Death in Devon (The County Guides)

by Ian Sansom

  And then I wakened with a start when Morley shook me at 3 a.m. It was my turn to go on watch.

  I managed to keep my eyes open for I know not how long and when I came to again it was to the sound of footsteps. I opened my eyes. The corridor was empty. The few candles in their sconces were guttering out. A weak moonlight shone through from the single window at the end of the corridor, barely illuminating the dark footprints in the ash. The footprints weren’t coming from the dormitory. They were heading towards the dormitory: the younger boys’ dormitory.

  I silently unwrapped myself from my blanket and quietly tiptoed my way down the tallow-tinted corridor to the dormitory door, stationing myself just outside so that I could grab whoever it was as they exited. All I could hear was the sound of breathing – the boys, asleep – and my own heart beating. From outside there came the sound of an owl hooting.

  And then there came the sound of shuffling towards the door.

  I braced myself and as the dark figure emerged from the doorway I swung a ferocious punch towards their head, which knocked them sideways and banged them loudly against the door jamb. As they slumped down towards the floor – and before I had properly prepared myself for an assault – another figure came rushing out after them. As they blundered into me I grabbed at them. They gave a yelp and I held tight and dragged them into the dim light of the corridor.

  ‘What on earth?’ said the headmaster, who had come rushing down the corridor at the sound of the commotion. ‘What on earth is the meaning of this?’

  ‘Headmaster,’ said the man I had apprehended.

  ‘Jones?’ said the headmaster. It was one of the teachers – Jon Jones the Welshman.

  The figure on the floor was groaning.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Morley, who had also joined us.

  ‘I might ask you the same,’ said Jones, in his challenging Welsh fashion.

  ‘We are here, Jones, to try to get to the bottom of these problems with the animals,’ said the headmaster.

  ‘Same as us then,’ said Jon Jones.

  ‘Really?’ I said.

  ‘Really,’ said Jones, staring at me.

  ‘Come on, get this man up,’ said Morley, reaching down towards the man on the floor.

  ‘Mr Dodds!’ said the headmaster. ‘I am so sorry.’

  Mr Dodds, the benefactor, gradually rose to his feet, with Morley’s assistance. In one hand he was clutching a teddy bear.

  ‘Ah, a Steiff,’ said Morley, admiring the bear. ‘Very nice. Very nice indeed. Never mind your Siemens: German engineering at its best, a Steiff.’ Mr Dodds offered Morley the bear to examine. ‘Thank you. But why might you be stealing teddy bears from the boys’ dormitories?’

  ‘We thought,’ said Jones, ‘that if we took a few teddies it might teach the little—’

  ‘Children,’ said Morley.

  ‘A thing or two,’ continued Jones.

  ‘Really?’ said the headmaster. ‘And teach them what exactly?’

  ‘An eye for an eye, presumably,’ said Morley.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Jones.

  ‘The old lex talionis.’

  ‘It’s just a bit of fun,’ said Mr Dodds. ‘Jones and I were going to set up a few of these little creatures as target practice.’

  ‘What?’ said the headmaster.

  ‘Just a bit of fun, Headmaster,’ said Mr Dodds, who had clearly been drinking heavily.

  ‘Just a bit of fun?’ said the headmaster. ‘Creeping into the boys’ dormitories in the middle of the night to kidnap their soft toys?’

  ‘Surely you can see the funny side, can’t you?’ said Jon Jones.

  The headmaster looked stern. Mr Dodds barked with laughter.

  At the sound of the laughter a group of boys – all of them in their regulation blue and white striped winceyette pyjamas – timidly made their way out into the corridor and gathered around us. They looked terrified.

  ‘Nothing to see here, boys,’ said the headmaster. ‘Back to bed, please. Immediately.’

  ‘Headmaster,’ said one small boy. ‘I need to pee, sir.’

  ‘Use the chamberpot, boy.’

  ‘Chamberpot’s full, sir.’

  Mr Jon Jones, in challenging Welsh fashion

  ‘You’ll have to wait until the morning, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Headmaster,’ said another boy. ‘There’s something on the floor, sir. A sort of white powder, sir.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said the headmaster.

  ‘What is it, sir?’

  ‘Ashes: someone has spilled some ashes.’

  ‘Headmaster,’ said another boy. ‘Michael Taylor’s not here, sir.’

  ‘No. I know. Michael has … gone away.’

  ‘Where is Michael Taylor?’ asked Jon Jones. ‘I didn’t know he was away.’

  ‘Is he ill, sir?’

  The headmaster ignored the question.

  ‘It’s time for bed, gentlemen,’ said the headmaster. ‘I will deal with you in the morning, Jones. In the meantime, perhaps you’d be so kind as to escort Mr Dodds to one of the guest rooms. Everything’s fine,’ he reassured the boys. ‘Everything in hand and under control.’

  CHAPTER 16

  THE CIDERIST

  AFTER ONLY A COUPLE of hours’ sleep Morley and I breakfasted with the boys on the head of the cow.

  A weak sun filtered through the clouds and a heavy dew lay upon the grass as we squatted around the dirty, smoking remains of yesterday’s fire. Morley instructed the boys in digging the head from out of the ground. The ashes were like warm sand. The gunny sack was charred, and inside the clay had baked hard to the skin of the head, peeling it off to reveal a dark, sinewy meat beneath. The eyes, brain and tongue had been cooked to a solid jelly. Morley cut away long stringy pieces of the meat and then warmed them in a skillet heated in the ashes, distributing them among the boys until the skull was entirely stripped and every morsel had either been eaten or discarded.

  ‘Delicious, eh?’ said Morley, his mouth full, offering me a small hot sliver of brains.

  I declined. The boys were silent and in awe, as though partaking in a ritual meal. I could not entirely share their enthusiasm. The whole thing smelled of Spain.

  The day slowly became warm and the school routine began again, as it must. The headmaster had Jones to deal with, and the police, presumably, would be continuing with their investigations. Our experiment with the ashes had not been a thoroughgoing success, but Morley, as always, was undaunted. As promised, he had organised for a few of the older boys to go surfing. He’d hired a charabanc – courtesy of the Sidmouth Motor Company and Dagworth’s Ltd., who usually ran trips around Salcombe, apparently – and so we found ourselves sitting, four to a row, in the wide, open-topped vehicle, Morley up front with the driver, who wore a proud white cap, a dark suit and a bold red company tie. It was like a works outing.

  Miriam followed us in the Lagonda, accompanied by Alex: I had by now abandoned her entirely to him. She seemed happy enough. She wore her hair swept back from her face, and a man’s white shirt knotted at the midriff, a pair of billowing navy trousers – free and natural, uninhibited, quite unlike her usual ensemble. Alex wore a light, almost semitropical suit and ancient suede shoes. In the car together they looked Mediterranean, or like a sleek, rich, satisfied missionary couple, setting forth to preach the good news, that the blind might receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers be cleansed and the deaf might hear.

  In the charabanc, under Morley’s instruction, we played games of animal, vegetable or mineral, sang hymns, and then Bernhard, who was keen to accompany us – surfing not yet having arrived on German shores – led us in a song from Through the Looking Glass, a book described correctly as ‘a mathematics master’s idea of a novel’, in Morley’s memorable survey of children’s literature, Morley’s Children’s Classics (1932). Bernhard was clearly not familiar with Morley’s judgement – alas. The song went: ‘Sprinkle the table with buttons and bran, put cats in the coffee, and mice
in the tea. Then fill up the glasses with treacle and ink … Mix sand with the cider, and wool with the wine.’ The boys preferred this to the hymns and joined in with gusto. All in all, and combined with Morley’s customary and incessant chatter about birds and buildings and fascinating topographical features, the quirky wholesome heartiness had me hankering for a good night out in Soho.

  As we drove past Axminster – ‘the carpet capital of the kingdom’, according to The County Guides – we came upon a hand-painted sign, made to look like a giant pointing finger, and underneath the sign, in an uncertain, splotchy, paintbrushed cursive hand, were two fateful words: FARM CIDER.

  ‘Stop!’ cried Morley, spying the sign. ‘Stop!’ he cried again. And the driver of the charabanc pulled up sharply, sending boys tumbling forward. ‘Well!’ said Morley. ‘Here we are then!’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Bernhard, resettling himself in his seat. I rather suspect that he had been gearing up for a recital of ‘Jabberwocky’.

  ‘Farm cider!’ exulted Morley.

  ‘Is this really a suitable stopping place for the boys?’ asked Alex, who had pulled up with Miriam in the Lagonda, and who had come to see what was the problem.

  ‘Suitable?’ said Morley. ‘Suitable? Farm cider? The oil – the essence, the elixir! – of the West Country!? Suitable! It is more than suitable, sir: it is essential! Come along, boys!’ And with that he had us all clambering out of the charabanc and about to proceed up a narrow grassy lane, following the direction of the giant pointing finger. ‘Wait here, driver,’ he instructed.

  ‘We’ll stay here also, I think, Father,’ said Miriam.

  ‘As you wish,’ said Morley.

  I glanced back to see her lounging by the Lagonda, laughing with Alex at who knows what.

  ‘Now, where one finds cider one will also necessarily find what, my friends?’ asked Morley, hurrying on ahead.

  ‘Drunkards?’ said Bernhard, trotting beside Morley like a large obedient German dog, boys running along in their wake.

  ‘Wrong, Mr Bernhard,’ said Morley. ‘Wrong. Where one finds cider one will also necessarily find: apples!’

  ‘Ah,’ said Bernhard.

  ‘And a knowledge of the English apple, and its uses, and abuses, is surely an essential part of any Englishman’s education, is it not?’

  This had clearly not occurred to Bernhard before, and in fairness had probably never occurred to Morley either; his thinking was entirely improvisational: a finger pointing here, a finger pointing there, always a new train of thought, always something new to discover. ‘Culture,’ he began riffing – I knew by now all the signs – ‘cultivar, same Latin root stock, I think you’ll find. And English literature, boys, is of course ripe with—’

  ‘Absolute nonsense?’ I offered quietly.

  ‘Apples,’ continued Morley, oblivious as always to any sense of the absurd about any of his vast and sudden enthusiasms. ‘And forbidden fruit, obviously, though apples are not specified in the biblical account, as we know, eh, boys?’ The boys nodded. Clearly, they couldn’t care less about apples – but the thought of cider! ‘If we think about it for a moment, gents: folk tales, fairy tales, Snow White, the myth of Atalanta. We might in fact interpret the world’s entire storehouse of knowledge as like a rich orchard – might we not? – ready for us to pluck the little round orbs of goodness from its generous branches. Make a note, Sefton, please. I feel a chapter coming on: “Devon and … ”?’

  ‘“The Devil’s Brew”?’ I suggested.

  ‘Hardly, Sefton. “Devon and … ”?’

  ‘“The Forbidden Fruit”?’

  ‘We’ll come up with a title later. Notes and photographs though, please.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Morley.’ I produced my pencil and notebook. I had, thank goodness, left the camera in the charabanc.

  Morley strode on, the heels of his brogues before us.

  ‘Thomas Hardy, boys?’ he asked. ‘Have you read Hardy?’

  Several boys admitted, rather mournfully I thought, that indeed they had read Hardy.

  ‘Well, there we are, then. Absolutely ripe with apples, Thomas Hardy. Might make a separate article actually, Sefton: “Hardy’s … Forbidden Fruit”? Now that might work. Make a note.’

  I made another note, while the boys barrelled down the lane, making quite a hullabaloo – the thought of the cider! – until we came close to a small thatched farmhouse, where Morley called them all in to show them the low orchards, rather like olive groves, that flanked the lane on either side. He began explaining to them methods of pruning and cultivation.

  ‘Careful pruning, as you see, boys, is essential. And why?’

  No one answered: the boys had suddenly grown quiet and their attention seemed to be elsewhere.

  ‘The removal of rot, boys,’ continued Morley, ‘and scab, and canker. Codling moths. Spot, pox, worms. You name it, gentlemen. I’m afraid, as our friend Hamlet might say, that the apple flesh is heir to a thousand natural shocks.’

  ‘I’m not sure about this, Mr Morley,’ protested Bernhard.

  ‘Come, come. I hardly think that introducing the boys to the product of nature will corrupt them, Mr Bernhard. I am myself, as you know, a devout teetotaller, but I see no reason why the boys should not be familiar with nature’s storehouse—’

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ said Bernhard.

  ‘Well, what do you mean, man?’ said Morley.

  What Bernhard meant was a farmer who had appeared while Morley was talking, and who had successfully gained all our attention: he was pointing his shotgun at us.

  The silence deepened. Morley, sensing that he had lost his audience, eventually swivelled round.

  Two barrels faced him.

  ‘Ah!’ he said, entirely unruffled. ‘Mr?’

  The ruddy-cheeked farmer clenched his jaw tight, and his shotgun tighter.

  ‘The ciderist, I presume?’

  The farmer looked rather bewildered at being described as a ciderist.

  ‘Mr … ?’ pressed Morley.

  ‘Reeder,’ said the farmer angrily.

  ‘Mr Reeder the ciderist, it is an honour to meet you, sir!’ Morley went to shake the farmer’s hand, ignoring the gun.

  ‘Well …’ said poor Mr Reeder the ciderist, overcome, like so many before him and so many since, by Morley’s bluff good humour and utter lack of normal, sensible behaviour. He’d have made an excellent politician. In the face of such careless, thoughtless, lunatic bonhomie Mr Reeder the ciderist had no choice but to lower the gun and shake hands: in an instant Morley had won him over. The boys looked on in amazement.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Mr Reeder, momentarily regaining some of his powers of resistance. ‘All of you? Who are you?’

  ‘Us? Ah. Yes, sorry, we clearly startled you, sir. But we were unable to warn you in advance. Spur of the moment sort of a thing, isn’t it, boys?’ More wide-eyed nodding from the boys. ‘This is a school trip, Mr Reeder! We are introducing the boys of All Souls to the joys of the natural world. We have come, sir, to pay homage to the fruits – literally! – of your labour. Indeed, to paraphrase the poet, to admire your fruits, filled with ripeness to the core – boys?’

  ‘Keats!’ cried one learned little chap.

  ‘Correct!’ cried Morley. ‘And to commune with you, if we may, in your Vale profound. Anyone?’ This was an allusion too obscure – but no matter. ‘Wordsworth!’ concluded Morley. ‘Champion of the real language of real men!’

  This little speech seemed to prove more than sufficient explanation for Mr Reeder, who had clearly been alerted by the noise of the boys to expect the arrival of barbarian hordes (and in fairness, barbarian hordes and public schoolboys can often be confused). His ruddy features softened.

  ‘Now you’re sure you don’t mind?’ asked Morley.

  ‘We’d also like to buy some cider,’ I added. I thought this might prove a more useful sweetener – as indeed it did.

  ‘Very well,’ said Mr Reeder. ‘But you need to quiet them
boys. I’ve animals.’

  ‘Of course. Did you hear Mr Reeder, boys?’

  ‘Yes!’ cried the boys.

  ‘Ssshh,’ said Morley. ‘Good, now. Let’s show Mr Reeder we know our business, shall we? The great cider-producing counties of England?’

  ‘Devon?’ said one.

  ‘Obviously,’ said Morley. ‘And?’ Putting people on the spot was rather a habit with Morley: it was not, I think, a form of incivility, as some have claimed, but rather his simple determination always to be finding out more about the world, and encouraging others to do the same.

  ‘Devonshire …’ prompted Morley. ‘Herefordshire and …’

  ‘Kent?’ said one boy.

  ‘And where are you from, boy?’

  ‘Kent,’ he admitted.

  ‘More impressive if you had been from Essex, of course,’ said Morley, clearly disappointed. ‘But well done, nonetheless.’

  Mr Reeder stood with his arms folded, listening.

  ‘Now, boys, the uses of cider?’ asked Morley.

  ‘For getting drunk, sir?’ piped up one wag.

  ‘One use, of course, boys. But one use only – and strongly to be discouraged, isn’t that right, Mr Reeder?’

  Mr Reeder’s livelihood of course depended on encouraging people to drink cider. Also, he looked like a man who perhaps enjoyed – and perhaps only very recently – a drop or two of his own produce. He remained silent.

  ‘Isn’t it good for rheumatism?’ I suggested, rather hoping that this might move the conversation forward.

  ‘I rather doubt it, Sefton. Does one drink it, or rub it in?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Mr Morley.’

  ‘It might be more efficacious if imbibed,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that right, Mr Reeder?’

  ‘Can’t say,’ said Mr Reeder.

  ‘Vinegar I was thinking, Sefton. Vinegar, boys! Cider being made into vinegar by a process of second fermentation. Is that correct, Mr Reeder?’

  ‘I just make cider,’ said Mr Reeder. ‘Pure Devon cider.’