Westmorland Alone

by Ian Sansom

  The first thing I noticed on our arrival at the dig was not the stones but an old motorbike and sidecar parked at the entrance to the field leading to the stones. It was no ordinary motorbike and sidecar. The sidecar had been converted into the most peculiar contraption: where the passenger might usually sit, a large black metal box had been installed, connected by a series of coiling pipes and wires to the motorbike’s upswept exhaust. Miriam parked the Lagonda and Morley of course leapt out and became instantly and utterly intrigued by the thing, and stood examining it in some detail, warming his hands on the sides of the box and then carefully sketching the design on one of his waistcoat-pocket notecards.

  ‘Remarkable,’ he kept saying. ‘Remarkable. Look at this, Sefton. English ingenuity, eh?’

  The sidecar itself was painted in the most ornate fashion, with the words DORA’S STATION CAFE AND OUTSIDE CATERING – CATERING FOR ALL TASTES picked out in bold – if rather unskilled – gold calligraphic lettering.

  As we stood admiring this peculiar machine a buxom woman came hurrying across the field towards us, becoming all the more buxom as she approached. She would have made an excellent Carmen, Morley later remarked. (‘With that accent?’ said Miriam. ‘The perfect accent,’ said Morley, who claimed that the accents of the north of the country came closest to the sound of the ancient settlers of Europe, and thus brought us closer to our common ancestors and our true selves. At least, he sometimes claimed that it was the accents of the north of the country that brought us closer us to our common ancestors and our true selves. At other times he suggested it was the accents of the south of the country. And the west. And the east. His ideas were not always entirely consistent. For a snapshot of his view at a single point in time – during a particularly ‘northern’ phase – see his paper ‘In Search of the English Ur-Accent’, in Pictorial Geographic magazine, vol.26, no.2, 1934.)

  ‘Aye, aye,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Aye, aye,’ said Morley in return, in what I assumed was supposed to be an approximation of the local accent. ‘Excelsior Triumph and a Steib sidecar. If I am not mistaken.’

  ‘And surely you are not mistaken, sir,’ said the woman. ‘My pride and joy.’

  ‘That’s quite a little stove you have there,’ said Morley, who had thankfully returned to his normal speaking voice. ‘I was just warming my hands.’

  ‘On my hotbox?’ said the woman.

  ‘Quite magnificent,’ said Morley. ‘I was just saying to my colleagues here.’

  ‘Well, thank you.’

  ‘A beautiful machine. The motorcycle and the stove.’

  ‘Do you know anything about motorcycles?’ she asked. It was a silly question; Morley knew a thing or two about everything.

  ‘Only a little,’ said Morley.

  ‘Well, I’m sure I could take you for a ride some time,’ said the woman. ‘If you were interested?’

  ‘Do you know,’ said Morley. ‘I might just take you up on that. Dora, is it?’

  ‘It is indeed,’ she said. The pair of them shook hands.

  ‘And you cater for all tastes, I see?’ said Morley, indicating the lettering on the sidecar.

  ‘I certainly do my best,’ said Dora.

  ‘I’m sure you do,’ said Morley. ‘I’m sure you do.’

  Miriam coughed loudly several times during the course of this carry-on and frowned noisily and disapprovingly towards Morley. He took no notice, of course. No slouch herself in the art of English flirting, Miriam knew exactly when her father was getting out of his depth, which was often. Morley was endlessly flirting with women without apparently realising that he was doing so – and this sometimes got him into serious trouble. (The episode with the Texan oil millionaire’s widow certainly springs to mind: that was a narrow escape. And all the trouble with the German countess. And the wife of the Scottish laird. The mixed-up divorcee who bought him a pet leopard. The poetess. The actress. The other actress. The list is surprisingly long.)

  ‘I’m afraid we really don’t have time to talk about motorcycles at the moment, Father, do we,’ said Miriam, making a statement rather than asking a question. ‘Remember, we’re here for the dig.’

  ‘Don’t let me hold you back then, my dear,’ said Dora, who was busy getting busy about her business. ‘They’re over there. You can’t miss them.’ She hauled a couple of trays out of the sidecar hotbox, using a pair of old leather motorcycle gloves, and stacked them one on top of the other. The trays were full of golden steaming pies in white enamel pie plates.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said Morley. ‘Don’t let us hold you up.’ He took a long, lingering theatrical sniff, which sounded rather like the reverse of a trumpet fanfare: this was yet another of his less than pleasant habits. ‘But may I say, whatever those pies are, Dora, they smell absolutely delicious!’

  ‘Well, thank you, sir. Herdwick lamb and juniper pies,’ she said. ‘A local speciality.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a little nibble on that myself,’ said Morley.

  ‘I might be able to treat you to some leftovers,’ said Dora.

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ said Miriam.

  ‘Here, let me help you, Dora,’ said Morley, entirely unconcerned. And he moved to take a tray from her.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, sir,’ she said, giving him one of her motorcycle gloves. ‘You don’t want to burn your fingers now.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Morley.

  ‘Father!’ said Miriam.

  ‘Where do you want these then, my dear?’ Morley asked Dora, holding the tray aloft in a gloved hand, for all the world as though he were a waiter serving drinks at the Criterion.

  ‘I’m just taking the last few bits over for the professor and his students,’ she said.

  ‘Jolly good,’ said Morley.

  ‘Father!’ said Miriam again.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘Come on, lend a hand. Sefton? Chop chop.’

  Miriam tutted and folded her arms in disgust – she was hardly going to act as a waitress – but I dutifully took another tray from the hotbox, this one full of boiled potatoes and enamel pots of mushy peas, and all four of us strode across the field towards a big white bell tent. Or rather, three of us strode, and Miriam sulkily followed, picking her way between cow pats in her unsuitable heels.

  ‘This is where they eat,’ whispered Dora, before we entered the tent. ‘And don’t mind him.’

  ‘Who?’ said Morley.

  ‘The professor. He’s full of babblement, but his bark’s worse than his—’

  ‘Bite?’ said Morley.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Dora, winking at Morley. ‘Don’t let him badger you.’

  We entered the tent to find perhaps a dozen people seated around a long trestle table which was set out with simple picnic food: oatcakes and oat bread and pickles, modest Westmorland fare. At the head of the table was a man who held a glass of dark wine in one hand, his eyes screwed small against the smoke of the cigarette held in his other. He wore a white shirt and cravat, and his long greying hair was swept back from his forehead, giving him the appearance of a poet or perhaps a playboy film director, the kind of bohemian fool I sometimes came across in Soho. He was not in fact a poet or a playboy film director. He was Professor Alan Jenkins, of Oxford University no less, and the author of English Archaeological Records, published by Oxford University Press in 1939 (as previously mentioned, though again, might I emphasise, not wholeheartedly recommended). Professor Jenkins is, I understand, generally considered to be the world’s leading expert on megalithic structures, and he may well be – it is a subject about which I am ill-equipped to comment. I can safely say however that Professor Jenkins is undoubtedly one of the world’s leading experts in incivility. Of all the preening pompous twits we ever came across in our perambulations, Jenkins ranked among the very greatest.

  ‘Herdwick lamb and juniper pie, Professor,’ said Dora, serving him with a pie in its enamel plate.

  ‘Not exactly high table, is it?’ said the prof
essor, snorting, to the attractive young woman seated on his right, who laughed uproariously at what was presumably intended to be a joke.

  ‘More damson wine, Professor?’ asked Dora.

  The professor waved a hand and Dora indicated to Miriam with a nod of her head that she should fill up his glass from a bottle on the table, while she continued to dole out the pies. Miriam vigorously shook her head in response, indicating that she would be doing no such thing, and Dora shook her head back in disappointment, while Morley nodded to indicate to Miriam that she should bloody well do as she was told. It was quite the little dumb-show we were enacting, though the diners – young and earnest, mostly male and mostly dressed in expensive rough tweeds – were so absorbed in their meal and their apparently hilarious conversation that none of them seemed to have noticed us. But when Miriam sullenly reached across the table to take the bottle to pour the wine – she and Morley having been vigorously nodding and shaking heads at one another now for quite some time – Jenkins did take note. Miriam’s, after all, was not a wrist to be ignored.

  ‘Well well,’ said Jenkins. ‘And who is this?’ He turned around to look at Miriam, apprising her instantly with a wolfish grin. But then he saw Morley and then he saw me and his smile and his tone immediately changed. ‘And who on earth are you?’

  Morley drew himself up to his full height and announced himself in his customary fashion – ‘Swanton Morley, sir, at your service’ – which I always thought marked him out as a provincial, suggesting someone who might have come to perform some lowly tradesman’s task, unblocking a sink perhaps, or sweeping a chimney, hanging a door, or some wallpaper. (‘For the working classes I am a builder of great palaces, Sefton,’ he once told me, many years later, in his darkest hours, when he had rather come to doubt his achievements. ‘But for the bourgeoisie I will never be anything more than a cheap paper hanger.’)

  To my great surprise, Jenkins greeted us warmly.

  ‘Well, well, Mr Swanton Morley! We have been expecting you. Very good of you to join us.’

  Little did we know we had walked into a trap.

  Jenkins clapped his hands to silence the table.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ he announced. ‘We are honoured to have with us at our humble dig today a very distinguished visitor. A very distinguished visitor indeed. You may be familiar with his work in the popular press. He is a journalist and the author of a number of books for children – isn’t that right, Mr Morley? And it seems he also has an interest in archaeology—’

  ‘A very amateur interest,’ said Morley.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Jenkins. ‘Indeed.’

  Dora, having finished distributing the pies from her tray, took Morley’s tray from him and went on around the table.

  ‘It is extraordinarily kind of you to allow us to visit, Professor,’ said Morley.

  ‘Kind?’ said Jenkins, taking a great swallow of his damson wine, and setting the glass down firmly on the table. ‘Kind?’ He made a sort of doleful face. ‘Oh no, Mr Morley. I don’t think it was my intention to be kind, sir. One is kind towards children and animals, isn’t one?’ He appealed here with a smirk to his gathered students, who smirked readily in response. ‘No, you seem to have misunderstood, Mr Morley. I wasn’t being kind. I was simply curious to meet the man who had the audacity to suggest in some inferior daily rag that I am the poor man’s Howard Carter!’

  Some of Jenkins’s students, to their credit, winced at this rather sudden and direct attack and even Morley himself – accustomed as he was to being patronised by the rich, the superior, the university educated, and the upper middle classes – was clearly rather taken aback. He coughed apologetically.

  ‘I think I know the article to which you are referring, Professor, and I can assure you I was merely suggesting—’

  ‘“Merely suggesting!”’ Jenkins interrupted. ‘“Merely suggesting?” And who are you, sir, to “merely suggest” anything to me? You who base your superior knowledge on … sorry, what exactly? The fact that you have written The Children’s Guide to Archaeology?’

  Jenkins was playing to the gallery here – and they were enjoying the show. Several of the male students guffawed, others tittered. Everyone was grinning: everyone except for me, Miriam, Morley and Dora.

  ‘I have certainly spent much of my working life doing my best to offer some schooling to those who have no access to a formal education—’ began Morley.

  ‘Well, bully for you,’ said Jenkins, taking up his glass of damson wine again and knocking back a final mouthful. ‘Bully for you. Well done.’ He held out his glass towards Miriam, indicating that she might refill it for him. She did no such thing.

  I was beginning to feel extremely uncomfortable, and fearing the worst. It wouldn’t take much more provocation for either Miriam or Morley to explode.

  ‘Just tell me this, Mr Morley,’ continued Jenkins. ‘Have you suffered for knowledge at all, as I have? And as my students have? Living outside’ – he waved his hands around him – ‘in this sort of squalor.’ The site was not in fact in the least squalid. On the contrary. It was rather better appointed, and certainly less damp and draughty than my old digs back in Camden. ‘Have you made sacrifices for knowledge, sir?’

  ‘I believe I have, Professor, yes,’ said Morley modestly. His life in many ways was a living sacrifice to the cause of knowledge.

  ‘And do you have the degrees and professional qualifications to prove it? The credentials?’ – which are of course the only things that count to men of Jenkins’s stature. Credentials. Awards. Certificates. Citations. Chaff.

  Morley remained silent.

  ‘No? Really?’ Jenkins made another sad, clownish face. ‘I thought not. In which case might I suggest, sir, that in future you leave serious scholarship to serious scholars and stick to scribbling about whatever pathetic subjects you actually know something about?’

  This caused another ripple of laughter among the students.

  Miriam had had enough.

  ‘How dare you, sir!’ she said, hands firmly on her hips. It is a terrible cliché of course to describe someone’s eyes as ‘blazing’ but Miriam’s eyes were indeed in that moment alight with indignation. I had seen them before. And I can see them still.

  ‘Pardon?’ spluttered Jenkins, who was clearly not accustomed to being challenged.

  ‘I said, how dare you! Do you talk to every stranger you meet like that?’

  ‘I talk however I damn well please to whoever I damn well please, miss,’ said Jenkins, pushing back in his chair.

  ‘Whomsoever,’ Miriam corrected him.

  ‘And who are you exactly?’ said Jenkins.

  ‘Never mind who I am, sir. Whoever I am I would expect a show of better manners from a gentleman of your so-called education and standing.’

  ‘Would you now?’ said Jenkins, twitching rather like a horse dug by a sharp spur. ‘Would you now, girl?’

  ‘Yes I would. And I am a woman, sir, not a girl, thank you. I’m assuming you can tell the difference?’

  The young woman sitting on Jenkins’s right gave a tiny clap of her hands at this.

  ‘Have you quite finished?’ said Jenkins, glancing from the young woman and back to Miriam.

  ‘No, I have not,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Well, might I point out, young lady, that we are engaged in serious scholarly research here and that you would be—’

  ‘And might I point out, sir, that any man of any education would rather be called a rascal than—’

  ‘– be accused of a deficiency in graces,’ said Morley, finishing what was presumably a quotation.

  ‘Thank you, Father,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Finished, the pair of you?’ said Jenkins.

  ‘No,’ said Miriam. ‘I have not. I’ll tell you when I’ve finished. To paraphrase Dr Johnson, sir, I find you utterly deficient in graces. You invited us here to join your dig, we came in good faith, and you have proceeded to insult us. Is this how you teach your students to behave?�
�� That seemed to hit the mark. Jenkins shifted uncomfortably on his seat and set his jaw in defiance. ‘Is it? I think you’ll find you owe us an apology, sir. At the very least.’

  ‘Young lady,’ said Jenkins through gritted teeth and lowering his voice. I wasn’t quite sure whether he was going to get up and strangle Miriam or whether he was going to knock Morley down. Either way, I feared for our safety. In fact, he stood up and made an elaborate bow. ‘Please forgive me. I seem momentarily to have forgotten myself. Please: I insist that you join our luncheon.’ He clicked his fingers and beckoned Dora over with a finger. ‘Set some more places for our guests, woman.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Dora.

  ‘And I’d expect you to show rather more manners to those serving you, sir,’ said Miriam.

  Jenkins laughed. ‘Do you know, I think you may be one of the most impertinent creatures I have ever met.’ He paused here for effect. ‘I rather like it.’

  ‘Whether you like it or not is of little interest to me,’ said Miriam, seating herself at the table, while tossing back her head in a way that suggested that it was actually of great interest to her. ‘And I am not a creature.’

  ‘Oh, I think you are,’ said Jenkins. ‘But do forgive me for any offence caused. It was perhaps the wine talking.’ He waved towards the bottles of damson wine. ‘Local plonk. One perhaps underestimates its effect. Stronger than one thinks.’

  ‘Really?’ said Miriam. With which, she poured herself a glass, I took a seat beside her, and Morley beside me.

  ‘Go easy on him,’ said Morley, leaning over to Miriam. ‘Mortuum flagellas.’

  And so – eventually – we all settled down to a lunch of Herdwick lamb and juniper pies in a tent at the archaeological dig at Shap.

  After the lunch, and before getting back to work, the students stood around chatting and smoking, invigorated, excited, full of vim and vigour, clearly having enjoyed the little spat between Miriam and Jenkins. It probably wasn’t every day that an archaeological dig saw such a spectacle: Miriam had become quite the centre of attention, as no doubt she had fully intended. (‘There is more than one way to prove the existence of God,’ as Morley liked sometimes to remark. ‘All of them inconclusive. Most of them incomprehensible. And none of them particularly interesting.’ And there is more than one way to become the star of the show: most of them mysterious, some of them nefarious, and Miriam expert in them all.) Morley was still eating slowly at the table, but then he did insist on chewing every mouthful of food thirty-six times or more (‘If it was good enough for Gladstone, Sefton, then it’s good enough for me’). Jenkins wisely kept a safe distance from both Morley and Miriam, briefing students and quaffing yet more of the admittedly delicious damson wine, while Dora bustled around, tidying up. It was a scene of peculiar domestic contentment, in the middle of a field, in the middle of nowhere in Westmorland, though my thoughts, as usual, were bellowing in my mind. I calmed myself with cigarettes, the wine and pinch or two of Delaney’s powders.