Alchemy

by Maureen Duffy

  The students are all over the age of consent so exposing them to adult material shouldn’t be a sackable offence. That’s the ground he stands on. But is it an abuse of trust? Only if it can be seen as truly pornographic, obscene. But nothing has really happened in the memoirs, not as far as I’ve read anyway. Surely no one could accuse such a sad love story of being obscene in these days? No court would support such a judgement.

  Suppose I wrote my own memoirs and published them: Confessions of a legal loner. Briefs and tarts. Inns and outs of the wig trade. How I played Cherubino to my countess. More like Bottom to Titania.

  Once again I’d been left dangling, wondering if the call would ever come. Then Helen Chalmers’ secretary rang me with a couple of dates. I said either was fine. When she rang again it was the later one. I turned this over, wondering how to read it. Sometimes in hope, often in doubt as the week passed, expecting all along that her secretary would ring to say it was all off. Then it was the day. We would meet in the foyer at six-thirty for a pre-drink. Helen was there first. I walked towards her on traditionally jellied legs hoping she couldn’t see them tremble under black velvet pants.

  ‘Very smart,’ she said. ‘What would you like to drink? There’s the stalls bar through there.’

  ‘I’ll get them. What will you have?’

  ‘Gin and tonic would be great.’

  It was the usual theatre crush bar with nowhere to sit. I left her leaning against a mahogany shelf and fought my way through, got the drinks, ordered a repeat for the interval and struggled back. She had lit a cigarette and was looking about her.

  ‘Jim would hate this but not as much as the performance itself.’

  ‘I ordered the same for the interval. Is that OK?’

  ‘Perfect. It’s more civilised to drink wine but I find it makes me sleepy.’

  ‘I got a couple of programmes.’

  ‘Do you know the plot? If not you’d better read up on the first act.’

  Doing as I was told I opened the glossy pages. It was sung in German with a famous Czech mezzo as the Marschallin, the older woman, to a young Austrian as Octavian, her lover. I just about got the first act under my belt before the bell rang to call us to our seats. Sitting next to Helen in the dark, my nostrils filled with her scent, the lines of her profile within my sideways glance against the darkened theatre and her arm touching mine, I couldn’t hear the overture for the singing in my ears. I didn’t want the distraction of the stage, simply to savour being so close beside her, but as the plot unfolded and the rich dark music poured into me with all the passionate yet creamy sweetness of an Austrian pineapple cake, I was sucked in, absorbed as an amoeba metamorphoses its prey. And I hadn’t realised from the programme and the unfamiliar names of the cast, that the Marschallin’s young lover, Octavian, was played by a woman, not a drag role for lack of a castrato as in Handel but a deliberate choice of the composer or his librettist.

  By the time of the first interval I had completely transposed myself and Helen into Octavian and the Marschallin and could no longer draw any distinction between the fiction of the stage and the reality of its two watchers. For there were only the two of us in the half light. The rest emerged chattering, laughing, comparing notes as we made our way to the bar.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘It’s fantastic. The music. The voices.’

  ‘Even Baron Ochs?’

  ‘Even him. He’s not my favourite of course but maybe you need that element of lumbering danger to threaten the lovers. It’s very well sung. But the Marschallin, she’s brilliant.’ I heard myself trying to impress.

  ‘You haven’t seen any Strauss before?’

  ‘I told you I’m not well up on later stuff.’

  ‘It was carefully chosen. I thought this would appeal to you, more than some of his other pieces.’

  Yet even as she was speaking I was hearing something else in my head, that variation Dryden and Purcell made on Shakespeare’s if music be the food of love, in Deller’s high pure counter-tenor.

  Sure I must perish by your charms. Unless you save me in your arms.

  Then the bell was calling us back I hadn’t had time to read the summary of the next act. We swallowed our drinks and fought our way back to our seats.

  Suddenly the plot had taken a turn for the worse. Octavian, splendid in silver as the Rosenkavalier, was presenting a rose to a young girl and obviously falling for her and she for him.

  At this moment Helen leant sideways towards me and whispered, ‘This is how you will leave me.’ At least I thought that was what she said but I was trying too hard to penetrate the German text as it soared on passionate cadences from the new lovers. I understood that Octavian was leaving the Marschellin for the vapid Sophie but I wanted, longed to understand every syllable of the change. By the final trio I was drowning in the Straussian melodies.

  ‘How can he?’ I asked in the next interval. ‘There’s no comparison between the two.’

  ‘Wait and see.’

  I found myself impatient with the farce that opened the third act, with Baron Ochs’ pursuit of Octavian dressed as a maid. It was Viola and Olivia in reverse and I wasn’t in the mood for it. I longed for the Marschallin’s return but it was only to a dignified renunciation. Octavian hesitates. Surely he can’t leave her. For a few seconds when the music finally ceased and the lights went up, I couldn’t clap. I was like a child at its first pantomime, my disbelief not just suspended but sunk fathoms down.

  I stumbled up the steps after Helen still blinking, unable to believe it was over and life would pick up where it had left off and go on again.

  ‘I’ve got the car round the corner,’ Helen said as we came out on to the pavement. ‘I’ll drop you home. Where do you live?’

  ‘Earl’s Court. But it’s out of your way isn’t it? I don’t want to…’

  ‘Not much. We live in Camden Hill. Only ten minutes or so away. I’ll go through Hyde Park.’

  And because I didn’t want the evening to end, was still under the spell of the music, I found myself walking beside her round to the street where she’d parked, getting into what I saw was a smallish BMW and directing her, after we had passed under the shadowy trees of Hyde Park and over the Serpentine luminous under a cold full moon, down Earl’s Court Road and into the side street of handsome square houses chopped into flats or harbouring grimly cheap hotels.

  Helen stopped her car in a lone space at the kerb.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said knowing it sounded flat and lame. ‘It’s been terrific. And for the lift.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in? I could do with a drink. I take it you’ve got something drinkable in there.’

  How could I refuse? Yet I dreaded her seeing what must be the comparative squalor of how I lived. My breakfast bowl and mug were still unwashed in the sink. Had I made the bed? I couldn’t remember.

  ‘It’s not very big or tidy. We could look for a pub or a wine bar if you want a drink.’

  ‘I want to see where you live, silly.’

  I gave in. ‘OK. I think I’ve got a bottle of red. Only plonk I’m afraid. But you mustn’t look at anything too closely. I’m not a great one for housework.’

  ‘I never supposed you were.’ She was getting out of the car. I had no choice but to do the same. When had I last cleaned the place? Would there be whorls of fluff behind the bathroom door and in the corners of the studio that would dance like dervishes in the draught?

  Deliberately forgetting my manners I opened the door and went in first. At a quick glance it didn’t look too bad. For once I’d chucked my clothes on the bed instead of on the floor. ‘Have a seat.’ I tried to sound cool as I pointed to the only armchair. ‘I’ll get the wine.’

  I uncorked the bottle and found two glasses.

  ‘Cheers!’

  ‘Salut. Tell me more about what you thought of this evening. Have you ever been chased by a Baron Ochs?’

  ‘There was a lecturer at Sussex, typical groper.
Thought I was gamine or game. I wasn’t sure which. What about you?’

  ‘Oh, all the time. That’s what dinner parties are for. Footsie under the table and a hand up your skirt. And for getting on, making deals, networking of course. It’s all part of the game.’

  ‘Doesn’t anyone complain or say no?’

  ‘What would be the point? And who to when everyone’s doing it? You’ll have to learn some of the tricks yourself if you want to get on. Maybe I should teach you, take you in hand as they say.’

  I felt like someone brought up in the forest by gentle wolves who now had to learn to talk, and the bitter ways of humankind. Helen took a packet of cigarettes and a gold lighter out of her bag and lit up. The little bright eye in the middle of the lighter, diamond or glass, winked at me. ‘I’ll need an ashtray if you don’t want me to flick ash all over your floor.’

  ‘I’ll find you something.’

  ‘You don’t smoke, I take it?’

  ‘Only an occasional cigar.’ I rummaged in the cupboard under the sink and came back with a saucer. Somewhere the temperature had dropped. Was she bored? Had I blown it?

  ‘So what did you think of Sophie?’

  ‘She’s an old-fashioned ingenue. He’s had his mistress but she has to be sweetness and light. At least that’s changed. There was only one girl I was at uni with who was a virgin, my best friend actually, and even she got it off in the end with a boring fellow student.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘That’s a long story.’

  ‘OK. Another time then. I’d better go. Jim doesn’t worry about me but I had to borrow his car. Mine was being serviced and they hadn’t finished with it. So he’ll be twitchy until I bring his home safely’ She stubbed out her cigarette and tilted back her glass. ‘By the way, I’ve fixed for you to join him the next time he’s in court. His secretary will send you down the brief. He’s very good. You can learn a lot from watching and listening to him.’

  She stood up and brushed at her skirt where some flakes of ash had settled. I put down my glass and stood too. ‘Thanks for the drink.’

  ‘My pleasure.’ I turned towards the door.

  ‘Aren’t you going to kiss me?’

  ‘Are you sure you want me to?’

  ‘That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?’

  I moved towards her. Helen was wearing high heels that meant I had to reach up a little with my lips to find hers. It began as a chaste kiss, friends might almost have exchanged but then I heard her gasp a little, her mouth opened and our arms went out as if we had to hold each other up from falling in a tangle on the bed.

  Helen drew back. ‘I think we’d better stop this or Jim will really have to worry about his car.’ She walked away from me to the door. Should I ask when I could see her again? We were out in the hall, the quaintly named ‘common parts’. Then I was standing on the pavement as she opened the car door and got in. There must be something I could say. She switched on the engine and wound down the window.

  ‘I’ll ring you. Soon.’

  ‘I’ll get a more decent bottle for next time.’

  ‘Some gin would be great.’ With a wave she drove off.

  ‘How are you?’ It was Helen’s voice next day on the internal phone. Was that risky? She hadn’t said her name or: ‘It’s me.’ She knew she didn’t need to.

  ‘Lonely,’ I risked. ‘What about you?’

  ‘A bit dazed I think. My mind doesn’t seem to be working properly. Someone’s at my door. I’ll call you again.’ She put down the receiver. It was weird knowing she was there in the building, that I only had to walk out into the corridor and I might bump into her heading for the loo, that I could climb the stairs or take the lift and knock on her door. I wouldn’t, of course. This was a delicate moment when she was maybe regretting last night, wondering what she was getting into and where it could go.

  Which of us was seducing the other or were we both the hunter and the hunted, the willing Leda in the swan’s clasp, the Venus trap for her many eager lovers whose goings-on adorn the walls of palaces and galleries and still have power to bring a blush or a flush, especially to those falling in love?

  My head was full of half-remembered lines, rags of verse, unsatisfying scraps from the feast I’d left when I switched to the law.

  Helen, thy beauty is to me

  Like those Nicean barques of yore…

  I wish I were where Helen lies

  Night and day on me she cries…

  And most potently:

  Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

  Thy lips suck up my soul…

  It was as if my memory had been storing them up with some terrifying foresight by a kind of osmosis, against the time when they would leap out at me like a tune that unspools again and again in your head no matter how much you try to press the stop button or chase it away with another. Except that I wasn’t trying. I was happy to sink into the repetition of her name, to wade out into its clear green waters and drown.

  At lunchtime I walked to Covent Garden and bought a CD of Der Rosenkavalier in the Royal Opera House shop: highlights with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf as the Marschallin and Christa Ludwig as Octavian. That night, alone in my flat where I could still see her sitting in my armchair, the smoke rising from her cigarette in an incense prayer to some goddess, could still taste her mouth with its tang of wine and that same smoke, I played it endlessly, obsessively, cutting out the bits that said nothing to me, until I could sing along in my head with the bits that did. I finished the bottle of wine and fell asleep on my bed, to wake shakily seeing it was three o’clock, and undress, drink a glass of water and fall asleep again to the Marschallin’s aria near the end of the first act, her outpouring of melancholy and the anticipation of love lost.

  Helen didn’t call the next day. I played it cool and didn’t ring her but by the evening I was desperate, prey to the plus ça change of Shakespeare’s sonnet:

  Being your slave, what should I do but tend

  Upon the hours and times of your desire?

  I have no precious time at all to spend,

  Nor services to do, till you require.

  I rang Joel and signed him up for an evening in the local pub so that I shouldn’t be left drinking at home alone. I didn’t feel like a club where there’d be dancing. We sat over our pints revisiting the Gateshead we’d neither of us seen in a decade, wondering if we could keep up the payments on our flats. Joel’s in Norbury was much cheaper than mine in Earl’s Court and as an accountant he was already earning more but I’d had a little nest egg from Nana I’d been able to put down as deposit. We talked about the property boom and should we sell now.

  ‘You’d only have to buy somewhere for just as much unless you got out of London. But then you’d never get back.’ It was the scene that was the great draw for Joel only equalled by Manchester, but the attraction of the northern Piccadilly set was offset by the thought of starting again, finding a job, somewhere to live, without friends. I didn’t tell him why I specially needed his company tonight. Tomorrow was Friday. If Helen didn’t ring then there was the whole weekend to get through not knowing how she was feeling, whether she was regretting the whole thing.

  Joel went off to catch the last bus to Norbury while I wandered back along the Old Brompton Road, under the lamplit silhouettes of the plane trees, their branches heavy with the broad palmed leaves of August, coated in a thin film of carbon from the constant flow of traffic beneath them, their bark starting its annual peel of fibrous scabbed patches, a scurf of dead cells. If she didn’t ring I would have to look for another job. It would be impossible to inhabit the same building day after day with all the likelihood of a chance encounter: the eyes cast down, a brief hallo as our bodies brushed past each other. Or worse, nothing, her eyes looking straight ahead without acknowledgement.

  There was a stack of files on my desk in the morning, neat, fat dark-blue ring-binders with the firm’s name across each. Inside the first was a small yellow sticker.
‘What are you doing on Monday evening? I’ll ring. H.’

  I shut the cover again quickly in case Drew should spot the bright yellow slip. Only when he left the room to go to the loo did I open it again and make sure I’d read it all right. I studied the writing but couldn’t make anything much of it, except that it was fluent, middle sized with no obvious quirks. Before Drew came back I detached the sticker and reapplied it to that day’s page in my diary. Dimly I remembered something about Queen Elizabeth I putting away Leicester’s final note, sent as he was dying, with ‘His last letter’ written on it. But maybe I’d made that up. Anyway this was Helen’s first and perhaps last too. It was already a relic to be preserved.

  James Chalmers’ secretary was on the line. ‘Did you get the brief and the witness statements? Could you study them over the weekend? The case starts on Tuesday but Mr Chalmers would like you to attend a short conference at two this afternoon and then a fuller one on Monday when you’re more familiar with the details.’

  That took care of my weekend. I’d have to work like hell to get my head round the stuff, not to let Helen down, after all she’d recommended me so her head was on the line too. I’d dazzle everyone with my brilliance, especially the boss, her husband. While we discussed the case I’d be thinking: I kissed her.

  ‘I see you’ve got the call to higher things,’ Drewpad picked up the first of the files. ‘When does the trial open?’

  ‘Tuesday I think, but the boss wants me for a conference this afternoon.’

  ‘You’d better get used to it Drew; you’re on your own from now on.’ He was only half joking.

  ‘No boss can come between me and my buddy. Let’s have a drink tonight to start the weekend. It’s the last one I’ll get until I’ve got a grip on this lot.’