Ian Sansom - Death in Devon

‘No, no, no. The cottage won’t be ready for a while, I’m afraid. I’ve spoken to Wilson about it. It’s going to need quite some fixing up. In the meantime we’ll put you upstairs in one of the attic rooms, if that’s still OK? Same room as before. All set up for you.’

‘That’s wonderful, thank you.’

‘Eaten?’

‘I had a sandwich at Liverpool Street.’

‘ Cheruntis pabulum ! You can find yourself something in the kitchen if you’d like. Cook made a wonderful mutton and parsnip soup a few days ago. It’s maturing rather nicely.’

‘No, thank you.’

‘What’s the Korean dish?’

‘I’m not sure, Mr Morley.’

‘ Kimchi ! That’s it. Rather reminiscent. I was there just after the Japanese occupation. Pretty grisly. Merciless … Anyway. Probably best to avoid the soup in your condition. I’ll bid you goodnight. Must just finish this.’ And with that he turned back to his books and his typewriter, and the endless words began to flow again.

Upstairs, as I walked down the long corridor towards my room up in the attic, the echo of Morley’s typewriter in the distance, a door happened to open and Miriam walked out. She was smiling inwardly, it seemed to me: there was a look of satisfaction on her face, of satiation, one might almost say, as if she had … Well … I had enjoyed a rather long weekend in London and was tired; my imagination was doubtless running away with me. Her hair, I noted, was a blonder shade of blonde than I remembered, her cheeks were flushed, and she was wearing a nightgown made of a silvery silk, creating an effect that in the half-lit corridor might be described as simultaneously ethereal and electrifying, shuddering almost, as if one had bumped into Carole Lombard herself, made-up, half dressed, lit, on set, and ready to take her call …

‘Oh, Sefton. You’re here!’ she gasped, clutching her nightgown more closely to her. ‘Sorry, I was just …’

‘Yes. Good evening, Miss Morley.’

‘Back for more then? We haven’t put you off?’

‘No. No. Not at all.’

‘You were in London?’

‘Yes, I was.’

‘I hope you had fun?’

‘I … did. Yes. Certainly.’

‘Good. I think we’re going to have fun, aren’t we, Sefton?’ She was standing alarmingly close to me at this point, so close that I began to feel rather vulnerable, like the poor antelope in Rousseau’s painting.

‘I’m sure we will, Miss Morley.’

‘You … and me,’ she said.

‘And your father, of course.’

‘Hmm.’

She walked off then, turning only to wave goodnight and to cast the mystery of her smile before me, like a cryptic invitation, or a code I was supposed to crack.

I entered my room and lay down on my bed, exhausted.

God, it was good to be back.

AS MORLEY HAD PREDICTED, there was a storm. I stood watching it from the window of my room as the lightning at first flickered feebly in the distance and then, as it came closer, began flashing through the darkness, illuminating both sky and earth, thunder reverberating everywhere, the whole building humming in response, it seemed to me, window frames squealing, until finally, after all the tumult, the soft rain came splashing down, dripping from the eaves above my little dormer window as though the house itself were weeping.

Eventually I fell asleep, with the assistance of only a couple of pills, and topped up with no more than half the bottle of brandy I’d brought with me in case of emergency, and which I’d intended to last me for some time. And then, as usual, I woke early, tense from another terrible dream – Spain, gunfire – in Laocoon-like distress, twisted, hot and uncomfortable, the sheets tangled tight around my body. Freeing myself from the bed, I rose, splashed myself with cooling water from the washstand, threw open the heavy damask curtains and stood by the open window, allowing the morning air to calm my racing thoughts. As I gazed out across the vast north Norfolk landscape, my previous life – all my indulgences and regrets, my lies and my mistakes – suddenly seemed far away. Everything seemed invigoratingly fresh and new. All that mattered now, I tried to convince myself, were the County Guides .

All I had with me were the clothes that Morley had kindly provided me with, a wash kit, some shaving gear and a few books. My humble tout ensemble . Having given up my digs in London I no longer had a permanent home: it seemed now as if every room I stayed in was almost immediately cleansed of my presence. Before leaving London I had purchased a few books to accompany me: George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier , Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English and a second-hand edition of Pound’s A Draft of XXX Cantos , published by the Hours Press in Paris, the hessian cover already worn thin. I was on another self-improvement jag. Not in the mood for either Orwell or etymology, I began flicking through the Pound, trying to find something at least half-readable, until I came to Canto XXX, and the poem beginning ‘Compleynt, compleynt I hearde upon a day’:

All things are made foul in this season, This is the reason, none may seek purity Having for foulnesse pity And things growne awry; No more do my shaftes fly To slay. Nothing is now clean slayne But rotteth away.

Both inexplicably cheered and thoroughly depressed, I shaved and dressed and went downstairs. I thought I would go outside to smoke. It was, by this time, about 5.30 a.m.

To my great surprise, as I walked quietly outside and around St George’s, along the path fringed with flowers and grasses that leads eventually under the narrow archway tangled with roses, and past the yew hedges down towards the model farm and the orchards, I came across Morley standing on the lawn outside his study. He was dressed only in a pair of pure white underpants and a white vest, without shoes or socks. His eyes were closed and his arms outstretched, as if in an enormous embrace, and the grass was thick with rain, and his breath rose from him like … I can only properly describe it as like steam rising from a dish of potatoes, though Pound would perhaps have described it as like steam from a bowl of rice, or Yeats perhaps as a grey mist, Auden as like a cigarette smouldering in a border, and Eliot – I don’t know – as a kind of god river sweat? I wonder sometimes if I’ll ever write a poem again, and indeed if I ever truly wrote one. If nothing else, my time with Morley convinced me of my own limited capacities as a writer.

The gardens and grounds of St George’s stretched out far behind Morley, in bright greens and in grey-green hollows of mist. He appeared in that moment, I thought, almost a kind of Christ figure, hanging suspended over the early morning English landscape. It was a strange and particular scene, and yet also somehow entirely everyday – and of course rather comic and banal. As Morley himself often liked to remark, the juxtapositions and non sequiturs of everyday life are often more astonishing than even the most extraordinary work of art. ‘There is no such thing as the avant-garde’ – this was one of his favourite sayings, repeated in a number of his books, including Morley’s Style Manual for Writers and Editors (1936) and Art for Art’s Sake (1939) – ‘there is only the garde-en-retarde . All artists are catch-up artists and merchants in nostalgia.’

In his semi-clad reverie he didn’t seem to notice me, so I stood behind a large shrub, finishing my cigarette, watching him silently from a distance. A big grey-backed fox – that old type of fox that one rarely sees any more – came prancing across the lawn, came towards him, glanced up, flirtatiously almost, and then trotted on, doubtless towards its breakfast in the hen-house and the orchards. Birds called – let’s say, for the sake of argument, that they were blue tits, willow warblers and chiff-chaffs, though at the time, in all honesty, I could not have recognised any of their calls, having only in recent years taken up Morley’s frequent admonition to make myself familiar with birdsong and the sounds of nature – and a couple came and settled so close almost as to rest upon him.