Susan Howatch
GLAMOROUS POWERS
HarperFiction An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1988
Copyright © Leaftree Ltd 1988
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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SOURCE ISBN: 9780007396382
Ebook Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN: 9780007396382 Version: 2014-07-30
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CONTENTS
COPYRIGHT
PART ONE:
THE VISION
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
PART TWO:
THE REALITY BEYOND THE VISION
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
PART THREE: THE FALSE LIGHT
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
PART FOUR: THE LIGHT FROM THE NORTH
ONE
TWO
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PRAISE
BY SUSAN HOWATCH
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
‘Ecstasy or vision begins when thought ceases, to our consciousness, to proceed from ourselves. It differs from dreaming, because the subject is awake. It differs from hallucinations, because there is no organic disturbance: it is, or claims to be, a temporary enhancement, not a partial disintegration, of the mental faculties. Lastly, it differs from poetical inspiration, because the imagination is passive. That perfectly sane people often experience such visions there is no manner of doubt.’
W. R. INGE
Dean of St Paul’s 1911–1934 Christian Mysticism
‘The apparent suddenness of the mystical revelation is quite normal; Plato in his undoubtedly genuine Seventh Letter speaks of the “leaping spark” by which divine inspiration flashes on him.’
W. R. INGE
Dean of St Paul’s 1911–1934 Mysticism in Religion
I
The vision began at a quarter to six; around me the room was suffused with light, not the pellucid light of a fine midsummer morning but the dim light of a wet dawn in May. I was sitting on the edge of my bed when without warning the gold lettering on the cover of the Bible began to glow.
I stood up as the bedside table deepened in hue, and the next moment the floorboards pulsed with light while in the corner the taps of the basin coruscated like silver in the sun. Backing around the edge of the bed I pressed my back against the wall before any further alteration of consciousness occurred. Firm contact with a solid object lessens the instinctive fear which must always accompany such a radical transcendence of time and space.
However after the initial fear comes the equally instinctive acceptance. I had closed my eyes to lessen the terror of disorientation but now I forced myself to open them. The cell was still glittering, but as I watched the glitter faded to a shimmer until the scene resembled a view seen through the wrong end of a telescope, and I could perceive my body, remote and abandoned, pressed against the wall by the bed as if impaled there by invisible nails. I looked aside – I could see my body turning its head – and immediately the darkness, moving from right to left, began to erase the telescopic view. My eyes closed, again warding off the fear of disorientation, and this time when I reopened them I found I was once more moving in a normal world.
I was myself, inhabiting my body as usual and walking along a path through a wood of beech trees. Insofar as I was conscious of any emotion I was aware of being at ease with my verdant tranquil surroundings, although I felt irritated by the persistent call of a wood-pigeon. However eventually the pigeon fell silent and as the path began to slope downhill I glanced to my left at the chapel in the dell below.
The chapel was small but exquisite in its classical symmetry; I was reminded of the work of Inigo Jones. In the dull green light of the surrounding woods the yellow stone glowed a dark gold, a voluptuous contrast to the grey medieval ruins which lay behind it. The ruins were in part hidden by ivy, but as I moved closer I could see the slits in the wall of the tower.
Reaching the floor of the dell I faced the chapel, now only fifty yards away