The Sacred Combe Page 9

  Wondering to what golden age of visitors Meaulnes had alluded, I now entered a small, square orchard with rickety espaliers of apple or pear and other short, gnarly trees, all now bare and grey. Rows of shrivelled and nibbled apples lined the path, which led to another door opening on the beech grove that Rose had showed me. I picked my way through the dewy mast and the first tiny, peeping, deluded bulb-shoots to the bridge over the eddying stream.

  I crossed over carefully (remember — no parapets) and began to climb the stepped path that slanted up the hillside. Diverse and beautiful trees reared up on both sides, and I soon passed between the two giant Wellingtonia redwoods that could be seen from far down the valley. These dwarfed a weird cypress with long weeping tresses and a low, dark, tangled conifer that sprawled fifty feet along the slope. I continued upward through a stand of pale firs and another of scaly Scots pines, catching occasional glimpses down through the silvery crowns of the beech grove to the house, the lawn and the crisscrossing garden walls.

  I soon reached a junction over which a sinister eucalypt crouched, with curved, ghostly-white boughs like heaped whalebones. One path traversed left around the hill and another climbed up to the right. Keen to gain height, I began up the right-hand, northward fork, but then remembered the doctor saying that the temple faced south, turned back and took the level path (my first choice, I later learned, was the public right of way that joined the ridge-top path at the wooden post). As I stepped over the slippery roots extended by small, mossy oaks and sycamores, a flicker of movement caught my eye and I saw a squirrel scamper along a branch — not the fat London variety but a little brownish creature with tufty ears and a wispy, off-white tail — my first red squirrel.

  The path now passed among a cluster of boulders around which a pool of damp, chilly air seemed to have settled. I happened to glance around the corner of the largest boulder as I passed, and froze in my tracks. Beyond a gap no more than two feet wide, which I might easily have missed, there rose a steep, narrow stair, straight up the wooded hillside, vanishing to a point in the distant trees: on the first step was a perfectly circular ring of moss growing in a carved groove.

  I stared for a few seconds and then began to climb, pushing aside the vegetation that crowded up both sides — brambles and ivy and bare saplings of birch and rowan clinging to the slope. Each step was high and narrow, so that I was tempted to use my hands as though on a ladder, but I climbed steadily and tried to forget the straight drop behind.

  After a hundred steps or more, I reached the security of a small square platform where the stair turned to the left. I now looked back and down but could see only a few glimpses of the valley between the tops of pine trees that grew thickly below. Gorse crowded the slope above, its spines piercing even the thick sleeve of my coat as I pushed aside encroaching branches to follow the now-curving stair.

  At last, as I climbed to the level of the highest treetops and the gorse fell back on either side, I became aware of the yawning sky and of clear horizons behind me and to each side. I followed my own jagged shadow up the last few steps and looked up: the Temple of Light blazed before me in the sun.

  3

  At first I saw a small, symmetrical façade of deep yellow stone with a gracefully curved and pointed gable, and a narrow black double door whose pediment was curved and pointed to match the roof. It was only as I drew nearer and stepped to one side that I perceived the great jutting prow, like a tapered blade of stone projecting from the gable above my head, its outermost point bearing two vertical iron prongs — to conduct lightning, perhaps — and supported by a pillar of black stone that was so polished and so improbably slender that I at once curved my hand around its cold surface in wonder.

  I turned and looked out at the view, which was all sky: beyond the tops of those cunning, concealing pines, the hazy grey horizon swept unhindered from north-east, through south, to north-west. Only to the north, behind the temple, a steep bank of gorse reared up thirty feet towards the flattening, unobserving plateau of Grey Man.

  The temple was surrounded by a neat, narrow sward of green, grazed short by rabbits or birds, and peering around the long east side I saw a row of circular stone tablets set into the grass. The first two were very old and weathered, but the text had been carefully maintained and was still legible:

  Hartley Stillwell Newton Comberbache 1735 – 1782

  Sarah Louise Comberbache 1745 – 1821

  The other six tablets looked more recent and were cut in a slightly different stone. Below are the names and dates they bore:

  Samuel Thomas Comberbache 1772 – 1837

  Samuel Sebastian Comberbache 1898 – 1917

  Catherine Sarah Comberbache 1875 – 1918

  Geoffrey Hughes Comberbache 1897 – 1966

  Stella Louise Comberbache 1900 – 1975

  Margaret Joy Comberbache 1935 – 1984

  Seeing these half-familiar names carved in stone, these graves, if graves they were, of characters hitherto confined to paintings and brief stories and faded spidery notes, now crossed by snails and warmed by my own January sun, seemed to transmute the entire combe from vision to chill reality — to transmute the doctor himself (a snail would one day be crossing his name), and even to work the same change in my own confused identity.

  I pushed back the panic and accounted for the names one by one: spirited Stella and Geoffrey Hughes were Arnold’s parents, of course. Catherine was his grandmother, Samuel Sebastian his organ-scholar uncle. Samuel Thomas must be the book-inscribing son for whom the birds would not sing — but why was his stone not weathered like his parents’? Because after his death the temple was forgotten. Stella must have laid the stone when she rediscovered it. As for the other ancestors, they were presumably buried in the churchyard, as M’Synder had intimated.

  This stream of easy inferences was arrested by the last name: Margaret Joy had died aged forty-nine, and was the doctor’s sister, or his wife. Both her names were new to the family, I noticed, and this together with Arnold’s ring made me suspect the latter tie. A folly, I had called this place: I winced at the thought.

  The neat row of eight stones suggested an exclusive alliance beyond the mere sharing of an outlandish name — Stella had laid stones for her beloved mother and brother but not her father, and of course Hartless the rector and his wife were absent. This thought lifted my glance back to the temple itself, which invited exploration. I returned to the pedimented entrance, turned the handle — a wrought iron wheel in the shape of the rayed sun — and the narrow door swung inward.

  I stood in a small, dark vestibule (this particular word arose in my mind, perhaps, because whilst diligently thumbing pages a few days earlier I had learned that it has a surprising anatomical application). Tiny circular windows on each side provided the only light, by which I discerned a few tools (shears, a lantern, a small stepladder) standing in one alcove, and in the other a deep stone shelf bearing a leatherbound book or journal and boxes of candles and matches. With my face tingling from the sudden stillness of the air, I removed my hat, turned another wheel-handle on the single door before me and advanced into the sacred interior.

  The Temple of Light was in as short supply of that commodity as its antechamber, and I stood blinking in the gloom while my eyes adjusted. A long space like a nave opened into a circular sanctum, the whole encircled by a stone seat around the wall (imagine the shape of a keyhole — such was the temple’s plan). The floor was of plain, smooth flagstones, with a narrow central band of inlaid darker stone that glinted oddly and corresponded to a massive dark beam overhead, supporting arching ribs of vaulting along each side. A shallow, curved step led down to the circular floor of the sanctum, whose flagstones were great segments of the circle. At the centre, in place of an altar, I caught the ghostly glimmer of a pool of water. The roof of the sanctum was a beautifully vaulted dome, bisected by the dark beam just as the floor and pool were bisected by the inlaid band — these two strong lines were connected by a buttress of black ston
e at the north end, which the curving seat joined on either side.

  Is my description of any use? I try to be precise (the temple demands it), but words are a poor vehicle for carrying the peculiar weights and shapes of architecture. I feel like the doctor’s delivery boy optimistically loading baskets of eggs onto that bicycle, whose springs, however ingenious, will not protect them on the combe’s rutted track. What you, the reader, really need — if you cannot find your way to the temple yourself — is a picture. You need a Piranesi, not a Samuel Browne; but you will have to make do with whatever broken remnants my words convey.

  At first I thought the sanctum had no windows (the dim light was from long horizontal slots latticed with plain glass, high on the walls of the nave behind deep sills), but as I sat for a moment on the seat I noticed two very long, very narrow, horizontal slits, one curving round each side. I leaned to peer into one, and found that it was set with dozens of black iron fins that reached the considerable thickness of the wall. As I moved my head, a tiny square of radial light flickered along these fins, while the rest of the slit was dark. Just below each slit a band of brass was fixed to the wall, set with a polished stud or boss at each end and one in the middle, and engraved with a frieze of devices representing the changing seasons.

  I stood up, frowning, and immediately noticed some cords neatly stowed along the roof-beam and hooked against the buttress. I reached up and my hand closed on something cold and hard and brought down a many-faceted sphere of glass or crystal, around which the two cords were carefully bound. This I lowered in its natural arc until it hung in space, right over the pool, where both the crystal and my hand were suddenly bathed in a cold light. I gently released it, stepped back up into the nave, and gave a little chuckle of wonder: a glittering point of light hovered in the gloom. It was not bright, but ghostly and utterly compelling, shedding little flickering flecks of colour like a low star. Here was Light — the thing itself, and not the mere icon of M’Synder’s church. After carefully lifting the crystal back onto its hook and one last look back (in which I suppose wonder was mingled with smug satisfaction at my powers of observation), I returned to the blinding open air.

  But my first visit to the temple was not quite over. On the top step of that long, steep stair back to the valley I stopped, flung out, it seemed, from meticulous sanctuary into chaos — into a blank flood of sunlight, of rushing air and unbounded space. The long sweep of the horizon circled me like the cut of a whip, and I was ambushed by memories of Sarah. I remembered the smell of the crown of her head, the way she closed her eyes and parted her lips, her words lined up neatly on a sheet of paper, her quick heels on the platform steps: it was as though I had slipped that famous forbidden ring onto my finger, had surrendered to the sweeping gaze, the groping hand — for a moment I let the panic claim me.

  I turned with a start to the temple, and felt suddenly ashamed — that I had picked over it coolly like a tourist, when I should have sought refuge and guidance like the desperate pilgrim I was. I would go back in, just briefly, and bow my head.

  As I opened the door I noticed vaguely that the slender shadow of the pillar, which before had striped one side of the door (the sole flaw in the temple’s ruthless symmetry) now fell almost straight down the middle. I thought nothing of it, closed the doors solemnly behind me and sank onto the cold seat at the side of the nave.

  Why didn’t I fight for my wife? Why not pursue her, confront her, beg her to come back? Why not act? Perhaps those questions occurred to you as you followed my account. But now you have read the words that were lined up on the sheet of paper I held over the immaculately-made bed on that placid, unremarkable August evening: now perhaps you understand. She was lost. But how could I start again, if such was my task, without knowing where I had gone wrong?

  That I had gone wrong — supported the wrong cause, followed the wrong dream — I could hardly deny; but it was this idea of starting again that summoned the galloping hooves of panic. I sometimes caught myself imagining that my life was just a casual experiment, a comic sideshow to the noble and profound centrepiece that must be proceeding already behind some curtain of heavy velvet. But no, this hunched ignoramus was the only Samuel Browne, and he must start again. I looked down at my bony fingers.

  A bright sliver of light sliced straight down the floor of the temple, and I started, thinking that someone had opened the door — but it was shut. The sliver intensified, and then began to multiply: little sharp daggers of light crept over the floor and the walls. A dazzling flare erupted on the far wall and then vanished, as a reflected beam crossed my face. I relaxed my startled grip on the edge of the seat and slowly rose to my feet, the sudden fear that I was not alone subsiding before a rising certainty that I was indeed alone, alone and yet cradled within this silent, glittering sanctuary that was not, after all, a miracle but merely a triumphant exposition of thought, calculation and craft. I began to lose my sense of space, as stone surrendered its own identity to the service of light, whose silent gliding fragments constructed their own impossible space around the blinding axis of the main beam. This steadily broadened and intensified until it seemed that the temple and the earth itself were splitting in two.

  4

  ‘A keyhole, yes!’ said the doctor, slowly pacing the long library carpet with a cup of green tea. ‘Well observed. And the turning sun is, of course, the key.’

  I had left the temple the second time feeling, I suppose, something like the euphoria of the born-again believer. I was not sure what I now believed, but I had faced the sweeping horizon joyfully this time and descended the stair with swift, precise steps. Now the curtains hung between a restless, windy dusk and the patient library, whose grandeur had astonished me anew when I returned from my expedition.

  ‘Hartley’s design is based on the principle of confinement,’ he continued, setting down the cup and placing his palms almost together, with a tiny gap between them. ‘A man’s eye is accommodative, like his heart — bathe it in light and the pupil contracts and becomes insensitive; but wrap it in gloom and it dilates — invites sensation and responds with rapturous intensity. By confining the sun’s light to the narrowest of paths and then splintering it into a dark space, he celebrates the glories of both phenomenon and witness.’

  ‘So the worship of light is a worship of sensation?’ I asked.

  ‘Not sensation alone,’ he replied. ‘Every visitor to the temple wants to know how it works: it offers a spectacle and demands thought in return. This faithful alliance of sensation and reason, under which neither one deceives the other, is the alliance of Truth — and geometry is perhaps its purest manifestation.’

  ‘I begin to see how it works,’ I said, falteringly.

  ‘Of course you do,’ he snapped back, ‘you’re a lapsed physicist and astronomer.’

  ‘The radial fins I understand,’ I began, ‘and the brass calendars on which the beams of the rising and setting sun will shine. The dark band was of some crystalline stone, perhaps set with glass to scatter the light. But the giant prow —’ I paused, frowning.

  ‘Confinement!’ he cried. ‘It is not enough to have a narrow slit in the roof — the confinement must have depth. So much depth that you didn’t even notice it though you walked right beneath it.’

  ‘But the winter sun is too low,’ I pursued, dissatisfied. ‘It seemed to be streaming through the door, but the door was shut.’

  The doctor cocked his eyebrow critically. ‘You did not, perhaps, notice the vertical slit in the buttress at the north end.’

  I obeyed the unspoken command to think. ‘Which conceals a narrow strip of mirror,’ I suggested, quietly.

  He smiled. ‘Imperceptibly curved to produce the sweeping beam. My parents had to replace some of the optics, of course, but they had all the original plans and sections. Once you see them you will quickly grasp the design.’

  As the doctor paced back and forth along the carpet, I noticed that on reaching the fireplace he turned his shoe on the sam
e spot every time, and here the fibres were almost worn through by his years of sporadic restlessness. He must have followed my gaze as I watched him approach the abrasion, for he paused on that spot and said, quietly, ‘Confinement again, Mr Browne — limit the damage to one place if you can. There it can be measured, at least, if not mended.’ As he turned and walked on his gaze seemed to flicker, just for a moment, towards the locked door in the corner of the room.

  The following day was just as windy but grey and much colder, and by the time I walked back to the cottage in the evening the wind was swirling around the combe in long, fearsome gusts whose approach I could hear in the trees well before they washed over me, flinging sharp sleet. Later, as I tried to sleep, one of the plum trees groaned sadly at the onset of each gust and I was reminded of a grim painting in a London gallery — a couple take their wedding vows on a human skull behind which glimmers a four-word inscription: We Behowlde Ower Ende.

  I stepped outside the next morning and nearly slipped over on a patch of ice. I began to pick my way carefully along the track but soon slipped again, and then again. The freeze had settled itself into the combe like a dragon gloating sleepily on its spoils, silencing the stream and dismaying even the bravest of the birds so that all I could hear were my own tentative footsteps and the last satisfied sighs of the storm circling the valley. Glassy traps lurked malevolently in every chink and hollow of the lane awaiting the careless heel, and my body gradually stiffened with its own nervousness (which is distinct from that of the mind) as though it were itself surrendering to the frost.

  The doctor stood at his hearth, wearing a woollen cap with comical earflaps that fastened under his chin — a garb for which he apologised, saying he was fighting off a cold. The fire was stacked high with logs which cracked and spat ferociously as I told him of my difficulties in the lane.