The Chymical Wedding

by Lindsay Clarke

  “He did say something that puzzled me, but then he shied away.”

  Laura nodded. “Then make him talk about it.”

  “Has he told you?”

  “Yes. And I think you need to know. From him.”

  “I’ll try… and, if you’re sure it’s what you want, I’ll talk to him about you too. But at the end of the day only you can convince him.”

  “I know.” She smiled up at me again. “But you can soften him up for me. Will you do that?”

  “Look at me like that and I can’t refuse you anything. But it’ll cost you a hug.”

  “Payment in advance.”

  When, after a long moment, we let each other go, she said, “Edward tells me that you’re leaving.”

  “The day after the party. It’s my son’s birthday.”

  “And you won’t come back?”

  “To visit perhaps… if you’re both still here.”

  “I hope so. We’ll both miss you.” She looked away towards the window where light slanted down into The Pightle’s shade. “The Weeping Fig’s looking good. You’ve been talking to it?”

  “All the time.”

  “What does it say?”

  I thought for a moment, then said, “It speaks Latin. It says, ‘Sunt lachrymæ rerum.’”

  “Which means?”

  “Untranslatable, but it has to do with the sadness in things.”

  “And what about the joy?”

  “That’s Advanced Level. I haven’t quite got there.”

  “You will.”

  “Perhaps I should come back for lessons. I think I might need them.”

  Her smile lightly disparaged the remark. “Shall I tell you your fortune? Give me your hand.” I did, and watched, smiling, as she studied the map of my palm.

  “Do I want to know?”

  “Oh, I think so. It says: beware of American women, cantankerous poets, Tarot cards and stone effigies. Pelicans are to be trusted, and ghosts are not what you think – they come from the future. I see… mmm.”

  “Well?”

  “I see a lot of ink.”

  “And scrumpled paper?”

  “Heaps and heaps. But that’s not all.” There was a change in her tone of voice, then another thoughtful hum.

  “What else?” I demanded.

  The smile became more sibylline. She folded my fingers onto the palm. “Don’t you know by now?” she said. “The future comes when we’re good and ready for it.”

  *

  All that blue midsummer afternoon, the sky over Easterness and Munding was loud with aircraft targeting their subtle, interlaced assault manoeuvres on the tower of the ruined church at Shippenhall, then zooming out across the calm North Sea. They sortied like mating pairs, frisky and metallic, as though impelled by an excess of exuberant vitality. So much care, intelligence, precision. Such expensive skill.

  By the time I walked across to the Decoy Lodge that evening, their trails had evaporated against a deeper blue. Less harsh than it had been by day, the Norfolk light solicited the best from everything, and even at the time – as now in recollection – it seemed to draw into its soft, enveiling blur the trees around the Lodge and the full palette of rhododendrons flowering beside the lake in pinks and whites, magenta and raw gold. With more to celebrate than the solstice, I sensed already how much I must miss this place, the light, the high expansive sky that never quite darkened to black that night, though the stars were visible.

  There were more cars in the yard of the Lodge than I’d expected and many people already gathered on the lawn. Bob was there, of course, and Ralph, but many others I didn’t know – estate workers and their families, children scampering about among the bushes and old friends of Ralph and Edward invited up from town. Among them, to my amazement and delight, I saw Clive, who informed me that he’d been drawn by rumours of witchcraft orgies in the old Rectory. The remark was overheard by someone else I hadn’t expected to see there, but Neville Sallis seemed to have recovered from his indignation. He gave me what my mother would have called “an old-fashioned look”, and resumed his debate with Bob.

  “Well, mooncalf,” Clive said, “you must tell me all before I go to bed tonight, and don’t expect to leave before I’ve checked the silver.” We were joined by Ralph who gave me his shy, lop-sided grin saying he hoped I would enjoy this party more than the last. “Edward’s been forbidden the Tarot cards,” he promised, “and if he’s more than traditionally rude to anyone, I shall terminate his lease.” He glanced across to where Edward sat in state on a high-backed wicker chair, wearing a raffish neck scarf and a cream silk shirt above his scarlet-braced corduroy trousers. He was surrounded by old friends.

  I said, “I gather things are happier.”

  “I’m happy that he’s on the mend,” Ralph answered. “The rest is bonus.” Then, with a twinkle, “Have you seen the spread over there? Laura’s outdone herself.”

  After a time, I went looking for Laura and found her sitting alone in the kitchen of the Lodge. The sheer cotton dress of dark blues and greens, the silver dangle of earrings and the subtle use of makeup, all spoke to breathtakingly successful care over her appearance, yet she seemed – as I suggested – to be hiding herself away.

  “I’ve looked forward to this so much,” she said, “and now I’m too nervous to enjoy it.”

  “Don’t be. It’s a triumph.”

  “Is he happy?”

  “I haven’t been able to get close to him yet, but judging by the chortles, yes, I’d say so… very. He’s sitting there like the Grand Cham. It’s not going to be too much for him?”

  “It’s the way he wanted it. I’ve made him swear to tell me when he gets tired.”

  I spotted her empty glass and asked if I could bring her another drink. “In a minute,” and, when I offered her a cigarette, “I’ve stopped – to encourage Edward. But have one if you like.” I shook my head, put the packet away, and said, “Perhaps I should do the same – though I think I may need at least one vice.” There was a brief, uncertain silence in which I caught the scent of her perfume, slight but delicious, on the air.

  “Alex” – I turned my gaze back from the window – “what I asked you to do…”

  “I haven’t forgotten.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “You mean he’s woken up to how lucky he is?” I saw that he had, and added, “Perhaps it’s just as well. With the way you’re looking tonight, I might have had second thoughts… I mean, friendship’s fine, but…”

  It was said lightly enough but the air between us was delicate. Then she smiled and looked away. “Edward tells me I’m virgin now. I suppose he knows what he means.”

  “Do you?”

  She said, “I think you had better get me that drink,” and stood up, sweeping back her hair. “On second thoughts, I’d better come with you.”

  We were standing very close. Involuntarily my hand reached for the cigarette packet again as I said, smiling, “You can be a very disturbing person,” but her grin arrested the gesture.

  “I’m trouble, I know. Edward encourages it in me. But then… it must have occurred to you that life is a very disturbing business.”

  “Some such thought has recently crossed my mind.”

  Still she didn’t move, and then, with a demure, flirtatious solemnity, she said, “Then I advise you to meditate on it, Mr Darken; for women as creatures are passing strange, and I suspect your life still has much business with them.”

  Laughing, I said, “I didn’t think the party could be quite complete without her.”

  “You don’t know it yet,” she answered, “but we still have a couple of things to do on her behalf.”

  “Which are?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Enigmatic as ever.”

  “Not really. At heart we’re very simple.”

  At that moment Ralph came through into the kitchen. “There you are, Laura. Edward’s been asking for you.” Then he took in how close we were.
“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything?” Momentarily he was dismayed by our laughter as I assured him we were being good this time, then he recovered and said, “It seems we are all becoming expert at renunciation. I do hope it’s good for our health.”

  Out on the lawn Edward rose slowly from the chair and stretched out his hands to receive us. “Midsummer night,” he announced. “The dream time. Time to light the fire against the dark.”

  On the grass close to the lake’s edge and well away from the thatched roof of the Lodge, the brushwood pyre stands ready. It is tall, pyramidal, well-constructed to sustain a blaze. Jem Bales is waiting beside it, staring down at the piles of handsomely bound books he has unloaded from the cart. His leather gaiters are the colour of chestnuts, and he is scratching his grizzled head. Jem is no reader, has no use for books, but she can see that even to his woodman’s eye a lot of good money is about to go up in smoke, and to no reasonable purpose. Then Pedro is bounding ashore towards him.

  Louisa lifts her skirts, steps from the skiff to the jetty, and turns to assist her father. He is staring in fascination – not at the pyre but at the Lodge itself, and within the wrinkles of his harrowed face she discerns the wary expression of an uncertain boy. If the hand he lifts is trembling, it is not only with the infirmity of age.

  “Come,” she says, “we promised to be brave.”

  “I was wondering why it should be that every occasion of my coming here is an unhappy one.”

  Because, she thinks, you first learnt to suffer here, and have never quite forgiven or forgotten that. And who is she to judge of this, when her own novitiate in pain is incomplete? In that respect Edwin is already far ahead of her, and there is further pain to be accrued before she gains on him. She has persuaded herself that any unhappiness this day may hold can only diminish the distance between his experience and hers, and thus – through a paradox – might even convert itself to its own opposite.

  None of this can be shared with her father, though she says, smiling, “Unless we choose to see it so, this need not be an entirely unhappy day.”

  “I cannot see it otherwise.”

  “But it has scarce begun.”

  Jem touches a hand to his temple as the baronet and his daughter approach, and Louisa wonders aloud at the way the woodman’s command has stilled Pedro to untypical obedience. “He pays scant attention to a word I utter,” she complains. “One day you must teach me your secret, Jem.” The man smiles and shrugs, says that if there is a secret he wouldn’t know how to explain it, then hopes that everything has been arranged to their satisfaction. He casts an eye upwards at the scudding clouds, comments that the breeze should make a good blaze, and that even if it veers, the thatch should be safe enough. His reassurances are addressed to the master, but it is the daughter who answers.

  “Thank you, Jem – you have done splendidly. Did you find me the flints I asked for?”

  Jem reaches into his pocket and brings out the twin halves of a broken flint. He looks down doubtfully where the exposed inner surfaces glint in his hands, and mutters that it seems a painfully slow way to kindle fire.

  “But the oldest and the simplest,” she answers, for the man would have no understanding if she spoke aloud the words that echo in her mind from an old text: Certaine Divine Raies breake out of the Soul in adversity, like sparkes of fire out of the afflicted flint.

  Old the method may be, but Jem is unpersuaded of its simplicity, particularly at a young woman’s uncalloused hands. Nor is he happy at the thought of her down on her knees blowing at a hard-won spark among dry leaves. He decides to speak his mind.

  Though patience does not come easily, Louisa listens, then resists. She has made her decisions, however capricious they appear, but her father intervenes. “Jem is in the right, my dear. Let him kindle a torch for you at least, and then – if you insist – you may bring it to the pyre yourself.” Reluctantly she sees the sense in this, and watches as Jem strikes the flints among the tinder he has laid ready in the lee of a ring of stones. Each click of the struck flints comes as a pang on the air. She sees now that it is, indeed, more difficult than she had anticipated.

  Her fingers reach for the locket dangling at her throat. It contains a strand of her mother’s hair, but it is also gold, and she has found an unexpected source of comfort there. Gold speaks to her now in richer language than before. Having been at pains for so long to stress its symbolic value, she is surprised each time her fingers close around the locket to sense a virtue in the actual element itself which is a mild but sovereign remedy for the disappointments of the heart. She understands why ritual objects are made of gold; she thinks it small wonder that men should hoard and covet it, unconscious as they were of what they deeply sought. The gold inside her hand is nourishment; it fortifies and heals.

  Jem is blowing among the stones. He adds more leaves and blows again, then grunts as the new leaves catch and a small flame crackles and thrives among them. He adds the dry twigs he has collected, and the ring of stones becomes a hearth. Utterly unaware how Promethean his endeavours, he stands, and looks down on his fire in satisfaction. It will take a torch now, and if she wants to send things up in smoke, it is not his business.

  “Thank you, Jem,” she says.

  “You may leave us now.” But Jem is a woodman; he has no great trust of flame, and mutters that it might be best if he stand close by for a time lest the fire get out of hand.

  “If you wish,” she answers, “but all will be well.” She dips the reed-torch to the hearth, and when the fire has caught, she lifts it to the breeze. It becomes a brand. Alarmed, her father worries for her hair, but she holds the torch confidently and steps towards the pyre. With her free hand she lifts the first of the books from the stack and allows it to flip open.

  What a host of words were here! And were any of them true, she wonders, or was her book no more than a consoling illusion that she – like countless solitaries before her – had woven out of dreams? No matter. It is her work. The harvest of deep feeling and long thought. Silently she makes the dedication that she could not write.

  She lifts her eyes, takes in the bright day, then throws the copy of her book into the brushwood. It falls open on its spine, the pages fluttering in the breeze. At arm’s length she holds the torch to the paper. A fringe of coral appears at the corner of a page. Flame blossoms and folds – coral blushing to purple, then saffron, and a paler glowing aureole like a feather’s tip. The page is rustling and flaking, mourning itself, until it is bent and ragged as an old crone in black tatters burning at a pyre.

  All the colours of the Art, she marvels, then throws the brand among the brushwood. The breeze gusts. Fire feels its way among the branches, sniffs the air, then swoops. The pages of the burning book turn quickly, leaf over blackening leaf, like a shuffled deck of cards. Twig and branch combust in a gasp of orange flame and she is pushed backwards by the sudden heat. She reaches for another book, feeds it to the fire, then another. The fire exhilarates. She is all enthusiasm. Bright-eyed, she points to where the burning pages turn. “Look,” she cries, “never was book so eagerly devoured. Never more completely understood.”

  And she laughs.

  He stands in vast, uncomprehending grief, unable to stop her, unable to assist. The fire burgeons. Smoke bends in obeisance to the breeze, rises and makes off across the lake.

  Our fire had been built beyond the kiln, and Edward was sitting in its ruddy glow talking to a small girl – an estate worker’s daughter who had taken a fancy to him. I listened as he talked to her about fire, about how everything began there, in the stars, and how one day everything would return to fire. When she seemed disturbed by this thought, he told her about phoenixes and salamanders, and then, eventually, he told her about Louisa. He told how she had come here once, more than a hundred years before, to light a fire which was a magic fire because it never went out. In fact, he said, the fire was really there all the time – it had been there long before Louisa lit her fire, and the fire in fro
nt of us now was the very same fire. It was just that sometimes it was invisible – a small flame burning inside each one of us – and at other times, like now, it became visible again so that we didn’t forget it was always there.

  The child was at once entranced and dubious. At one point, under question, Edward glanced across at me and murmured, “What a critic have we here!” but at last he told her he had a thing to do, and promised as he left that if she gazed into the fire as into a mirror, and did so long enough, she would see her own small spark of star-fire reflected there. It was all a question of knowing how to look.

  When he’d gone, the girl favoured me with one of those exaggerated facial expressions by which the young practise their scepticism of the adult world. I said, “But didn’t you enjoy his story?”

  “On the whole,” she conceded – I saw that she was grateful for the opportunity to employ the phrase – “but he’s funny, don’t you think?”

  I agreed, and we stared into the fire together. Some time later I became aware of Edward and Laura standing over me. The little girl had gone.

  “Didn’t she believe me then?” Edward asked.

  “She thinks you’re funny.”

  “It’s a pity Laura wasn’t here. She could have shown her that fire doesn’t only destroy things – it transforms them.” He looked at Laura, who glanced down at me. “There’s a gift for you,” she said. “I thought you should have it. It’s on the window sill in the sitting room.”

  Giftless myself, I stood up, embarrassed. “Well, aren’t you going to see?” Edward encouraged after a moment, smiling.

  “You’re not coming with me?”

  Laura shook her head and sat down by the fire. Edward joined her. A little bemused, I went back to the Lodge and through into the sitting room, where the curtains had been closed. I drew them and found what was in the window alcove, waiting for me.

  Its form was flower-like, opening like the outward reach of a corolla, the rim serrated and uneven where thin sheets of clay had been folded and pressed together, shaping the delicate cup of a vase. It might have been growing there from the white window sill, stemless but poised on its own centre of gravity. The glaze was matt, earthy, yet shot with igneous colours – shades of umber, ruddy irons and manganese, vivid and raw – as though mineral elements had fused into botanical form, or an ardent plant had been petrified by heat. This pot was a living presence, discretely itself, yet a portion also of the natural world around us, a member of its order. I lifted it and it felt good in my hands. Then I saw the note: