The Sacred Combe (6 page)

This time the doctor opened the door. Music was still playing softly through the house — again a lone cello, but something different that I did not recognise. It produced a vaguely expectant atmosphere that reminded me of my parents' rare dinner parties when I was a child, when my mother had put on perfume but the guests had not yet arrived. I felt rather flattered as I performed the now-familiar ritual of hanging up my hat and coat, and the doctor led me through a different door, on the right this time, into a splendid panelled parlour.

‘Sherry?' he asked, fetching two glasses from a corner cabinet. He lifted a decanter from a row of at least a dozen standing on a long side table.

A number of fine but well-worn upholstered chairs of different designs and periods stood in a semicircle around the fire, which was flanked by two cosy-looking corner seats below narrow windows on either side of the massive chimneypiece. There, set into the ornate marble relief and dominating the room, hung an allegorical painting of two women. One, spectacularly naked, upheld in her hand the sun, which shone on her white skin and fair, windswept hair, and the open white gown flung about her shoulders. The other cowered at her feet in supplication, wrapped in a heavy mantle of dark blue, shielding her eyes.

‘That was one of the many locations where the arms of the Kempe family were proudly displayed until Hartley made his alterations,' said the doctor, handing me a crystal glass. I was aware of him watching me as I studied the painting. ‘These were added later, of course,' he added, pointing to two huge landscapes on the opposite wall: nineteenth century depictions of the sublime. One showed sunlight breaking through sweeping clouds over a mountain pass; the other, a red sunset beyond a lake surrounded by distant, jagged peaks, with a mass of storm clouds rolling in. ‘I call them
Hope
and
Despair
,' he said, as we sat down by the fire.

‘It must be a valuable collection,' I suggested, sipping the dry sherry, trying to look at ease but feeling like an undergraduate at the vice-chancellor's lodgings.

‘It is valuable to me,' he replied, simply. ‘If you mean that it could be a target for thieves, yes it could — but it is not, because they don't know about it. Believe it or not, very few people know that we exist, here in the combe.'

‘I do believe it,' I said, laughing. At that moment I heard the soft click of the door opening, and turned in my chair.

‘Ah, Rose is here,' said the doctor, rising. I sprang up too, as Rose, she whom I had earlier seen in the hall, entered the room.

The second thing I noticed about her, in that instant of meeting face to face, was that she was very young — a girl and not the eligible woman I had imagined. How old? It seems we men (forgive us!) are naturally incapable of guessing a girl's age once she has become
nubilis
. I later learned, however, that she was seventeen.

Before I noticed her youth, I saw the scar. It ran down from her temple to the middle of her cheek, dark and irregular, slightly distorting the corner of her right eye. She had sharp, pretty features, and her green irises had that rare iridescent colouring that makes eyes intense and disquieting — but of course her beauty only magnified the horror of the scar. My response to it was not that uncomfortable blend of tender, useless pity for the child and indignation at the pitiless world that one feels on seeing a small child in a wheelchair — her calm, proud eyes seemed to forbid pity, and instead I felt a kind of solemn admiration, as for one who carries with dignity a burden of grief or regret. She nodded a greeting to the doctor, and then looked at me steadily, as a young child looks.

‘Allow me to present Rose, my ward,' said the doctor. ‘Rose, this is Mr Browne, the man from London.'

‘How do you do,' I said, as though I were in a novel, which is how I felt after this introduction. Her hand was very cold.

‘Welcome to the combe, Mr Browne,' she said, in a soft, relaxed voice — her accent was keenly clipped, like the doctor's. She wore a short tunic dress with a dark bluish print and tiny beads sewn into the neckline, with dark red tights and black court shoes. He handed her a glass of a darker sherry, and we resumed our seats.

‘Rose has been staying with friends for the new year,' said the doctor. ‘She gets rather bored here, I'm afraid.'

‘I do, sometimes,' she said. ‘So do you.' The doctor shrugged and smiled. ‘So will poor Mr Browne,' she added, ‘I am sure. How long are you staying, poor Mr Browne?'

I hesitated. ‘Until the job is done, I hope,' I replied, glancing at the doctor. ‘I expect it will take a month or so.' He was holding up his glass, watching the flames through the pale sherry, and said nothing. ‘Maybe you could show me around the valley,' I suggested. ‘So far I've only seen it in the mist and in the dark!'

Rose took an adolescent gulp from her sherry and winced. She was sitting with her scar towards me. ‘That would be fun,' she answered, in a level voice that almost suggested, but did not quite suggest, sarcasm.

There were questions that I would have liked to ask, but felt I could not, and this left me with nothing to say. At last, the doctor came to the rescue.

‘Mr Browne is an astronomer,' he said, ‘so you must show him the star-tree. I believe the Quadrantids are upon us this week, are they not, Mr Browne?'

‘Yes,' I said, enthusiastically, glad to be steered into familiar territory. ‘The maximum occurs on the third or fourth — probably early tomorrow morning. To be honest, I've never had much luck with them.'

‘You could be forgiven for being less patient with a winter display,' he said. ‘Did I tell you that Hartley was an astronomer? Our night skies are the darkest in England.'

‘And the cloudiest,' added Rose, quietly. ‘Besides, there is no view to the north, south or west.'

‘Not from the valley, perhaps,' I replied, impressed by her quickness, ‘but your Grey Man would make a first-class observatory.' At this suggestion, Rose seemed to glance at the doctor, whose face was frozen in a particularly pained smile.

‘Indeed,' he said, after a pause, and drained his glass. Then the clear, distant note of a dinner gong sounded, and he got slowly to his feet. ‘I hope you are both hungry,' he said, and we followed him to the dining room.

I barely recognised it as the room where the doctor and I had taken our simple lunch. Now the table was like a golden pool, glowing softly in the darkness and laid with silver and crystal. Four narrow candle flames flickered as we entered, and then stood upright — the only other light was a dim orange glow from the fireplace. M'Synder was laying out three steaming bowls of soup.

‘Thank you, M'Synder,' said the doctor, in a low voice. ‘This is a rare treat.' M'Synder bowed and left the room. The doctor sat in his usual place at the head of the table, and Rose and I faced each other on the two sides.

‘Rose, I believe it is your turn to say Grace,' said the doctor, gently laying his napkin across his lap. Rose nodded, lowered her eyes, paused a moment for dramatic effect, and then gave a peculiar recitation:

‘J'étais sûr de moi,' she began, with a perfect, precise accent, ‘sûr de tout, plus sûr que
lui
—' she paused on that word and seemed to nod almost imperceptibly towards me ‘— sûr de ma vie et de cette mort qui allait venir. Oui, je n'avais que cela. Mais du moins, je tenais cette vérité autant qu'elle me tenait.'

The doctor smiled quizzically, as though trying to place the words, then nodded with approval and picked up his spoon. Without further comment or explanation, we began to eat.

8

‘Banks,' said the doctor suddenly, after M'Synder had cleared the bowls, and as she poured wine from a tall carafe. ‘M'Synder tells me you work for one.'

‘I did,' I replied, warily. ‘I resigned. In fact, I resigned when I secured this position.' The doctor looked surprised.

‘Should I be flattered,' he asked, ‘that my humble little notice so dramatically interrupted a lucrative career, or do you merely have an impulsive nature? Or, and this seems more likely, were you on the lookout for an excuse, an avenue of escape?'

I was determined not to mention Sarah. The twin forces that had driven me to the combe, the panic and the vacuum, seemed more absurd and tawdry than ever. And yet, for the first time, I felt tempted at that moment to consider my ruined marriage as a kind of resource, an unsuspected arrow of experience in my youthful quiver. You idiot, Browne, I thought.

‘That is a fair assumption,' I said. ‘I don't intend to return to my old career.' You, the reader, may recall the ticking air conditioner and the curved bank of screens on which, in a hundred different places, the time advanced by one minute. I had worked fifty hours a week at the bank for three years — it had been my only so-called permanent job (a grim but misleading designation) — so you probably expect me to tell you more about it. There is no more.

‘What will you do, then,' asked Rose, simply, ‘after you leave the combe?'

‘I don't know,' I replied. I remembered that last volume of Gibbon standing on the shelf in London: the plan for the rest of my life stopped there. ‘What about you?' I asked quickly, hearing the galloping hooves of the panic approaching. ‘What do you want to do?' I was getting used to her steady, defiant gaze.

‘I'll either go to art college,' she said, ‘or join the Navy.' I smiled and glanced at the doctor, but he was nodding earnestly. ‘Which do you think I should choose?' she demanded.

‘Come now,' chided the doctor, ‘that's not fair — Mr Browne has only just met you.' M'Synder re-entered with a tray bearing a magnificent roast pheasant, which she placed at the foot of the table and began expertly to carve. Rich smells of game and bacon diffused through the cool air. ‘Save some good cuts for yourself,' said the doctor, as she served. He and I each received a leg and some tender slivers of wing, and Rose was given two splendid, long, wafer-thin cuts of breast.

‘A happy new year to you all,' said the doctor, raising his glass. M'Synder acknowledged her inclusion in this toast with a silent nod, and left us.

‘I hardly feel that I've earned such a feast by searching through a few books,' I said, as we began to eat. ‘I am certain that this unfortunate bird would agree.'

‘Ah, she would be a generous and a foolish creature who conceded the justice of her own consumption!' countered the doctor. ‘But if you find your quarry in the library, as I fully expect, and if it is what I believe it to be, you will have earned pheasant, goose, swan — albatross if you desire it!' He waved his fork expansively.

‘Wouldn't that bring bad luck?' I said, lightly. There was a moment's silence, and Rose glanced at the doctor.

‘Are you superstitious, then, Mr Browne?' she asked, with a hint of accusation in her voice.

‘I don't think so,' I replied, with a nervous smile. The doctor returned the smile reassuringly but said nothing, and we ate for a while in silence.

‘You are searching for Arnold's precious letter, I suppose,' said Rose, later, rising to refill our glasses. I nodded. ‘Well, I don't believe you'll find it,' she said, standing over me with the carafe, ‘if it even exists. But don't let that stop you.'

The doctor sighed wearily, as though this were an old topic. ‘We won't,' he murmured.

There followed a rich pudding with cream, and port for the doctor and me. The fire had died to a mound of faint embers, and the chill of the night began to creep into the high, shadowy spaces of the room. I felt a little tipsy, and guessed that Rose, who now spoke little, did too.

‘I suggest that we all retire at this point,' said the doctor, suddenly, having drained his glass, ‘before the brandy bowls beckon. We men must work tomorrow.'

‘I'll go and help M'Synder,' said Rose, pushing back her chair sharply.

‘Leave that to me,' he said, pushing back his own. ‘You can accompany Mr Browne back to the cottage, and M'Synder will follow shortly.' Rose shrugged, indifferent.

A fine, drizzling sleet glittered in the torch-beams and prickled our faces as we crossed the bridge. Rose walked with quick, easy steps on the cracked stones, and I loped to keep up.

‘So you live in M'Synder's little cottage, while the doctor has that enormous house all to himself,' I said, half joking, half curious. It was the only one of my questions that seemed broachable.

‘Yes,' she replied. After a while she added, ‘I used to live in the house, years ago, but I didn't like it. It —' she hesitated. ‘It's a sad, gloomy old place.'

‘I thought you were going to say it was haunted,' I said, and then added, mischievously, ‘but of course you are not superstitious.' She hurried on in silence, looking down into the bobbing torchlight. The lamp over the cottage door appeared faintly ahead.

‘A house does not need ghosts to be haunted,' she said at last, without turning. ‘Memory is enough, if there's someone left to remember.'

As I lay in the absolute darkness of my room, listening to the thin, whispering patter of sleet against the window and waiting calmly for my body to warm the sheets, I thought of Rose just a few yards away at the other end of the little landing, warming her own sheets with a slender young body, and felt a pleasant glimmer of sensuality that seemed wholesomely disinterested. Then I thought of her unexplained words, and of the doctor, alone in that great empty house in the softly sleeting combe, turning out the light in some high-ceilinged bedchamber, his face pained in the darkness, remembering.