Death in Devon (The County Guides)

by Ian Sansom

  ‘Hie thee to the gardener’s shed then, Ginger,’ said Morley. ‘Hie, hie, hi!’ And the ginger-haired boy hied, as he was told. ‘And you’ – Morley then indicated a burly-looking lad, who was sniggering at Ginger’s eager departure – ‘when Ginger returns, I want a pit dug, six foot by six? Understand?’ The burly boy nodded, no longer sniggering. ‘Good. In the meantime,’ continued Morley, ‘I think the police might need a word with some of you, perhaps? Hughes?’ He nodded towards Hughes and his plump accomplice. ‘And the rest of you are going to build a fire. Sefton, if you wouldn’t mind taking charge of the fire?’

  ‘Very good, Mr Morley.’

  While I organised a group of boys to gather firewood and to make a mountain of branches and twigs, Morley and the policemen took Hughes and his friend to one side. After twenty minutes or so of questioning, the policemen escorted the boys away and Morley and the headmaster came and stood by our fire-to-be.

  ‘All well?’ I asked.

  ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,’ replied Morley.

  ‘Julian of Norwich,’ said the headmaster.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Morley.

  ‘The police are dealing with the matter,’ said the headmaster.

  ‘For better or worse,’ said Morley. ‘Now, tell me, boys, who on earth has set this fire?’ he asked, staring at our little mountain of sticks and branches.

  ‘We did!’ cried several of the boys.

  ‘He did!’ said several others, pointing at me. I had, admittedly, taken charge of the fire-setting.

  ‘Sefton?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Morley?’

  ‘Boys I can forgive, but Sefton, you really have no idea how to set a fire?’

  I rather thought I did know how to set a fire, but clearly I was mistaken.

  ‘What on earth is being taught to our young people, Headmaster?’ Morley proceeded to kneel down and started picking off sticks and twigs, one by one. ‘You know, sometimes I wonder if we might benefit from a curriculum that applied across the whole of England, that we might all enjoy the same privilege of understanding.’

  ‘An impractical undertaking, I would say, Mr Morley,’ said the headmaster.

  ‘Nothing is impossible, Headmaster, unless we decide it is so. My curriculum – a national curriculum, shall we call it? – would include cookery, gardening, practical household skills, the memorisation of texts. And the setting of fires. What do you think, boys?’

  ‘Yay!’ cried the boys.

  He straightened up. ‘No. No good. We’ll have to start again, I’m afraid.’ He kicked aside what remained of the pile of wood we had gathered. ‘Also, we need the fire in the pit, Sefton. How’s our pit?’ he asked the burly boy, who was busy digging with the spade that had been returned by Ginger.

  ‘Nearly done, sir,’ puffed the burly boy.

  ‘Good. Now, perhaps a demonstration? How to set a fire. Step one. First things first. What’s the most important thing in setting a fire, boys? Any suggestions?’

  ‘The wood, sir?’ said a small blond smirking boy.

  ‘Precisely!’ said Morley. ‘But what wood? Which wood?’

  ‘Whatever wood one is able to find, sir?’ said the boy.

  ‘A beginner’s mistake!’ said Morley. ‘There is wood, young man, and there is wood.’

  I sensed the beginning of a lecture. Which indeed came.

  First he picked up a small branch. ‘Elm, as you know, boys, when lit, is inclined to smoke. A lot.’ He tossed the elm branch away.

  ‘Ah,’ said the headmaster.

  ‘All wood is possessed of different qualities in this crucial regard. Lime, for example. Anyone know what lime does when set alight? Sefton? Lime, when alight?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Lime smoulders, gentlemen. Smoulders like a goddess of the silver screen.’ He tossed away a lime branch.

  There came a slight tittering from some of the boys.

  Morley then began kicking through the remaining twigs and branches. ‘Elder, oak, robinia – all terribly acrid. Poplar? Very bitter. Larch and Scots pine – they crackle too noisily and throw out sparks at such a great distance that you almost have to wear protective equipment. But the best for heat, boys, hands down?’

  ‘Spruce?’ I said, keen to get the questions and answers over with.

  ‘Spruce, Sefton? Spruce? Apple, man! Boys!’ he said, pointing at me with both hands. ‘Boys! Behold a man who does not know how to set a fire!’ The boys looked at me rather pityingly. ‘Do you want to end up like this, boys?’ There was a general shaking of heads. They did not want to end up like me. ‘Apple,’ continued Morley, picking up a small branch admiringly. ‘Wonderful wood for burning. Wonderful. Little flame, great heat and burns down to a beautiful white ash. Hazel also good.’ He picked up another branch. ‘Holly – rapid burning but good. Cherry, slow to kindle, but excellent once alight. But … Aha!’ He bent down and took a branch from the ground like a prospector discovering diamonds while panning for gold. ‘Ash, gentlemen, ash for a fire – ash is the king of woods! Burns green as well as dry. You are of course familiar with the saying “Ash that’s green is fire for a queen.”’ The boys nodded, as if they had heard the saying – which they certainly had not. ‘Beautifully clear-flamed. And beech is good. Juniper wonderful for scent. Lilac almost a rival to sandalwood. Walnut also. Larch. The good old Weymouth pine …’ He seemed to have gone into a reverie.

  ‘So, Mr Morley?’ I interrupted.

  ‘So?’

  ‘What would you like us to do with the wood?’

  ‘I’d like them to go and collect some wood we can burn, Sefton. As I had originally hoped they would. And pile it in the pit. How’s our pit?’

  ‘Deep, sir,’ said the hard-labouring burly boy, now up to his knees in a hole.

  ‘Excellent! So, what is the king of woods, boy?’

  ‘Ash!’ came the chorus.

  ‘Very good. And the queen?’

  ‘Apple!’ called a couple of lone voices.

  ‘Excellent!’ said Morley.

  ‘And elm and lime the jack and ace?’ I said light-heartedly.

  ‘No, Sefton. No. Did you not listen, man?’

  At which moment the boy Captain came hurtling out of the woods towards us, bucket of clay in one hand, large sack in the other.

  ‘Perfect timing, Captain, perfect!’ said Morley. ‘Half of you then – you half – off to scavenge. The others, stay here with me. We have other work to do.’ Half the boys scurried off, the rest of us remained.

  ‘Now,’ said Morley. ‘What we need to do is this.’

  Rolling up his sleeves, he then led the boys through the final stages of the experiment. First, they larded the sack with clay. This took some time: it was a messy job. The boys who arrived back with branches, meanwhile, were instructed in the correct method for laying the fire, which soon was blazing in the fresh-dug pit, and as the flames began to leap in the dark and damp of the dusk there was a gathering sense of anticipation among the boys, as though they were participating in some profound ancient ritual.

  Finally, as we stood gathered in the heat and light, Morley produced his pocket knife – ‘A knife, some string and a pencil stub,’ he liked to say, ‘should be enough to see a man through the darkest day’ * – and he instructed the boys in the delicate art of removing a cow’s horns from its head, though this proved rather easier said than done, and the severance was only eventually effected – with surprising strength and gusto – by the small ginger boy, brandishing the shovel. The horns went, in the end, with a crack. We then placed the poor dehorned cow’s head inside the larded sack and Morley held up the grisly thing in the gathering gloom, like Perseus having bagged his Medusa.

  ‘Shall I be mother?’

  The fire now having burned down, he popped the sack into the pit full of burning ashes, the top of the sack almost level with the ground. The boys then piled more ashes from the fire on top and p
roceeded to build another fire above it.

  ‘I do hope you’ll be able to join us for breakfast?’ Morley said to the headmaster. ‘It’ll need a little finishing off in a skillet, but I can guarantee you’ll never have eaten brain and tongue quite like it.’

  This proved too much for a couple of the exhausted, dirty boys – who had doubtless earlier been scoffing pies and sneaking sherry – who promptly vomited, copiously, into the bushes.

  ‘Excellent!’ said Morley. ‘Now, where were we? Weren’t we playing croquet?’

  * This is obviously not entirely true: a knife, some string and a pencil stub are not sufficient to see a man through the darkest day. In recent years many readers have contacted me for copies of an article originally written by Morley for his friend Baden-Powell and published in the magazine The Scout in April 1931. The article is titled ‘Swanton Morley’s Tobacco Tin Survival Kit’. I reproduce it here in full, with the kind permission of the Scouting Association.

  SWANTON MORLEY’S TOBACCO TIN SURVIVAL KIT

  I remember first trekking with Baden-Powell some time after his return from Africa in 1904. We enjoyed a number of walking and climbing holidays together in Scotland and in Cumberland and Westmorland. I learned much on these trips from B-P’s skills as an explorer, backwoodsman and frontiersman. On our trips we would often discuss the bare essentials necessary to survive in the wild. B-P would of course be able to survive only with a knife but it was clear to me that for the rest of us a small number of other tools and equipment would be necessary. Hence my devising the tobacco tin survival kit, which I present now as a useful tool kit for the worldwide Scouting movement. My own survival kit is contained in a handsome blue Edgeworth High Grade Plug Slice tin, given to me by my gardener, Mr George Haynes some time around 1906. On one of our walks together B-P admired my ingenious device and I later presented him with his own survival kit, contained in a Super Black Cat Craven A tin. It is important to note that the use of a tobacco tin does not and should not encourage the use of tobacco.

  Knife: This is unlikely to be contained in the tin but is obviously the most important item to carry. Buy the best you can and keep it sharp and clean.

  Matches: As many of the strike anywhere variety as possible. Consider a minimum of 20.

  Flint and Striker: This is essential for when you run out of matches. Note: using a flint and striker requires practice.

  Candle: When you light a match, light a candle, which will save you lighting other matches.

  Wire Saw: Used to cut wood, bone and metal.

  Brass Wire: For snaring and improvising pot hangers.

  String: Kite string is strong and lightweight.

  Needle and Thread: For threading gut.

  Fishing Kit: Some fishing line, swivels, split shot and hooks.

  First Aid Supplies: As much as possible.

  Mirror: For signalling, rather than personal hygiene.

  Whistle: I never leave home without one.

  Wrap the outside of the tin with tape and elastic bands which can be used for spring traps.

  CHAPTER 14

  RURITANIA

  IT WAS FAR TOO LATE FOR CROQUET. The boys were ushered to bed and as dark night descended and the smoke steamed steadily from the fire, Morley and I plunged back towards the school and yet further into the strange: it was time for the Founder’s Day fancy dress party.

  The party had already begun, weirdly, and in earnest, in the school’s ornamental garden, which featured a Japanese rock pool and stone toadstools, the sort of sham garden features that were then enormously popular, and which Morley himself railed against in his book In the Garden with Swanton Morley (1929): ‘In the garden, as in life, the natural is always to be preferred over the ornamental. The first garden, the Garden of Eden, was a place of plenty: it was not a place of excess. The gardener’s motto should be multum non multa. Much not many.’ What we had endured that day, frankly, was already too much and too many. But there was still more to come.

  Lanterns and streamers had been hung from the trees, which gave the party an air of the exotic, though the exotic gone slightly sour or off: the garden’s roses and gardenia were long past their best, and vast moths hung lazily around the lanterns, their wings the colour of old cracked celadon. It made for a rather shady, brazen, haunting scene – as though the party were itself throwing a party for its own sad passing.

  ‘We seem to have washed up on the shores of the Acheron,’ said Morley as we arrived. ‘Certainly a scene for the book, eh?’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed.

  ‘“Devon’s Nightlife”? A little chapter? Though it’s perhaps not entirely representative.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The fleshpots of Torquay we might need, for that. Worth an excursion. Anyway, do make an effort and mingle, Sefton, while we’re here. I have to speak to the headmaster and the police.’

  As Morley disappeared my German friend Bernhard approached. He had – to my astonishment – blacked up and was wearing sandals, a turban and an Arab-style robe that he explained to me was called a jibbah.

  ‘I have come as a sultan,’ he explained.

  ‘Really.’

  ‘But Mr Sefton, you seem to have come in your civilian clothing! Come, come!’

  ‘It’s been a long day,’ I said.

  ‘And tonight will be a longer night! You really must be dressed for the party. It is a fancy dress party.’

  ‘I’m fine thank you.’

  Bernhard called over to a female teacher, who was wearing a beard and a long dark flowing robe.

  Devon’s Nightlife

  ‘Katherine!’ he called. ‘Katherine!’

  Katherine approached.

  ‘Tolstoy?’ I said.

  ‘Rasputin,’ she replied through her beard.

  ‘Katherine,’ said my German friend. ‘Do you have something suitable for Mr Sefton here to wear?’ And then turning to me he said, ‘Katherine teaches the boys English and drama. She is our chief costumier!’

  ‘I’m sure I can find something,’ said the bearded Katherine, fingering my clothes. ‘Get you out of these old rags, eh?’ And then she winked. No one wants Rasputin to wink at them.

  ‘Good luck!’ cried Bernhard. And Katherine/Rasputin led me inside the school to change.

  Fortunately, she left me to make what I could from the clothes trunks and I soon emerged back into the party in full costume. I was feeling rather self-conscious, but then again some of the male teachers were in dresses and full make-up, and there was everywhere a profusion of sarongs, cowboy chaps, Highland wear (including full kilts), feather boas and gangsterish suits. One chap wore nothing but a large green felt fig-leaf attached to a pair of long johns, which was not a pretty sight. There was a Sioux chieftain, a Mad Hatter, a toreador, a pirate, several army and navy officers, and much sporting of eccentric headgear, including sombreros, stovepipes and helmets. Alex’s wife, Mrs Standish, was dressed as a ghost. In comparison, I was soberly attired.

  A makeshift bar had been erected in the marquee, with bottles of beer, wine, gin and various cordials, plus a steaming hot punch, and hot chocolate ‘for the ladies’, explained one of the porters, who was transformed for the night into a barman. The ladies were in fact mostly drinking the punch, and helping themselves also to the light supper that appeared to be the afternoon’s high tea, rather thinly disguised.

  The police who had been there all day were now relaxing, chatting to staff. There was a sense of us all being at the very edge – or at the end – of something.

  ‘Sefton!’ cried Bernhard, spotting me. ‘Wonderful! Now the party can begin!’ He pressed a glass of something upon me. ‘Bloody Mary?’

  It would have been impolite to refuse – and so there I was, standing by the makeshift bar drinking a Bloody Mary when Miriam spotted me.

  ‘What on earth are you drinking, Sefton? Bull’s blood?’

  ‘It’s a Bloody Mary, Miriam.’

  ‘I know it’s a Bloody Mary, silly. I mean, why?’<
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  ‘Nice and weighty,’ I said. ‘Meal in itself.’

  ‘You should try Alexander’s cocktail.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes, it’s amazing!’

  ‘I’m sure. What’s in it?’

  ‘I don’t know. He calls it the Kubla Khan.’

  ‘Of course he does.’

  ‘I think I’ll have a glass of the punch, though, thank you for not asking,’ said Miriam. ‘More than two Kubla Khans and one’s an absolute goner …’

  It was difficult to determine how far she had already gone. I caught the eye of the barmaid and procured Miriam her punch.

  ‘Well, here’s mud in your eye,’ she said; like Morley she tended to adopt a cod-American vocabulary for social occasions.

  ‘Having fun?’ she asked.

  ‘Not particularly, no.’

  ‘Oh, I love it here!’ she said. ‘You are a spoilsport, Sefton, you know. But I do like your uniform.’ My costume was an absurd, tight-fitting military uniform that had presumably been used in a school production of a Gilbert and Sullivan. ‘I rather like you in a uniform.’

  I ignored the remark.

  ‘Are you a marquis?’

  ‘I think I’m an officer of the law in some Ruritanian country.’

  ‘Ruritania, possibly,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘I hope you’re not going to arrest me and drag me off to some horrible prison or dungeon?’ Miriam had come as Emmeline Pankhurst. She wore a sash emblazoned with the words ‘VOTES FOR WOMEN’. I had no intention of arresting her and dragging her off – though I wish I could have done so for many of the partygoers.

  The only two people who seemed not to have taken leave of their senses entirely were Morley and the headmaster who sat at a table outside the marquee, deep in conclave. They had been joined by Mr Gooding, the gap-toothed tenant farmer, dressed in a long black coat, presumably in mourning for his chickens, his goat, his donkey, and now – I assumed – his cow.

  Music was playing on a gramophone, the lanterns were swinging in the evening breeze, and then Alex arrived, accompanied by his dog, a small black Pomeranian.