Alchemy (34 page)

My heart sank at these words. She went on: ‘I would provide you with something towards your marriage portion.’

‘My lady, it was not the lack of a dowry that brought me here at your command.’ And here I felt the tears begin to start in my eyes.

‘There child, do not distress yourself. Only think of what I have said and we will speak of it again when you are more recovered from your wound.’

Then I said that I would go to London. ‘Not to be a charge on your ladyship but to make my own way, never to bring you any discomfort but only to be allowed to come to you sometimes and to be always ready if you should need me.’ And here I could no longer stay my tears but wept openly.

My lady reached down and drew me up and into her bosom. ‘Come now be calm. Do not drown us both in your tears. You shall come with me when I go and we will see what the future will bring and what God intends for us both in his own good time. Perhaps the course of nature will settle all. Who knows but we shall both find husbands.’

I decide not to do any more paperwork after signing off with the Gaos. Instead I switch on the tele and zap in on the ten o’clock news. There’s the usual political shenanigans going on of how the minister lied. Cries of ‘resign, resign’. Smiling ripostes and animal howls and groans in reply from the Commons bear garden. Public service workers are threatening to strike. The dead will be unburied; the living uncared for; fires will rage; refuse pile up in the streets for rats and foxes to rummage through. The spectre of ancient anarchy is invoked to keep us in line.

‘Symptomatic of a lawless age,’ the newscaster is saying against a background panorama of clenched fists, stones being thrown. The sound cuts in above his voice: men’s shouting and women’s screamed abuse. ‘This normally quiet street of respectable citizens…’ The camera focuses on the street name and then pans to the house number. It swings to the words on a couple of placards: ‘Satanist, Pervert; We don’t want you in our town.’ The address is Galton’s.

The camera sashays from face to face contorted with self-righteous rage and then to the back of the small crowd to capture the arrival of the police. As it zooms in on the police cars (Z cars, jam sandwiches? What are they called now that they’re fruity coloured as ice lollies?) for a couple of seconds it picks up a silent figure at the back, a little apart. I think I recognise Ms Apple-pie Molders.

I switch channels to see if I can find another version of the news, with perhaps a second shot of her in confirmation. This time I get the beginning of the story. The protesters were alerted by a piece in the local paper. But how did the rag get hold of it? I dial directory enquiries for its number. Will there be anyone there as late as this? Perhaps I should ring Galton to see if he’s inside the house and OK. I try his number.

‘Yes. Who is it?’

‘It’s Jade Green, Dr Galton. Are you OK?’

‘How did you know?’

‘It’s on the television news. The police have just arrived. I expect they’ll want to come in. You should let them. Be nice to them. You’re an innocent citizen who hasn’t been charged with anything, besieged in your own home. They have to protect you. Do you want me to come down? Is there anywhere you can go? They should put a guard on the house.’

‘There’s nowhere I can go, except perhaps to one of our coven but I don’t want to involve them. If they’ll send these people away and leave someone on duty here I’d rather stay in my own
home. It’s good of you to offer to come down but by the time you could get here I hope they’d all be gone.’

While he’s speaking I’m watching the Molders moving away from the back of the crowd. Mission accomplished. I decide not to tell Galton what I think I’ve seen. After all I’m not absolutely sure and he might spill it to the cops as a fact or do something silly with the information.

‘There’s someone at the door, Ms Green. I expect as you say it’ll be the police. Thank you for calling. I’ll ring you in the morning.’

‘Earlier if you need me. I’ll try to find out how all this started.’ Is he frightened or just excited? I can’t tell from his voice. I decide it’s too late now to ring the paper. Sleep on it, Jade.

When I ask for the editor in the morning I can just imagine the set up. ‘Trisha speaking. Can I help? I’ll see if Mr Hanks is available. Who shall I say is calling?’

Hanks comes on the line with a triple note ‘Hal-lo-ah. Ms Green, is it? What can I do for you?’

‘I represent Dr Alastair Galton, Mr Hanks. The man whose house was besieged last night as a result of a piece in your paper. I’d like a copy of that article and to know where you got your information.’

‘We never reveal our sources, Ms Green.’

‘Don’t make it hard for me, Mr Hanks, or I could make it hard for you. I don’t imagine your paper could stand an action for libel, let alone the damages Dr Galton would undoubtedly be awarded.’

‘We merely reported the facts.’

“There are no facts except that Dr Galton has not been charged with anything and is therefore entitled to his privacy and to not being libelled by your publication. Are you a lawyer, Mr Hanks? If not I suggest that you consider carefully what I have said.’

‘The local library has a copy.’

‘I haven’t time for that, Mr Hanks. I need one now. I suggest you fax one to me as soon as we finish this conversation. Now for my second point. Did your information come from the police?’

‘Alright.’ He’s suddenly understood the seriousness of what I am suggesting. ‘It was an anonymous tip-off. A phone call.’

‘Did you get the number?’

‘I told you it was anonymous.’

And you didn’t use 1471 to find out?’

‘No.’

‘Did you attempt to verify the allegation?’

‘I checked the name and address on the electoral roll. I rang the college and asked to speak to Dr Galton. They said he no longer worked there. So I knew I’d got the right guy. Look, I don’t want any trouble. We run on a shoestring. I can’t tell you any more than I have, and what’s in the piece.’

‘Fax me a copy then, Mr Hanks. You do have a fax machine? What was the voice of your informant like? Male or female?’

‘It was muffled. It could have been deep female or light male. I thought they’d put something over the mouthpiece. People often do if they’re giving information anonymously. Or else these days they text or email.’

‘I need to see the whole piece to decide how libellous it might be.’

‘Look, we didn’t mean any harm. I wasn’t to know they’d besiege the guy’s house. I can’t be held responsible for people getting worked up about something they read in the paper. Christ knows it’s hard enough to get them to buy one, unless it’s got their kid’s birthday in it. OK, I’ll fax it to you. What’s the number?’

When I tell him he says: ‘That’s a London number.’

‘Yes indeed. My office is in London.’ Just in case he thinks he’s dealing with some little local firm.

When the fax comes through I see why Hanks suddenly decided to cooperate. It’s all there: the arrest, Gallon’s name and
address, the fact that he was naked, his dismissal from Wessex. The only thing that isn’t in the piece is why he was sacked. But the implication of ‘not safe with young people’ is enough to damn him as a paedophile, and bring out the self-appointed guardians of public morality baying for blood. If it weren’t all true, Galton could demand a printed apology at least. But anyway that isn’t what I’m after. I’m trying to figure out why the Wessex people should pursue him in this way. Is it just spite or their own version of self-righteousness?

By getting himself arrested he gave them the opportunity to hit back at him, even if someone (Molders?) was behind that too. But it doesn’t tell me why. I could ask Galton point-blank but somehow I don’t think I’d get an answer, not the real one anyway. An evasion if not a full-blown lie.

I ring Galton. ‘How are you this morning, Dr Galton? Did you talk to the police? Did you get some sleep?’

‘I did as you suggested and asked for their help. They were quite correct and polite. I realise of course that our beliefs seem strange to them. One of them I thought would have been less sympathetic if he had been on his own and in charge. Fortunately his superior realised his responsibilities in keeping the peace and protecting an innocent member of the public.’

He’s sounding smug again and I can feel myself getting tetchy. ‘If anyone tries to interview you from the press don’t talk to them. Have you still got police protection?’

‘They went off about midnight after all the people had gone away. They said I should telephone if there was any more trouble.’

‘And the TV cameras?’

‘They left soon after the police turned up and dispersed the crowd. I watched it all from my bedroom.’

‘Can you see if there’s anyone there now?’

‘There is someone, I think. On the other side of the road, looking up at the house from time to time. Unless he’s a burglar I can’t think why else he would be there.’

‘He’ll pounce on you if you go out, and try to get an interview. Be very careful. Remember what I’ve said. Don’t talk to anyone, except me or the police. I think I’m going to be paying a visit to Wessex. I might need to talk to you. If you’re going out call me on my mobile.’

‘Ms Green, I have to say when I asked you to help me out with my little problem I had no idea things would escalate in this way. I am so grateful for your support.’

‘Don’t worry Dr Galton, my bill will soon fix that.’ I ring off angry with myself at my own sharp tongue. It’s when the guy gets yucky I find myself lashing out. I wonder why he hasn’t tried to recruit me for his coven. I should have warned him above all to lie low and not go dancing about in the woods at night.

There’s no pleasure in a run on the Crusader today. For one it’s raining and two it’s Friday. Everyone’s already heading out of town in the spray from the car in front. Pile-up time on the motorway. I steer well clear of both the plodders and the racers. I can’t wait to get out of my wet gear when I get to the Wessex bike shed. Axe you getting old, Jade? You used to find bombing along in the rain, using all your skills, exhilarating. Or is it just that for so long post-Helen you didn’t care if you lived or died and now, suddenly you have a stake in being alive; though I couldn’t pin down what if anything it’s based on and it may not last, may be just a delusory false dawn. There goes Rosalind again in my head cocking a sharp eye, sticking out her sharp tongue. ‘Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love.’

Maybe I should just come clean. March into the dean’s office and say: ‘I’m representing Dr Galton, the lecturer you sacked and we’re going to sue you for unfair dismissal and harassment.’ But I still haven’t any proof. I’d be thrown out of Wessex at once with no chance to gather any evidence ever again. How can I prove it was an anonymous tip-off from here that set the mob on Galton?

I head for my tutor’s room and knock on the door, not expecting any result. To my surprise the door opens and Dr Davidson is peering out at me. ‘Yes?’

‘Lucy Cowell, Dr Davidson. I wonder if you could spare a few minutes.’

He smiles in recognition. ‘Ah yes, of course. How are you getting on, Ms Cowell? Do come in. As a matter of fact I have an envelope for you here. Ms Molders, the dean’s secretary, asked me to pass it on to you if you should be in touch. Now where did I put it? Do sit down.’

I take the chair on the opposite side of his desk, while he opens drawers and fumbles about in them. There’s a newspaper upside down on his desk that he must have been reading when I knocked. I see it’s the same page of the local rag that I’m carrying among my own papers. He looks up shutting the drawer and pushes a manila A4 envelope across the desktop towards me. I point towards the piece of newsprint.

‘A nasty business,’ I say. ‘I understand he was sacked from Wessex.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I read it in the same local paper. And there was something about him on the news last night. Did you know him, Dr Davidson? Perhaps you didn’t overlap here. That was a strange thing: for the crowd to attack his house. I mean it was a very extreme response to just a paragraph of newsprint.’

‘“Though shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Isaiah.’

‘A witch? I thought they died out long ago apart from children’s fiction.’

‘Children’s fiction deals in wizards, I believe. Think of
The Wizard of Oz
among others. A witch is a quite different matter. They don’t wear pointed hats and jet about on broomsticks of course. The witch is a very real figure.’

‘But the accounts of witch trials…’

‘Can be read either way. You can take Reginald Scott’s view
that they were deluded and mostly old, women. Or you can read the accounts of the trials as very often showing malevolent intentions to harm, even kill, their victims and of evil familiars who did their bidding or pacts with the forces of darkness. After all many of them confessed to all these things. And if you believe there is a force for good operating in the world then you must also envisage a force for evil. Otherwise how can you account for all the violence and immorality in the world?’

‘Human folly?’ I know from our last meeting that it’s no good putting forward the view that, being just very clever apes,
Homo habilis,
not very
sapiens
and not genetically far removed from
Pan troglodytes,
our cousin, who also commits rape and murder on occasion, so-called evil is only what’s to be expected of us.

‘Led into temptation by someone or something.’

Again I want to say: by territorialism and competition for status and the food supply, and the chance to pass on your genes through the best combination for survival, beauty and brains.

‘Good and evil: a constant struggle but in the end good must prevail and we must make sure we are there among the elect.’

I realise now that Dr Davidson isn’t just a lecturer at Wessex. He’s one of the chosen, the inner elite. It isn’t only the theology students who are the Temple of the Latent Christ. There must be others like Davidson scattered through the faculty. And there’s nothing to stop them spreading their nutty beliefs except common sense. Just sometimes a judge will rule that a child must be given a blood transfusion against the parents’ wishes and beliefs or parents be forced to send their children to school, but on the whole we don’t interfere. A child’s body is found half burnt with strange signs cut into the soft skin or another is beaten to drive out the evil spirits, and then the social services are blamed for not doing a proper job, a job we make sometimes impossible with our tolerance of individuality to the point of negligence. You mustn’t interfere. Live and let live. Freedom of expression. The fifth amendment or is it the first? You’re wandering, Jade. Davidson is looking at me curiously.