Alchemy

by Maureen Duffy

  Dutifully I presented myself at Chalmers’ office, joining a group of three others, apart from himself, eager young suits who’d been taking the witness statements. All I could do was listen while they sparred above my head, flashing their findings and opinions and probably wondering why the hell I’d been brought in. At the end Chalmers said: ‘Is there anything you want to add, Jade?’

  ‘I think I’d rather listen today. Maybe by Monday I’ll have had some thoughts.’ I couldn’t wait to get back to Drew, realising suddenly as I made my way along the anonymous corridors that neither of us would get on unless we became as thrusting as the rest, that as Helen had said, rising up the hierarchy depended as much on performance as knowledge, and maybe it was already too late for Drew.

  ‘I’m thinking of moving on,’ he confided as we sat in a corner of the Mitre, leaving the pavement outside and the standing room by the bar to the noisy crew of overgrown kids let out of school but not ready to go home yet. ‘I can’t see any future for me with S & F. You’re going to be okay. Someone up there obviously loves you.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything to earn it.’

  ‘I’m not blaming you. These things have their own mysterious dynamic. I just haven’t connected. I’ve been there four years. It’s time to move on.’

  ‘Have you put out any feelers?’

  ‘A few.’ He looked down at his pint of lager.

  ‘I think you should.’

  ‘Nobody may want me. That’s why I’d rather you didn’t say anything at S & F.’

  ‘As if I would. But of course there’ll be firms wanting to snap you up, with your qualifications and experience.’

  ‘I might go back into company practice where I can make something of my own. How did it go with the boss man today?’

  ‘I tried not to show my complete ignorance of the case, the procedure, you name it. I just hope I’m better briefed by Monday.’

  ‘Lucky you. I wish I could spend a quiet weekend with work instead of having to entertain the cousins from Bangalore, looking for a nice girl for their son and expecting me to be the marriage broker when I haven’t been able to find one for myself.’

  Drew’s life was a succession of visiting family from all over the world, all believing succour could be had in Maida Vale for their diverse needs: education, employment, finance, marriage. After a couple of drinks we set off for the nearest tube where a handwritten notice warned us of a signal failure that meant the line wasn’t going further than Marble Arch. I left him staring at the criss-cross coloured lines of the underground map, trying to figure out a way home.

  There had been no call from Helen as promised in the note. Maybe after my inarticulate performance at the conference, James had convinced her I wasn’t worth bothering with. I did myself a fry-up of egg, tomatoes, mushrooms on toast, decided I’d better stay off the booze for at least an hour and opened the first file.

  It was one of our media cases: the division and stripping of assets after an independent TV company had succumbed to the tentacular embrace of a corporate. Jobs and contracts had been scrapped and now those who’d gone down in the rationalisation were trying to claw something back. We were representing the corporate Goliath. Not a pretty sight since he also had the sling. I set to with my magic marker on the statement of case.

  The phone rang about eight. It was Helen.

  ‘I didn’t know you had my number.’

  ‘Oh I have my ways. Are you on for Monday?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘James is out at a Silks’ dinner. He thought you were very cool.’

  ‘Just plain ignorance I’m afraid.’

  ‘Anyway you went down OK. What are you doing now?’

  ‘Sitting here boning up on the paperwork. And you?’

  ‘I’ve had some people in for drinks. They’ve just gone. I’m going to have a long soak. We’re off to the country tomorrow; a wedding in Berkshire.’

  ‘I’ll be stuck with more of this.’ I didn’t want to tell her this weekend was also Sunday lunch with Linda and Rob, Roger, Jenny and the children, the dog and cat, in the suburbs.

  ‘I thought we’d go to the movies on Monday. Jim’s out and there’s nothing I particularly want to hear. Is that OK with you?’

  ‘Absolutely fine.’

  ‘I’ll ring you on Monday to fix it.’

  ‘We’ve got another conference on Monday.’

  ‘I know. But that’s in the afternoon.’

  I knew as well as studying the brief this weekend I’d be cleaning the flat, getting some gin and the dressing to go with it, tonic, lemons, filling the ice cube tray with fresh water and lastly changing the sheets, just in case.

  On Monday afternoon we all gathered again in James’ room but this time there were two representatives of the clients, Mediatex. Looking round at the rest I felt more confidence. After all I’m a barrister and as far as I knew they weren’t, not then.

  ‘It looks pretty open and shut to me, sir,’ young, still slightly acned, Jason offered when James asked if we’d had any further thoughts.

  ‘You don’t think we need to bring in counsel, then? Judges can be very eccentric. Jade, what do you think now you’ve had a proper look at the stuff?’

  This was my moment. If I bogged it he would despise me and so would Helen. The pack of young suits would fall on me and tear me to pieces.

  ‘I think we have to be rather careful in our presentation. After all the other party can be said to have a moral right on their side.’

  ‘Oh come on, the law’s quite clear,’ someone to the left of me said.

  ‘The law may be, but we could find ourselves in trouble, our client paying compensation to dozens of claimants, if we appear too greedy and hardline. We don’t want any suggestion of abuse of a dominant position. Apart from anything else think of the bad publicity if the media suddenly woke up to a nice bit of juicy corporate bashing.’

  ‘That’s to be avoided at all cost.’ The older representative of the client, small and balding, spoke for the first time. ‘We don’t need any more column inches on starving artists and corporate fat cats.’

  I thought there was another way to avoid it, by a negotiated settlement, but now wasn’t the time to say so.

  ‘So you would recommend the softly, softly, more in sorrow than in anger approach?’ James was asking me.

  ‘The erosion of sales by piracy leading to a need to cut titles, much regretted. Making a Calderbank offer quite early in the proceedings to show willingness to cooperate.’

  ‘That’s not really the purpose of a Calderbank,’ James said.

  ‘I like it,’ the little man said. ‘I’ll talk to my board about an offer. That’s the way to play it. At first anyway. We’ve always got the iron fist to fall back on.’

  I left the meeting elated. I could do it. I’d done it. I’d talked and they’d listened and in the end I’d swung them my way. It was my first taste of power, the power of persuasion, and it was as heady as booze or maybe even sex. I could meet Helen more as an equal. I could have her if I wanted. And I did.

  I had continued my experiments with the electrics while my lady was absent and when my duties as physician allowed, and now I determined to write to Dr William Gilbard and tell him what further substances beyond those he had himself discovered showed this property. Following the instructions in his book, which included many cuts for greater understanding, I constructed a versorium after his model, a light needle like to a sailor’s compass, upon a pin which should swing when the electrics were rubbed and electricitas was present. Writing to him as the amanuensis of my father lest he should discountenance such practices of a mere girl, or even of the youth Amyntas, I questioned whether this presence in things might be the same or akin to that magnetism he had also explored, begging him of his kindness to vouchsafe his opinion on these matters.

  My lady still did not know of this work for I felt in my bones that she would not approve unless I could show it to have more purpose than mere experiment,
for it was held by some that no man ever found out a truth by experiment but that all knowledge came by chance, and the countess might indeed be of this opinion. Also that no knowledge came by speculation, as I believed Dr Adrian Gilbert held, but that it might be by revelation of the angels as some scryers claimed. But my father said that all such were but deceivers of the gullible and that truth would only be sweated out by labour and experiment. Yet he himself, as I now saw, had profited little by all his toil and therefore I was inclined to observation and then taking thought thereon as the likeliest way to proceed.

  So I writ to Dr Gilbard with my trials and the results thereof but there came no answer and one day my lady made it clear why I had heard nothing. Her majesty was sick and Dr Gilbard had been appointed one of her physicians, and must therefore be always ready to attend her wherever she might go for she still determined to keep up her visits whenever her body allowed although she had passed her climacteric and was now in her sixty-ninth year which some believed, though they dare not say so openly, was the mark of the beast, and was eager to go on progress as far as Bristol when summer came. Whether she would make a stay at Wilton the countess much doubted for she was still angry at the young earl and as yet would give him no favour.

  I had laid aside the Dutch trunk sent to my lady by her brother from Flushing after my attempt to turn it on the moon which had so frightened me but now I brought it forth for her amusement lest her brother should ask how she did with it.

  ‘Let us see what it will show us,’ she said when I had explained its purpose and use. Then she made great sport to look through it at different objects but most it gave her much amusement when she spied upon her favourite stallion as it mounted the mares in season, to see its great prick unfold as a snake to climb up the mares’ bellies and pierce their secrets. This she could do without alarming them for the trunk allowed her to watch from such a distance and yet she saw every particular of their mating even to when some of the seed ran back out again.

  Then she would take it hunting to prove how serviceable it might be in that sport. So in a March morning when the ground was still hard and slippery with ice and snow, and the horses’ hooves broke the cart ruts into slivers of shattered glass with every step, we rode out from Ramsbury towards the forest of Savernake, my lady the very likeness of Diana herself in full hunting dress of Spanish farthingale and little round hat with sprightly curling plumes, and slung about her a bow and quiver of silver-tipped arrows, attended by her ladies, themselves glittering on horseback and the servants afoot to act as beaters. Before us had gone the head forester to spy where the most game might be hiding.

  We passed under leafless trees where the beech mast crackled underfoot and an occasional small bird sang among the branches for St Valentine’s was already past. ‘Will you be my Valentine, Amyntas?’ my lady had asked me on the eve.

  ‘If it would please my lady.’

  ‘And do I have your heart?’

  ‘Oh madam for ever.’

  ‘For ever is too long. No man keeps faith for ever. Will you outdo all man else?’

  ‘For ever and a day madam.’

  ‘You will find a little year is a long time. We shall see how you bear up when summer comes again. Come to my window or rather my door as soon as day dawns.’

  So I was there in the morning as bid, with sweetmeats and wine which I presented on my knee and she throwing back the bedcovers showed me herself again in her loose gown and had me into her bed.

  ‘There is no sin, in impossibility,’ she said, putting my hand on her breast, ‘you but feel how my heart beats.’

  Then I remembered some words of that poet knight Sir Thomas Wyatt, one that nearly lost his head over her majesty, her mother, Queen Anne Bullen.

  Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise

  Twenty times better; but once, in special,

  In thin array, after a pleasant guise,

  When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,

  And she caught me in her arms long and small,

  Therewith all sweetly did me kiss,

  And softly said, ‘Dear heart, how like you this?’

  So we had dallied there in the warmth of her bed like fishes in the crystal flood of our own sweat or in the pure tears gathered in a limbec.

  That day we had found nothing to spy on and soon returned. On another day of our hunting we rode out early as soon as it was light, taking only such of her ladies as would ride and a groom in case of mishap, who carried the bows and quivers. Here and there the birds of spring now fluttered and sang among the branches green with fresh leaf and the grass was soft under the horses’ hooves.

  ‘Stop,’ she said, ‘we shall see if we have the advantage of the deer with my brother’s gift.’ She took a bow from the groom and slung it about her. Now indeed she seemed like Venus, indeed arrayed in her favourite hat with the green feather and velvet cloak for the chase upon a milk white horse, or the Fairy Queen herself gone a-maying so that I remembered the poet Jonson’s words from his masque of Cynthia which my father had in a little book printed: ‘Queen and Huntress chaste and fair.’

  At last we drew up in a clearing so that the countess might try the Dutch trunk and putting it to her eye she began a slow sweep of what lay before us, down a long ride between the trunks of ancient beeches and oaks. ‘See,’ she said, ‘there are the horns of deer as if we had come upon Herne the Hunter in his hide among his people of the forest.’

  We had brought no dogs with us in order to our experiment with the trunk, for their noise would have alarmed the prey for miles around unless we had surrounded the woods with beaters. ‘It is as if I could take part with them in their sylvan lives. I see the very breath from their nostrils and the twitch as they scent the air for danger. They have no heed of us, poor silly beasts whose lives are forfeit to arrow or dog. Let us return. Now that I perceive them stand so quiet I no longer wish to hunt. This is the strange power of this instrument that seeing so clearly, and so close as if they stood but a yard before me, I cannot shoot. What other wonders will it show us that will unmake our thoughts, even unman the hunter? And what then should we eat but farm cattle and sheep? Every hair of their bodies is distinct as if drawn by Holbein.’

  Then I told her how I had frightened myself with turning the trunk upon the heavens and in special the moon. ‘And you found no man in the moon nor any goddess there?’

  ‘Venus has left the moon and dwells now among us here, my lady.’

  ‘You have learned to flatter like a courtier. I would my son can do as well in her majesty’s presence if he is ever to prosper. Now I am grown melancholy. Let us go back. We will have some music to lighten our spirits.’

  And indeed the day which had been so bright was now overcast and a cold wind had driven even those few birds from the branches.

  ‘Stop,’ the countess said and we all reined in our horses. ‘Give me the trunk again. I think I see a hare on that hillside.’ For we had left the forest and were in open country now. So I gave her the instrument and we waited while she put it to her eye, the horses stamping and snorting their breathy clouds into the frosty air. ‘It is two hares and they fight like men. Now one has the mastery and the other slinks away. Such gentle creatures yet even they are seized with the madness of love. They rear up like stallions and strike against each other with their forelegs even as cocks or dogs set on one another. So the whole earth is in thrall to passion as men are. Yet only we can look for redemption and know when we sin. Sir Thomas Wyatt who gave not all for love but saved his own neck the while he condemned the queen’s to the headsman’s blade, saw his own lust as nothing but the chase when he writ: “Whoso list to hunt I know where is an hind…” Are not all women hinds for the hunting? No matter how hard we struggle or fast we run, like Daphne when she fled Apollo, we are brought down at last.’

  I saw that my lady had indeed fallen into a melancholy fit. ‘You are growing cold madam. We should return home at once and I will make you a hot posset to
drive out this black humour and the chill,’ and I took the trunk from her and rode on to set an example.

  At Ramsbury when we arrived she sat close to the fire in her chamber and allowed me to chafe her hands and feet while she sipped at a cup of spiced wine. Then she took up a letter from her younger son Philip still at his studies in Oxford. ‘Read it to me Amyntas. I foresee that he writes because he wants money as all Oxford scholars do.’

  So I read and indeed she was right and the young nobleman did write for his mother’s help towards his debts though I do not remember all the details of that letter. But some gossip of the court I do remember as that Master John Donne that was secretary to the Lord Egerton, was sent to prison for marrying without the consent of the bride’s guardian in whose employ he was.

  ‘It is as I said: this loving is a madness. Young people should avoid it and marry as their friends direct. Yet I would not have them do as my own son, to father a child and not marry with the mother. You are fortunate Amyntas that passion does not move you and you are safe in your boy’s clothes. I dread to hear any day that my own daughter has fallen prey to some young courtier and lost her chance of a good marriage, and therefore I continually beseech my sister Sidney at Penshurst to keep her close until we can find a good match, since she would not affect the old Earl Hertford who desired her before my lord’s death. Yet for all our care it may be in vain as in the case of Mistress More who has eloped with Master Donne. Was it not some verses of his that were once sent to me in error? It touches me more nearly for that her father, Sir George, was guardian to my cousin Edward Herbert, and indeed perhaps the verses came from him who also aspires to be a poet.’

  Then I lied and feigned that I did not remember for I feared that if she recalled them distinctly the countess might turn against me and bar me from her chamber. So I took myself to the kitchen about her supper and afterwards mixed a little poppy with her wine so that she would sleep deeply and not ask for me till morning. And this I did, I swear to God, out of my care of her, though since they have made it seem otherwise.