Free The Sacred Combe by Thomas Maloney

obligation to make conversation. The cat threaded its way restlessly between our legs and those of the table, purring.
    â€˜Rose showed me around the gardens this afternoon,’ I said.
    â€˜Oh yes,’ murmured M’Synder in acknowledgment.
    â€˜What was that you said about someone — freezing?’ I asked Rose, in a concerned tone. She stared blankly at the wall, while M’Synder, with her gaze lowered, slowly laid down her knife and fork. There was a brief, helpless silence, and then the old lady spoke.
    â€˜Monsieur Meaulnes, the gardener, died the winter before last, in the garden he loved.’ She pronounced the name with such dignity that I instantly realised its true spelling. ‘We called him the gardener, but he also managed the woodlands, the lane, the church grounds, the village green, and many other things besides.’ She spoke quietly and with great precision, as though she might thereby disguise her emotion.
    â€˜The man we saw today is his son,’ said Rose, and then added, sardonically, ‘Le Petit Meaulnes.’
    I resisted smiling. ‘How did it happen?’ I asked. M’Synder sighed.
    â€˜Monsieur was a very capable and worthy man,’ she began, hesitantly.
    â€˜But he drank like a fish,’ put in Rose, coolly.
    â€˜My dear, please,’ scolded M’Synder, frowning. Rose shrugged.
    â€˜Well, he did. Aren’t we all allowed our vices?’
    â€˜I hope you won’t speak like that of mine, when I am gone.’
    â€˜I shall,’ said Rose defiantly, before adding, in a slow, sincere whisper, ‘if I can think of any.’
    Later, when M’Synder had left the room, Rose filled in a few more details. The Meaulnes lived in the next valley, which could be reached by an old green track that continued up the combe from the meadow and crossed a low saddle of heathland. This explained why I had not encountered ‘Le Petit Meaulnes’ in the lane. Old Meaulnes had kept bottles of brandy in the potting shed, she said, concealed in particular pots that she had easily discovered. She spoke of him fondly, though without M’Synder’s reverence, and I got the impression that he had been a rather wonderful man. She did not mention his son again.
    â€˜Arnold found him one morning,’ she said, in an odd, mechanical voice, ‘sitting on that seat beneath the star-tree, with a bottle beside him. His head was tipped back, and his eyes were wide open, looking at the stars. But of course there weren’t any stars left by then. There was frost on his eyebrows, and his moustache, and even his teeth.’
    â€˜How do you know all that?’ I whispered, doubtfully. Rose shrugged and began to gather up the plates.
    â€˜I asked Arnold about it, and he told me.’

11
    By Thursday morning I had advanced so far down the enormous bookcase that my back began to ache from stooping, so I fetched a cushion from the window seat and continued the search on my knees. These have never been my strongest point, and they creaked audibly as I shifted my weight. My task, which beforehand had not seemed to present any great mental or physical challenges, assuming its sheer magnitude and repetitive nature did not cow the spirit, was, I now discovered, not only scrambling my brain but also taking a physical toll on each part of my body in turn. Moreover, the solitary and silent nature of the work made me keenly aware of my own body: every ache, every sensation of cold or stiffness, every creak of my suspiciously creaky young bones, gnawed insistently at my consciousness until I had to turn from the books with a sudden exhalation and throw myself into a chair.
    The lower shelves were dedicated to a field with which I was more familiar: the physical sciences — first chemistry, then geology, then astronomy and physics. It was not a large collection by academic standards, of course — perhaps four hundred volumes across all these