Westmorland Alone

by Ian Sansom

  ‘That’s just what I was going to say.’

  ‘Good,’ said Morley. ‘Do you know the entire population of the world could be stored in Lake Windermere, if you stacked them correctly?’

  ‘Really?’ said Miriam. ‘How fascinating.’

  ‘Or packed shoulder-to-shoulder on the Isle of Wight.’

  ‘Well, that’s good to know, Father.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Write it all down then, Sefton. Write it all down.’

  If there is only one thing I learned from my time with Morley it was probably that: the secret of successful authorship, summed up in just four words. Write it all down. Assemble, not disperse. Interventions, not interjections. March, don’t waltz. Reality, not illusions. And always keep a pencil handy.

  On our rather circuitous drive – ‘We must stop here!’ Morley would announce, every ten minutes, and ‘No, Father,’ Miriam would invariably retort, before we did often end up stopping, for no good reason other than to admire a view. ‘Aren’t we just the William Gilpins!’ Morley would exult – we passed a couple of gypsy caravans, tucked down narrow lanes away from the main road.

  ‘Miriam!’ cried Morley. ‘Didn’t our friend the signalman mention gypsy children on the line? I wonder if perhaps we should—’

  ‘No, Father!’ said Miriam. ‘Sorry! No time. We’re due at the dig.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No ifs, no buts, no nothing. I have the wheel, in case you didn’t notice. If you want to speak to the gypsies you’ll have to do it later.’

  ‘Do you know the gypsiologist John Sampson?’ Morley asked me.

  ‘I can’t say I do, Mr Morley, no.’

  ‘Terribly interesting. Bit of an oddball. Founding member of the Gypsy Lore Society. Rather romantic view of things – the gypsy as a kind of ur-ancestor of mankind. Interesting notion of course, and a long line of such thinking in the literary imagination: Arnold associating gypsies with resistance to the “strange disease” of modern life. Other examples?’

  ‘Erm.’

  ‘Miriam: other examples of representations of the gypsy in English literature?’

  ‘Heathcliff?’ called Miriam.

  ‘He’ll do, I suppose,’ said Morley.

  ‘He’ll more than do,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Never seen the appeal myself,’ said Morley.

  ‘He’s not for you, Father.’

  ‘Well, who is he for? Dreadful man. Tortured romantic soul, prone to violence, troubled past. Can’t see the appeal.’

  ‘That’s precisely the appeal,’ said Miriam. ‘Isn’t it, Sefton?’

  I forbore to answer.

  ‘I rather prefer Arnold’s scholar gypsy,’ said Morley.

  ‘You would,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Rather fascinating topic, though, eh?’ said Morley. ‘The English gypsy. Fascinating …’

  (A complete history of Morley’s fascinations would be very long indeed. There is, I believe, a doctoral student in the United States of America, a Mr Balokowsky, who is currently compiling an index of Morley’s topics and themes, culled from the thousands of publications. It seems to me like an utterly pointless and very probably endless enterprise. I have made my views known to the young man and declined to become in any way involved. The task is simply too great, like compiling a list of everything. I doubt that there was any subject, place, person, entity, animal, vegetable or mineral that during our time together I did not hear Morley describe as ‘fascinating’. The rules of etiquette: fascinating. Electro-plating: fascinating. Falconry, fingerprinting, flower lore: fascinating. But as for the English gypsy, ‘the Romanichal’, this was more than fascinating: the Romanichal were an obsession.)

  ‘Maggie Tulliver’s defection to the gypsy camp,’ he continued, ‘and Jane Austen’s Harriet Smith accosted by begging gypsy children on the outskirts of Highbury in Emma. The gypsy perhaps as the Englishman’s surrogate self’ – and certainly as Morley’s surrogate self. He was in many ways a romantic wanderer, strange and set apart, just like the scholar gypsy in Arnold’s poem. ‘O like unlike to ours! / Who fluctuate idly without term or scope, / Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives, / And each half lives a hundred different lives; / Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope.’

  Anyway, Miriam, I am delighted to say, accelerated quickly past the gypsy caravans.

  ‘Miriam!’ cried Morley. ‘Couldn’t we stop just for a moment?’

  ‘No time!’ cried Miriam. ‘Fugit irreparabile tempus.’

  ‘But they look like very fine wagons! You can’t beat a gypsy vardo. I remember I was in the Carpathians once—’

  ‘It’s not happening, Father.’

  ‘Have you ever been inside a gypsy vardo, Sefton?’ asked Morley.

  ‘I can’t say I have, Mr Morley, no.’

  ‘And he’s not going to be today, Father,’ said Miriam. ‘Come on. No slacking, no shilly-shallying. No funking.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Morley. ‘Very well.’

  He returned to his typing, while Miriam let out a triumphant laugh, tossed back her head with typical dash, and floored the accelerator. I, as always, felt rather sick and wondered what on earth I was doing with these lunatics.

  My leg, which had been expertly dressed by the nurse the day before, was now throbbing rather. And my head: the bump from the luggage rack had swollen into a lump the size and colour of one half of a bad potato. I did perhaps mention my pains once or twice, and perhaps more than once or twice, and certainly so much that as we were driving through Kirkby Stephen – ‘Just a little detour?’ Morley had petitioned Miriam. ‘To see the parish church, the Cathedral of the Dales?’ – Miriam pulled over the Lagonda and we parked outside a pharmacy in the centre of the town.

  Kirkby Stephen: The High Street

  ‘Come on, you big baby,’ she said, getting out and slamming the door.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s get you something for those bangs and bruises.’

  Morley was about to leap out of the car and follow.

  ‘We’re not stopping here, Father,’ said Miriam, pushing him back in.

  ‘Well, we are, actually,’ said Morley. ‘Strictly speaking, we have stopped. We are no longer—’

  ‘I mean we’re not stopping here for long,’ said Miriam. ‘We’ll only be a minute. You just stay in the car.’

  ‘Fine!’ said Morley, who was already hammering away at his typewriter again, his attention having been caught by some pillared shelter. ‘Hmm. What do you think, early nineteenth century, Sefton?’

  ‘Back in a moment, Father! Come on, Sefton. Chop, chop.’

  Taylor’s Pharmacy – ‘ALL PATENT MEDICINES AND PROPRIETARY ARTICLES KEPT IN STOCK’ – was a jigsaw-puzzle neat storehouse of brown and white bottles and pots in glass cabinets, decorated with gilt and mirrors and dark mahogany drawers. Mr Taylor, the pharmacist – for it was he – stood in his pharmacist’s white coat, perfectly framed before this vast pharmacopoeia and behind a tiny set of shiny brass scales, like a god preparing to weigh mercy and justice, sub specie aeternitatis. He was younger than one might have expected for a pharmacist and might perhaps generously have been described as ‘robust’, sturdy around the chest and waist, though with a generous, soft clerical sort of face. He looked indeed like the perfect pharmacist: one could imagine him both dispensing and refusing to dispense you with absolutely anything. The drawers and bottles and cabinets behind him suggested a world of wonders and he the guardian to another realm. The whole atmosphere of the place, I have to say, made me rather excited. I felt like a cook, or a gourmand, surveying a well-stocked kitchen, come to petition the larder keeper.

  Miriam explained that we were just passing through and were on our way to Shap, and that we required a little something for bumps, bruises and a headache.

  ‘You’re not locals then?’ said Mr Taylor, gathering whatever it was he saw fit to dispense.

  ‘No, sir, from Norfolk. We’re here on a trip.’

  ‘You heard a
bout the crash yesterday, at Appleby?’

  ‘Not only did we hear about the crash,’ said Miriam. ‘I’m afraid my companion here sustained his injuries in the course of it.’

  ‘You’re not the fellow from London who everyone’s talking about?’

  ‘Almost certainly!’ said Miriam.

  ‘The chap who saved the family from the burning carriage?’

  ‘The man himself.’

  I winced.

  ‘Well done, sir,’ said Mr Taylor. ‘Congratulations.’

  I had nothing to be congratulated on.

  ‘I’m sure you must have been busy here yesterday with the crash?’ asked Miriam.

  ‘We sent over some supplies, yes,’ said Mr Taylor. ‘Terrible business.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Miriam.

  ‘There was a little girl who died, from London, is that right?’

  Miriam, kindly, did not answer, and Mr Taylor carried on with his tasks.

  ‘They don’t know yet what caused it then?’ he asked.

  ‘Not as far as I’m aware,’ said Miriam.

  At which point a bell rang in the shop, announcing another customer – and Morley wandered in.

  ‘Father!’ said Miriam. ‘I told you to wait in the car!’

  ‘I know, my dear. I know, I know. I just thought you were taking so long that there might be some sort of problem.’

  ‘There’s no problem, Father. Everything’s in hand, thank you. You can go and wait in the car. Otherwise we’ll fall behind schedule. Far far behind schedule. You know how far behind schedule we are already.’ She looked at me imploringly.

  ‘Mr Morley,’ I said. ‘We really must hurry along. This is not a part of the itinerary.’

  ‘Oh, but I do love a pharmacy,’ said Morley, beginning to fossick around, running a hand along a super-shiny wooden counter. ‘I’m always reminded of Blake in a pharmacy, aren’t you, Sefton? “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” You have the keys to unlock the doors of perception, sir,’ he said to Mr Taylor, who was concentrating on weighing and packing our prescription.

  ‘Don’t mind my father,’ said Miriam. ‘We’ll be gone in a moment.’

  ‘You certainly keep this place spick and span,’ said Morley.

  ‘I do my best, sir.’

  ‘And are we to assume that you are the Mr Taylor of Taylor’s Pharmacy?’

  ‘That I am, sir. Gerald Taylor. Third generation of Taylors to be running this shop. Pleased to make your acquaintance.’

  ‘Likewise,’ said Morley. ‘Likewise.’ He was staring up at the many awards and certificates that were framed, high up on the walls.

  ‘You appear to be supremely well qualified, Mr Taylor,’ said Morley, gesturing towards the certificates. ‘Inspires confidence, eh?’

  ‘Them?’ said Mr Taylor. ‘Oh, no, they’re not for the pharmacy. They’re for the wrestling.’

  ‘The wrestling?’

  ‘Westmorland wrestling. Bit of a hobby. Goes back generations in our family. You’ve mebbe not heard of it, sir? It’s local.’

  ‘Westmorland wrestling!’ cried Morley, becoming dangerously but predictably excited. ‘Westmorland wrestling! Not only have I heard of it, Mr Taylor!’ he exclaimed, standing up tall on tiptoes in his brogues. ‘I am a great fan of wrestling of all kinds.’ (This I can confirm. He was also an enthusiastic practitioner.)

  ‘Father,’ said Miriam. ‘It’s probably time we went. Mr Taylor, if I could pay you perhaps, for the—’

  ‘Greco-Roman. Freestyle. Lancashire wrestling. Do you know William Litt’s Wrestliana, perhaps, Mr Taylor, in which he claims that wrestling is of divine origin? Wonderful book. Jacob wrestling with the angel at the River Jabbok?’

  ‘I can’t say I do, sir. I just likes the wrestling.’

  ‘You know, the most extraordinary bout I think I’ve ever seen was when I was in Turkey once,’ said Morley, warming to another theme. (Note, Mr Balokowsky – another theme. There is no shortage. There can be no definitive list.) ‘They have this most peculiar sport of oil wrestling. Have you come across it at all at all at all?’

  ‘I can’t say I have, sir, no.’

  ‘The competitors oil themselves up until they’re positively glistening – almost like they’ve been dipped in honey—’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Miriam involuntarily.

  ‘And then the aim is not to throw the opponent but rather to hold on to them.’

  ‘More like pig wrasslin,’ said Mr Taylor.

  ‘Precisely like pig wrestling,’ said Morley. ‘Rather spectacular, actually. Reminds one of Marcus Aurelius.’

  ‘Father!’ said Miriam. ‘There’s no time to be reminded of Marcus Aurelius! We really must press on.’

  ‘“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.”’

  ‘Father!?’

  ‘But do you know I have never once seen Westmorland wrestling,’ continued Morley. ‘Never had the opportunity.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to be across in Egremont later, sir, at the fair. If you’re interested.’

  ‘Well, we really should, Miriam, shouldn’t we?’

  ‘You’d be very welcome, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Taylor. Very best of luck to you today.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  We took the medicines and left.

  ‘What an absolutely charming fellow,’ said Morley. ‘And he must be quite a wrestler, judging by all the awards and certificates.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Miriam. ‘Big hog of a man.’

  ‘Break your neck quite easily, I would have thought,’ said Morley.

  ‘Oh, don’t be morbid, Father. Now, Shap here we come!’

  CHAPTER 8

  ENGLISH ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORDS

  FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE DIG at Shap I can only suggest that readers refer to Professor Alan Jenkins’s standard work, English Archaeological Records, published by Oxford University Press in 1939 – though for reasons that will become clear it is not a book I can enthusiastically or wholeheartedly recommend.

  Shap itself is a perfectly pleasant little Westmorland village, the sort of place where one can imagine living a perfectly pleasant life along the perfectly pleasant one-and-only street, going about one’s perfectly pleasant business during the week and then on Sundays saying one’s perfectly pleasant prayers to one’s perfectly pleasant God in one’s perfectly pleasant little church, and enjoying a perfectly pleasant pint of Westmorland ale in one of the perfectly pleasant country inns. Shap, like so much of England – and indeed like so many of the English, as they once were, until very recently – is perfectly pleasant. It is charming and inoffensive, and completely clogged on the day we arrived with car and lorry traffic escaping to Scotland and, presumably, with many Scots cars and lorries escaping to England in the opposite direction. Shap is not a destination: it is a place entirely en route, a perfect nowhere.

  But the surrounding area! The surrounding area is something else entirely. The surrounding area – the wider parish of Shap, Shap Rural, as it is known, to distinguish it from the village – is simply astonishing. It is England at the extreme. It is ultimate England. Of all the places we visited during our time writing the County Guides it is probably Shap that remains in my mind as the most extraordinary. The vast plateau of fells and dales, the sudden peaks and valleys, the perfect dry-stone walls, the ravines and the waterfalls: it is a place entirely self-invented and self-contained, a place perfectly poised between the Lakeland mountains proper and the big bluff sweep of the Pennines, the remote kind of place where a man might wish to go late in life and wait happily to die. Sometimes, when I imagine for myself another life, a good life, a life of ease and peace, I don’t think of the Caribbean or the Côte d’Azur, I think of Shap, maybe somewhere up above the village, or in the lonely valley of Swindale, with nothing to do but to admire the fells, the sheep and the heathe
r, to think and to remember and to write. Our business in Shap that morning turned out to be a grim matter indeed, but the view was nothing short of magnificent.

  Morley was already excited by the sight of the area’s granite works and its limestone quarries, and by the beauty of the tiny little chapel in the hamlet of Keld – another ‘essential’ detour – but when he spied the standing stones of Shap he was, frankly, in ecstasy. He gave a deep sigh of satisfaction, took a deep breath in through his nose – one nostril, then the other, in his usual pranic fashion – and smoothed out the corners of his moustache. A pleasant smile spread across his face and he relaxed. This is what Morley lived for: England and its history. (Indeed, in What I Live For (1930), an anthology in which he asks various writers, politicians and all the other usual suspects what they live for he answers his own question, indirectly, by quoting Shakespeare from Henry V: ‘Follow your spirit, and upon this charge cry “God for Harry, England, and Saint George!”’)

  Shap’s stone circle stands at the south end of the village and consists of a collection of boulders of varying sizes which once formed part of a much larger collection of standing stones, what Morley in the County Guides calls ‘one of England’s many ancient reckoning places’. Over the centuries the stones have been gradually moved and manhandled and hauled away to be used for other purposes – for hardcore and foundation stones, and doubtless for decorative garden features – and yet for all the destruction wrought upon the site what remains is still rather impressive, like a small ruined Stonehenge. It was all the more impressive the morning we arrived for being the scene of a busy archaeological dig, with all the associated tents and equipment and tools. That day it undoubtedly felt like an important place, a place where something might happen. Shap, according to Morley, is ‘the Avebury that nobody knows’: it is, moreover, ‘a sacred space’. I am not entirely convinced. But it is certainly a site of great drama.

  ‘Look! Look!’ cried Morley, like a boy coming across a travelling circus or a country fair. ‘We’re here!’