Part 4ii.)

The Shakespeare Chronicles

a novel

James Boyle

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It should be attributed as follows.

“James Boyle, The Shakespeare Chronicles: A Novel

Available from http://www.lulu.com/content/467168

Published by Lulu Press.

ISBN 978-1-4303-0768-6

This is a work of fiction. With the exception of the Elizabethans, all of the characters are fictional. Immaculata State and its university exist only in my imagination. In particular, the university should not be confused with any educational institutions bearing a similar name. Any resemblance to real people, natural or legal, heretic or orthodox, living or dead, is unintended. I have taken some liberties with Elizabethan history, and freely entered into the labyrinth of transposition, revisionism and conspiracy theory which surrounds this subject like a privet maze. The authors to whose work I refer are real and I am indebted to them, particularly to the ideas put forward by the intriguingly named John Thomas Looney in Shakespeare Identified 1920, [Frederick A. Stokes Co]. A more recent and extensive version of the same hypothesis can be found in Charlton Ogburn’s, The Mysterious William Shakespeare 1988, [Cardinal Books]) Finally, a wonderful (and absolutely hilarious) overview of the authorship question is provided by Samuel Schoenbaum’s Shakespeare’s Lives 1993 [Oxford U. Press.] I must stress, however, that substantial fictional modifications have been made and neither Mr. Looney nor any other of the authors I mention are to be held responsible for the story I tell here. My goal is entirely different from theirs.

Read Part 1 | 2 i.) | 2 ii.) | 3i.) | 3ii.) 4.)

December 4th

Around me is the tinkle of metal and crystal as the passengers in first class strive to unwrap their British Airways linen napkins without spilling their plastic knives and metal forks all over the floor. Secretly, I think most of them would prefer a burger. The stewardess wrinkles her nose slightly as she bends over me but she says nothing.

–– Beef Wellington, or Sole Meuniere, sir?

–– Neither, thank you. I dine upon the chameleons dish: I eat the air, promise-crammed.

–– Very good sir, and would you be wanting champagne with that?

She is quite unfazed, used to Americans and their faddish diets. In truth, I am quoting out of context. The air is filled, not with the insubstantial promises of others, but with the promise of a glorious future. I will accept a glass of the free champagne and tell you all, I shall tell you all.

Flipping back the page, I see that I had to close at the point where I had, as they say, ‘revealed my feelings’ to Jean. I was holding her gently by both arms, staring into her eyes, watching the pupils expand, the eyelids narrow. I remember thinking that it was unsurprising that poets go on and on about their lovers’ body-parts. The smallest thing can be illuminated by the lightness, the glow. Even the crinkly little worms formed by the tear glands in the corners of her eyes bear a secret message for me. But I digress.

–– Stanley?

–– Yes, dear?

She pulled away from me, but not with enough determination to succeed. She opened her mouth, closed it, shook her head from side to side, drew breath again to say something. I kissed her. Quandary had always disliked those cinematic kisses, exercises in osculatory domination, where the woman beats feebly on the man’s back and then succumbs. I must admit that they seem more like an apology for rape than an expression of love. Still, I do not have Quandary’s predisposition to disdain that which might benefit me. In any event, this kiss was not cinematic in the true sense. Jean simply did not expect an access of desire from her ex-husband. She had not prepared her resistance, mustered her conscience, readied her refusal. Besides, she was fond of me. And so she kissed me back. Perhaps she would always have kissed me back. In how many things do we fail because we never try?

When at last she broke a way from me, she took another breath and then started the refusal.

–– Stanley, this isn’t a good idea.

–– It seems like an excellent idea to me.

I kissed her again.

–– Stanley, Norm is a good person...

Above all, these words gave me hope. Any spouse described as ‘a good person’ already has little buds of horn sprouting from their head. Do you disagree? You must admit I only preach what the world has always practiced.

–– ... this doesn’t make sense, its not going anywhere. Besides, you know that you will always..

I kissed her again, slipping my hand under the baggy sweatshirt. The skin of her back was warm and soft and smooth. It felt like magic that my hand could go so quickly from the normality to delight, from public to private, from fabric to soul. I had more than one motive in what I did. She had been going to talk about the gardener and that had to be prevented at all costs.

–– ..remember..

Another kiss. And another. I stroked her hair. She stroked my gleaming bald pate. We both laughed. We kissed again. I was wild with desire, and this is where I made my mistake. We sank to the ground – a hard thing to do, though authors always use the phrase. To really "sink" to the ground, rather than topple with a thud onto your paramour, you need to have tremendous muscles in your thighs. Try it. – Anyway, we sank to the ground, her sweatshirt and my ripped silk came off, with the usual beautifully clumsy tugging and pulling and.. Well, whatever I may have said earlier, I am certainly not going to describe to you what it was like to make love to Jean. The stuffed boar and the underside of the dining room table were the only witnesses to the event, and we’ll let it stay that way.

It was a mistake. "What’s this?" you might say, "an apostle of desire, advocating its repression?" The answer is yes, but not for the reason that you might think. Power consists of the ability to obtain those things which we from time to time to desireth. This much is obvious, but while power is everywhere finite, our desires are, potentially, infinite. Thus the truly wise man looks ahead and reckons the losses and gains to be had in the gratification of a particular desire. For once, I allowed myself to be carried away by the force of my passion. I should not have done it. Even Quandary knew that passion is a fine slave but a cruel master. The thing was, I had to win Jean back. I did not dare to abandon myself to my love. I was playing for larger stakes than an afternoon of pleasure under another man’s dining room table. The pressure was terrible, like juggling Fabergé eggs on a roller coaster. My love could be won or lost in a moment.

I had no real excuse. I knew Jean. Having made love to me she would be overcome with guilt. She would be blind to all other thoughts than the need to pay penance through denial. If we refrained, the unresolved sweetness and lust of the afternoon’s memory would give me a permanent ally in her heart. By taking this delight I would resolve that tension and turn her thoughts to obligation and normalcy. The afternoon’s joy would be the evening’s misery. So you see, I should have been calculating, even with my heart’s love. But I wasn’t. I gave in to the delight of the moment, to the joy of murmuring reassurances about how much I respected Norm even as I showed my disrespect for him in the most palpable of ways, gave in to the abandonment of calculation in the arms of my sweetheart.

Of course, it could have been worse. If Quandary had managed to get himself into the same situation – an impossibility in itself – he would have allowed his knowledge of the dangers of the moment to spoil his enjoyment of it. In effect, he would lose both the advantages of willpower and the joys of abandonment. Of the second sin, at least, I am not guilty. Those stolen hours under the reproachful eye of the stuffed boar are my most precious memory.

After a long, long time we dressed ourselves in creased garments, and went for a walk. Hand-in-hand like adolescent lovers. The ‘countryside’ outside Norm’s house hardly justifies the name. There is grass and even the occasional tree but the most common growth is the post-modern corporate office, pungent designs made for a downtown stew of styles dropped instead into the plain dish of the Northern Virginian countryside. It is a bad landscape for adulterers. It speaks volumes about the inevitable victory of the mundane. Lovers, particularly adulterous lovers, need something more ethereal, cliffs and forests perhaps, desert monoliths bespeaking infinite possibilities. I did the best I could, pointed out birds and strange lichens, showed how the bizarre lurks everywhere unsuspected.

–– Stanley, what just happened, I think we should..

–– Hush, my dear. Let’s not spoil it with words.

Actually I longed to spoil it with words, to sing hymns of praises to her, to tell her how my spirit soared when I was inside her, to say that I finally understood the phrase "little death," to cover her with adjectives and kisses. Ah, but if I did. If I did, Jean would begin to speak of how impossible this was, how there could be nothing more between us, how Norm was a good man and could expect better from her. Words would drive her to logic and logic would drive her from me.

We walked in silence after that, but I could not stop her hand from slipping from mine when we came back in sight of the house, or her shoulders from hunching unconsciously under a rain of self-inflicted blows. It was getting dark by now and the house lights were on. For a moment, I thought that Norm was already home, that we would enter under his accusing eyes.. Ah, here’s the stewardess. Time for another glass of champagne. But it wasn’t Norm, just the Cerberus of photo-electric eyes he had installed.

Jean went to take a shower, to wash away the physical stains of what we had done. I sat downstairs and pondered what needed to be done. Making love had been a mistake, but that didn’t mean that all was lost. My first thought was that I could just leave things as they were and then use the fame brought to me by my proof that Edward was the true author of Shakespeare. Would fame win Jean for me? A moment’s thought convinced me that it would not. Indeed, it would do nothing but harm. Seeing me raised to lofty heights, she would think my eminence a consolation, would convince herself that Norm needed her more than I did. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that I must win her before I announced my discovery. But how?

I had managed to stop Jean from talking about the afternoon. If she had done that, her words about our love-making would have taken the place of her feelings. Words, hardened by guilt and varnished by obstinacy, would have formed an impermeable barrier between us. Avoiding discussion was only a temporary solution. Left to her own devices, Jean would think herself to the same conclusion, even if she had no-one to talk to. By now, the guilt had settled into her soul. It would take an event of equal magnitude to drive it out again.

And that was my clue. An event of equal magnitude. As I said before, people believe that it is only at times of great danger that extraordinary feelings gain their utterance. I know better. But understanding the prejudices of others, I can tailor my acts to their fallacies. What event has the same kind of magnitude as adultery?

The shower was still hissing upstairs. I had about five minutes. I found it in the basement. The Norms of this world would insist on oil paint, and the painters of this world would always leave a bottle or two of turpentine lying around. I left it on the little shelf where I had found it. Everything else I would need was to hand. The rest of the evening was purgatory, even to someone as strong-willed as myself. First of all I had to stop Jean from wringing her hands in recrimination. This I did by chasing her around in a playful manner until Norm got back. She was so worried about what Norm might see, that she didn’t have time to lacerate herself with reproaches about what she had done. The mechanics of deceit kept her mind off its morality. Then, when Norm finally did return, I had to endure loutish taunting about the differences in my appearance produced by the Changes, while simultaneously keeping Jean from betraying herself in any one of a hundred ways. It was a relief when I could finally claim tiredness and retire early to bed.

Surprisingly, I actually napped for an hour or so, waking at about 11:30 to find that Norm and Jean were in bed. Lola wasn’t back yet. I tiptoed all the way down to the basement and set to work. The votive candles were the greatest piece of luck. Those are the little round, flat ones, about one and a half inches in diameter and an inch deep. I poured the turpentine into one of the plastic tubs full of calcium chloride which Norm had littering his basement. You know, the kind you take the lid off and they are supposed to absorb damp? Anyway, I tipped the chemical goop out and filled the thing up with turpentine, putting it on the floor by the gas furnace. Then I lit the votive candle and – ever so gently – started to put it down in the turpentine. This was the most ticklish aspect of the whole affair. If the candle had turned turtle at that moment, the turpentine would have gone up and I would have been badly burned. I kept my wits about me and my hand steady. Finally, I let go. The candle bobbed, flickered, and then went back to burning steady and true. Children, don’t try this trick yourselves! I estimated that it would take two and a half hours to burn right through. At that point, of course the burning wick would fall into the turpentine and the whole lot would go up. The wall was made of chipboard, the smoke detector was ten feet away. It should go off as soon as the flames got hold. There shouldn’t be anything suspicious in the wreckage. Turpentine, candle and container all came originally from the basement. There wouldn’t be much left of the house anyway, even if someone was suspicious. Well? I said I would win her back with a conflagration of desire. Did you suspect me of metaphor?

I must admit that the champagne has made me a little drowsy. I think I shall nap now, lulled to sleep by the hum of the engines, and resume my story later. I will have both seats to myself so sleeping should be easy – my seat mate looked at my black eye, took one sniff and then moved to the back of the first class section.

That’s better, now where was I? Ah yes, the conflagration. By 2:30 in the morning I was getting nervous. The candle should have burned through long ago. I was tempted to go downstairs to the basement and see what had happened. I couldn’t, of course, because it was vital that I be found in my bed when the whole thing went up. I could hear Lola still moving around downstairs. Even if the smoke detector was a puny one, she would hear it from down there wouldn’t she? By now it was 2:45 and I was having to summon all my willpower to keep from a Quandary-like attack of the conniptions. Finally, at ten of three, just as I was on the point of getting out of bed, waking the whole house and convicting myself in the process, I heard the electronic shrilling of the alarm, closely followed by Lola’s screams. By that point I could smell the smoke myself. Why it had taken so long, I don’t know. The only explanation I could come up with was that the smoke detector in the basement was not working and that it was not until the smoke reached the second smoke-detector, in the living room, that the alarm had gone off. Well, if nothing else, this should teach Norm the importance of maintaining one’s safety equipment.

I nestled myself further into my pillows, deepened my breathing and waited, rehearsing my bleariness, for someone to burst in and scream "Fire!" And waited. And waited. I could still hear Lola screaming downstairs, but her screams were getting fainter and fainter and were more and more frequently interrupted by coughing. The smoke was billowing under my door now, I could see it in the moonlight. Knowing Lola’s tastes in entertainment, it suddenly occurred to me that she had probably come back blitzed out of her brain on some cocktail of designer drugs and was unable to distinguish between the real flames and the hallucinations. I could hardly hear her any more. Perhaps no-one was going to wake me after all. I threw off the covers and pulled on my jeans. The leather felt clammy next to my skin.

The smoke downstairs was so thick that I could hardly see my hands when I held them in front of me. I found Lola crawling around at the base of the stairs, mumbling something about "fucking Josh" and "no hallucinations." This, I took it, was a complaint about what she took to be the chemical side-effects of her evening. I told her to take it up with the manufacturers and slung her over my shoulder. When I got the front door open, a great mass of smoke rushed out and the cool night air poured in like a river. I could hear a dull roar from the basement. Leaving the door open would only speed up the flames, but I would need the fresh air when I went back in. I dumped Lola on the lawn, where she resumed her mumbling, and jogged back to the front door. There was no sign of Norm or Jean yet. I took a deep breath and plunged back into the smoke. It was only by memory that I found the stairs. I felt my way up and discovered that the staircase wall was ominously hot to the touch. Everything was going much faster than I had expected. I stumbled to their bedroom door and felt for the handle. It seemed to take ages. I tried both sides of the door and still couldn’t find it. My eyes were streaming even though I kept them tightly closed – there was nothing to see anyway, the smoke was solid now. I made myself concentrate. The handle on my bedroom door had been fitted stylishly low. I fumbled lower and found it at once. The door swung open. I had expected fresher air, but the smoke was just as thick in the bedroom as it had been on the stairs.

I stumbled to the bed and shook the first limb I came to, yelling at the top of my voice for them to get up. They didn’t stir. Yelling made me cough and I pulled in a big lungful of smoke. I pulled at the body the limb was attached to and found I had hold of Norm. I almost dropped him and reached for Jean, but something made me pull him upright and sling him over my shoulder. He made weak little retching sounds and dribbled on my back, so I knew he wasn’t dead. Sitting back now in my extra wide seat, sipping this champagne, I still can’t decide why I carried Norm out first. Was it because I wanted to stage-manage my rescue of Jean? Was it that I didn’t think that I would be able to persuade myself to go back into the house if I had left Norm and not Jean behind? I suspect it is the latter, less creditable reason. I still have some of Quandary’s weaknesses. Feelings of responsibility, in this case.

In any event, I lugged Norm downstairs, pulled him through the front door and dropped him by his mumbling, crawling daughter. That was the moment when I realized that I hadn’t even checked Jean. She could have been asphyxiated already. What if I had just saved pusillanimous Norm and his trollopy daughter and left my darling to die? I went through the front door as if I had wings and ran straight into the edge of the open door to the living room. That’s where I picked up this charming shiner. The impact must have turned me round as well as knocking me out for a second, because when I came to I was looking straight up at the stuffed boar, no longer reproachful but burning. Some weird trick of the air currents had cleared the smoke for a moment and I could see flames shooting up the wall, licking around the boar’s tusks and shooting out of its nose as if it was breathing fire. I realized that I had been about to run in the wrong direction, away from the stairs instead of towards them. In my half-asphyxiated, semi-concussed state, it seemed to me that the boar was warning me not to. I reoriented myself and plunged back towards the stairs.

By now the dull sound I had heard from the basement was a full-throated roar. There were thuds and crashes all around me, things breaking loose in the flames, I suppose, although at the time I thought that the structural timbers of the house were giving way. This time, the bedroom door was open, so I made better time. I was running so fast when I hit the bed that I fell right on top of Jean. The air whooshed out of her and she coughed. It was the most wonderful noise I had ever heard. Everything was going to be alright. I pulled her up and threw her over my shoulder as I had done Norm and Lola. She seemed the heaviest of the lot, so I knew I was pretty close to collapsing myself. I staggered out of the bedroom, half slid, half fell down the stairs and then we were outside on the lawn and I was pulling in great heaving chestfuls of cool air and going into paroxysms of coughing as they hit my lungs. As soon as I could see straight, I got Jean over on her back and started to give her the kiss of life. She thrashed around weakly, coughed, and then took a big deep breath. "This was a sign" I told her as she choked and whooped, "that we were never meant to be separated. I stole your pen, you know, just to have the bite marks you had left in the plastic. It was my fault you had to screw the gardener." "What? What?" she was saying. I spoke more slowly. "We were never meant to be separated. This was a sign." "What? What?"

There were lots of sirens by now. Norm’s smoke detectors were all shrilling out the obvious, until one by one the flames silenced them. The police cars were hooting along the road and the fire engines were pulling into the drive, just missing the E-type, I noticed. Norm staggered over.

–– Is she OK? Is she OK??

–– She’s fine.

A fireman ran up to find out if anyone was still in the house.

–– No, they’re not and I tell you why. Because of this man! He saved us all from..

Having found out what he wanted, the fireman ran off again, interrupting Norm in mid-peroration. I just lay back on the cool grass with Jean’s hand in mine and watched the hoses play on the house as Norm’s praise washed over me. The garden was filling up with people. Truly, the aftermath of disaster reveals human frailty in the most wonderful way. All the neighbors were crowding onto Norm’s lawn, men and women in their best night clothes, trying to absorb the extraordinary by contiguity or to find reasons why such a thing could never happen to them. The firemen moved among them purposefully, oilskins and boots beside pajamas and slippers. The shadows from the flames flickered oddly on the wet grass and the burning timbers flavored the air agreeably with the tang of pine. In the flower bed under my window, I could see my bag, lying safely where I had dropped it. Despite some upsets my plan had worked out fairly well. All that remained now was to see if it had achieved its purpose. From beside me I heard Jean’s voice, still hoarse from the smoke.

–– A sign?

So she had heard what I was saying. Then everything was perfect. Criminal carelessness about that basement smoke detector, though. Someone could have been hurt. Another glass of champagne, I think, and we’ll be in Heathrow in an hour.

Read Part 1 | 2 i.) | 2 ii.) | 3i.) | 3ii.) 4.)

The next excerpt will be posted on www.shakespearechronicles.com next week. (Note – the sections in this version are slightly different than the chapters in the published book)

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