson Stukely used to say.”

  “You mustn’t ask me to answer for my predecessor, Amy.” Frere reached, significantly, for his watch.

  “Well, I just wanted to say that you was ever so good to me, Mr Frere.” She fixed him with candid, tender eyes – a heifer’s mild stare. “Us Larners don’t forget such things.”

  “I know that, Amy. I found your note most touching. But you must think no more of it now.”

  Again that glance, with a perhaps deepened suffusion of the cheeks.

  Belatedly Frere realized what this might be all about. And blushed.

  He looked away, cleared his throat, nodded at young Frank Wharton, who drove his gig through the square with Fanny Hethersett laughing beside him, then said, “Well I really must be on my way. It was a pleasure to see you.”

  A hand placed softly on his own stopped him as he turned. Amy Larner held her nether lip in her teeth and smiled. Hotly conscious of the touch, he too contrived to smile. Then she lifted her skirt to cross a puddle and walked away, the basket swinging at her side.

  His bed that night was enormously empty. He had not made love to his wife since the first advent of her morning sickness. It was some considerable time since he had even slept beside her, and he thought he had grown accustomed to his lonely bed, was sure that he had done so, until with her sincere if unorthodox interpretation of Christian charity Amy Larner had seemed to suggest that he need no longer lie alone.

  Not that he was tempted. Not by Amy. Heaven spare him, no. It would be an act of monstrous irresponsibility – one that Stukely might not have blinked at, but he (with George Herbert’s little book on the pillow beside him) was made of sheerer stuff.

  Yet in all innocence – if such a word could possibly be apt – the plump young woman had unleashed a demon in his mind. Celibacy was not his natural inclination. He was no anchorite, no ascetic, but a parson of the Anglican faith – a faith that had ordained marriage as an honourable estate for the priesthood, signifying the mystical union between Christ and his church. Even for the clergy it was better to marry than burn. But how if one married and burned also?

  He lay on his bed recalling the reasons why marriage had been ordained: for the procreation of children; for a remedy against sin and to avoid fornication by those who lacked the gift of continency; for the mutual society, help and comfort that the married couple ought to have, one of the other, both in prosperity and adversity. Sound reasons all. Yet what if mutual comfort had turned to rancour and resentment; if the marriage was not blessed with children; the marital bed refused? What then if one lacked the gift of continency?

  Not for the first time Frere began to pity himself. Trying as hard as he did to bring comfort to others, wherein lay comfort for himself? Not, for certain, in Amy Larner’s arms; yet she had set his mind raging elsewhere like a beast of the field.

  Carnal lusts and appetites: how potently the language of those Tudor divines nailed the beast. Yet the more he sought to resist them, the harder they pressed. Better to shift his attention entirely. To contemplate next Sunday’s sermon, which must have, he reminded himself, a little more of the common touch if it were not once more to miss its mark. The parables were the clue – the language and the experience of the common man rendered magnificently apposite. He recalled how he had approved of Wordsworth’s preface to his Lyrical Ballads. What was the phrase? “A selection of the language of ordinary men and women” – something of that order. He too must find some appropriate correlative of the rural idiom. How did they speak among themselves?

  The nearest example he found was the memory of Amy Larner’s singsong cadences. He must remember to pray for her.

  “Dear Lord, you who sit in the deeps of all our hearts, who made us flesh and knows how flesh is weak, con
sider the soul of thy servant Amy, and find it in your heart to…”

  Dear God, such pious evasion!

  It was not Amy Larner who came into Frere’s chamber that night, nor did the woman even look like her. The figure was darker, more slender, sinuous even. She moved with un-English motions, bejewelled, filmily dressed, Indian. She had stepped from the temple wall, stone made flesh, one of the crowd of provocative nymphs that lingered there. Tender and indolent, her gaze was turned towards him. It spoke of her yearning to become a maithuna figure – to be coupled, like those pairs of lovers that stood at the entrance to every temple, serpent-twined, endlessly making love in public view, unabashed and rapt. She was a silent, miasmic dancer whose every gesture uttered only a single word.

  The next day, a second letter arrived from Emilia. She was surprised and (she confessed) a little injured that Edwin had proved so insensitive to the feelings she had tried so delicately to express in her first message. She had hoped he would read between the lines and voluntarily give her leave to remain longer in Cambridge than originally planned. The case for this alteration was not selfishness on her part but a response to the dire need of her father. She went on to describe at length the symptoms of his distress, which read strangely similar to those Frere had encountered in his wife, and angered him. He guessed what Tom Horrocks would make of this. Must he go to Cambridge and drag her back by the hair?