The Sacred Combe (33 page)
20
âWill you reveal your deception?' I asked as we paced the smooth, tessellating slabs of the runway on the first day of May. âWill you take off your mask at the end of the book?'
âThere will surely be no need to be explicit,' replied Corvin, toying with his notebook, swinging it between his finger and thumb. âEven with all that chatty stuff about the narrator being unsure of his approach and Salvator Rosa glowering down on his labours, my readers will understand the difference between truth and fiction. But perhaps as I wrestle with the final chapters I'll catch a glimpse of the book I should have written but didn't â if so I might throw down my cards just to cheer myself up, and, of course, to honour the creed.'
We had passed the gates to the rose and stone gardens, and now approached the end of the promenade, where a sun-bleached table stood on a terrace beneath a blossoming cherry tree.
âThen your readers will assume that you've simply invented me â that I'm merely a narrative convenience, a Dowley to your Furey â'
âThat's precisely what you are,' he said firmly, smiling as he sat down.
âBut I'm as real as this damned table,' I protested, laughing and slapping my hand down on the warm, weathered grain of beech. âAs real as anything in this valley â as real as you!' He was still smiling, but thoughtfully now. It was almost my last sight of him: the breeze stirred and white petals began to fall, tumbling edge over edge or turning like records, mottling away lines and colours and the weathered grain and the span of these bony fingers like the last words on a page. Somewhere in the grove, a jay screamed.
âQuite so,' whispered the honest clown, taking up his pen.
Dedicated to the memory of Thomas Chatterton.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The title is John Fowles' translation of the phrase
la bonne vaux
from Restif de la Bretonne's
Monsieur Nicolas
, as discussed in the former's novel
Daniel Martin
. The character Geoffrey Hughes is inspired in part by the mountaineer and writer W. H. Murray, combined with some experiences of the author's grandfather and a dose of fiction. Rose's secular Grace is from Albert Camus'
l'Etranger
. Various other writers are quoted in the text with or without acknowledgement, as permitted by Corvin's interpretation of the creed. The climbing route
The Temple
is very loosely based on the Ben Nevis route
Centurion
(VIII,8), with significant topographical alterations. Samuel Taylor Coleridge enlisted with the 15th Light Dragoons in 1793 under the name Silas Tomkyn Comberbache.
