1. Eclipse
From 'Passages' by Jean de Lier
Marlow Church, as the nostalgic Scruton describes it, is a “.. pretence: a large, Gothic revival structure in flint and stone, designed to look as though it had stood for ever at the end of a high street where it was in fact the newest building.” Old Possett House was also built in the middle of the nineteenth century by and for the owner of a firm of monumental masons. They specialised in Churches, presumably just those Victorian Gothic buildings that Ruskin had declared to be the only truly religious style of architecture. Marlow and the whole of England believed him. The original owners seem to have decided to save money, or else maybe they thought they were sparing no expense; and built their castellated and towered home out of old left-overs - the centre of the spiral staircase is still recognisably a re-used font, but the relationship to Neuschwanstein (and hence to Disney) is nevertheless striking. There it was that something over 50 years ago, the child Hugo saw a partial eclipse of the sun through a broken, irregular piece of glass blackened in a candle flame: the memory of glass, lampblack and eclipse had stayed with him, but he had to wait half a century, most of a lifetime, to see a total eclipse.
And it was perfect. Absolutely perfect. He had made a diary note and having spent several years vainly trying to interest friends and family, with a map taken off the internet, supplied by NASA, he set his sights on northern France. The newspapers belatedly took up the story and Alain and Claire kindly agreed to put him up just off the main path of totality, while he organised a Champagne Party in situ. The party never happened, his own family refused to be enthused, the house guests disdained to join in, fearing for the health of the eyes of children (do they normally look into the sun?) and by the morning of the 11th August Hugo, accompanied only by Alain himself (and perhaps even then only out of politeness and pity) set off for the ancient abbey of St Germer en Fly. The morning sky was totally overcast but Hugo was determined to go anyway and Helène, another house guest, had at least promised to pray on their behalf for sunshine, or more properly for moonshine. She is well practised at prayer, or else, as others say, she is a witch.
Although Hugo had been assured that the French were not so silly as to get excited about this sort of thing, the Police had sensibly banned all lorries from the road. Even so the autoroutes were blocked solid for 30 miles north from Paris and a special SNCF train had been hired by enthusiasts from Lyon. So they pulled off and took the little D129. Even so they were not alone, but luckily within a few kilometres most of the other cars started to stop and park in adjoining fields. Every time the sun came out for second, bursting through the cloud cover, they stopped briefly to look at it through the special glasses supplied by French pharmacies out for the main chance, but also encouraged by a Government anxious to avoid optical expenses: it was certainly an advance since lamp-black. The first half of the eclipse was exciting but they hurried on, saw the last quarter beginning to be obscured and arrived at the Abbey just before midday. Having set up deck chairs they bought coffee in the little bar opposite, a baguette and some charcuterie for a picnic lunch and settled down under a leaden sky to assess the efficacy of prayer (the wish is partner to the deed).
It worked. Just before the eclipse became total, the clouds parted revealing the whole disk. A last small crescent of sun illuminated the sky as well as the lawn in front of the little Sainte Chapelle, most definitely a genuine pure Gothic architecture at its most delicate and fine. The summer air had already turned cool, the pigeons flew to roost on the roof of the old Abbey and within the space of some thirty seconds, the light of the heavens at high noon, vanished. A single large star shone in the darkened firmament and the Corona of the Sun, our sun, was visible with the naked eye hanging up there like a flaming Apollo with his hair ablaze, the decorated host of a mediaeval monstrance. The formerly sunlit wall of the Abbey went purple, then grey and limpid in the cool air, and almost as if it were under water, the silence, the lack of motion and the absence of bird calls was oppressive in the clear stillness. They held their breath. La Cathedrale Englouti.
Within 120 seconds it was over - the smallest crescent of sun was enough to re-light the heavens and warm the earth. Increasing by the second, it was no longer possible to look into the sun without the special glasses, impossible to tell with the naked eye that it was not full sunlight. Helène’s prayer had worked, the clouds waited till the eclipse was less the 50% again, half uncovered and all was bright and warm - All things bright and beautiful, as the hymn sings.
The sandwich was eaten, another coffee and a beer, and they joined the throngs of traffic back towards Paris. They soon cut off into deserted minor roads past bemused peasants and pretty houses: Alain had been moved despite himself, but in his soul he is perhaps more of an enthusiast for minor Châteaux than eclipses. Nothing wrong with that, but most of them have been there for a few hundred years and he could see them any day of any year, whereas, for Hugo at any rate, an eclipse was once in a life time. All in all, a perfect day.
A fortnight later, in Italy, Hugo was staying with a good friend. Alessandra was no longer in her prime, a little stiffer, a little plumper, not quite in the latest fashions but with the same sparkling eyes behind only slight wrinkles. She had what he called the ‘beautiful lady syndrome’, had indeed been beautiful beyond lust (he well remembered the lust as well) and she had used her charms to the full. Favoured by nature, she had been generous with her favours to build a successful life for herself, and now she had been most virtuous for many years. Not everything had gone well, but she was always smiling and pleasant, to man and woman alike, and she was universally loved for her even temper and general kindness. It was her firm conviction, born of a lifetime of experience, that every problem in the world could be fixed, certainly ameliorated, by a winning smile and a little kindness. In truth, for her, it had generally worked out like that and it had really never occurred to her that for people less blessed it might not have the same universal effect. It still worked, because she believed it worked and believed she was as beautiful as she had been and she really was charming and attractive, a fine figure of a woman. She occasionally allowed herself insincere self-deprecating remarks to the effect that she was not, it was true, quite so slim as heretofore. She regarded such remarks as a realistic assessment, not fishing. She had never needed to fish for compliments and did not think to do so now. Most of her efforts, her talents, she used for charitable works and helping friends and she was loved by her children, needed by her noble if rather distant husband, and by a large coterie of acquaintances and society.
It was an ancient romance and Hugo, now a widower, was there on holiday, not to try to warm it up. They had met socially together occasionally, either with spouses or alone over the years and could truly be said just to be ‘good friends’. The two of them had dined simply that night at the local trattoria and now sat, alone upon the darkened veranda in the hills above Forte dei Marmi, with flickering candles scented with Citronella to drive away insects. They heard the cicadas sawing their love songs, the occasional nightjar, the sweet and slightly sickly scent of figs on the tree, when, almost by accident, unplanned by either, their lips met as of old, one last time perhaps. The moon that had been full for the eclipse, was now only the slimmest crescent, and by the flickering candle light she was as young and entrancing, soft and pliant as thirty years earlier. They each took another slow sip of the sweet Vin Santo, wondering, assessing, whether this was really a good idea. She gave the slightest shrug of the shoulder, the smallest perceptible “why not?” and when they kissed again he held her tight, encircled her in his arms. And as he did so he caught sight, on the wall behind her, of a circular Majolica plaque let into the side of the house.
Coloured yellow ochre, initialled with the Saviour’s cypher IHS and surrounded by a flaming gold Corona, the Sun God winked at him. He suddenly saw where the image comes from, so common and so universal almost, and why sun worship is not dead. He thought for an instant of the beaches, a few miles down the road, and the back gardens and the rooftops, the pools where the masses immolate themselves daily before their god, oil their naked bodies and barbecue themselves in the rays of a god who returns their adoration with skin cancer, melanoma. The flayed pink devotees are but latter-day sacrificial victims of whom Marsyas was the first, skinned alive by Apollo: They are victims of a god they no longer understand.
Not Apollo. That night Hugo would pay every conceivable honour to Venus and then the next morning, the sun would shine forth again in the flaming form Hugo had now seen, two weeks earlier, with his naked eye. Not everyone can fix a god with his eye and live. Not everyone can look Apollo in the eye and see. He quickly looked back, fixated, fixed, staring, gazing upon his Venus, naked upon the warm dark veranda. He looked quizzically too, critically, the hard look of experience and familiarity, but also a look of kind affection, memory, remembrance, and, yes, of most sincere love. He approved what he saw and she, who had caught and understood the glance, appreciated, and graciously accepted his silent approbation.
Later, toasting each other and the two ancient gods, they drank more wine and talked till the stars faded and morning forced them to their separate beds.
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