Alchemy. Maureen Duffy

I hope. I can always smell unwashed hair and damp stone.’

      ‘And then I pick up later. Tchaikovsky, Elgar, Britten.’

      ‘Strauss? There’s a good production of Der Rosenkavalier by Opera Bauhaus at Sadler’s Wells. I’ll tell my secretary to get us some tickets. She can ring you for some dates.’

      Was my new lifestyle going to be all as whirlwind as this? I felt like young Kay in ‘The Snow Queen’, lifted up on wings above the earth. But there was no ice splinter in my heart, rather a glowing lump of charcoal that threatened to barbecue me from the inside. The wine was having an effect after only a couple of glasses, that and my heightened awareness of her every look and gesture. They would have made me drunk just on the deep gulps of San Pellegrino I was taking to try to stay sober. I was glad that at least the spotlight was off me and my past and the conversation had switched to music. I sensed that too much knowledge might make me less interesting to her. I couldn’t see Gateshead or Acton as high on her list of places to visit. She certainly wouldn’t have found my evening job now as a Chinese takeaway courier an amusing occupation.

      It must be Amyntas who’s led me into this memorial maze but maybe that’s what I’ve needed to bring to the surface stuff that’s been lying below in the silt and murk, things I haven’t faced, that I was brought up to not to face, Mam and Dad belonging to the old school of so much best left unsaid and ‘what the head doesn’t know the heart doesn’t grieve over’ or ‘no good crying over spilt milk’, a horror of navel gazing or letting go.

      Back in the office I was pretty useless for the rest of the afternoon. ‘Well?’ Drew asked as I sat down at my desk.

      ‘Hard to say really. She seems to want me to get some court experience, shadow the boss to learn how it’s done.’

      ‘He’s not Marcus Lately. You’d do better sitting in the public gallery.’

      ‘Can’t argue with the Begum. Theirs to command; ours to obey.’ I got out a file and tried to look busy.

      ‘Let’s have a quick one when we leave before I go home to the family.’

      Drew still lived with his mother and sister. I had been to his home to dinner where we had eaten so many delicious south Indian dishes that the finest curry restaurant in town would have been put to shame. Tonight I didn’t want to join a bevy of lawyers in the Globe downing pints. I wanted to go home and try to make sense of it all but I knew I couldn’t say ‘no’ to Drew.

      Later in the pub half listening to his account of a complex piracy case he was working on, I found myself watching a girl, probably in her first job, being sent up by a posse of young suits, becoming flushed and a bit shrill as she tried to hold her own against a barrage of heavy teasing. That’s what you had to deal with if you were straight and pretty. The disproportion in numbers of male and female lawyers makes any girl, especially in her first job, irresistible prey to a gang of young men vying for her attention. If she’s cool and tough enough she can handle it, even enjoy the experience and give as good back. But if she gets flustered then the pack will goad her into unwitting double entendres, to be pounced on and held up to braying laughter until she’s close to tears or takes refuge in a shouting match that only eggs them on. It wasn’t just a broken heart that made me duck out of Settle and Fixit.

      

      Now the days passed for me on leaden feet, alone except for the servants, and the sick people I was charged by my lady to tend at Ramsbury. When Twelfth Night had come and gone and all our sports were over, the wagons and carriages were laden with beds and coverings, clothes and necessaries of every kind, both for the long journey and to furnish the castles fit for my lady to lie there while she attended to her affairs.