Alchemy

‘Begin the first.’

So I read her:

Come madam come all rest my powers defy

Until I labour I in labour lie…

‘Enough,’ she said laughing, ‘it is as I supposed. Not to be read in company. Leave us.’ She waved her hand in dismissal to her ladies and Mr Davys and moved from the tapestried chair she had been sitting in to her daily couch, where she reclined in a smoky cloud like to some goddess on an altar wreathed with the haze of sacrifice.

‘The tobacco has made me easier. Go on. Begin the second. Let us see if that is meant for women’s ears and eyes.

‘Where is that holy fire that verse is said to have…’ I began not seeing as I read what lay in wait for me.

Plays some soft boy with thee, oh there wants yet

A mutual feeling that should sweeten it

His chin a thorny hairy unevenness

Doth threaten, and some daily change possess.

Thy body is a natural Paradise,

In whose self, unmanur’d, all pleasure lies

Nor needs perfection; why shouldst thou then

Admit the tillage of a rough harsh man?

Men leave behind them that which their sin shows,

And are as thieves trac’d, which rob when it snows,

But of our dalliance no more signs there are,

Than fishes leave in streams or birds in air,

And between us all sweetness may be had;

All, all that Nature yields, or Art can add.

‘What is this Philaenis: man or woman?’

‘I do not know my lady. The name suggests a man Philo, the teacher of Cicero.’

‘Read on and let us see. There were the brothers, the Philaeni who were buried alive to save their country.’

My eye had travelled down the page while she was speaking. I did not know how to continue but did not dare refuse.

‘Must I read it myself?’ she said, suddenly assuming the mistress who must be obeyed.

My two lips, eyes, thighs differ from thy two,

But so as thine from one another do;

And oh no more; the likeness being such,

Why should they not alike in all parts touch?

Hand to strange hand, lip to lip none denies;

Why should they breast to breast or thighs to thighs?

Likeness begets such strange self flattery,

That touching myself, all seems done to thee.

I faltered, feeling a throb begin in my loins and pass up through my stomach and thighs in a hot wave that I attributed to the tobacco I had smoked that now I thought reached down to those parts and caused this fever as if a hot poultice had been laid to them.

‘This is a woman to a woman. Give me the paper. It is something near some words of my brother’s. Fetch me my Arcadia.’

I went to the bag which contained the most precious things she carried always with her, that held her jewels and gloves, and those two books, the other being of the psalms, which she was never parted from.

‘It is in Book Two where he wrote of the love of Philoclea for Zelmane believing her to be an Amazon and not knowing yet it was the Prince Pyrocles in disguise,’ the countess said turning the pages. ‘Here it is. “First she would wish that they two might live all their lives together like two of Diana’s nymphs…Then grown bolder she would wish either herself or Zelmane a man.”‘ She read on silently for a little and then continued aloud.’ “It is the impossibility that doth torment me: for unlawful desires are punished after the effect of enjoying but unpossible desires are punished in the desire itself…thou lovest me excellent Zelmane and I love thee. And if she can love poor me shall I think scorn to love such a woman as Zelmane.”’

I’m reading slowly so as not to miss anything. What was Gilbert up to with this text? It seems harmless enough so far but then I’m not reading it as the Wessex people might. When I got back from my abortive trip today I rang the Gaos to see if they needed me and was glad to find they could manage with just Charlie, a young cousin from Hong Kong, studying English. He’s probably a would-be illegal and one day I may find myself defending him in some immigration tribunal but at the moment he’s safely enrolled in some language school or college. The Gaos have bought him a crap second-hand scooter he can’t go too fast on, and that isn’t worth stealing. I think he sleeps on a camp bed in the front part of the shop that becomes a hot house of green pads like bladderwrack, under the flashy canopy of my namesake the jade plant and the rubber plants that thrive to fifteen feet in the steam of a Chinese kitchen. Two of them arch from pots inside the doorway making it like the entrance to some temple hung with scarlet fringed lanterns. It must be good for my stomach to have an occasional night off Mary’s tofu and egg fried rice. I munch on crisp cos lettuce and Fribourg Camembert I picked up from the stall in the Waterloo Road on my way home as the commuters scurried like a disturbed antheap into the open maw of the station.

Amyntas’ memorial hypnotises me. I’m the rabbit caught in headlights or stunned by the snake’s stare as I watch her falling for her countess and remember my own plunge into passion, the crazy roller coaster of it, a ride on the out-of-control merry-go-round at the end of Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. To take liberties with the bard: my mistress’ eyes were nothing like the sun, coral was far more red than her lips’ red. If snow is white why then her breasts were dun; if hairs are wires, gold wires grew on her head. I’m slipping into hindsight. At the time of course nothing was more shining than those gold wires.

How naff to fall in love at the office party even if it was on a boat, a shipboard romance of three hours up the river to Greenwich with its baroque enticements in stone a fine backdrop for corporate lust. My first outing with the comrades of Settle and Fixit. Somehow I hadn’t expected legal minds and loins to be as susceptible to booze and bonking as any works outing or accounts department communal thrash. And I expected nothing on board to be to my special taste. So when she beckoned me over and patted the padded bench beside her I went unsuspecting, careful not to let the boat’s movement make too rough seas in my glass of wine.

‘You look a bit out of things over there. As if you don’t know too many of these renegades.’

‘I’ve only been in the firm a couple of months.’ I heard myself sounding almost tremulous. Pity poor me. Not my usual style at all.

‘Helen Chalmers,’ she said putting out a hand tipped with iridescent green fingernails. Her name was on the list of partners just before a James Chalmers.

‘Jade Green.’

‘Your parents must have had a sense of humour.’

‘My mother believed no one could forget it or shorten it.’

“You could be Jay or even J.G. She could be wrong. Mothers often are. My daughter tells me I’m wrong most of the time. I wonder where the wine’s got to? I don’t feel like tottering up that gangway for a refill.’

‘I’ll get us both one.’ I stood up.

She held out her glass and looked up at me, smiling. ‘Don’t forget to come back.’