Alchemy

by Maureen Duffy

  ‘To your aunt and uncle, to the shop?’

  ‘No, Miss Jade.’

  ‘Where are you, Charlie?’

  ‘I’m at Wessex at the uni. Miss Jade, someone has died. I think we must talk. I don’t know anyone else.’

  ‘Meet me at the bike shed in an hour. You know where it is?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Jade. I will wait for you there.’ It looks like I’m not destined to be a don after all.

  Charlie’s face is even graver than usual when I wheel the Crusader into the shed nearly an hour later. I take off my helmet and gloves.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Miss Jade.’

  ‘Tell me what’s happened.’

  ‘One of the students has been found dead.’

  ‘How do you know? Why aren’t the police here?’

  ‘They are trying to keep it quiet as long as possible.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘The dean and others.’

  ‘What others?’

  ‘The owners. The Temple people.’

  ‘Then how do you know?’

  ‘I have a friend here. One of the theology students. He is very worried, frightened.’

  ‘Which of the students has died, Charlie?’

  ‘She was in theology too. She was from Africa. Ghana, I think. Her name was Hester Ado.’

  At once I have a picture of the girl in the chapel, in a state of trance, falling down and being lifted into a chair and, after, led away stumbling.

  ‘And your friend. Is he from Africa?’

  ‘He is from Goa.’

  ‘Why is he frightened?’

  ‘He thinks she has collapsed and died because of pressure that was put on her that her heart wasn’t strong enough to deal with or even that she has been persuaded to kill herself.’

  ‘What kind of pressure?’

  ‘My friend says that she was recently made one of the elect because she can easily go into a trance. They call it receiving the spirit. But afterwards she was very sick and depressed.’

  ‘Like coming down from a high. Well, they won’t be able to conceal it for long. It’s a serious offence not to notify a death. Someone will find out.’

  ‘Perhaps they have a doctor who will say she was ill.’

  ‘Provide a death certificate you mean?’

  ‘Then she will be flown back to her family for burial.’

  ‘Who else knows about this?’

  ‘My friend says the theologs all know and some of the staff. No one is talking about it.’

  ‘Aren’t they all frightened like your friend?’

  ‘He says they are brainwashed. That they believe the world is coming to an end soon anyway so it doesn’t matter when they die.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he think like that too?’

  ‘He came here because he wanted to be a missionary. He is from a Christian family but after he had been here a few months he began to have doubts. Then when we met it all came together for him.’ Charlie is looking at me very straight. ‘You see they are taught not to have friends, not to love except God. They must be celibate, even in their thoughts.’

  ‘“God make me chaste but not yet.”’

  ‘I don’t understand, Miss Jade.’

  ‘St Augustine, I think. There was a lot of celibacy about among the early Christians. St Paul’s fault. And others. The question now is: do we inform the police? We’ve got no evidence. Maybe they’ve spirited her away already. Poor girl.’

  ‘A letter will be sent with a copy of the doctor’s certificate. She’s probably on her way to the chapel of rest at Heathrow already. What can her parents do or even know so far away? They thought their daughter was just getting a good education. These people must be stopped, Miss Jade.’

  ‘Did you know her, Charlie? Was she a friend of yours?’

  ‘No. I never met her. It’s that…I haven’t been quite honest with you, Miss Jade, not told you the whole truth.’

  ‘I don’t think I believe in a whole truth. But go on.’

  ‘I didn’t come here only for study. I think I told you I was being paid for by my uncle in America. There was a reason for him to do this. His only daughter, my cousin, came here to study. They got to her. At least that’s what my family believes.’

  And the Gaos? Do they know all this?’

  ‘No. They are ordinary people with their own problems. There’s no need for them to be concerned with all this.’

  ‘So how did your cousin die? I’m presuming that is what happened.’

  ‘They said she had anorexia. She caught flu and it turned to pneumonia because of her weak condition. That was what the dean wrote and the doctor backed him up.’

  ‘Who was the doctor?

  ‘The name didn’t mean anything to us. But he isn’t here now. Now they have a Dr Hedley who attends to the students.’

  ‘And what were you hoping to do here?’

  ‘I suppose to try and find out some more that would help my uncle understand how Cecile died. And if anyone was to blame. You’re a lawyer, Miss Jade. You could help me, advise me. If I can find out something, what should I do? You say you don’t believe in “the truth”…’

  ‘I’ve seen it distorted too often by clever lawyers to win a case. I’ve probably done it myself in the excitement of going after something. The chase, and then the kill. The law isn’t a way of looking for the truth, Charlie. At its best it’s a way of maintaining the checks and balances so that society can more or less hang together. Only at Wessex it seems to be being badly distorted, the scales weighted in favour of someone or something.’

  ‘There’s another thing, Miss Jade. My uncle is a wealthy man and my cousin had money from a trust set up by her grandmother which became hers when she was twenty-one. She left it all to the Temple. She was twenty-one and three months when she died. My friend says they all have to make everything over to the Temple when they become the elect. Some students haven’t got much but others are from rich families.’

  ‘And your friend. Where does he fit in?’

  ‘His father is a kind of prince, I think. So far my friend hasn’t been made one of the elect.’

  ‘No aptitude for trances? We need evidence, Charlie. That’s a kind of truth if you like. Facts.’

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘Stay here. Keep your head down. Don’t let them suspect you. They could turn nasty. What would I tell your aunt and uncle if you were found floating down the river? Keep in touch. What’s your mobile number? Find out as much as you can. I have to tell you I haven’t been completely open with you, either. Like you I’m not here to study. It’s too long to explain but let’s just say I believe your interest in Wessex and mine are linked and maybe even the same. How did you get here?’

  ‘I came on the shop bike. It’s rather slow. Not like yours but I look after it and it’s very reliable. Now I must go back. I am on duty with the takeaways tonight. What will you do, Miss Jade?’

  ‘I think for a start you should drop the handle, Charlie.’

  ‘The handle, Miss Jade?’

  He’s far too young to know and from another cosmopolitan culture. He doesn’t have Linda, Rob and Nana looking over his shoulder and thickening his tongue from the days when English wasn’t a homogenised Lingua Americana. ‘It means title, form of address. Just call me, Jade.’

  ‘OK. Cheers, Jade. I’ll be in touch.’ He goes to where his own bike is propped and locked and begins to put on his helmet.

  What shall I do now? As I’m here I might as well take a walk through campus and see if I can pick up anything, even if it’s only from the faces of students. I go through the grounds towards the main building and take a diagonal path across the quadrangle to enter by a corner door I haven’t used before. I’ve come into a new stretch of corridor with classrooms and labelled doors on one side and the long windows on to the quad on the other. This part of the building is quieter than others I’ve been to though not as deathly as the theologs’ hall of residence. As I’m passing along this corrid
or a name on a door catches my eye. Dr R. Raval. On an impulse I knock.

  ‘Come in.’

  Now what are you letting yourself in for, Jade. ‘Hallo,’ I say. ‘Dr Raval, I’m Lucy Cowell.’

  ‘I’m very sorry. I can’t place you. You’re not a student of mine, are you?’

  ‘Well, I nearly was. For my thesis. I couldn’t decide whether I should have an overseer from English literature or history. I discussed it with the dean and in the end I went for Dr Davidson and history. But I’m not sure it wouldn’t have gone better in the English department.’

  ‘What was the topic?’

  ‘Cross-gender in Tudor and Stuart theatre.’

  ‘I see. Yes, you could have fitted it into either department. But it’s hardly original, is it? You’ll find it quite difficult to come up with a new angle. There’s been a lot of published work, whole studies, that’s apart from papers and theses. You’d probably find more under gender studies than literature or history.’

  ‘So I’m discovering. I may have to reconsider the whole thing. I don’t think any external examiner is going to be impressed with a rehash of Spinks. I’ll have to start it from scratch and perhaps sign up with you this time.’

  ‘I’m afraid I shan’t be here much longer. I’m going to a new job in the autumn where I’ve got a chance to set up my own creative writing department. Just exams and grades to get through and I’m off.’

  I take a chance. ‘That sounds as if you’ll be glad to go.’

  ‘I don’t know how long you’ve been here Ms…’

  ‘Cowell, Lucy.’

  ‘But my advice, in confidence, of course, would be to take your thesis elsewhere. Shall we say that Wessex isn’t really geared up for postgrad research.’

  I risk another throw. ‘Well, I was surprised when Dr Davidson turned out to be a creationist.’

  ‘He isn’t the only one.’

  Now I really go out on a limb and start sawing through the branch behind me. ‘I hear one of the students was found dead last night. Or was it this morning?’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I have a friend in theology.’

  ‘No one is supposed to know.’

  ‘You can’t keep something like that quiet.’

  ‘She was one of my students for a time. She came here to perfect her English and to study the work of African writers in the language. She was a devout Christian and joined the SCU.’

  ‘SCU?’

  ‘Students Christian Union. After a bit she said she wanted to change courses to theology. I tried to dissuade her. Said her work on African literature could be valuable in itself. But I lost the argument. Now she’s dead. I feel I failed her. It makes me even more sure I’m doing the right thing by leaving here.’

  ‘Do you know how she died?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No. I do know she wasn’t the first.’

  ‘But that was different. That happened just after I came here and the student was severely anorexic. That was a very sad case.’

  ‘Girls often find the pressure of being away from home for the first time, with so much that’s new and unknown, very disturbing.’

  ‘Oh it’s not just girls. A male student hanged himself but that was in the holidays. Nothing immediately to do with Wessex.’

  ‘Even so, you’ll be glad to get away.’

  ‘I find the atmosphere here oppressive. It’s too…’ she hesitates, ‘too small. I shouldn’t be saying that, of course, but since I’m leaving anyway and have another post waiting for me I have nothing to lose. But I do seriously advise you to take your thesis elsewhere. Not that you look impressionable material.’ Dr Raval smiles.

  Now I remember her first name: Ranee. Ranee of the raven-wing hair. I think we could have got on just fine.

  ‘What did you want to see me about, Ms Cowell?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve rather wandered off the point. It was really just to apologise. I should have come to see you when I first came, in fact before I made my choice. Now I think I made the wrong decision and it’s too late.’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s never too late Ms Cowell, for anything. Look, if you’re worried, I’m not going to the ends of the earth. I’ll give you my email address. You can contact me if you want to talk about any of this further.’ She scribbles it down on a sheet of paper. It’s just a number and a server. Nothing to give her whereabouts away.

  ‘Thank you. That’s very kind. I’ll definitely be in touch. Where are all the students today? The place seems very quiet.’

  ‘Exams start next week. They’re all at home revising, those that is that don’t live on campus.’

  ‘Like the theologs?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Outside her door my head seems to be singing and my heart’s threatening to choke me stuck somewhere in my windpipe like that same old piece of cold potato that won’t go down. Before I set off I call up Galton on my mobile.

  ‘Dr Galton. It’s Jade Green. I’m at Wessex, just leaving. I thought I’d call on you. There are some things we should talk about.’

  ‘I’ll be glad to talk, Ms Green. Do you have my address?’

  ‘Oh yes. I know your address.’ I can see it in my mind’s eye: the name of the road and the outside of the house as it appeared on the screen, fronted by howling faces and raised fists.

  Galton opens the door for me. I’ve never seen him not smartly togged up in a suit before. I should have suspected that at home he wears a sandy cardigan and soft slippery moccasins. As he leads me to his sitting room I glimpse a blue silk robe, either a dressing gown è la Noel Coward or witch’s mufti hanging behind a door. The furniture is almost antique. Sixty-year-old Tudor repro in dark oak, I remember from Nana’s old home. The house has a musty, dusty smell as if the windows haven’t been opened for a long time.

  ‘Do sit down. Can I get you some tea or coffee? I’m afraid the chairs aren’t very comfortable. This was my mother’s house and I’ve changed very little except for my study. That’s a bit more high tech. These days people seem to expect you to answer an email instantly.’

  This is a new facet of Galton: the eager technobuff. Then I remember that the coven keeps in touch by email and no doubt they also contact like-minded people all over the world faster than by broomstick. I don’t think I’ll be offered a tour of the study. There might be a big picture of the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley, or some other giveaway decoration, a magician’s wand, a steeple hat, eye of toad and ear of bat.

  ‘Coffee would be great, thank you.’

  While he’s gone I suss the room as best I can without leaving my chair. For all I know he’s got some way of observing visitors or he might come back suddenly and find me snooping. And indeed when he returns with a neat tray, laid out with cups and saucers, coffee in a pot, milk and sugar in matching china I don’t hear him approach but fortunately I’m sitting sedate in my chair. He pours out the coffee with a feline delicacy. I think of Psycho. I wonder if Mum’s still sitting skeletally upstairs somewhere.

  ‘What do you think we should discuss, Ms Green?’

  ‘One of the students has died but they don’t seem to be informing the police. Something is going on there beyond the ordinary or even, shall we say, beyond arcane studies. I think you were set up, your dismissal that is, to get rid of you. Now I wonder whether they thought you knew what was going on and might blow the whistle on them.’

  ‘That’s a lot of questions, Ms Green, a lot of supposition. But then I’ve been waiting for you to reach this point. To realise there was something more than academic spite.’ He’s back to the old Galton of an almost smiling smugness that so pisses me off. I want to get up and leave now.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me? We might have saved a lot of time.’

  ‘I’m afraid it was a kind of test, to see whether you were up to the task.’

  ‘What task?’ The arrogance of the guy is breathtaking.

  ‘Of finding out what I couldn’t because they s
acked me first. There is something evil there.’

  ‘Just because a student kills herself? Come on, Dr Galton, we both know these things happen. Young people get depressed. Some of them try to kill themselves with not eating, drugs or booze, others with an overdose. I suspect if you looked into the statistics there’s at least one a term in every institute of higher education, let alone those that go unnoticed or are covered up by the students themselves or their families. This may be no more than that.’

  ‘Or much more. Those people thought I was evil. They found a way, through my own foolishness I admit, to get rid of me, but I believe the evil is with them. That they take vulnerable, impressionable minds and turn them for their own purposes.’

  ‘But what purposes?’

  ‘I hoped you would find that out in the course of looking into my case. And you’re getting there, Ms Green. I of course have been doing all I can in the background. I don’t suppose you believe in special powers or the influence of thought energies but I assure you it can work. After all, look at the progress you’ve made already.’

  ‘Well if the stars are on our side it’s taking them a long time.’ I couldn’t begin to imagine what he might be doing; what mumbo jumbo might be going on on my, our behalf. Involving who for fuck’s sake: the goddess, the horned god?

  ‘I must urge you to be careful, Dr Galton. No more rituals al fresco or we could be completely discredited and then the whole investigation would go out the window. Whatever they’re up to at Wessex they would have got away with it and you would be personally no better off.’ I’ve never told him I think he will never get another job in education. Let him find that out for himself.

  ‘Then you do believe there’s something going on there?’

  ‘Perhaps. But if there is I don’t intend to alert them by showing my hand too soon. Do you know Ranee Raval?’

  ‘The Indian woman?’

  ‘The girl who died was in her class for a time until she switched to theology and became one of the elect. Apparently she had the gift, if you can call it that, of being easily induced to go into a trance.’

  ‘An ancient technique for getting in touch with other forces, part gift or aptitude but often part training. We use it ourselves, of course.’