The flat grey drizzle clouds of morning were oozing north on a tired breeze. Weathering a storm of a different brew, Prudence swerved her Fiat up into her ex-boyfriend's gravel drive, sloshing through the potholes, and skidded to a halt when Matthew ran out of the house to greet her.
"Now," she said, slowly lowering the window to half mast. "What is it that's worth breaking off our trial separation?"
With a profusion of enticements and expressions of gratitude for her presence, he coaxed her out of the fuming metal box, and ushered her into the 'holiday-maker's dream cottage' he had rented for the dank off season months. "Listen," he said in a trembling voice. "Yesterday, after our Tiff - yes, with a capital Tee I admit it - I wound up down by the river. Did you see the sun set fire to the cloud-plumed pyre of our last day....?"
"Matthew, don't fool yourself that I'm the least bit interested in hearing this."
"Please, Pru, hear me out. I felt like collapsing into the swollen waters to have done with the pain in my life once and for all. But then I thought of you. Actually a verse sprang to mind: 'Star-crossed lovers we/The yew our trysting tree....."
"I'm out of here!"
"No, don't go. It's not what you think. I know all about the cut and thrust of emotional blackmail too you know, remember? And that's not why I asked you here."
She noticed his fingers twitching, clumsy and excited as he cleared away just enough of his scrap yard jumble of chemistry apparatus for her to fit into the sofa. "So why did you?"
"Because I've done it. Prudence, it's true... And I've done it." His arms were spread wide.
"You mean you did commit suicide..... And you're a ghost, right?"
Prudence had no patience left and her ascorbic temper flared in frustration.
"No!" He laughed. He'd never laughed her off before - she wasn't sure how to take it.
"No. Now I know the great secret of Alchemy! At last my apprenticeship with all this paraphernalia," with a theatrical sweeping gesture he indicated the innumerable phials of chemicals, and miscellaneous equipment (part jam jars and ketchup bottles, part beer-making tubes and filters, part very fragile customised glassware with beautiful curves)..... "Is all over - completely finished. Simple as that. Cracked the philosopher's egg no less - seen through the stone of the wise....."
'Cracked, stoned, ah-ha.' thought Prudence struggling to read between the lines. She decided to humour him in an effort to get some sense out of him. "So you've found out how to made gold."
"Ah, you can't make anything from scratch, you know. You need lead, remember, to transmute into gold. And, moreover, you've got to have gold to make gold."
"So you've bought some gold, is that it? Oh No, no, I'm sorry Mat. That's too much." She suddenly rose to leave, thinking he'd bought a ring to offer her his honourable intentions. But seeing him closely now, she paused and frowned. "Are you OK? You're whiter than a monk's bedsheet."
"Yeah, well it has been a bit of a shock to the old system." He was deadly serious about his claim to have achieved the goal of Alchemy. But he definitely did not look well. Yet even if his intelligence seemed dimmed, his enthusiasm was undaunted and his smile, albeit almost a grimace struggling in the teeth of mental and physical exhaustion, certainly bore the seal of success.
"You mean you've actually done it?" She had never believed in his dabbling in what she teasingly termed the 'arse magical', but if Mat was as special as she had previously thought, why couldn't he find a way where others had failed?
He nodded with an even more rictus grin.
"Show me." She tried not to admit even to herself that she was at all interested in sharing a life of infinite wealth.
"Pardon?"
"Some gold."
"Oh Pru!" He chided her as if she were a credulous child asking whether tooth fairies have teeth and hence need smaller tooth fairies of their own.....
"Mat? You're trembling again. Sit down. Now, how do you feel?"
"Better than ever - and the transmutation has only just begun! Oh, how can I even begin to explain?"
Her eyes flashed with a fire that seemed to shine from her very soul. Matthew loved this dearly.
"Remember," he began. "What Gold means. It's freedom. We all have life, but how few have the liberty to lighten the loads of those we love?"
This was more like the old Matthew, before his obsessive, introspective preoccupation with that decrepit old book of his. A little window in her heart was beginning to open. Without warning, a trellis of rose-coloured roses sprang up beside it and fragrant blossom cascaded over the charming porch from which a lazy path ran down to a neat wooden gate in the white picket fence that ran right around her like a warm hug. "Freedom....?"
Matthew sat down. "Everyone knows the Alchemical formula: first you take lead, then you transmute it into gold. The secret is - wait for it! That it is an internal process.
"All this equipment is completely redundant - the transmutation actually occurs inside your body. I am transmuting lead into gold!"
Prudence was stricken, her dream suddenly wrecked on the coast of nightmare: his wracked, ghastly features and jerky movements collided with a dreadful doubt in her mind. "You've taken this idea literally...? The lead is actually inside of you... Right now? But it's toxic - deadly!"
"I have understood the Ars Magica for the first time. Yes the lead is in me. Yes I can feel it, weighing me down, my thoughts are still heavy with its oppressive influence. It is what has made me sick. And yes, it is mortal poison."
"Mat!"
"I've not yet finished. The transmutation isn't complete, that's all. It is a bitter pill to swallow, but if I can keep it down, I'll achieve full spiritual transmutation and rebirth. And, Beloved, you can do the same."
"Oh Mat what have you done! Don't you know what's going to happen to you?"
"I will transmute the lead within me to pure, incorruptible, untarnishable gold: I will dance with destiny and show the world what value life's gift of freedom really has!"
"But you fool, you've thrown your life away!"
"Many a mystic reckons you've got to lose your life to save it. And hey, now it's our turn."
This was just too scary; Prudence found discretion inviting her to use the door. "No kidding Matthew. Now come with me."
She raised him up - hauled him, rather - he was heavy with fatigue. Now she moved as if through a dream, but it was a dream with a purpose - a matter of life and death. "Matthew, come with me."
"Where do you want to go."
"For a drive." Adding, in an inaudible sigh: "To hospital."
They moved slowly, arms wrapped tightly around each other. Suddenly he stumbled to a stop and entreated her: "Baby wait. I would rather die here alone, now, than have you be with me - trying to help me - out of some misguided sense of pity, however well intentioned."
She quelled a heart wracking sob as gently as a stoic nodding in acknowledgement to a victorious enemy as she was handed a lethal dose of utter defeat.
"Honestly Pru, every word I have told you has been the truth. But you've got a thick lead shield of ignorance that has blocked the radiance of truth from enlightening you.
"Hey, I'm not really half the fool you think I am! Of course, I have been a fool - I'll never deny that - and I've been through seven hells of worry since yesterday. It was like a purifying furnace - and I've burnt off the dross from my soul. I'm no longer mine own worst enemy - I've defeated that dragon of despair and melancholy! And yes, my body is the crucible cradling the gold of my newly reborn self.
"Internally I am as pure as purified can be - I have fasted..... Prudence listen: I have eaten nothing."
She had led herself through her own hell of fear for his safety and, finding him alive at the end she rejoiced. He gently led her back to the sofa and swept another armful of redundant apparatus onto the carpet and sat down close beside her.
Relaxing now together, she answered his smile that was warm as gold, with her sparkling eyes which were far more eloquent than money and much softer than silence.
In the tenderest moment, their liberated love dawned quietly as the afternoon grew bright.
Ken Taylor
Written c.1985, Dartmouth
First published in Shorts from the West Country, New Fiction, 1992
© 1999 WordWrights.