The Sacred Combe Page 2

  At last the woman made a low exclamation expressive of understanding. ‘I do beg your pardon, sir,’ she said, cordially, ‘I had forgotten all about those. To be honest, we had given up hope.’ A very slight ponderousness suggested hale old age, and there was a thick provincial accent — but which accent?

  ‘So the work still needs doing?’

  ‘Well now,’ she said, hesitating. ‘He’s not told me otherwise. I shall have to ask, though.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ I said, casually, reassuringly. Then with a nervous laugh, I added, ‘I didn’t really expect it would. I thought I might be twenty years too late, or that the notice might be some sort of joke — it seemed such a strange place to put it.’

  She ignored this comment and said, slowly, ‘I’ll note down a few particulars.’ There was a pause as she looked for pen and paper. ‘Mr Browne, did you say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Then she made a sound with a questioning tone: ‘Ee?’ I wondered if it was an abbreviated question in the local dialect.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Do you have an “E”,’ she asked, irritably, ‘or did your forebears lose it along the way?’

  I laughed. ‘Yes, I have an “E”.’

  ‘Oh good.’ She sounded relieved. ‘Now, what about education?’

  ‘Yes — I mean — well — I have a degree in Physics and Philosophy, from Nottingham. A two-one.’

  ‘Phil-os-ophy,’ she murmured, writing. ‘Though whether they actually learn anything these days —’ then she added, sharply, ‘Occupation?’

  For a moment I was at a loss. Then I said, firmly, ‘Banker.’ I thought it was the sort of language she would understand. She gave a short ‘hm,’ that seemed to express resigned pity.

  ‘Interests?’

  Again I hesitated. ‘I am interested in many things,’ I began, stupidly, ‘even most things.’ Well, it was true.

  ‘In books, I hope,’ she snapped, then added, patiently, as if I were rather slow, ‘since you are applying for this position, I mean.’ I said that some books interested me, and others didn’t. ‘Some books,’ she murmured, ‘not others.’

  ‘And walking,’ I added, wondering what the reader of this lady’s report would think of me. ‘Hiking, I mean. And astronomy.’

  She gave a faint murmur of satisfaction as she finished writing. ‘Your feet will carry you around here as well as in most places,’ she said, ‘and we have our share of stars.’ I asked where the job was located. She told me the county, and added that they were ‘a bit out of the way.’ I asked her if she could tell me anything else about the work, but she replied that she thought all the details were clearly stated in the notice. Then she took my telephone number and said she would call back. ‘One last thing,’ she added. ‘Which book was it, and where did you get it from?’ I told her, and she wrote it down. She said that ‘he’ might be interested.

  Miss S. Synder called me back the following day to tell me that she had discussed my application with the gentleman who owned the library, and that, if I was sure that I wanted the position (she was insistent on this point), it was mine. I assented, and she gave me the name of a small railway station at which I was to present myself on the evening of the first Sunday in January (it was now the beginning of December). She told me the departure and arrival times of my train, and that someone would meet me. I asked her if there was anything I should bring.

  ‘Patience, and a head for heights,’ she replied, mysteriously. ‘And plenty of warm clothes.’

  3

  I decided to resign from my job. I was very polite — I did not mention the vacuum at all, but told my employers that I wanted to do some voluntary work for a while. One said that he could understand my wanting to ‘give something back’. As expected, I was not required to work out my notice — indeed, I was virtually thrown off the premises, albeit courteously. I finished the seventh volume of Gibbon with some difficulty and struggled with the opening chapter of the eighth — my allegiance to the flag was wavering, now that I saw another on the horizon.

  Christmas loomed, and then swept by painlessly in the presence of my family — a few games of chess with my silent and inscrutable brother, some earnest job advice from my father, and one undignified, brandy-fuelled outburst on the subject of Sarah to my sister and her husband. I returned to my own flat to find my P45 and the decree absolute on the doormat. Happy new year, Sam.

  I had bought a rickety suitcase in a junk shop — it bore the initials ‘E. G.’ for Gibbon, which made me smile. Into this case went half a dozen shirts, spare trousers, a couple of jumpers and a handful each of socks and underpants. On top I laid four of the remaining volumes of Gibbon, leaving the last one on the shelf: something to come back for. I added a pair of binoculars (for the stars), a couple of notebooks and a waterproof jacket.

  Sunday morning was bright, cold and still, and the outer door of the flat, formerly our flat, made a sharp sound like a pistol shot as I pulled it to (a farrier’s pistol, a putting out of misery, I fancied). The local railway station was a fine, Victorian structure, built where the line passed through a cutting. Every morning Sarah and I had stood together on that narrow platform awaiting the seven-twelve. On some mornings the cutting had filled with mist; on others it was bathed in low sunlight that shone on her newly-washed hair while wrens yammered in the trees above; and on yet others, rain had beaten down into it, so that most commuters crowded under the drumming iron roof, while she and I found shelter by flattening ourselves into one of the shallow brick arches that bordered the platform — for five minutes our own intimate domain. But over the past few months it was the panic that had settled here like a fog: I seemed still to hear her voice, lent a faint resonance by the walls of the cutting, and the crisp clip of her shoes on the steps. Now it was only my shoes that shifted restlessly, crunching the scattered grit.

  I crossed London on the tube, mounted onto the concourse of one of its great diesel-scented termini and boarded the long outbound train. At the door I turned for a moment, and found myself speaking out loud over the roar of the engine: ‘So long, you bastards,’ I said.

  There are many things from which we fly. Some we can escape; others, not. When we succeed in escaping, we feel surprised and a little afraid. When we fail, we feel resigned. That is my brief treatise on flight.

  I read a long paragraph of chapter forty-five for the third time. ‘... the lofty tree,’ it said, ‘under whose shade the nations of the earth had reposed, was deprived of its leaves and branches, and the sapless trunk was left to wither on the ground.’ A passenger sneezed, and I looked around the sealed carriage at the sleepy students and those silent, sharp-eyed elderly couples who seem as alert to the world as they are oblivious of each other. Slowly, unprofitably, I read the paragraph again, then turned to the window. Long shadows of trees and pylons reached over the sparse winter barley, and here and there a ghostly trail of frost lingered along a hedgerow. Details flashed past: a scrap of blue plastic half-submerged in deeply rutted mud, an old tree with a broken bough, a flock of starlings rising.

  The sun, having given his best for a few hours, was already slipping, glowing orange on faces and the backs of empty seats, as the train pulled into the last stop. After a chill half an hour on the platform, I boarded a second train which rattled me out across twilit fields and past looming copses. Then came another change, at a market town that I had heard of but never visited, and another chill half-hour wait. A two-carriage train shuffled into the tiny branch-line platform, with which it exchanged a few silent travellers.

  At each stop I peered out into the darkness, shielding my eyes from the carriage lights, in search of the name of the station. One seemed to have no name, and I suffered a moment of indecision, gripping my suitcase, poised to leap into the darkness. I stayed in my seat. Another few stops, and suddenly there it was — the sign illuminated by a dim lamp. I stepped down into the raw, windy evening, and the train rumbled away.

  I started on seeing a shadow at
the end of the platform, which I had thought deserted, but then its motionlessness made me sure it was just a post. As I turned towards the gate, however, it moved. It approached, and took the form of a rough-looking, denim-clad teenage boy with tangled red hair.

  ‘Misser Browne?’ he asked, casually. He led me out onto the narrow road, past a rusting, abandoned car that leaned into a ditch. How could the local council permit such an eyesore to remain there, I wondered, right outside the station? To my surprise, the boy opened the sloping boot of this wreck (it was a Ford Cortina, I think) and motioned for me to put my case into it. He then tipped himself into the driver’s seat and with a clattering roar the car lurched up onto the road. The passenger door swung open.

  The cold interior smelled fiercely of petrol and stale tobacco. I glanced across at the boy, trying to convince myself that he was old enough to drive legally — he smiled to himself in the gloom but said nothing as we drove fast along narrow lanes for several miles. After a while he pushed a cassette into the ancient dashboard and a muffled, metronomic dance-beat accompanied the heaving engine: he smiled again and drove slightly faster. Soon we bore down on a lamplit village green at the foot of a looming bank of hills, and as we passed the church the boy braked hard and turned onto an unsigned track that wound behind the churchyard, straight towards the black hillside. The car bumped and jolted on the grassy ruts and puddles that I could see in the beam of the single working headlight. We did not climb steeply as I had expected, and peering out of the window I realised that we had entered a narrow, steep-sided valley. Leafless hawthorn branches hung across the track from both sides and screeched against the windows as we passed.

  I had been unsettled by the post that moved and the abandoned wreck that was not abandoned: I have an adventurous disposition, I think, but now I was failing to make sense of my surroundings. I wanted to speak, to protest, but gripped my seat and said nothing. At last, about half a mile from the village, we reached a lonely stone cottage on the right, with a lamp over the door. The car stopped.

  ‘Here yer are,’ said the boy, in a friendly way. I thanked him and fumbled with my wallet. He shook his head, muttering, ‘I wunna get away with it.’ I retrieved my case, and held up my hand as he threw the car into a skilful five-point turn, paused to light a cigarette, and drove away, a dark shape against the bouncing beam of the headlight.

  The door of the cottage was opened by a tall, broad-shouldered, smiling woman who could only have been Miss Synder. Her steel-rimmed glasses were almost identical to my own, and her hair, rather greyer on the left and darker on the right, was neatly brushed back from a strong, finely lined forehead. She wore a sort of tunic of thick, plain dark wool with a matching skirt — but the austerity of this costume was, I noticed, relieved by a pair of fluffy blue slippers.

  She led me through a small, dark hallway and a low door into what I soon learned to call the parlour. Half a dozen assorted, threadbare rugs lapped and overlapped each other to cover the floor. A black oak table stood against one wall beneath a large brass wall lamp, and two armchairs faced the fireplace, whence a cosy warmth radiated though the air was cool. A cat dropped silently from a broad and well-pawed chair arm and studied me from under the table. Countless pictures covered the darkly papered walls — old photographs, watercolours, engravings, and a number of bold and incongruous charcoal sketches of figures and faces. A heavy, carved bookcase was crammed with paperbacks. Miss Synder took my coat, offered me the un-pawed chair, and brought me a glass of a hot, spicy punch or mulled wine.

  She had an air of serenity that allowed her to seem welcoming whilst speaking little and matter-of-factly. My place of employment was Combe Hall, a quarter of a mile further up the lane, at the head of the little valley or combe; I was to present myself there at nine o’clock the next morning; my employer was a Doctor Arnold Comberbache; breakfast was at eight.

  After a delicious supper of beef pie and another glass of punch, Miss Synder led me up a dark staircase to my bedroom, which was one of three. It was plainly furnished, dimly lit, and so cold that I could see faint wisps of vapour as I breathed.

  ‘Usually I only light the parlour fire and the stove,’ she said unapologetically, nodding towards a small unlit fireplace in the corner, beside which stood a coal scuttle and a neat pile of kindling. ‘You are very welcome to sit in the parlour of an evening, but it’s as you wish.’

  Three books stood on a shelf beside the bed — there was something deliberate about their presence, and I stooped to read the spines: J. L. Carr’s A Month in the Country, the Rev. E. Donald Carr’s A Night in the Snow, and Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm. I unpacked my case rather hastily and undressed, shivering. The sheets were stony cold as I climbed into bed, but there were two heavy blankets and I soon warmed up. As my body settled and my breathing slowed, I became aware of the exquisite silence. I could hear the microscopic stirring of my cheek against the cool pillow as I breathed, and the slowing pulse of my blood, and nothing else.

  I wondered which horrors I had successfully escaped, and which might have followed me to this mysterious retreat.

  4

  I awoke to see a faint, pre-dawn glimmer around the heavy curtains, and felt a little rush of excitement as I drew the sharp, cold air into my lungs and remembered where I was. To my relief, there was a spluttering shower with hot water in the downstairs bathroom; I also had a tiny basin in my bedroom. The parlour fire was already crackling merrily as Miss Synder brought scrambled eggs, toast and tea, and sat down with me for breakfast.

  I asked her how long she had lived at the cottage. ‘At least as long as you imagine,’ she replied, cheerfully, but without elaborating. After a while she added, as though to change the subject, ‘I don’t get a paper here, and the radio reception is not up to much. It’s best in the kitchen,’ she confided in a mildly disapproving tone, ‘if you ever want to catch the news.’ Then she seemed to remember something, went to the hall and brought back a small electric torch. ‘Always carry this in your coat pocket,’ she said, handing it to me. ‘You’ll need it in the evenings.’

  After breakfast, I drew back the curtains in my bedroom to reveal a misty morning. The window was divided by a single stout mullion into two iron-framed casements which, though fastened shut, exuded coldness. I could see a small, sloping, frosty back garden, with a couple of fine old plum trees and a little greenhouse. Beyond, the hillside mounted steeply into the mist in a sombre wall of bare, twisted trees and dead bracken.

  At ten to nine, muffled up in coat, hat and scarf, I slipped the iron door key into my coat pocket and started cautiously along the frozen track. After a few steps I stopped at the sudden, weird sound of a robin, singing from a bony elbow of hawthorn not ten feet away. He fixed his bright, black eye just over my shoulder and sang with astonishing quietness — a thin, intimate whisper of beauty that only he and I could hear. The vibrations stirred the tiny feathers of his throat, whose colour, a soft, cinnamon orange, made me think of the noblest tones of ancient tapestries, and so seemed to lend that tiny, fragile, short-lived creature an air of grandeur and wisdom. After a few seconds he flew to the next tree and sang again, a tiny puff of colour leading me into the white morning. I followed along the track, delighted.

  I could hear the subdued gurgle of a stream to my left, and occasionally glimpsed its frost-crusted banks over the mossy wall. Blood-red haws lingered on the twigs that hung over the track, and a few dog-roses held up sprays of fat, scarlet hips on groping branches. After I had walked a few hundred yards I caught a sudden smell of wood-smoke on the air, and the robin disappeared up the hillside. I wiped the mist from my glasses and continued.

  The track curved to the right and then turned sharply left towards a graceful stone bridge, about eight feet wide and with no parapets, that crossed the stream in a single low span. Above the bridge was a sort of archway of ivy-clad branches, which confused me until I drew nearer and realised that it was a clever illusion: one ash tree on the far left side of the brid
ge, and another on the near right, each extended a long branch which, though parallel and separate, appeared from the track to meet in a perfect gothic arch over the bridge. How such a thing could have been contrived, I could not imagine.

  The smooth slabs of the bridge were slippery, and it was not until I reached the other side that I looked up into the mist before me: I drew an arrow of sharp air into my lungs as the first of my revelations of place found its mark.

  The track ended at two stout columns that marked an opening in a very low, curved wall. Beyond this reared the front of a beautiful and ancient house, seen obliquely: I could faintly distinguish vast, mullioned windows of many lights, and three high gables loomed against the sky. In front of the house, to the left as I looked, there towered an enormous beech whose highest branches were lost in the mist. One mighty silver bough, a yard wide at its base, reached low towards the house for a great distance over a bare and moss-darkened expanse of gravel.

  I walked through the gateway (there was no gate), gazing always up at the house as I approached. It was not as large as that first glance had painted it: two great windows to the left of the door and one even greater to the right, and these three repeated above with slightly reduced height, and again in a trio of much smaller windows in the gables.

  The single oak door was fantastically wide though of modest height, shaped at the top in a low gothic arch that the branches over the bridge had neatly prefigured. Beside it grew the twisted trunk of an ancient Virginia creeper, whose tendrils spread a vast leafless web over the pale yellow stone, around the door and the window high above it. The doorstep was worn into a shallow curve, as though sagging under the weight of years.

  I stopped before the step. The air carried a damp, mossy, wintry smell. The silence was broken by the long, hoarse scream of some unfamiliar bird in a distant treetop. The house, the beech and Sam Browne stood together in the mist: substantial in that otherwise ethereal morning — but they were ancient and majestic beside my clumsy insignificance, sure of themselves beside my doubt. With the reluctance of an intruder, I lifted the heavy iron knocker and let it fall twice. The sound seemed to wake me from my bewilderment: I stepped back, straightened myself and attempted an enthusiastic smile. After a long pause I heard a heavy latch being lifted and the door swung back to reveal the welcoming but unexpected figure of Miss Synder herself, whom I thought I had left in her cottage just a few minutes before.