The Chymical Wedding

by Lindsay Clarke

  Bob filled the silence. “You seem to be making good progress.”

  “Oh, if it’s our progress you want to know about, you need only observe our position in the ward. We’re all on a Wheel of Fortune. You start over there when you’re in no state to understand the system, and they walk you to and fro and swing you round till you get over there where our infarcted hearts are supposed to lift at the imminent prospect of return to life’s mercies. Always supposing, of course, that you don’t fall off on the way. Some do. Some do.” It was hard to tell whether there was more of sadness or envy in his voice. “I, as you see, still have a few more spokes to go.”

  Bob smiled. “Your tongue doesn’t seem too infarcted. You must be feeling better.”

  “My principal feeling,” Edward answered, “is that if I hear another wag say ‘Blessed are the pacemakers’ with a grin of invention on his face, I might expire of boredom.”

  “Do they think you’ll need one?” I asked.

  “A pacemaker? I already have one. Where is she tonight, by the way?”

  “She thought it best if…”

  Edward looked away, discouragingly. Then, before I could speak again, “I could have done with a whole new engine, and all I’m offered is a sort of de-coke. I’m forbidden to smoke. What they don’t explain is how, in those diminished circumstances, one is expected to breathe.” He offered a bleak smile. “It appears I’m stuck with this particular heart – doubtless because any substitute would reject me.”

  And so it went on. I was grateful that Edward was speaking at all, yet aware how distanced was this sardonic banter. I could find no way through it, and caught myself covertly examining the colours of his skin, the quality of light in his eyes, the pace of his breathing, as though at any moment he might tire of this and send alarm bells ringing round the ward.

  At one point a young nurse stopped at his bed in passing and said with cheerful, ironical surprise, “So you do have friends after all, Mr Nesbit!”

  “These are mourners,” Edward answered.

  “Then I hope they’re prepared for a long wait.”

  “Not at all. They’re grieving over the demise of my youth.”

  The nurse smiled. “They should have got over that years ago,” grinned at Bob and me, and passed on.

  “Saucy baggage, that one,” Edward commented. “I made the error of calling her a tight-arsed bitch when she was being stern with me. She replied to the effect that the flexibility of her rectal muscles was a mystery on which I was unqualified to speak, and that I’d never get to the bottom of it unless I cheered up.”

  “It’s a good incentive,” Bob suggested, then looked at his watch. “You two must have things to talk about. Edward, when you’re up and about again, you’re welcome to visit me at my convenience.”

  Momentarily Edward looked alarmed, but he recovered himself and said, “I shall do so, dear man. And I’ll endeavour to put the breath you lent me to sweeter use.”

  “If you don’t insult me,” Bob replied, “I’ll think that one or other of us is getting past it,” then winked at me, and left.

  Edward regarded me with a wintery eye. “Were you a party to this conspiracy of tact, or are we both its victims?”

  “I did want a chance to talk.”

  “Well, here I am – a captive audience, as you see.”

  There was an embarrassed silence which we both tried to end in the same breath. I deferred to Edward, but he insisted that it was my responsibility to entertain him.

  “I don’t have many jokes, Edward.”

  He sighed then, assessed me sadly, and said, “Neither do I. But I can offer a nice line in regret.” For a moment the past lay between us like grief. I wanted to reach out for his hand and say simply that I was sorry, but that was impossible as long as his eyes refused to meet mine. Which they did, for an instant, as he murmured, “For God’s sake, don’t agonize. I’ve done enough of that for both of us.”

  “Edward, I…”

  “You were a young fool,” he interrupted, “which is tolerable. I was an old fool, which is not. But unless we’re to grovel before one another in an orgy of contrition, I think there’s a verb that should remain understood in all our sentences.”

  “To forgive?”

  He nodded, smiling warily, then said, “There are only two things I’ve held against you, and I think I’ve just let them both go.”

  I looked up and saw the remission. The air had changed between us. Neither of us had moved but the distance was diminished. I felt freed to speak.

  “About the first…” I began.

  “You don’t know what it is.”

  “Laura?”

  “But not what you think.” He was smiling at me more broadly now, amused by my bewilderment as I said, “Then what?” He shook his head again with a kind of affectionate despair, then relaxed back onto the piled pillows, staring up at the ceiling. “It wasn’t the rogering that bothered me,” he said eventually, “…not in itself. It was the consequence – the fact that you, a mere novice, were chosen to do what I had failed to do.”

  I puzzled over this and could see only one possible context in which it might make sense. “To put her in touch with Louisa, you mean?”

  Edward scowled impatiently. “We are alive now – in my case regrettably so. It’s the present that matters.”

  “Then I don’t understand.”

  In a voice hoarse and wistful, Edward murmured, “You made her virgin.”

  “Laura?”

  “Who else?”

  “That’s not the word I’d have chosen.”

  “It means more than you think it means – though I may have confused the issue by saying that you did it. It wasn’t you, of course, but it came to her through you… and I found that a little hard to take. Particularly as your face would seem to suggest that you still don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about. Do they teach nothing sensible at Cambridge?” He sighed with exasperation, the corners of his mouth tucked in a weary frown. A teacher impatient with a talented but lazy pupil. Or just a tired old man? “There are times when it’s a rite,” he said, “a rite by which a woman becomes one-unto-herself. Single. And she does it not by giving herself to a particular man but by committing herself to life without reservation.” He looked away again. “Laura was able to do that with you as she was not able to do it with me. It shines out of her now. If you’re not quite blind, you must have observed it.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “That is a fact beyond buts. There’s now another Virgin woman in the world, and God knows it has need of them. I would have preferred to accomplish it myself, but I’m deeply glad for her. And if that was the only, right and best way of getting the job done, then blessings on you both.”

  It was as if he was consigning Laura to me, and I couldn’t believe that he was left with this misunderstanding. “But she must have told you…” I began.

  “She didn’t have to. I could see for myself.”

  “I don’t mean that… I mean, that we’re not together… Laura and I. It wasn’t…”

  Edward sighed impatiently. “That’s utterly beside the point. If you were together, it would be a completely different kettle of fish. It would be marriage, and neither of you is ready for that – especially you.” He shook his head. “I have no idea what you are now, but Laura is virgin.”

  Smiling with relief, I said, “She’s certainly her own person.”

  “She was that before. She’s her own woman now. There’s a difference.”

  “God knows what the feminists would make of that,” I said after a moment.

  “That, fortunately, is none of our business. They have their mysteries and we have ours. One day perhaps the twain shall meet, then the sparks will turn to confetti and we can all have a party.” He grinned at me then. “That might be fun.”

  I was encouraged by the mischievous light in his eyes, but it was brief. Almost as though he’d remembered that he was supposed to be unhappy, or –
more likely – because he was reflecting on the impossibility of communication across different experience, his face clouded again. He muttered something about gasping for a cigarette, and looked at his watch.

  Thinking that I’d taxed him enough, I prepared to leave. “You’re in better shape than I expected,” I said. “I can’t tell you how much that matters to me.”

  “God knows what I thought I was doing that night…” His eyes were closed, grey about the lids. The breath was released in a long sigh, and it carried an enormous grief that had not, until that moment, expressed its own enormity. “Madness…” he whispered. “Went too far…”

  “It’s past, Edward.”

  “Despair, you see… It can be absolutely ruthless… savages everything. And the hell of it is, it feels just as real as the other thing… as if they belong together, and you can’t have one without invoking the other…”

  “You told me once that we’re the case for hope as well as the authors of our own despair.”

  “I said a lot of things. Too much… Trying to convince myself. To hold it here.” He held up his empty hands. “It’s always larger, subtler… You make statements like that at your peril… find yourself turning into something you wouldn’t believe.” He gave a weary shake of his head. “I’m tired, Cambridge.”

  “Do you want me to leave?” But no, he wasn’t ready for that, not yet.

  “The second thing,” he said. “Don’t you want to hear about it? It was harder to let go.”

  “If you want to tell me about it.”

  “That you brought me back.”

  I tried, and failed, to hold a grave gaze that contained no reproach but was unbearably sad. “Without Bob I wouldn’t have known what to do,” I said. “It was a close thing. I’d never have forgiven myself if…”

  “You don’t know?” There was a note of perplexity in his question, and when I looked up, the corner of his mouth was twitching a little.

  “What?”

  He searched my face and saw that I too was genuinely puzzled, then looked away. And back again. “You really don’t know?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not with you.”

  He smiled then, still a little baffled, and said, “It takes more than breath, you know.”

  “You’ll have to say more.”

  He studied my intent expression steadily for a moment, then sighed. “Perhaps another time.”

  Then I realized what had been at the back of my mind throughout the conversation. “Edward, there may not be another time – not unless you want me to visit you here again.”

  “Why not? I should be out of here in a couple of days.”

  I told him about the letter from Jess, about Marcus’s birthday and why I had to go. “But you’ll come back?” he said.

  “I don’t know, Edward, but I doubt it. I have some reconnecting of my own to do. And now that I know you’re all right… that the verb is understood…”

  “Your dream-quest is over – is that it? Time to return to the tribe?”

  “I can’t imagine that you’ll be going back to work on Louisa’s papers?”

  “No, there’s no need for that.”

  “Then…”

  “There’s nothing to hold you here?”

  “I think it would be evasion. Another tower. I have to get a purchase on the world. Most of all I have to get back in touch with my kids. Jess and I are getting divorced, but the kids will still need both of us.”

  “And you have your dream.”

  “Two dreams,” I said. “And you to thank for both of them.”

  “Two?”

  “Yes. The other night – Friday – I went to the CND meeting I told you about, and that night…” But Edward raised an admonitory finger.

  “Don’t tell it,” he whispered. “Become it.”

  “I’m not sure it was about me.”

  “They always are,” he said. “They’re the secrets we whisper to ourselves. And if it’s a secret the rest of us should know then make something of it. Remind us.”

  “If I can.”

  “I think you will.” Then his lined face unfolded in a smile! “Show us that Zosimus was right.”

  “Zosimus?”

  “One of the texts I didn’t show you. Thought it might inflate your ego, but I don’t suppose it can do too much harm now. If I can get it right, he says, ‘For the priest, the man of copper, whom you see seated in the spring and gathering his colour, do not regard him as a man of copper…’” He hesitated, frowned, remembered, “‘for he has changed the colour of his nature and become a man of silver. If you wish, after a little time, you will have him as a man of gold.’” Then he smiled at me again. “Mind you, there’s still a coppery tinge of green about you, and in the spiritual calendar a little time may be as much as a half a century or more.”

  “I can wait. It might give you a chance to get there first.”

  “And, doubtless, I shall continue to example nothing but my own perversity. However, apart from Laura’s transformation, two other things appear to have happened: I’ve been brought back from the dead, and your Green Man seems to be a less shaggy beast. One might almost mistake us both for human beings. These developments should perhaps be celebrated. When do you say this birthday is?”

  “The twenty-third.”

  “So you needn’t leave till the twenty-second?”

  “I’d planned to leave earlier. I should see my publisher, Clive Quantrill. I have to thank him for the loan of The Pightle – and tell him he should spend more time in Munding.”

  Edward sniffed. “Publishers can wait – especially when they’re on to a good thing. Will you bear with an old man and promise you won’t leave till the twenty-second?”

  “No, but I’ll bear with you.”

  “Don’t patronize me, you little shit.”

  The woman by the next bed started at his growl. I smiled at her disapproval and said, “One has to do something to stir your stumps.”

  He eyed me shrewdly. “A bargain? I’ll stir my stumps if you’ll stick around till our next meeting.”

  “Will my head be safe?”

  Edward grimaced. “My dear man, in this day and age nobody’s head is safe.”

  “A bargain then.” I put my hand to his. He gripped it, held it for a long moment, very tight. So tight I could feel the pricking of my eyes. Then he narrowed his, and growled. “Stay out of my way till I send for you. I’ve got more important things on my mind.”

  I learnt later that what he had in mind was a celebration of the summer solstice. Discharged, he’d secluded himself in the Lodge, and it was Laura, who brought my invitation to The Pightle. Also she was looking for my help.

  She told me that Edward was insisting that the time had come for her to return to the States without him. He argued that she was her own person now, young, with the whole promise of her life before her. In his words, there was neither sense nor justice in tying herself to the geriatric future of a tiresome old man with a heart condition.

  “But it’s precisely the condition of his heart that makes me want to stay with him,” she said, “and I don’t mean its weakness. It may sound contrary but it’s precisely because he’s let me go that I feel I can stay. Freely stay. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “If you’re sure it’s what you want… that you’re not just doing it for him.”

  “It’s what I want and need. I know we need each other. He won’t see it – he denies it even. But it’s only a kind of obstinacy, as if it was enough just to know we love each other without doing anything about it.”

  “He’s thinking of you.”

  “I know he is, but he won’t admit it. He knows he’s on shaky ground, so he says he’s making his soul – that it’s like making your toilette – you do it on your own. He says he has a thing to do before he dies and he doesn’t want me under his feet.”

  Uncertainly I said, “If you make allowances for the rhetoric… I mean, have you considered the possibility that he migh
t be right?”

  “I’ve been over and over it. I’ve examined my own motives and I’ve thought about his. I’ve listened seriously to everything he has to say, and in the end it’s the feeling that convinces me. I know what I feel, and all the logic in the world isn’t going to alter that. As for him…” She shook her head in exasperation. “He’s not going to get rid of me that easily.”

  “Has he told you what it is he wants to do?”

  “No, but I have a damn good idea, and I know he’ll do it better if I’m around.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  Laura smiled. “His business.”

  “His real business?” Her smile broadened. “God, I hope so. It would be the best possible…”

  “Yes.”

  “Does Ralph know this? It would really matter to him.”

  “They’ve talked. They spent a long time together. I don’t know what was said, but Edward was smiling when Ralph left. I guess the two of them must think I’m ignorant or something – about their past, I mean.”

  “You know about that?”

  “It was obvious the minute we turned up here. One of the many things Edward wouldn’t talk about. Ralph neither. It put me in a terrible position. Anyway, it seems to have changed now. Ralph was really sweet with me. He thinks I should stay.”

  “And that hasn’t made any difference to Edward?”

  She shook her head, gazed up at me. “I wondered if…”

  “You want me to talk to him?”

  “As a friend.”

  “I doubt he’ll listen.”

  “I think you matter to him more than you know.”

  “But after all that’s happened…”

  “Because of. Look how easily you cheered him up.”

  “He did that. He made it easy.”

  “But you brought him back – and not only out of gloom.” She held my eyes for a moment then looked, pensively, away. “How much has he told you about what happened? After the attack, I mean.”