Chapter 9

He accepted another pint and took a pull at it.

“Of course, I had my own personal alchemist too.”

“You what?”

He was getting silly and he knew it. Exuberance and Hall and Woodhouse best bitter was a mixture to be wary of, but one of the first effects it had is to stop you being wary of things, and the point at which Arthur should have stopped and explained no more was the point at which he started instead to get inventive.

“Oh yes,” he insisted with a happy glazed smile. “It’s why I’ve lost so much weight.”

“What?” said his audience.

“Oh yes,” he said again. “The Californians have rediscovered alchemy. Oh yes.”

He smiled again.

“Only,” he said, “it’s in a much more useful form than that which in. . . ”

He paused thoughtfully to let a little grammar assemble in his head. “In which the ancients used to practise it. Or at least,” he added, “failed to practise it. They couldn’t get it to work you know. Nostradamus and that lot. Couldn’t cut it.”

“Nostradamus?” said one of his audience.

“I didn’t think he was an alchemist,” said another.

“I thought,” said a third, “he was a seer.”

“He became a seer,” said Arthur to his audience, the component parts of which were beginning to bob and blur a little, “because he was such a lousy alchemist. You should know that.”

He took another pull at his beer. It was something he had not tasted for eight years. He tasted it and tasted it.

“What has alchemy got to do,” asked a bit of the audience, “with losing weight?”

“I’m glad you asked that,” said Arthur. “Very glad. And I will now tell you what the connection is between. . . ” He paused. “Between those two things. The things you mentioned. I’ll tell you.”

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