A Secret Alchemy (34 page)

The sign to Towton flashes past, the bridge that carries the road to it a mere flicker over our heads, and then we swoop off the trunk road to trundle through the suburbs of York. Micklegate Bar looms before us against a thinly gray sky; we turn left around the outside of the walls and past the station. The road threads casually through the city walls and gates, back again and over the Ouse. Ahead of us the Minster lies at anchor with the smaller buildings clustering about it, and our road skirts them at a respectful distance. Anthony would have been taken straight through the city, I realize, riding under escort through streets where cars are now forbidden. Did he want to stop at the Minster for Mass, or for private prayer? But they wouldn’t have let him. It was a sanctuary, after all, a consecrated place of safety, and they wouldn’t have dared drag him from it, even in Richard of Gloucester’s fiefdom. To the right, Monkgate Bar stands, the road from Sheriff Hutton almost a tunnel through it, so deep and thick is the stone it’s built of. We’re making the same journey as Anthony, I realize, only backwards, from Pontefract to Sheriff Hutton. Our
pilgrimage is to recover the past. His was a ride toward some kind of future, which he, I suppose, believed to be eternity.

We cross over the Fosse toward Heworth.

Fergus lives in a neat loop of 1930s houses with a blob of well-mown grass in the center, each garden neater and more flowery than the last, except his, which has a long-haired lawn and a certain accidental beauty about the way the neglected shrubs pile themselves against each other. It’s such a backwater that he heard the car, it seems, because as we park he comes out onto the doorstep. He must be twenty-five or-six, I think, taller than Lionel, with Sally’s fine-grained Celtic wiriness to go with his dark Pryor coloring.

“Hello, Aunt Una. You found it all right?”

We hug. “I don’t think you ever met Mark, did you?” I ask, though I know perfectly well he can’t have. His birth was one of those pieces of family news that even after nine and a half years I longed to tell Mark.

They shake hands, and Mark introduces Morgan. “Shall we go through to the kitchen? I’ll put the kettle on,” Fergus says.

“Don’t bother with ‘Aunt,’” I say, over my shoulder. As we go past I can see that the two main rooms have been knocked together and Fergus is using them as his studio: I glimpse sheets of metal and machine tools standing on a bare-boards floor, and the wall I can see is a thick patchwork of sketches, postcards, and pictures torn from magazines. The kitchen also has bare floorboards, and cupboards that have been hand-painted a color that reminds me of a collared dove’s breast feathers.

“Did you knock the rooms together?” I ask him.

“Yes. The neighbors disapprove, of course. Not the knocking-through, the machines and things. Though the front garden’s their biggest trial.”

He’s grinning cheerfully, so I don’t try to hide my puzzlement. “What made you move here?”

“I was living with someone and we needed more space. It was—it was her kind of place. Dad said it was a good investment. And it’s a good size. Only it…She decided she couldn’t hold her own against the sculpture in the end.” After a moment he shrugs and says, “I sometimes think I ought to move, but I can’t be bothered. I’ve got used to being here, I guess.” He flips the kettle on and raises his voice. “So, what do you do, Morgan?”

“I make jewelry, and I’m a care assistant,” she says, and the way his gaze sharpens makes me realize they’re much of an age. Amused and touched, I half-listen to their talk of burnishing and annealing and the properties of titanium, and try to work out my approach to Fergus.

“…needs to be really stable,” he’s saying.

“I could lend you my jig,” she says. “It’ll take just about any gauge of wire.”

“Could you spare it?” He pours the kettle into the cafetière.

“Sure. I don’t use it much.” She grins at him. “Would you do a swap? Show me how to use your lathe sometime?”

I hold my breath, because asking an artist if you can use their tools—as opposed to offering your own—is rather like asking if you can borrow someone’s best-beloved suit or kitchen knife. Will Fergus feel obliged to say yes? Will Morgan mind if he doesn’t? And then I realize two things simultaneously: that Morgan won’t mind if he says no, and that he’s not going to say no to that or to just about anything else she might suggest.

Smiling, I glance at Mark. He isn’t smiling, just watching Fergus with a slight frown.

“So, Aunt—sorry, Una,” says Fergus, bringing the coffee to the
table. He looks around, and Morgan already has a clutch of four mugs by the handles.

“These ones?”

“Yes, thanks. Una, Dad sort of explained, but tell me properly what this restoring-the-Chantry business is about. How
is
Great-uncle Gareth, by the way? Just grab sugar and milk, everyone.”

“Shall I go away?” asks Morgan, taking her coffee from him. “Family stuff and all. Fergus, would you mind me having a nose-around your studio?”

She’s slipping out of the kitchen door before anyone can answer, and the three of us sit down at the kitchen table. I set out, as even-handedly as I can, the situation, the problem, the possibilities, the obstacles. The only obstacle I don’t mention is Izzy.

“And Dad says he doesn’t think it’s possible unless we can raise lots of money?”

“Well, we all think that. But we can’t even
try
unless we all agree it’s something we want to do. Everyone who owns the house.”

“There needs to be some kind of trust before we can start trying to persuade organizations that it’s serious,” says Mark.

“And of us all, Mark’s the best-qualified to work out what it’s likely to involve, in money and work, and he’s the one with the contacts,” I say, then realize what I’ve said.

But Fergus doesn’t say “But Mark’s not family,” though that would be understandable. He just nods. “And I’ve got a vote.”

“Apparently you’ve got Lionel’s share.”

“Yes, he reminded me. I’d forgotten.” The telephone warbles. “Excuse me…Fergus Pryor…Oh, hello, Aunt Izzy, how are you? How nice to hear from you.” Remembering my last conversation with Izzy, I try to catch Mark’s eye, where he’s sitting across the
table from me, but he’s staring into space as people do when they’re listening to a conversation behind them. “Yes, she’s here…” Fergus is saying. “Yes, we are…But…Why not?…Yes, I do understand what she’s suggesting, but I don’t see—Okay, hold on.” He holds out the receiver to me. “She wants to talk to you.”

I take the receiver. “Izzy? It’s Una.”

“Una, what on earth’s going on?”

“I needed to do some research, and then I realized it was my last chance to see Fergus before I go home,” I say, which is true, if disingenuous.

“But you’ve been discussing the Chantry.”

“Yes, as it happens.”

“I really don’t think it’s wise to take it any further,” she says, her voice dropping so suddenly, by an octave and several decibels, that I can tell she’s forcing herself to sound reasonable. “Fergus isn’t in a position to make the right judgment, after all. He hardly knows the place. It’s not as if he’s ever lived there.”

“Well, he owns quite a chunk of it…” I say, and can feel myself losing my temper in turn. “Izzy, we’ve had this conversation before. Can it not wait till we get back to London?”

“
We?
Is Mark there?”

“Yes. He wanted to see his stepdaughter in Leeds. Do you want to talk to him?”

“No, it’s none of his business what goes on in the family. I’m really just phoning as a courtesy to tell Fergus I’ve finished the inventory, and I’ve instructed shippers to take the archive to San Diego. But you’ll do to tell. It’s booked in to go on Wednesday. Can you pass the message on? I can give you the details before you fly. A copy of the bill of lading if you like. Good-bye, Una.” The line goes dead with a clatter.

Winded, I put the receiver down and tell Fergus and Mark about the shippers.

“Why doesn’t Aunt Izzy want the Chantry restored?” says Fergus. “She’s the one who wrote the book. You’d think she’d be pleased.”

“I think…” I arrange my words carefully. “As far as I understand her, she doesn’t think restoring the Chantry is the important thing, that it’s the documents that matter. And she’s—she’s worried they won’t be safe at the Chantry. Though, of course, we wouldn’t dream of keeping them there unless we could have proper archival storage.”

“It must matter to Great-uncle Gareth, if he’s going to lose his workplace. And his home, come to that. I mean, I know he’s old, but you’d still mind, wouldn’t you?” says Fergus, reminding me of Morgan and her old lady. “And, anyway, it’s such a great idea. Though a lot of work. I suppose it comes down to how much we want it, really, doesn’t it?”

“Well, I want it, but it’s not my call. I’ll be in Australia in a few days’ time.”

I can feel Mark’s eyes on me, and when I turn my head to meet them, heat creeps up my cheek.

“Can’t you get that thing you do to stop something quickly?” says Fergus.

“An injunction,” says Mark.

“Even if we do,” I say, swallowing the cold dregs of my coffee, “if Izzy doesn’t want to help, long-term it’s going to be next to impossible to get the restoration off the ground.”

“Can’t do much till Monday anyway,” says Mark.

“No, but thanks so much for bothering to come and explain it,” says Fergus, getting up. “Dad’s so brisk. I mean, he always
makes lots of sense, but it’s money sense. I don’t think…Well, he doesn’t talk about the other kinds of sense.” He opens the kitchen door. “Must let poor Morgan out of purdah. I’ll phone Dad later.”

In the studio Morgan’s holding a small sculpture of burnished golden metal to the light from the window: a series of roundels assembled at odd angles, so that they seem to shift and gleam, at once irresistible to my gaze and impossible to see.

“That’s lovely,” I say. “Is it one of yours, Fergus? It reminds me of the moon your father’s got. The one in spun pewter? I thought that was beautiful.”

“They’re a pair. This is brass, though. Should be silver and gold, of course.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Brass is incredibly enduring. And there’s something wonderfully human about pewter.”

Fergus smiles, then says to Morgan, “I ought to give him this one as well. They ought to be together.”

“That would be good,” she says, and hands the sun to Mark.

He holds it, turning it this way and that, and I watch his movements, because they have the confident care of this small work of art that reminds me of Adam’s care of human bodies. Mark looks up, and I’m scarlet again, the heat running down my neck and breasts and into my core. Then as I watch, and know he’s seen, he looks down again for a moment, then across to Fergus and Morgan. Is it my own quickening, or just my wishful thinking, that I seem to see approval, now, in how he regards them? Side by side, Morgan’s deep gold, jeweled looks make Fergus’s dark hair and eyes appear engraved on silver.

When I suggest that although I need to go to Sheriff Hutton there’s no need for Morgan to come if she doesn’t fancy it—we can
pick her up on the way back—Mark raises no objection. Nor does he suggest that he, too, stay behind.

“So, is that the last stop on your pilgrimage?” asks Fergus.

“Yes. Unless you count the journey home. Not that London is my home, these days.”

“I’ve always wondered about that,” he says, to my surprise. “Going home after a pilgrimage. Must have been such an anticlimax.”

“Depends whether you think the shrine was the most important thing, though,” says Morgan. “Or the process of getting there.”

“If you get the process right in sculpture,” says Fergus, “—this your jacket, Una?—I think you always reach the goal. Even if it’s not the goal you set out for.”

Morgan nods. “Sometimes I think the more surprised I am, the better it turns out to be when I stand back. But only sometimes.”

Fergus says, “You know, one of the things I always think when I’m reading books about artists is how
unlikely
it all sounds—I mean compared to when you’re in the studio with the plaster bandage hot and wet in your hands and a maquette that won’t stand up and five minutes to get it right before it goes wrong and dries that way forever. I’m not sure art historians understand the
doing
of it. Even if they read letters and things. When you’re doing it, you don’t think, I want this to be a new stage in my developing sense of spatial form. You think, How can I get the bloody thing to stand up, or would it work better lying down anyway?”

I laugh. “But you do think that later, don’t you? About spatial form?”

“Yes, of course. When I’m teaching or having an argument with another artist. And certainly if I was writing my memoirs.”

He laughs. “Though other people see things that I haven’t sometimes. They fit it into a story I didn’t know it was part of. But at the time, no. And yet…what’s more real, more interesting? More true, even? That moment, all plastery? Or where it fits in a story you didn’t even know about then, but can see so clearly when you look back? It’s like Heisenberg said about quantum mechanics.”

“Who?” says Morgan.

“Heisenberg, the atom-bomb man. The uncertainty principle. The more accurately you measure the position of something at a particular moment, the less accurately you can measure where it’s going: the velocity—the trajectory. At least, that’s roughly it. My father could tell you more.”

“Could he?”

“He’s good at that sort of thing,” says Fergus, smiling at her.

We could take the trunk road, I see, peering at the map Mark’s holding, but that’s new. I can only guess the route that Anthony’s escort would have taken him, but I do my best. Halfway along Monk Stray I tell Mark to turn left, and we run north alongside the Fosse, through Huntington, Haxby Landing, Towthorpe, Strensall Common, where red military signs point into deep woods, Strensall itself, lying in the curve of the Fosse with the railway slashing through. Over the Fosse and down onto Haxby Moor. The country’s flatter than the big-boned hills and valleys around Grafton, marshy and low-lying, the fields greeny-gold, threaded with streams and dotted with copses of dark-green high-summer trees. It’s hawking country, I think, as the road lifts over a little bridge where the Fosse has curled around again to cross our path before splitting in two. A bird rises from Whitecarr Beck at our left: a big heron in his wedding-guest gray, wings unhurried, heading west.