A Secret Alchemy (22 page)

Why can I not remember his name for certain? After all, I can remember the moment on that much-later day—September, it must have been—when the other diggers started leaving, grumbling that the sluicing rain showed no sign of letting up, and work was clearly done.

Only he was left. I made a fresh pot of tea. “I don’t fancy biking home in this, do you? I think I’ll give it a bit longer. Do you want some tea too?” He said he did.

I sat down on the sofa with both mugs, and held his out to him.

I think I was only curious to see what would happen, though I must have known what might. I’d been at the university for a year, after all. And why with him, whom I’ll have to think of as Nigel? There’s something about the remembered smell of the gas fire and the sofa—soot and old fish-and-chip papers—that tells me my reasons weren’t romantic ones.

I asked him about what he would be studying next year, and gazed into his eyes while he told me. By the time he’d explained the importance of analyzing eighteenth-century parliamentary division records, he was breathing heavily between sentences, red in the cheeks. I can’t remember who made the first move. Remembering my twenty-year-old self, remembering the times, I doubt it was me. He was hardly a pouncer, however, so I imagine that we inched toward each other in tiny shuffles and gestures. By the time we started to kiss I had my eyes closed. It was nice, if wet. Then his tongue tried to inch between my lips and into my mouth, still tasting of tea. I wasn’t sure I liked it, but then he put his arms around me and that I did like. I leaned back, but I wasn’t straight on the sofa, so I was already half-lying, and he slid his free hand up under my sweater and found my breast.

My mind cleared enough to know this was a sort of point of no return, even if we didn’t go the whole way. I opened my eyes. Nigel’s were closed, and he looked as if he was going to faint. I was surprised, because I knew that “up there” I was pretty disappointing, my bust hardly worth the stout satin and straps of a brassiere. But he gasped, and pulled his other hand out from behind me, so that I couldn’t help sliding further sideways until I was almost lying on the sofa. He could reach my other breast. I closed my
eyes, hoping it would help, and what I thought of as the swoony feeling began to be very nice. He was warm on top of me, and he’d gone back to kissing as if it was the most important thing in the world to be doing. I started to feel as if it was too. Then suddenly he was in a tremendous hurry. I wanted to know what it was like, but I wasn’t so overtaken as to forget what a friend had told me to say, or was it Izzy? I can’t be sure.

“Have you got something?”

His eyes flew open, and he shook his head. “It’ll be all right. I’ll come out.”

I half-knew what he meant, and half-knew I should say no, but I didn’t. He slid my trousers off, and what I chiefly remember about the next few minutes is that one of my legs kept sliding off the sofa, and he was huffing and puffing in my ear, and it hurt, quite a lot, and then he shouted, and it seemed to be over, and I realized he hadn’t come out.

The rain had eased off a little, and it was dark. When I tried to get out from under him, he woke, and asked me if I was all right.

“I must go. I’m going to be late.”

“Shall I see you home?” I’ll say that for Nigel Miller, if that was his name: he was well brought up. But suddenly I absolutely couldn’t bear him. I could bear myself, I thought, feeling a sort of roughness as I pulled my knickers on and then a rather distasteful stickiness. What had just happened—how I’d felt during it, and now—was quite interesting and in a way perfectly reasonable. But I couldn’t feel interested and reasonable about it if Nigel was shambling alongside. That I did know.

I felt sure it must show that I was no longer a virgin. When a car overtook me as I pedaled home, I thought the driver must see how different I was. There was a zebra crossing on Loampit
Hill; the old lady I stopped for said, “Thank you,” and I wondered if she knew. I was sure Aunt Elaine or Uncle Gareth would be able to tell.

I left my bike in the shed and went in by the back door. Aunt Elaine was kneeling on the kitchen floor and everything was covered with soot and coal dust: the range had gone out. And when I said hello and could I help, she said that the workshop roof had sprung a new leak and ruined several hundred pounds’ worth of stock before anyone had seen. “And you’re wet through, Una pet. Hurry upstairs and change before you catch a chill. Lionel’s coming down for the night.”

I plodded up the Chantry stairs, cold and shivering, wanting nothing so much as the hot bath I couldn’t have, yet feeling all the time the slight, hot roughness between my legs that told me with each step that I was utterly changed.

Mark was standing at the top of the stairs with a bucket in each hand. He must have been fetching them from the attic.

I was suddenly scarlet and prickling with sweat. I was sure he could tell—he must be able to tell. My nod and mutter couldn’t hide what I felt any more than if I’d been stark naked.

He nodded to me, and in the weak, rainy light I thought he too looked red-faced and awkward. Then he stood back to let me come upstairs before he went down, and as he moved, the water slopped out over the edge of one of the buckets.

I washed in cold water as best I could, and by the time I was dry and dressed supper was ready, though that was cold too, because though Mark had got the range going it hadn’t warmed up. I buried my gaze in my plate in dread of meeting his eye, because I didn’t want him to know, not the way it had been.

But what if it had been the way I’d read about, I thought,
staring at cold mutton and lettuce and bread-and-marge. Not a muddly, smelly business with a boy I didn’t even especially like? The way I still knew it could be? But I knew with the certainty of youth that it could never be like that unless it was Mark.

Afterwards he went back to the workshop with Uncle Gareth to finish emptying the storeroom, and I excused myself with a plea of university work and went upstairs, so I heard Lionel arrive, laughing and swearing at the rain, but didn’t go down.

I lay awake for what felt like hours. In the end I gave up, put on my dressing gown, and went downstairs to make some cocoa. The range had got going well enough to warm the kitchen, but I used the electric kettle so as not to lift the lid.

“Hello, Una.” It was Lionel. “Missed you earlier—how are you?”

“Fine, thanks. You know, working hard.” The kettle boiled. I switched it off and poured it onto the cocoa powder in my mug. “Did you get very wet coming up from the station?”

“Not half. Had to dig my emergency clothes out.” But even his black sweater, discreetly darned by Aunt Elaine, and rumpled flannels looked sleek somehow, I thought, and he sat on the corner of the table with a kind of self-contained ease that faintly thrilled me, his cigarette dangling from his fingers. “I was going to have some whiskey. How about some in that cocoa?”

I didn’t put much in, but it made the cocoa suddenly very delightful, and instead of carrying it back upstairs to drink in bed, as I’d meant to, I propped my bottom on the rail of the range and sipped it. “Have you been talking about the Chantry?”

“No, it was too late. We’re going to talk in the morning.” He got off the corner of the table and joined me against the warmth of the range. “So how are you, Una? Properly? Feel as if we don’t see much of each other, these days.” He put an arm
around my shoulders and gave me a hug. “You are all right, aren’t you? University okay? Love-life not gone awry, or anything? You’d say if there was anything Sally or I could do to help, wouldn’t you?”

I remember thinking, even then, how when you have to be absolutely silent about one thing, you want to talk about everything else. I wanted to tell Lionel about Nigel and…so on. Probably I shouldn’t. But as soon as I’d thought it I knew I would. A bit, anyway. He was what Grandmama called worldly. He wasn’t like Izzy, who never really talked about sex, even though she was engaged to Paul and I was fairly sure they were sleeping together. I squashed down a thought about whether Mark knew about them, and whether he minded…Lionel wouldn’t tell anyone about Nigel if I asked him not to, and he wasn’t old, not like Uncle Gareth…

Now I must say it, I told myself. Now, or I won’t be able to. “Well, there is…a boy.”

“Oh, good. Have I met him?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s anything. Serious, I mean. But we…Well, once or twice…”

He turned a little, and grinned. “And you know what you’re doing? Someone’s explained it all? Being sensible?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, feeling myself blushing.

“So I don’t have to beat him up, or ask his intentions, or anything?”

“Oh, no.”

He stretched out a hand to the whiskey bottle on the draining board, topped up his glass, then looked at me. “Cheers! Glad you’re having some fun.” I couldn’t help thinking of the fish-and-chip smell of the sofa and Nigel Miller’s grunts, and wondering if that was what fun was supposed to be like. “I could get Uncle
Gareth to do the Victorian bit, if you want me to. If you don’t want to ask him yourself?”

“No, please don’t,” I said. “It’s…No, thank you.”

“Okay. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. You’re right. No good ever came of telling the old dears anything you don’t have to. Just as long as you’re having fun and being sensible.”

“I am,” I said, though I hadn’t been sensible, either. “Did you know there’s been a leak in the storeroom roof?” I went on, to change the subject.

“Yes,” he said. “Nearly a thousand pounds’ worth of stock they’re going to have to write off, apparently. Maybe now they’ll see sense and realize it’s time we got rid of the old shack.”

“It isn’t a shack; it’s as solid as the house, Grandpapa says. It only needs patching up. Mark would have done it already if it wasn’t pouring.”

“The trouble is, rain does pour. They haven’t found a way of stopping it yet.”

“He’s going to do it tomorrow.”

Lionel tossed off the last of his whiskey. “There’s only so much patching up that’s worth doing, even if Gareth has got Mark to do it for him. I wonder what’s in it for Mark, hanging around the crumbling edifice? Any ideas?” I shook my head. He put his glass down on the draining board. “Damn it, Una, we’re more than halfway through the century, and I’m the only one who’s noticed. I don’t blame Grandpapa. He
is
a Victorian, after all—not surprising he’s sentimental about the old place. But Uncle Gareth’s a businessman. Or, at least, he’s been running a business long enough. He’s not going to be able to pretend it’s all okay much longer. Sooner or later he’ll take my side…Ah, well, I just do what I can. I’m off to bed. Night, Una.”

“Good night,” I said.

But I lay awake for a long time, still feeling the faint sand-paperiness between my legs, and wondering what would happen when I met Nigel in the morning.

In the event, nothing happened. I’m ashamed now to think that I spent the last two weeks of the dig avoiding him. Many times he tried to catch me in private, but I couldn’t look him in the eye, let alone talk to him, and I gave up volunteering for things, in case he joined in. My skin crawled at the thought of his, though I knew even then that he’d done nothing much wrong except be young and inexperienced, as I was. I was also praying fervently that I wasn’t in trouble. Inevitably, my period was late, though it came at last, just when the dig ended. I never saw Nigel Miller again.

But night after night I dreamed of Mark. He held me and I him, and although I saw and felt the details of him that when awake I couldn’t really imagine, I wasn’t surprised or embarrassed. They were part of the warmth, the rightness, the unreasonable joy. Sometimes we were at home; more often we were in a place that felt entirely familiar, though I’d never seen it before. I curled my body down and down and down into his arms until I exploded, and woke panting and sweaty in the chilly dark. My eiderdown had slipped off, and dimly across my room I could see the broad, blank arrowhead of the boarded-up Chantry window, but I felt as if I were still with Mark. I could almost smell his outdoors smell, leaf mold and wood smoke and the iron-cold air off the Kentish Downs. Among my waking knowledge of his absence, the joy of sated desire lingered, so that I had to cling to both, or lose everything.

Mark’s filling my glass again, and the sun’s finally gone off our patch of grass when there’s a crackle of gravel and a rough-
sounding engine. By the time Izzy rounds the corner of the house the men are on their feet. When she takes Mark’s hand, he grips it, but I can’t read his glance.

“So here we all are,” says Gareth, when he’s kissed Izzy and we’ve sat down again.

“Mark, it’s splendid to see you,” says Izzy. “Una’s been telling me about everything you’ve been up to. So nice to see you back at the Chantry. I’ve been looking up the postwar records. What a lot you were involved in. I’d forgotten.” She laughs and drinks some wine. “But I’m afraid I was always so taken up with my own work.”

“I know,” he says. “Did Gareth tell you he’s found the casts of
The Stations of the Cross
?”

“Yes, he did. Nice to know they’re still around.” She turns to me. “Did you know some evangelical cow in the parish tried to get the originals taken down because they weren’t made by ‘a believer’? Can you believe it?” She reaches for the bottle and offers it around. “Now, tell me the plan.”

We outline it again. After Lionel’s professional skepticism and Mark’s cool command of heritage-industry jargon, there’s something very alive in her thoughtful, listening face, her narrowed eyes and the half-smile that ignites as Mark speaks of restoring wall paintings and tracking down the original furniture. Gareth catches my eye, and smiles too.

Then Mark moves on to generating income, and her smile fades, though she’s still listening.

Only when he’s finished does she say slowly, “Let me get this right. You want a shop? Display boards of potted history? Tourists watching the press?
Weddings?
And to stick all the letters—the whole archive—in the cellar for anyone to poke through who wants to?”

“Any funding bids would build in the cost of converting the undercroft to the highest curatorial standards,” says Mark. “And the warden would control access.”