Death in Devon (The County Guides)

by Ian Sansom

  Miriam did exactly as Morley described, raising and lowering her body slowly over the foaming surf. The boys were becoming restless again, so it was fortunate that she astonished them with what happened next.

  Far out in the surf, she had turned the board and was facing the beach.

  Morley described for us what we were witnessing, because none of us had ever seen anything quite like it before.

  ‘Note: the surfer feels the wave – picks up the board – arches her back – tucks her arms beneath her – before pushing up – and then – up, up – see! – into the crouching stance – arms out – bending the legs. And lo!’

  And lo indeed: Miriam was now standing on the board, just as in the Britannica, her feet apart, arms outstretched, looking shorewards, riding a wave, rushing towards us, grinning.

  It was a truly amazing spectacle: the long brown board, the blue-white wave and Miriam in emerald green … And as she came washing up in shallow waters it was all any of us could do to prevent ourselves from rushing out into the waves to embrace her. On reaching the shoreline she simply and gracefully dismounted. We all burst into a spontaneous round of applause, which Miriam bowed to acknowledge, before turning and paddling out with the board again. This of course only made the accomplishment all the more impressive. The demonstration continued for several more runs, with variations, Miriam shifting her weight between front and back foot, somehow turning the board left and right.

  The cold comforting waves at Croyde

  I felt that I might have watched the same scene, utterly contented, repeated for hours. But I sensed Alex at my shoulder, his pure white bathing costume burning in the sun.

  ‘“Her clothes spread wide,”’ he said quietly. ‘“And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up: but long it could not be till that her garments, heavy with their drink, pull’d the poor wretch to muddy death.”’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Ophelia,’ he said. ‘Surely you know Ophelia?’

  ‘Ophelia?’

  ‘A famous woman among the waves,’ he said. ‘Eh?’

  ‘Now, Sefton?’ said Morley, interrupting us. ‘Would you care perhaps to take a ride with Miriam?’ He placed his own surfboard in my hands.

  ‘I … certainly would,’ I said, looking triumphantly at Alex, and I ran down to the water to join her.

  Miriam seemed rather disappointed.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it’s you. Are you ready?’

  ‘Ready-ish,’ I said.

  ‘I suppose that will have to do,’ she said. ‘Just follow my lead, Sefton. If you can.’

  I carefully followed her every move, to the best of my ability: paddling and ducking through the waves until we seemed far out and alone – just us and the waves, and the sun high above us, rocking gently up and down. Alex and Morley and the boys seemed like creatures on another planet. It should have been perfect, but I was surprised: I was nervous, almost panicking.

  ‘Where did you learn?’ I asked, trying to steady my nerves.

  ‘Learn what, Sefton?’

  ‘Surfing.’

  ‘Learn?’ she said. ‘Learn? This isn’t school, Sefton.’

  ‘No, of course, but—’

  ‘Like anything worth learning, surfing cannot be taught,’ she said. ‘Whatever Father says. One learns only by doing, Sefton.’ She tossed back her head and smoothed her hair away from her face: she knew of course in that moment that she was beautiful, and that she had me entirely. ‘Agatha Christie first showed me how.’

  ‘The lady novelist?’

  ‘Indeed. Excellent surfer. Surprisingly nimble. Friend of Father’s. And George Bernard Shaw – though he’s a terrible poseur. Takes himself rather more seriously than the surfing: not good. It’s the dance, not the dancer, Sefton.’

  I felt a swelling beneath me and behind me.

  ‘Now!’ cried Miriam. ‘This is our wave, Sefton! Follow me! The dance, remember, not the dancer! The dance!’

  I kicked frantically with my feet. I felt the wave come from behind and pick me up like the hand of God Himself, and I grabbed the edges of the board and began to kneel and … Blinded by the spray, unable to breathe, I was immediately somersaulted off, smashing my face onto the edge of the board as it came slicing down through the waves towards me.

  My head snapped back and I felt my nose pop and blood come spurting.

  Moments seemed like an eternity: I was choking on water, frantically struggling up to the surface, gasping, heaving, coughing. Flailing, turning around towards the beach, I saw Miriam speeding off away from me towards the shore. Somehow this calmed me: I was overcome, simply, by shame.

  Some dancer. Some dance.

  Defeated, I recovered the board and paddled slowly back into the shallows.

  Miriam strode back past me into the water.

  ‘Are you OK, sir?’ asked a boy.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

  ‘Bad luck,’ said Morley, who was acting as umpire, lookout and referee. ‘I should have said: it is a dangerous sport.’ I pinched my nose to feel the swelling: it was as though someone had hammered a blunt nail directly between my eyes. ‘Next?’

  And Alex strode forward and grabbed the board triumphantly from my hands.

  I turned to watch, the taste of blood in my mouth like bitter metal. Alex followed Miriam and when the right wave eventually came, he managed to raise himself from the board and stood for a moment, before crashing down into the surf.

  ‘Bravo!’ cried Morley.

  And ‘Bravo!’ echoed the boys.

  The day wore on, with the boys throwing themselves into the surfing with total abandon; not one of them suffered a mishap like my own. My bloodied nostrils dried and crusted, the bridge of my nose was wide and soft and sore.

  Once everyone had followed Miriam out and enjoyed a turn on the boards, Morley himself gave a demonstration.

  Dressed in his woollen bathing suit he lay down on the wooden board and paddled out, then sat, his head bobbing above the waves, waiting for the right moment. And when that moment came he was suddenly, magically, up on the board, arms outstretched, hurtling towards the shore, like some mad bejumpered Jesus on the Sea of Galilee. His moustache hung down wet like an old dog’s whiskers.

  ‘That was … amazing,’ I said, when he made his way up the beach, though my dented nose flattened the ‘amazing’ into what sounded like ‘amusing’.

  ‘Amusing?’

  ‘Amazing,’ I said again, though the word caused me pain.

  ‘Want me to set it straight for you?’ said Morley, referring to my nose.

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Sure? I’ve done it before. Had to help fix up Teddy Baldock once after a fight at Premierland. Friend of mine had been training him. Best bantamweight I’ve ever seen fight. Did you ever see Baldock fight? Pride of Poplar?’

  ‘No, I didn’t, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Doesn’t look too bad anyway. Gives you a touch of the old Joe Louis, you know.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I certainly felt like I’d been beaten to a pulp by a heavyweight.

  ‘The thing with surfing, Sefton,’ continued Morley, ‘it’s like cycling. One never quite loses the knack.’

  ‘Once one has acquired the knack.’

  ‘Quite. But you’ll get there, Sefton. You need to relax. Be at one with the waves.’

  ‘At one with the waves?’

  ‘Absolutely. You do seem rather – what do they say? – uptight at the moment, Sefton, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  ‘Uptight, Mr Morley. Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well. I … I’m worried about Miriam.’

  ‘Miriam?’

  I nodded over to where Miriam was horsing around with Alex and some of the boys.

  ‘I have warned you about Miriam,’ said Morley, looking out to sea.

  ‘You warned me, Mr Morley?’

  ‘Several times,’ said Morley. ‘Untameable.’

  ‘Yes, but …’


  ‘I suggest you leave her to her own devices, Sefton. When her mother died, I perhaps slightly lost my—’

  ‘Lunch!’ announced Bernhard at that moment, and boys suddenly came crowding round.

  ‘Line up! Line up!’ said Bernhard.

  We were once again finishing off the remains of yesterday’s afternoon tea: cakes and hard-boiled eggs, mostly, plus the rather ornate fresh cucumber sandwiches that had been prepared for the parents: rounds of bread cut with a fluted cutter, and the bread spread unappetisingly with a kind of green butter that seemed to have been concocted from vinegar, egg yolks – and fish. The sandwiches had not proved a great success with the parents yesterday. And they were no more appetising today.

  ‘Capers?’ said Miriam, chewing.

  ‘Capers,’ confirmed Morley. ‘Alas.’ He had extremely strong opinions about sandwiches: they most certainly should not contain capers, though he did permit anchovies, with egg, and they should ideally be consumed within an hour of being made, in order ‘to prevent the moisture from the filling wreaking havoc with the crust’. (His little pamphlet – one of his self-published jeux d’esprit – ‘On Making Sandwiches’, contains a long prefatory warning about the dangers of confining sandwiches ‘in closed receptacles’ and instructions on how to make one’s own muslin sandwich bag, to allow the sandwich ‘the freedom to breathe’.)

  The boys were equally unimpressed with the sandwiches, some of them defiantly spitting them up, forming them into little green balls, and hurling them at one another.

  ‘Boys!’ cried Bernhard, utterly ineffectually.

  ‘Boys!’ said Alex quietly – and the sandwich spitting immediately ceased.

  ‘Time for a game, perhaps?’ said Morley.

  ‘Beach cricket?’ said Alex.

  ‘Good idea!’ said Morley.

  ‘Allow me,’ said Alex, getting up immediately. He was the only one among us who had changed back into his clothes, which emphasised his appearance of superiority. ‘I have spent the best part of a year trying to inculcate in these young fellows the basics of inswing, but I’m afraid I’m not having much luck.’

  ‘Takes a while,’ said Morley.

  ‘Indeed,’ agreed Alex. ‘But no time like the present. Cricket, chaps, come on! No more mucking around now.’

  There was widespread groaning from the boys, but they got up and made their way down the beach in preparation for a game of cricket.

  ‘Can we tempt you to join us, Sefton?’ asked Alex.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Pity. Bernhard?’

  ‘Germany is not a cricketing nation, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Thank goodness,’ said Morley.

  ‘I’ll sit this out,’ said Bernhard.

  As Alex departed, Miriam came and sat close beside me. ‘He’s an Eton blue in cricket, you know.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘And he gives the boys lessons once a week on the art of swordsmanship.’

  ‘Swordsmanship?’ I said. ‘Renaissance man.’

  ‘Yes. Epee, sabre. Singlesticks,’ she said, licking her fingers clean from the remains of cucumber sandwich. ‘Love the nose, by the way.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Sort of like a snout. Have you ever fenced, Sefton?’

  ‘I can’t say I have, Miss Morley, no,’ I replied, though I had, to my shame, held a knife to the throat of a man in Spain and threatened to kill him unless he allowed us unfettered access to his larder. Some of our men also helped themselves to his daughters.

  ‘Sport of kings,’ said Morley, who was flicking through the pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Miriam.

  Keen to clear my mouth of the taste of the cucumber sandwiches, and looking for any distraction to avoid having to discuss Alex’s endless schoolmasterly accomplishments, I handed round apples from the sack from the cider farm. When I bit into mine there was at the centre a tiny white coiling maggot. I spat out my mouthful in disgust.

  ‘Not you too, Sefton?’ said Morley, not looking up from the Britannica. ‘What’s the problem, man? Taste of the old Laodiceans, eh?’

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  ‘“I will spew thee out of my mouth?”’ said Miriam, apparently in clarification.

  ‘Correct!’ said Morley. ‘Book?’

  ‘Of Revelation,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Correct! Chapter?’

  ‘No idea, Father.’

  ‘Three, verse sixteen. But no matter.’

  ‘It was a maggot, Mr Morley,’ I said.

  ‘Ah. You know what they say, Sefton.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s the apple that corrupts the worm, not the worm that corrupts the apple.’

  Miriam had wisely cut her apple in half, to avoid any maggot surprise – and she held the pure white cut face towards me on her palm.

  ‘The old apple clock is ticking, Sefton,’ she said.

  Down on the beach Alex continued drilling the boys on their inswing.

  ‘It’s something Father used to say when I was young,’ she explained.

  ‘Wonderful sight, isn’t it, Sefton?’ said Morley, looking up from his book, pure contentment on his face.

  ‘Indeed it is, Mr Morley,’ I agreed, though I wasn’t sure if he meant the boys, the apple, or the Britannica.

  ‘Forms a pentagram, of course,’ said Morley, indicating the half of the apple that Miriam had handed him. ‘Ancient symbol of the goddess Kore. Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.’

  ‘We could stay here tonight, Father, and go home for breakfast tomorrow?’ interrupted Miriam.

  ‘I’m not sure that would be entirely practical,’ said Bernhard, who was busy clearing up the remains of the lunch.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Miriam. ‘Do us all the world of good. Sleeping out under the stars, as nature intended.’

  ‘I’m not sure that we have come properly equipped for an overnight stay,’ said Bernhard.

  ‘Oh nonsense!’ said Miriam. ‘Father’s a famous fresh air enthusiast, aren’t you, Father?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Morley. ‘Absolutely. The more fresh air we get the better, obviously. Nothing worse than to be cooped up. One might simply imagine an individual hermetically sealed in a room who breathes and rebreathes his own impurities – it would make himself liable to all sorts of infections, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I’m really not sure,’ said Bernhard, gobbling the few remains of some cake.

  ‘Oh come on, chaps,’ said Miriam. ‘It is a glorious autumn afternoon. The boys are enjoying the surfing and the cricket. We have enough provisions to see us through. And we could rise early and be back in time for classes tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m really not sure.’

  ‘Well,’ said Morley. ‘I was rather hoping to show the boys how to collect gulls’ eggs. And I did wonder if it might be good to teach them how to make Australian boomerangs … Simple to carve, but takes a while. I thought we could use driftwood. Taught to me by the Aboriginals when I was there. All the best Australian boomerangs are notched on both surfaces, you know, almost honeycombed. Like a golf ball. Most curious and I …’

  I remembered as Morley continued that I had arranged to meet Mrs Dodds in Sidmouth early that evening.

  ‘I think we should probably return,’ I said, looking to Bernhard for support.

  ‘We would really have to have checked with the headmaster,’ said Bernhard. ‘It might seem rather reckless otherwise.’

  ‘Reckless?’ said Morley. ‘Reckless?’ Miriam looked at me and raised a victorious eyebrow. ‘Reckless? I really do think this is what’s wrong with schooling these days, Mr Bernhard, if you don’t mind my saying so. The lack of adventure. Lack of initiative. Fear. Where are those who are willing to take these boys and show them what life is really about? Who is willing to stick their neck out and do what’s right, eh? What we need are more men like Alex in our schools.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Miriam, clapping her hands toge
ther. ‘Hear, hear!’

  ‘My ideal school,’ said Morley, warming quickly to a theme, ‘is a place where boys learn how to milk a cow, shoe and ride a horse, bake bread, grow fruit, keep bees and engage in handicrafts such as carpentry, building and leatherwork. I’ve been speaking to the headmaster about this. Also, the rudiments of engineering and—’

  ‘That’s all very well, Mr Morley, but—’ I began.

  ‘Each boy could simply place his blazer on the ground tonight and we could make a big ring,’ said Miriam, ‘with the fire in the centre, and some large stones for the fireplace, and the boys can collect wood and twigs, and we can surf and then—’

  Bernhard suddenly leapt up and gave a cry. He was pointing down at the sea.

  For a moment I thought he was pointing at the cricket ball, which was sailing high up into the sky, a small, hard red ball against the vast pale blue. But he was not pointing at the cricket ball. He was pointing at a speck, a splash in the ocean. One of the boys had apparently slipped away from the game of cricket and taken a surfboard, and swum out too far, and gone under. Bernhard had seen the splash – but the boy had not resurfaced. Alex, much closer to the shore, had also seen and was already running down to the sea, plunging in fully clothed, swimming out with a terrific stroke towards where the boy had disappeared. The boys had run down behind him and gathered at the shore. Miriam was crying out.

  The boy surfaced for a moment, hand and head, and Alex reached him and grabbed him, but suddenly he too was pulled under, the boy dragging him down.

  Miriam screamed again.

  I too had run down to the shore but by the time I had reached the water’s edge Alex had dragged the boy out and had laid him on the beach, where he tilted his head back, and the boy choked up sea water and then Alex gave him the kiss of life – which had, thank goodness, the desired effect. The whole thing was over in minutes.

  The boys whooped and hollered. Miriam wept. Alex stoically shook himself dry. Bernhard attended to the boy, a young man named Louis – and soon we all traipsed our way back to the charabanc, all thoughts of staying the night abandoned.