The Sacred Combe (2 page)

I turned to the title page. ‘
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
by Edward Gibbon. A new edition, 1825. Printed for Thos. McLean, Jas. Goodwin, W. Sharpe & sons, G. & J. Robinson, also R. Griffin & Co., Glasgow & J. Cumming, Dublin.'

Now I had heard of this Gibbon, author of the pre-eminent masterpiece of English historical writing. I knew nothing about the subject, except for a puerile idea that the Romans had spread themselves out too thinly, like not enough butter on a slice of toast, but this was my chance to learn (I will return to the subject of my own ignorance later). In the margin of every page were the author's prompts to guide his readers through the massive river of prose. One page held a large folded map of the empire. A neat pencil inscription on the flyleaf stated:
12 vols complete. £200.
Even the fat, round figure of the price, and its grand excess over what I had expected to spend, appealed to me. I placed the book on a chair and began to take down the remaining volumes — three at a time, for I have large hands.

2

A few weeks after my wife's disappearance, or flight, I received a letter in which she expressed sympathy and concern about the shock I must have suffered, and asked whether I was adjusting to life without her. She wrote that she herself was feeling ‘very strange' but had no regrets. She wanted to begin divorce proceedings as soon as possible, and, admitting (irreproachable, as ever) that she had no legal grounds on which to divorce me, she asked whether I would mind if she falsely cited ‘unreasonable behaviour'. This would allow us both to ‘put this all behind us' as quickly as possible.

I stared at those two words, ‘this all' — a clumsy appellation for three happy years of marriage preceded by another three of passion and fidelity at university; for anxiously awaited phonecalls, joyful reunions, acts of selfless devotion on both sides; for aberrations of meanness or thoughtlessness fiercely regretted; for holidays and plans and stoic smiles on Monday mornings; for lives that chose to be defined by each other. But, after all, I could hardly expect her to be the Woman of Words as well. It occurred to me that my allegiance to that supernatural love-entity could indeed be described, with hindsight, as unreasonable behaviour. But she had been just as guilty of that — a cascade of now-incomprehensible snatches of memory allowed no doubts about it: Sarah had loved me.

I replied briefly (c/o her mother, as instructed) that she might do, say, cite as she pleased. How irreproachably correct of her to choose the medium of letters, I thought: how easy it was to write mad, phoney words that I could never have said, and to resist writing those that I could never have resisted saying. The concise madness of this reply made me feel better, and I got on with my life — in other words, I got on with reading the book.

With Edward Gibbon's strong hand in mine, I steered between the vacuum and the panic. Autumn began to tighten and darken. Sarah's birthday came and went, like unexplained laughter heard from a window. I did not send a card c/o her mother. I read slowly, sometimes lingering on a chapter for several days or referring back to an earlier one, but during my leisure hours I did little else. Whenever I was forced away from the book I felt as though I were holding my breath: urgent and vulnerable.

Upon reaching the end of chapter thirty-nine, near the beginning of the seventh volume, I made the discovery that led me to the sacred combe.

The chapter tells of Theodoric the Great, that barbaric king of the Ostrogoths who is now remembered chiefly for having ordered the execution of the philosopher Boethius. Its last lines are weird, fine and memorable in themselves, so I will quote them to set the mood for my discovery:

His spirit, after some previous expiation, might have been permitted to mingle with the benefactors of mankind, if an Italian hermit had not been witness in a vision to the damnation of Theodoric, whose soul was plunged by the ministers of divine vengeance into the volcano of Lipari, one of the flaming mouths of the infernal world.

This image was vivid in my mind — my interpretation had the nasty old king falling headfirst, the skirts of his armour flapping immodestly, into a pool of white magma — as I turned the page. On its reverse, which the printer had left blank in order to begin chapter forty on the right-hand page, was pasted a small type-written notice:

WANTED:

Diligent volunteer to carry out two months' painstaking archival work for private library.

Board and lodging provided;

curiosity and imagination rewarded.

Please telephone Miss S. Synder on

01092 650 0000

I gazed at this rectangular apparition for a long time; I even threw a glance over my shoulder, as a man might who suspected a prank. The notice did not look particularly old, but neither did it look brand new. I picked at its edge with my fingernail, but the glue held firm. I did not recognise the area code (neither will you, since I have changed the number), but it looked like a current British telephone number. Was the diligent volunteer still wanted? There was one way to find out. I chuckled at the idea, closed the book with a flamboyant snap, and went to bed. A week passed.

‘Hello?' A woman's voice, on a bad line.

‘Ah,' I said, confused already. ‘Good afternoon. My name is Samuel Browne and I'm calling about an advertisement that I found glued into a book.' I waited for a reaction, but heard only the gentle hiss of telephone silence. ‘For an archivist,' I added. More silence. ‘For a private library?' I shook my head, feeling foolish — what had I expected? I had nothing to lose by one last attempt, so I suggested, ‘Curiosity and imagination rewarded?'

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: ‘
E
e
?' 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.