by Ian Sansom
‘Well, we may have missed the fallow tomato fields and the figless fig trees of Sussex, Father, but I think we got a pretty good sense of the place, don’t you?’
Morley gazed out at the countryside and was silent.
It meant nothing to me at the time, but over the years I have come to recognise Morley’s sense of grief and of missed opportunity as we toured the English counties. All those places. All those people. It seems more than likely that I too shall never now make it to Tarring, or to Rye, or to Hurstmonceux, or to Pyecombe, home of the finest shepherd’s crooks in the country, or the village of Robertsbridge, home of Gray-Nicolls cricket bats. Or indeed East Grinstead, the home of Sackville College, haunt of ancient peace. I know them only through the pages of The County Guides: Sussex, composed and written by our divers hands, in libraries, in grief and in shame, and elsewhere.
‘Do you know, Sefton,’ said Morley, as we approached Brighton, ‘if I could live anywhere in the world I think I might live in Sussex.’ (For the record, he also told me during our years together that if he could live anywhere in the world he would live in Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall and etcetera, all the way through to Wiltshire, Worcestershire and Yorkshire in all its Ridings. And this doesn’t include all the places in Scotland, Ireland and Wales where he would have wished to live. I think Dumfries and Galloway came out top, overall, over all the years.) ‘Withyham,’ he said, ‘near Crowborough. If I could live anywhere in the world it might be Withyham. A nice church, a good inn, close to Buckhurst Park.’
Again we drove in silence under darkening skies.
‘Sussex light,’ said Morley after a while, staring at the far horizon. ‘Might make an interesting little book.’
‘I’m sure it would, Mr Morley,’ I said.
‘Sussex light. Quite exceptional,’ he said. ‘It’s to do with the chalk. Very interesting, chalk.’
‘Is it, Father?’ said Miriam.
‘There’s an artist, Ravilious,’ he said. ‘Do you know him, Sefton?’
‘I can’t say I do, Mr Morley, no.’
‘We have a couple of his at home. He captures that chalky underlay of the light,’ said Morley, ‘that light that lies between things.’
Brighton appeared up ahead. Morley continued staring out towards the sea.
‘During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the sea inundated large areas of the Sussex coastland,’ he said. ‘And then of course other areas silted up, leaving us with what dear old Kipling calls “Our ports of stranded pride”. Rye. Old Winchelsea, disappeared. Even Pevensey Castle was once surrounded by the sea.’ He sighed. ‘Nothing lasts, Sefton, is perhaps what shapeshifting Sussex reminds us. Nothing – and no one.’
In all our years together I don’t think I ever heard him come quite so close to admitting to personal feelings for someone.
Miriam dropped me on the seafront. The pair of them were going to motor back to London and then up to Norfolk. I’d decided to spend a day or two in Brighton before heading back up to meet them and to start work on The County Guides: Sussex, which would largely be a cut and paste job from other sources: each book had its own unique process of composition; each its own sad story.
I went down to the beach. The blue-green swells were heaving against the pebbled shore, just as in Arnold’s poem, making a noise very much like the long withdrawing of a weary army. In the distance white sails leaned against the horizon. It was far too cold to consider swimming, except at the risk of one’s life.
I took off my clothes and plunged into the water.
I swam out for perhaps a hundred yards and then turned and looked. From this distance, I was surprised to say, England looked pure and untainted. You could almost imagine that all was not lost.
FOOTNOTE
CHAPTER 2
1 Morley’s names for our adventures, in roughly the order in which they occurred were: The Norfolk Mystery, Death in Devon, Westmorland Alone, Essex Poison, The Sussex Murder, Northumberland’s Dead, The West Riding Evil, Kent’s Secret, Rutland Deceased, The Lincolnshire Riddle, Wiltshire’s Ruin, Hampshire Innocents, Rogue Cheshire, Warwickshire’s Strangers, Gloucestershire Skeletons, Black Cornwall, The London Crime Co., East Riding Alibis, Berkshire Damned, The Malice of Durham, Bedfordshire’s Revenge, The Hertfordshire Revenge, The Lancashire Tragedy, Middlesex Thieves, Nottinghamshire’s Fear, Somerset’s Night, The Dorset Judgement, Bloody Suffolk, Vanished Huntingdonshire, Buckinghamshire Troubles, Tainted Shropshire, The Challenge of North Riding, Repentant Leicestershire, The Cambridgeshire Killings, The Northamptonshire Sorrows, Derbyshire’s Shadow, Oxfordshire Wrongs, Lost Herefordshire, Staffordshire’s Danger, False Surrey, The Curse of Cumberland, and The Worcestershire Sickness. My own nickname for our final adventure together is The End of Jersey and Guernsey.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For previous acknowledgements see The Truth About Babies (Granta Books, 2002), Ring Road (Fourth Estate, 2004), The Mobile Library: The Case of the Missing Books (Harper Perennial, 2006), The Mobile Library: Mr Dixon Disappears (Harper Perennial, 2007), The Mobile Library: The Delegates’ Choice (Harper Perennial, 2008), The Mobile Library: The Bad Book Affair (Harper Perennial, 2010), Paper: An Elegy (Fourth Estate, 2012), The Norfolk Mystery (Fourth Estate, 2013), Death in Devon (Fourth Estate, 2015), Westmorland Alone (Fourth Estate, 2016), Essex Poison (Fourth Estate, 2017) and December Stories I (No Alibis Press, 2018). These stand, with exceptions. In addition I would like to thank the following. (The previous terms and conditions apply: some of them are dead; most of them are strangers; the famous are not friends; none of them bears any responsibility.)
50 Watts, Kobo Abe, Giorgio Agamben, Brian Aldiss, Ali al-Du’aji, Haifaa al-Mansour, Wes Anderson, A-WA, Richard Ayoade, Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Michael Bond, the Bookshop Band, Owen Booth, Anthony Bourdain, Lili Brik, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the Brisley Bell, Build an Ark, Cabinet Magazine, Orly Castel-Bloom, CB Editions, Aimé Césaire, Beth Chatto, Jeremy Clarke, Joshua Cohen, Stephen Connolly, Mike Coupe, Dalkey Archive Press, Frédéric Dard, Liz Dawn, Mary Denvir, the Dial House, The Dø, the Doobie Brothers, Danny Dreyer, Ross Edgley, Charles W. Eliot, Elmham Surgery, Equiknoxx, Mohammed Fairouz, Chet Faker, Fauda, John-Paul Flintoff, Floating Points, Nils Frahm, Simone Giertz, Natalia Ginzburg, Emma Goldman, Michel Gondry, Gramatik, Ayelet GundarGoshen, Ed Hands, Nick Harkaway, Jim Harrison, Charlotte Higgins, HM Tower of London, Chas Hodges, Michael Hofman, Hooverphonic, Michael Hughes, Sean Hughes, Shabaka Hutchings, the Institute of Economic Affairs, Shirley Jackson, Astrid Jaekel, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Velly Joonas, the Joubert Singers, Kersti Kaljulaid, Laura Kampf, Mark Kermode, Sam Leith, Larry Levan, The Lifeboat, Little Georgia, Michael Luck, David Markson, the Vladimir Mayakovsky Museum, Samar Samir Mezghani, Ferdinand Mount, Ben Myers, Mike Nichols, Larry Norman, Martha Nussbaum, Iona Opie, Shelly Oria, Lawrence Osborne, Peter Osborne, Over the Rhine, Nick Parker, Mark Pawson, Tom Petty, Zbigniew Preisner, Quantic, Dorit Rabinyan, the Railway Tavern, Randomer, Rabbi Danny Rich, Shan Sa, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Peter Sallis, Dominic Sandbrook, Luc Sante, Habib Selmi, Tony Servillo, Anoushka Shankar, Michael Shannon, Simon Shaps, Viktor Shklovsky, Nikesh Shukla, Christopher Skaife, Jaz Skaife, Edward Soja, Son Lux, Sons of Kemet, Paolo Sorrentino, Harry Dean Stanton, Swagger, The Tangerine, Ayelet Tsabari, Robert Twigger, the Ulster Independent Clinic, the University of Reading, the University of Westminster, Emma Warnock, Jocko Willink, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Heinz Wolff, the Wolseley, Woodkid, Evie Wyld, Shifu Yan Lei, Howard Zinn.
PICTURE CREDITS
Images here and here are from Arthur Mee’s King’s England Guide to Sussex.
Reproduced by kind permission.
www.kingsengland.com
Images here and here
© The Francis Frith Collection.
All other images supplied by the author.
The author and the publishers are committed to respecting the intellectual property rights of others and have made
all reasonable efforts to trace the copyright owners of the images reproduced, and to provide an appropriate acknowledgement in the book.
In the event that any copyright material is not properly credited the author and the publishers will endeavour to rectify this.
THE NORFOLK MYSTERY
IAN SANSOM
The first of
THE COUNTY GUIDES
Quaint villages, eccentric locals – and murder!
Professor Swanton Morley needs help writing a history of England, county by county. His assistant must be able to tolerate his eccentricities – and withstand the attentions of his beguiling daughter, Miriam. Stephen Sefton is broke and looking for an adventure.
The trio begin the project in Norfolk, but when a vicar is found hanging from Blakeney church’s bell rope, they find themselves drawn into a fiendish plot. Did the Reverend really take his own life, or was it … murder?
DEATH IN DEVON
IAN SANSOM
The second of
THE COUNTY GUIDES
Cream teas, school dinners and satanic surfers!
When Swanton Morley is invited to give a speech at Rousdon school, he, his daughter and his assistant pack up the Lagonda for a trip to the English Riviera. But when the trio arrive they discover that a boy has died in mysterious circumstances …
Join Morley, Sefton and Miriam on another adventure into the dark heart of 1930s England, as they follow up a Norfolk mystery with a bad case of … death in Devon.
WESTMORLAND ALONE
IAN SANSOM
The third of
THE COUNTY GUIDES
Great lakes, dead poets and a mysterious crime!
Swanton Morley sets off to continue his history of England, accompanied by his daughter and assistant. But when the gang are stranded in Appleby after a tragic rail crash, they find themselves drawn into a wild world of country fairs, gypsy lore and wrestling. And then a woman’s corpse is discovered at an archaeological dig …
Catch up with Morley, Miriam and Sefton as they journey along the Great North Road and the Settle–Carlisle Line into the dark heart of 1930s England.
ESSEX POISON
IAN SANSOM
The fourth of
THE COUNTY GUIDES
Pipers, gangsters and a fishy case of food poisoning!
October 1937. Swanton Morley, the People’s Professor, sets off to Essex to continue his history of England, The County Guides. Morley’s daughter Miriam continues to cause chaos and his assistant Stephen Sefton continues to slide deeper into depression and despair.
Morley is an honorary guest at the Colchester Oyster Festival. But when the mayor dies suddenly at the civic reception, suspicion falls on his fellow councillors. Is it a case of food poisoning? Or could it be something far more sinister?
About the Author
IAN SANSOM is the author of Paper: An Elegy and the Mobile Library Mystery series of novels. He is also a frequent contributor to the Guardian and the London Review of Books, and a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. The Sussex Murder is the fifth in his County Guide series, following The Norfolk Mystery, Death in Devon, Westmorland Alone and Essex Poison.
Also by Ian Sansom
Paper: An Elegy
The Truth About Babies
Ring Road
The Enthusiast Almanack
The Enthusiast Field Guide to Poetry
THE MOBILE LIBRARY SERIES
Mr Dixon Disappears
The Delegates’ Choice
The Bad Book Affair
The Case of the Missing Books
THE COUNTY GUIDES SERIES
The Norfolk Mystery
Death in Devon
Westmorland Alone
Essex Poison
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