The house of Doctor Dee

by Peter Ackroyd

  The house of Doctor Dee

  Peter Ackroyd

  This novel centres on the famous 16th-century alchemist and astrologer John Dee. Reputedly a black magician, he was imprisoned by Queen Mary for allegedly attempting to kill her through sorcery. When Matthew Palmer inherits an old house in Clerkenwell, he feels that he has become part of its past.

  PETER ACKROYD

  THE HOUSE OF DOCTOR DEE

  ONE

  I INHERITED THE house from my father. That was how it all began. I had heard nothing about it until after his death, and it was not until the summer of this year that I visited it for the first time. The house was in Clerkenwell, an area I scarcely knew, and I took the tube from Ealing Broadway to Farringdon. I hardly needed to save the expense of a taxi now, but since childhood I have always enjoyed riding under the ground. I am so accustomed to travelling into the City or West End, in fact, that I recognized nothing out of the ordinary in the course of this particular journey — except, perhaps, for a more powerful sense of the change. It begins to happen when I leave the Central Line at Notting Hill Gate, and ride the escalator to the Circle Line platforms on a higher level. The stations along this route have always been less familiar to me; a slight adjustment is necessary, therefore, and I adopt another layer of anonymity as the train moves on from Edgware Road and Great Portland Street to the old centres of the city. Each time the automatic doors close I experience a deeper sense of oblivion — or is it forgetfulness? Even the passengers seem to be transformed, and the general atmosphere of the carriage becomes more subdued and, on occasion, more fearful.

  Just before the train arrived at Farringdon it emerged from the tunnel and, for a moment, I noticed the pale sky; it reminded me of the mild, depressing Ealing light, but as soon as I stepped out of the underground station into Cowcross Street that illusion was dispelled. For the light of the city changes — pearly in the west, sombre in the south, misty in the north, sharp in the east — and here, close to the centre, it had a particularly smoky quality. I could almost taste the scent of burning.

  No doubt this accounted for my nervousness as I made my way towards the house which my father had left to me — the house about which I knew nothing except its address. I had looked up Cloak Lane in a London atlas, and in my imagination I had already placed it among other streets packed with shops and offices; but as I made my way down Turnmill Street towards Clerkenwell Green, I realized that this was like no other part of central London. It seemed both more open and more desolate, as if at some point the area had been laid waste. Cloak Lane itself was difficult to find. I estimated that it was some thirty yards north-west of the Green, but when I walked in that direction I found myself circling around Clerkenwell Close and the church of St James. It was a late Friday afternoon, and the grounds of the church were deserted; three cats sat along a portion of ruined wall on the south side, and pigeons murmured among the gravestones, but of human life there was no sign.

  And then I saw it. It was at the end of what looked like an alley, sprawled across a patch of waste ground, and for a moment I closed my eyes; as I opened the gate and prepared to approach it, I found myself concentrating upon the pale bindweed, the dock and nettle, growing up among the broken stones of the path. I have always disliked weeds, because they remind me of my childhood; I still remember my father telling me that they spring from the bodies of the dead and, as I walked down the path, I crushed them under my shoe. It was only then, when I stopped and looked up from the mangled remains of the ragwort, that I noticed the strangeness of this house. I had assumed at first glance that it belonged to the nineteenth century, but I could see now that it was not of any one period. The door and fanlight seemed to be of the mid eighteenth century, but the yellow brickwork and robust mouldings on the third storey were definitely Victorian; the house became younger as it grew higher, in fact, and must have been rebuilt or restored in several different periods. But its most peculiar aspect was its ground floor: it ranged beyond the area of the other storeys and, as I walked closer, I realized that the basement covered the same more extensive ground. These parts of the house were not faced with brick; the walls seemed to be fashioned out of massive stone, and suggested a date even earlier than the eighteenth-century door. A much larger house must once have existed here, of which the ground floor and the basement were the only visible remnants; later additions were on a more modest scale, so that now the central section rose up like some broad tower from its rambling origins. No. It resembled the torso of a man rearing up, while his arms still lay spread upon the ground on either side. When I walked towards the steps, it was as if I were about to enter a human body.

  I took the keys which my father had bequeathed to me, and opened the door. A draught of air enveloped me for a moment, and I thought I detected a sweet or perfumed aroma within it; it was as if the dust of this old house had somehow been overlaid with syrup or marzipan. Then I walked into the hall and, crouching down just beyond the threshold, listened intently. The truth is that I have a particular horror of rats — of anything, really, which invades and lives within an empty house — and if there had been the slightest sound or shadow of movement, I would have shut the door behind me and never returned. I would have sold this place and secretly been grateful for the excuse to do so. But there were no sounds. The house was only a few yards from the Farringdon Road, and was overlooked by a small estate of Peabody Trust flats; yet it was entirely quiet. I might just as well have entered a sealed room.

  I stood upright and walked down the wide hallway. There was a staircase to my left and, on the right, a dark-brown door which appeared to lead to some other room. It was locked. I shook the handle impatiently, and there was something like a dead echo from the other side which suggested to me that this door opened upon some basement stairs. So I left it, and made my way towards the room at the end of the passage. It was much larger than I had expected, and covered almost the whole of the ground floor; but it had a low ceiling, so that it seemed unnaturally restricted. I could see that the interior walls were fashioned out of the stone I had glimpsed from the path, and there were several elongated windows cut into it which seemed almost as old as the fabric itself. The room was also of an unusual shape, since it linked both wings of the house and formed a kind of enclosed courtyard around the hall. There were one or two items of furniture — a chair, a sofa, a wooden chest — but they only served to emphasize the bareness and silence of this place. I was baffled and, I suppose, rather depressed: I knew that all this was now mine, but I did not feel I could claim any possible connection with it. But if I did not own it, then who did?

  I went back into the hallway, and climbed the stairs. There were two rooms on both of the other floors; they were all light, with high ceilings, and had an altogether freer atmosphere than the room I had just left. From the windows here I could see the small housing estate and, just beyond it, the spire of St James; Clerkenwell Green was also visible, although the 'Green' itself was merely a space in the middle of the shops, offices and houses which had been fashioned out of the grand eighteenth- and nineteenth-century dwellings of the area. From the back windows on these upper floors I could see the viaduct covering the underground railway, and beyond it the old steep streets leading to Saffron Hill and Leather Lane. I was still a stranger here, and now I experienced a distinct though related sensation — that somehow this house, and myself within it, had no connection with the world which surrounded us. What had my father done here? All the rooms were simply furnished and, although they showed no sign of being recently inhabited, they were not in a state of neglect or disrepair; the electric lights worked and the little kitchen, in an alcove off the ground-floor room, seemed to function. It looked as if the real owner ha
d embarked upon a long journey, with everything left in readiness for his return. Yet my father had never mentioned any house in Clerkenwell. He had so many other properties that perhaps this should not have surprised me — except that the others, as far as I knew, were all commercial sites. And this was also the only house he had explicitly mentioned in the course of his bequests to me. Why was it of such importance to him?

  I had not seen as much of him in his last years — perhaps because he was always busy with his 'empire', as my mother sarcastically called it. I suppose he was disappointed to discover that his only child was a failure, really, but I don't know. He never mentioned the subject, and my mother seemed too concerned with her own affairs to worry about mine.

  I had not been with him when he died. I had been working in the British Library throughout that day, and by the time I reached the hospital my mother was, as she said, 'winding things up'. I did not even see the body: it was as if he had simply disappeared. Of course I had visited him in the final stages of his illness, but the cancer had engorged so much of his flesh that he was scarcely recognizable. My mother was with me on the last occasion I saw him alive, and she greeted me in the ward with a brief kiss on my cheek.

  'Hi there.' I tried to be as cheerful as I could, but in her presence something always held me back. We both knew, in any case, that she was waiting impatiently for him to die. 'How's the old man?'

  'I wish you wouldn't call him that. He's sinking.' We went into his room, and sat on either side of the bed. He was staring up at the ceiling, his eyes very wide under the influence of morphine, but my mother began to talk across his body as if we were grouped around the kitchen table. 'I suppose you were at the library today, Matty?'

  I was twenty-nine years old but, from her general tone and manner, I might as well have been a child again. I hated discussing my work with her, and so I found myself talking to my father while taking care not to touch him. 'I've been asked to do some research on Elizabethan costume. A theatrical company.' I think he was sighing. 'Did you know that young men in the sixteenth century often wore leather caps? I suppose things never change.'

  He parted his lips, and then moved his tongue across them. 'Sit here beside me.'

  The idea horrified me. 'I can't, father. I'll upset all this stuff.' Plastic tubes had been inserted into his nostrils, and a drip had been attached to his arm.

  'Sit here.'

  So I obeyed him, as usual, while my mother looked away with what appeared to be an expression of disgust. I did not want to come too close, so I perched on the edge of the bed and started talking even more rapidly than before. 'It never really occurred to me,' I said, 'but some human gestures must remain the same.' I had always discussed general or theoretical matters with him; we pursued them with an analytic passion that was the closest we ever came to companionship. I was quite different with my mother: I stayed on the most banal level of everyday incident, where she seemed quite happy to leave me. 'Take Elizabethan sewing-women, for example. They always sat on the floor with their legs crossed. People have sewn that way for thousands of years.'

  'Haven't you ever heard of the Singer machine, Matty?'

  My father had understood nothing of this, but now he leaned over and touched me. 'Something is coming through the veil,' he said into my ear. I could smell the cancer on his breath, and quietly returned to my seat beside his bed. He lay back, and began to talk to someone I could not see. 'Let me brush your coat, good doctor. Do you know this music? It is the music of the spheres.' He gazed around the room, and both of us flinched as his eyes passed over us. 'Do you know these shining lanes and alleys, the river of pearl, and the lighted towers rising into the blue mist?' He was looking at the plastic tubes around him. 'It is as old as the universe, and the city from which you first came.'

  'Don't listen to anything he says.' My mother whispered intently to me across the bed. 'Don't believe him.' She got up abruptly and left the room. I glanced at my father and, when he seemed to smile at me, I followed her. We walked down the corridor of the ward; it was painted lime green, and the rooms on each side were decorated in a similar shade. I knew that there was someone lying in each bed but I tried not to look: only once did I glimpse some movement beneath a blanket. No doubt all of these patients were lost in a morphine dream, like my father, and death here was no more than the last stage of a process that was monitored and contained. This was not like death at all. 'It's nice and peaceful here,' she said. 'Everything is well under control.'

  I had been so shaken by my father's outburst that I spoke quite freely to her. 'I suppose you'd like piped music, too. They could all be wearing pink pyjamas, and holding balloons.' I was silent for a moment as a nurse passed. 'There is such a thing as holy dying, you know.'

  She looked up at me in distaste. 'You sounded just like your father then.'

  'And why not?'

  'I suppose you'd prefer to be sitting in an old churchyard, like he used to do. Talking about ghosts and all the other nonsense.' I was surprised by this description of him, but I preferred to say nothing. 'Do you love him, Matty?'

  'No. I don't know. Everyone uses that word, but I don't think it means anything.'

  She seemed curiously relieved by this. 'That's my opinion, too.'

  Together we went back into his room, where he was still talking animatedly to someone I could not see. 'Do you smell my decay? It means that my change is coming, and I will be restored. This is your work, good doctor. This is all your work.'

  'I wish there was a real doctor here,' my mother said. 'Why don't you call someone?'

  My father had taken my hand, and seemed to be gazing earnestly at me. 'Do you feel the light coming through the stone of this wonderful city? Can you feel the warmth of the true fire that dwells in all things?' I could not bear to hear any more of his delusions and, without saying another word to my mother, I took my hand away and left the room. I never saw him again.

  But then I inherited everything. More pertinently, perhaps, he bequeathed nothing to my mother; even the Ealing house, in which we had all lived, was given to me. How he must have hated her. Of course I told her at once that she should consider it her home, but this did nothing to allay her anger and bitterness against me. In fact it served only to increase them, since she believed she was being offered something which was already properly hers. She tried to conceal her feelings beneath a loud and vulgar manner, as she had always done, but I could sense her suspicion, her resentment, and her rage. She put me to the test soon after the funeral by inviting her boyfriend — 'the lover', as she called him — to live in the house with us. I said nothing. What could I say? But it was then I decided to visit my father's house in Clerkenwell.

  'My darling,' she said to me a few days ago. 'The lover and I were thinking of a new car.' She always adopted what she supposed to be a sophisticated tone, but managed only to sound false and inappropriate.

  'What kind of car?' I knew what she expected me to say, but I enjoyed leaving her in suspense.

  'Oh, I don't know. The lover fancies a Jag.' That's how she always betrayed herself, with 'fancies' and with 'Jag'; her common vocabulary and genteel manner were perpetually at odds.

  And still I did not say it. 'A new model, mother?'

  'Oh, darling, I don't know anything about transport. Shall I bring the lover in to explain?'

  'No,' I said quickly. I could bear it no longer. 'Of course you must let me pay for it.'

  'You musn't do that, darling…'

  'Father would have expected it, wouldn't he?'

  'I suppose so. If you put it like that. I suppose, in principle, it is my money too.'

  That had become her story; my father had left her nothing, but 'in principle' it was all hers. I understood now why he had disliked her so much, while as a superstitious Catholic he had refused to leave her. Geoffrey, 'the lover', had come in. I suspected that he had been waiting outside until the financing of the new car had been satisfactorily resolved, but he was not about to bring up the s
ubject now. He was a very ordinary man, with one saving characteristic — he knew that he was ordinary, and was always implicitly apologizing for the fact. He was a surveyor who worked for one of the London boroughs; he had an awkward, diffident manner and seemed to fade still further in the company of my brightly clad mother. The strange thing was that both of them seemed to enjoy the situation.

  But why was I thinking about these people, as I sat in the house at Clerkenwell? They were no more than phantoms conjured up out of my weakness, their voices less real to me than the shape of this ground-floor room and the texture of its thick stone walls. Here, at last, there was a chance of freedom. I could leave that terrible house in Ealing which had hampered me and injured me for the last twenty-nine years — for the whole of my life — and come to a place which had, for me at least, no past at all. I heard myself talking into the air in my sudden exaltation: 'Let the dead bury their dead.' But even as I said it, I did not know what I meant by it.

  Then I noticed something. The shadows within the room seemed to fall at a curious angle, as though they were not properly aligned with any of the objects that created them. And there came upon me a curious fear — that there were, somehow, shadows where no shadows should have been. No, they were not shadows. They were patterns in the dust, caught suddenly in the changing light of that summer's evening. So had my father come here secretly, and entered this room? Had he sat, like me, with his head bowed? And hadn't he once told me that dust was simply the residue of dead skin?

  I might have stayed there all evening, gradually enshrouded in darkness and shadow, but I shook myself out of my trance. I had left my suitcase in the hallway and, in the gathering dusk, I collected it and slowly climbed the stairs: there was a bedroom on the first floor, with a bathroom beside it, and I began to unpack my clothes as neatly as if I were in the house of a stranger. But I was so tired that I was hardly able to complete even this minor task. I lay down upon the bed and, closing my eyes, found myself walking along Cloak Lane. I had imagined everything; I had not yet entered the house which my father had left for me. It had four doors, the first of which was black, the second as white and as transparent as crystal, the third was green, and the fourth red. I opened the first door, and the house was full of black dust like gunpowder. I opened the white door, and the rooms within were pale and empty. I opened the third door, and there appeared a cloud of water as if the house were a fountain. Then I opened the fourth door, and I saw a furnace. Before I could move or do anything, I heard a voice close by me distinctly saying, 'You are utterly undone, my little man.'