When I walked back up the lane, Bob was out in his front garden tidying his hedge. “Feels like a waste of time…” he said, “after last night, I mean. But I had to do something. Hardly slept a wink. Kept tossing and turning, wondering how the hell we ever got ourselves into this mess, and how the hell we’re ever going to get out of it.”
“Me too.”
“Sometimes I’m grateful that Doris and I couldn’t have a family… that there are no grandchildren to worry about.”
“I woke up wanting to talk to my kids but the bloody phone’s out of order.”
“Use mine.”
“It’s long-distance, Bob. I suppose I could get the operator to…”
“Don’t worry about it. Hardly ever use the thing. The bill’s neither here nor there. Take your time. You know where it is.”
Again the photograph of Bob’s wife approved of me as I sat down by the phone. “Forgive me, Doris,” I whispered, and dialled the number of the Decoy Lodge.
I let it ring for a long time but there was no answer. Not Laura, not Edward, just the moronic twinned buzzes, still-born on the silence. I sat for a while, collecting my thoughts, before I picked up the receiver again. Saturday morning – they too might be out.
It was Martin who answered. My place, his voice.
“It’s me – Alex.”
There was a short, I assumed stunned, silence before he said, “Thank God. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“The kids got your letter. It meant the world.”
“I’d like to talk to them.”
“Yes, of course…”
I heard Jess’s voice, thin, from the kitchen probably: “Is that Alex?”
“He’s okay. He wants to talk to the children.”
“Let me talk to him first.”
“He asked for them.” And then, into the receiver: “Look, Alex – Jess wants a word. The kids are out in the garden. I’ll go and call them, okay?”
“If you would?”
“You’re really all right?”
“Really.” I heard how edgy my voice was. “Relax,” I said. “It’s okay. Go and get them, will you?”
The receiver changed hands.
“Alex?”
“Jess, I really wanted to talk to the kids.”
“I know, but… listen. Are you really all right?”
“God – the pair of you! I’m okay.”
“You don’t sound it.”
“I’m nervous, dammit. I feel bad about… What about you?”
“We’re okay.”
“That’s all?”
“Well…”
“I mean, be happy, for God’s sake. What’s the point otherwise?”
“Alex, it’s not that easy…”
I didn’t want to hear their troubles, and decided: “Listen, I’ve been thinking things over. I accept things. Okay? It’s for the best. It has to be. I don’t think I could handle seeing you just yet, but as things are… it’s all right. If you want a divorce, that’s all right too. In fact, it’s the best possible thing. Get a solicitor to serve me some papers or whatever they do. I’ll sign.”
There was a long silence in which I heard the children come in from the garden. “Alex, we can’t talk about this now.”
“Okay, but get on with it, will you? I need to simplify my life. The only thing… money. That could be a problem. I’ve just resigned from the Poly.”
“You’ve what?”
“You heard. By September I’ll be broke, so no point suing for maintenance. Anyway, you’ve got the house. Martin can earn. He can probably have my job if he wants it. I’ll get some money to the kids as and when I can…”
“Alex, money is the last thing on my mind. We have to…”
“Listen, I’m on someone else’s phone. I really want to talk to Marcus and Lily. Can I do that?”
“You’re different. You sound different.”
“I am. I’m in Norfolk. They do different here. Haven’t you heard?”
“What’s been happening to you?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you some time. Give me the kids.”
“Okay, but stay in touch, will you? Don’t disappear again.”
“Yes to the first. I don’t know about the second. Now will you please get off the line?”
Had she been a few years older, Lily might have proved difficult. As it was, almost four, she mainly wanted to know about the pheasant, which had been some distance from my thoughts. Improvising, hoping it was true, I told her that the brood was hatched and learning to fly. Was I enjoying my holiday, she demanded, and why hadn’t I taken her and Marcus with me? Because they both needed to be with their mother, I explained, and anyway wasn’t Martin looking after them? He was and, heart swimming, I had to listen to tales of their adventures until we told each other that we loved each other and would be again together before too long.
Marcus was tougher. For a child not yet seven he had an unnervingly pensive face which was mobile enough when he giggled but otherwise observed the world with a detached mien that, in an older person, might have suggested incredulity. I was sure he was wearing that face now.
“Where are you?” he demanded.
“You know where I am. I’m in Norfolk. I told you in my letter.”
“When are you coming back?”
“I don’t know yet. I still have things to do here.”
“Soon?”
“As soon as I can.” I tried to lighten the tone. “How you doing, tiger?”
“I’m all right.”
“I know you’re all right, but what have you been up to?”
“Nothing much.”
“How’s school?”
“Boring.”
“Is that all?”
Marcus sniffed. “The other kids…”
“What about them?”
“Gary Watson says you’ve run off.”
He was the next-door neighbours’ son, three years older than Marcus.
“Well, we all know what Gary Watson’s like,” I evaded.
“Is it true?”
Once you admit the truth there’s no ending, I thought, but wasn’t all confusion in children finally traceable back to the untrue, the unreal? And not only in children.
“Listen,” I said, “sometimes grown-ups get confused too. They need to be on their own for a time, to think. To try and sort things out. That’s what I’m doing, Marcus. I know it must be hard for you to understand, but it’s important, I promise you, and I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise. Hasn’t Mummy talked to you about this, and Martin?”
“Yes.”
“And didn’t they explain that I haven’t run away from you?”
A silence so sharp I could feel the pricking of his eyes.
“Well, it’s true,” I said. “I love you and I won’t ever run away from you. I’m your daddy, right, and I always will be. That’s what’s true.”
“Are you coming back?”
“I told you – as soon as I can.”
“To stay, I mean.”
And, for a long time, I was silent now. “Marcus,” I said at last, “I can’t promise that. When I see you, we’ll talk some more. It’s hard like this, on the phone. I can’t see your face and you can’t see mine. And there isn’t time to…” I faltered. “Listen, I want you to hear this, and I want you to remember it. Mummy and Martin and me, we all love you. We’re going to keep you safe – you and Lily – until you’re old enough to look after yourselves and to understand properly what has happened to us now. And you will. I promise you, one day you will. So don’t be frightened, right? There’s nothing to be afraid of. Other things might change but love doesn’t. It’s always with you whether I’m here in Norfolk or right beside you – it doesn’t matter. The love is with you all the time. Do you understand that?”
Down the phone, two hundred miles away, I heard Marcus begin to cry. Dear God, why was the truth so invariably cruel?
There was a crackle as th
e receiver changed hands. Martin again: “Alex…”
“I know,” I said. “I tried to tell him… he asked… you heard. I didn’t want to lie.”
“It’s all right,” he answered. “Jess is with them.” For a time nothing but the sound of our breathing down the line and, distantly, the cries of weeping children.
“God,” Martin said, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s done. You were right. For God’s sake just take care of them.”
“I will.”
“I know,” I said, “I know,” and put down the phone, and sat there in my tears.
As I came out through the garden Bob switched off his strimmer. “Did you get through all right?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I really don’t know.” He looked across at me steadily, troubled, then sighed. He would have said something but I shook my head, thanked him for the use of the phone, and was walking away when I heard: “By the way – while you were in there – I saw your friend go by.”
“Edward?”
“The girl. She drove up the lane, then back down again. I suppose she might have been looking for you. I tried to flag her down but…”
“She didn’t stop?”
“I don’t think she understood… seemed to be in a hurry.”
“Damn!” I was at his gate, about to pass through.
“And, Alex – I might be wrong about this, but…”
“What?”
“Well… I thought she had a black eye.”
From the gate of The Pightle I saw the note folded into the horseshoe that served as a knocker on the front door. I had never seen the handwriting before. It was strangely childish, without sophistication:
Came but you were out. Couldn’t have stayed long. Things are difficult but we’re surviving. I’ll try to see you soon.
L.
And underneath, a swift afterthought in capitals:
DON’T COME. I WILL GET BACK.
I stood there at the door stone, the note trembling in my hands, wondering what the hell was happening at the Lodge.
At the Decoy Lodge, Louisa Agnew gathered the pages of her manuscript into their binder and tied it neatly in a knot of green ferret. She laid it down on the desk.
It was oddly separate from her. The book authorized itself. She was only the vessel through which it had passed, out of the dark latency of things into the phenomenal world. But for this moment they were alone together with their secrets.
Throughout the day she had worked in a dream to complete the fair copy of her script. She was weary from the long labour and from that previous night in which she had scarcely slept at all. Soon she would feel the first pangs of dissatisfaction that swiftly follow any sustained expenditure of mental energy, but such considerations were far from her thoughts. There was, rather, a glow of certainty about her.
Louisa turned in her chair to survey the simple room. The light was failing outside where wildfowl called across the lake; she had not yet lit her lamp, and she was a grey shadow among shadows. For so many weeks she had been alone there. Ice had come to drive her briefly away, into that encounter on the frozen lake, and later into the fraught, finally mysterious conspiracy with Emilia. Her shades had come, stepping from the dark places of her mind to engage her in sometimes harrowing, sometimes joyous conversation. Tilly had come, bringing gossip and supplies, bewildered by Louisa’s reclusive life, disapproving of it and utterly unaware how important to her mistress was the news she shared. At last, as though invoked by her deep need, Edwin had appeared at her door, dishevelled, distraught, yet knowing somewhere – how could he not? – that a momentous beckoning of Providence had brought him there.
She had absented herself from life to write down all she knew of life, and now, at the end of her labours, life had caught her by surprise, saying, “Everything that you have written here is true, but now you must know it, and with a knowledge that is no longer pallid intellectual idea but the very quickness of my touch.”
And so, as she had copied out the pages, her book had seemed more magical than, to a child’s eye, those unfolding volumes where prince and princess, demons and fairies, rise in paper pageant as each leaf is turned. The images opening from her cabinet of dreams were subtler, far more tender. The words had proved an exact analogue of experience, and not of experience past, but that which – when the words were written – was yet to come. Words and experience, experience and words: each was a validation of the other. It was, of itself, a chymical wedding, and in her Open Invitation Louisa saw unanticipated resonances now. For, joyous as the previous night had been, how greater even than she had imagined was the cause for celebration there.
It was borne in upon her most forcefully as she copied out the passage which reflected on what was, for her, a crucial error in the history of the European soul. The passage examined that Vatican debate in which the Church had missed the opportunity to wed its spiritual vision with the natural magic of alchemic lore. For a moment, there at the height of Renaissance humanism, Trismegistus might have been preferred over Aristotle as the cornerstone of Christian philosophy. A powerful case was made for the immense spiritual values that would accrue, but the debate was lost. Sternly the Church turned its back – and at what cost! The split between mind and body was reopened. The palace of matter was laid waste, and a soul allowed only to human existence. The female knowledge of the heart was ever more mistrusted and reviled, and – where it might have been made whole – the consciousness of man shattered between the tragic contraries. In these rejections lay the crisis of the European spirit. Without the social strength of Christianity, Hermeticism lay in chains; without the regenerative power of Hermetic knowledge, Christianity was moribund. It was vital for the contraries to meet again. And now, in this strange unanticipated love that had brought Louisa and Edwin Frere together, it seemed to her that the reconciliation had at last begun.
He was the true spirit of the Christian church; she the hand maid of the Hermetic Mystery. How long had the sad world waited for this union! Yes, it was a seed only, but who knew what might grow from such a seed? If one had faith as a grain of mustard seed then mountains might be moved. Was not the Kingdom of Heaven itself likened to a mustard seed? And this small seed had scarcely yet begun to germinate.
She remembered that cryptic fragment from the Gnostic Gospel. According to the Egyptians which had survived only because Clement of Rome had quoted it: When ye have trampled on the garment of shame, it began, and when the two became one, and the male with the female is neither male nor female… And there it ended. She had long been intrigued by its inconclusiveness. Perhaps the rest had been deliberately lost by some ancient bigot terrified of matter? It made no difference; truth would always survive censorship, and she knew now how the promise ended. For once the garment of shame is shed, and the male and the female become one together, then shall ye enter the kingdom.
She exulted in the knowledge, but strangely there were shadows too; an unease for which the exhaustion of mind and hand could not entirely account.
One regret was already identified. Dearly she would have wished to pen an inscription additional to the one declaring the book her father’s property; to make some acknowledgment, however cryptic, that the book was also a gift to the man whom, for the purposes of the inscription, she might call her mystic brother. It was not possible. That dedication must remain a secret within the secret. It was enough that it was known to her heart. The secrecy enriched it, and this was accepted. So there was something else.
Some moments passed before she realized.
Her work was finished now. There was no further pretext for remaining sequestered in the small kingdom of the Lodge. She had worked all day to complete her task, to be free of it that more life might arrive, and the very act of completion spelt the end of all it had come to signify. She had been shown the gate of the Garden even as it closed before her.
The unease enlarged itself to panic.
Could she keep up the pre
tence that the book was unfinished? Work of this order was never wholly complete – it was only abandoned. Need she abandon it yet? There were always improvements that might be made. Its expression might be yet more finely tuned, its subtleties made subtler still. Out of her own dissatisfaction many weeks of work could be contrived. If time had laid siege to her kingdom, she had invention enough to delay its fall.
Immediately she saw how ignoble such stratagems were. She had assumed this task out of the world’s urgent need for her good news. She had accepted the grave responsibility of preparing the way for her father’s greater work – he who was driven almost to despair by time, she who had ever been friendly with it. To fabricate delay would be more than selfishness: it would be an act of apostasy.
Striving to control her feelings, she remembered what she herself had said: “We know that the Lord will hasten all up at last, and quickly enough.”
Well, the Lord was moving quickly now, and she was caught up in his haste. To procrastinate, to deceive and lie would vitiate the very meaning of her work. Rather than quickening the appetite for life’s great mystery, the book would begin to smell of the lamp, of mortality. It would betray the love its present quickness celebrated.
And yet to leave the Lodge…
There was nowhere else he might come – not in honesty, not in the declared truth of who they had become. The confines, the secrecy of the Lodge was the entirety of their world; everywhere else they were estranged. And to seek refuge in the kind of renunciation with which she had earlier accepted loss would now itself be betrayal. It would be impossible.
Anguished minutes passed before her mind was calm enough to receive a further thought: if the Lord was importunate with her now, there was a Lady also. In Her she must place her trust.
The childish hand was uncompromising, its promise made. DON’T COME. I WILL GET BACK. So what do you do? When eyes are being blacked, not to act is also to act, but cravenly. I couldn’t leave it at that.
I think you’ll find you can.
I’d already found that out once. But again? Caught between contrary impulses, I started and stalled like a fitful engine, for if Laura didn’t want me to come, she had her reasons. I remembered how Jess had kept Martin away from me at the start of my own crisis. And with just cause. Was that what Laura was afraid of then – irrational male violence? Was I afraid of it myself? I remembered Edward with the hatchet in his hand.
The Chymical Wedding Page 46