Westmorland Alone

by Ian Sansom

  ‘But we’ve already been to Kirkby Stephen, Father!’ She lifted her coffee cup and sat up straight. ‘Oh goodness! You’re not losing your memory, are you?’

  ‘No, I am not losing my memory, thank you, Miriam.’ This was to become a familiar exchange in the years to come. ‘But I do want to have another little look around Gerald Taylor’s pharmacy.’

  Miriam took a sip of coffee, realised it was cold and called over a waiter.

  ‘This coffee is cold!’ she said. ‘Is it too much to ask for hot coffee in the morning?’

  ‘No, miss, not at all,’ said the waiter.

  ‘Really,’ she said, ‘the service here is quite atrocious.’

  ‘We have been waiting for you for quite some time,’ I said.

  ‘Beside the point, isn’t it?’ said Miriam. ‘Anyway, why on earth do you want to go back to Gerald Taylor’s pharmacy?’

  ‘Just, because, Miriam,’ said Morley.

  ‘Because what?’

  ‘Because … The poor man’s lost his wife and I feel we have a responsibility, having found the poor woman.’

  ‘Responsibility?!’ said Miriam. ‘To do what? Get ourselves in more trouble with the police?’

  Our fellow breakfast guests seemed unusually subdued, I thought. Had they nothing themselves to talk about? All I could hear was the scraping of butter on toast.

  ‘Probably not a good idea, Mr Morley,’ I said quietly. ‘Under the circumstances.’

  ‘The thing is,’ continued Morley regardless. ‘I don’t really want the police to know that I’ve been looking around.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Miriam, clapping her hands. The waiter arrived back with a fresh pot of coffee. ‘Marvellous!’ said Miriam. ‘And perhaps some toast?’

  ‘So we just need to be a little bit stealthy in our approach,’ said Morley.

  ‘Stealthy?’ I said. Morley‘s idea of stealthy did not alas extend to his governing the volume, tone or manner of his table talk.

  ‘It’s a Sunday, for goodness sake,’ said Miriam. ‘Gerald’s still helping the police, as far as we know, and his poor wife is dead. There won’t be anybody at the pharmacy.’

  ‘Which would be perfect,’ said Morley. ‘But just in case there is, I will need you two to come up with some good reason why you’re there, and to provide a bit of a distraction. I hope you don’t mind?’

  ‘Well, I think I can safely say that I can always provide a distraction,’ said Miriam, looking towards me, doing her best Jean Harlow impersonation.

  ‘And I don’t need long,’ said Morley. ‘I should be in and out in no time.’

  ‘As the bishop said—’

  ‘Enough of that sort of talk at breakfast – or any other time for that matter – thank you, Miriam,’ said Morley.

  ‘It was a joke, Father!’

  ‘If that’s the sort of thing you pick up at these dances I do rather despair, my dear.’

  ‘That is the least of what one picks up at the dances, Father!’

  ‘No doubt. Right.’ Morley consulted his wristwatches and his pocket-watch, and began gathering up his papers. ‘Estimated time of departure for Kirkby Stephen, 09.30. That’s twenty-three minutes by my watches. No shirking!’ With which he rose to leave, typewriter under one arm, reference books under the other.

  ‘No funking,’ said Miriam loudly, getting up and sweeping out, grabbing a couple of slices of toast on the way from the poor confused waiter, who had re-emerged from the kitchen with a tray laden with a toast-rack, butter and jams.

  ‘Sefton?’ cried Morley, halfway out the door of the dining room.

  ‘And no shilly-shallying,’ I muttered quietly, slinking out behind them.

  ‘Sir!’ called the waiter, as I was leaving. ‘Sir!’ I turned back, almost having escaped. The waiter handed me a brown paper bag full of a dozen hard-boiled eggs. ‘Your father—’

  ‘He’s not my father,’ I said.

  ‘The gentleman asked the kitchen to prepare some eggs, for your outing.’

  ‘Very good,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And some flasks of black tea.’ He handed me two flasks.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘And I just need a signature, sir, for breakfast.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said.

  I duly signed and left the dining room as quickly as I could.

  I had the strong feeling that the staff and our fellow breakfast guests were glad to see us gone.

  The heavens opened as we drove to Kirkby Stephen, the mild September weather finally giving way to grey autumn rain and wind. This prompted Morley, alas, to start quoting Coleridge, from ‘Dejection: An Ode’, at great length. By the time we arrived in the town my head was throbbing and when Miriam and I presented ourselves half-bedraggled at the front door of Taylor’s Pharmacy I was wondering whether they might be able to provide some cure for those suffering from Romantic poetry recited by middle-aged men in droning tones – some kind of poetry emetic. (I was so pleased with this notion that I made a note in my notebook to compose a long free verse epic against the recital of poetry, titled ‘Poemetic’. The poem, alas, has never been undertaken: my years with Morley rather sapped my poetic strengths. My Complete Poems, 1937–1940 consists of a single sonnet, a sestina, some limericks and a ballad. The County Guides became my Poly-Oblion.)

  Morley made himself scarce, looking for an entrance round the back, while Miriam knocked loudly once, twice and three times on the pharmacy’s big black double-width front door. On the third knock the door was opened by a woman who looked more than a little pained and discombobulated. She was carrying a coat, gloves, a hat and a Bible.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Can I help you?’ said the woman, distracted, fussing around with her coat, her gloves, her hat and her Bible.

  ‘I do hope so,’ said Miriam, clasping her hands together, in a wretched fashion.

  ‘I’m just on my way to church, actually,’ said the woman. ‘Can it wait?’

  ‘Unfortunately …’ said Miriam, doing her best to look utterly pathetic. The rain certainly helped: pathetic was not her forte; triumphant was more her style.

  ‘You know I can’t dispense? It’s a Sunday.’

  ‘Oh no, we don’t need you to dispense,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Good. Is there some sort of trouble then? Is it something to do with Gerald? With the police?’

  ‘No, no, no. Nothing like that.’

  ‘Well, as I say,’ said the woman, peering outside the front door at the rain. ‘I’m afraid—’

  ‘It’s rather awkward, actually,’ said Miriam. What had been a drizzle had now become a shower and was threatening to become a downpour. ‘I wonder if we could come inside, just for a moment …’

  We were clearly one more trouble to add to the woman’s long list of difficulties. This proved fortunate; after all, what’s another trouble when you already have enough of your own? (‘Suffering is never shared equally,’ writes Morley in ‘Man’s Lot in the World’ (1931), one of his odd little syncretist pamphlets. ‘The wounded can often bear wounds that would prove fatal to the faint of heart.’ And, ‘To be whole is to be broken.’ And ‘To know weakness is to be strong.’ He was deeply susceptible to such proverbs and maxims. I did my best to deter him, but they were always creeping back into his prose. I blamed his interest in Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and all his other favourite Easternisms, which tend to rely on wise sayings and stories. He admired Jesus and Moses and Mohammed, but he revered the Buddha.)

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘You can come in. But just for a moment. Until this shower’s passed.’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ said Miriam. ‘Thank you.’ One might describe Miriam’s tone as patronising – if her tone wasn’t always patronising.

  The pharmacy was deliciously dry and warm inside and my eye was caught again by the array of brown-bottled elixirs lined up on row upon row of dark mahogany shelves.

  ‘What was it you wanted?’ asked the wom
an, who was searching in a cane umbrella holder by the door for a suitable Sunday umbrella.

  ‘We are terribly sorry to bother you,’ said Miriam. ‘It’s just …’

  I thought I heard a noise from the back of the pharmacy – a kind of thudding. Morley? Had he got in already? Miriam was going to need to think on her feet.

  ‘… it’s just, my fiancé and I are travelling up to our wedding.’ Miriam smiled mischievously at me. This was fast becoming her favourite diversionary tactic.

  I smiled sarcastically in response.

  ‘Congratulations,’ said the woman, having chosen an umbrella. She seemed not to have heard the noise. She unfastened the umbrella’s straps and gave the thing a vigorous shake.

  ‘Thank you!’ said Miriam.

  ‘Marriage is a blessing.’

  ‘I certainly hope so,’ said Miriam. ‘All advice welcome.’

  ‘I haven’t myself been so blessed,’ said the woman, shrugging on her coat.

  ‘Well. I’m glad to say this is my first time as well!’

  The woman made a sour face. ‘And where are you getting married? Here? In Westmorland?’

  ‘Gretna Green,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Really?’ said the woman, pulling on her gloves.

  ‘Yes, we’re just travelling up,’ said Miriam. ‘My father doesn’t approve, you see.’ This was spoken with an attempted sob in the voice.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said the woman.

  ‘I have no doubt he’ll come round though,’ said Miriam more brightly.

  ‘I do hope so.’ The woman looked at me, clearly attempting to assess my suitability as a husband.

  Miriam was looking a little stuck. She raised her eyebrows at me, pleading for assistance.

  ‘My fiancée was previously engaged,’ I said. I was about to add ‘several times’.

  ‘Ah,’ said the woman.

  ‘And was horribly let down by her previous suitor.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. I see,’ said the woman. ‘So your father is concerned for you, that you don’t make the same mistake again?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Miriam.

  The woman peered past Miriam to the open door to check the rain. I thought I heard more rumbling from out back. What on earth was Morley up to?

  ‘Was that thunder?’ asked the woman.

  ‘I think it was,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Miriam. ‘It’s just, the reason we’re here … we … forgot one or two essential things for our honeymoon, and I wonder if you might be able to provide us with …’

  ‘What sort of essential things?’

  ‘The sort of essential things … that a young … innocent couple might need as they … set out on the path of married life together,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Ah,’ said the woman. ‘Those sorts of things.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miriam. ‘So I was hoping …’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said the woman, sniffing in my general direction. ‘Marriage is created for the procreation of children.’

  ‘It is, it is,’ said Miriam. ‘Yes. It is, isn’t it? I’m very much a Christian myself, actually, and a very devoted churchgoer. In fact we both are, aren’t we, darling?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, with as much Christian grace as I could muster.

  ‘And we are very much hoping to start a family right away. But as you can imagine I really would like to gain the approval of my father before we do so.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said the woman.

  ‘And so we just wanted a little time to … bed in, as it were.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said the woman.

  She huffed and she puffed, weighing us in the moral balance, just as she would weigh out potions and lotions using the brass scales behind her on the counter.

  ‘Well,’ she said eventually, laying down her Bible by the scales. ‘I know he keeps them here somewhere.’ She went behind the counter and began opening drawers.

  ‘My brother would know, of course, but he’s otherwise indisposed. Or my sister-in-law, but she’s …’

  ‘Oh, yes, we heard,’ said Miriam.

  ‘You heard?’ said the woman, looking up, confused.

  ‘We were staying in Appleby last night, and someone mentioned there’d been a death. The pharmacist’s wife, they said. Is it poor Maisie Taylor, your sister-in-law?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman. ‘Unfortunately.’

  ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’

  ‘Well, that’s very kind of you, miss.’ She continued rootling in drawers. I checked my watch. Morley had had five minutes. ‘Aha!’ cried the woman, having discovered what she was after. ‘Were you looking for rubber? Or Gerald has these local ones, made from lambskin, I think? I don’t know what they’re all about.’ She held up the range for me to see.

  ‘Rubber or lambskin, darling?’ said Miriam, trying to keep a straight face. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Rubber is fine,’ I said, unamused.

  ‘You don’t want to try the lambskin?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll take the rubber,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Good,’ said the woman, utterly unfazed; she clearly felt she was acting in a righteous manner, assisting two young innocent Christians on their way to wedded bliss.

  ‘And our deepest sympathies once again,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Thank you.’ The woman was wrapping our honeymoon supplies in brown paper. ‘Though I can’t say I’m surprised, to be honest.’

  ‘Surprised at what?’ said Miriam.

  ‘Well, you’d maybe understand, miss, as a … woman of the world. My sister-in-law was quite a …’ She looked around, to ensure no one else might overhear. ‘A gallivanter.’

  ‘Maisie? A gallivanter?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman, ‘ruined even before she met my brother.’

  ‘Ruined?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. She wasn’t right for him. We all said so. Everybody said so. He’s a good, decent person, my brother. A respectable person.’

  ‘I’m sure he is.’

  ‘And she is – was … Well, this shop’s been in our family for a hundred years or more.’

  ‘Lovely shop,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman. ‘I think she saw her opportunity and took it.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Miriam. ‘I see. A social climber.’

  It takes one to know one, I thought.

  The woman sighed and gave no answer.

  ‘But how is your poor brother?’ continued Miriam.

  ‘Gerald? I’m hoping to see him later. He was attacked by some madman at the Egremont Fair yesterday.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ said Miriam. ‘There are some very strange people around, aren’t there?’

  ‘Lucky he didn’t break his jaw, apparently. He’s helping the police at the moment. Not that they think he’s … I mean, they haven’t charged him or anything. It’s not like that.’

  ‘Well, that’s good.’

  ‘He’s not guilty of anything. The only thing he’s guilty of is being gullible.’

  ‘I’m sure no one’s suggesting he is guilty.’

  ‘Well, you know what people are like.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘It’s terrible to say it, I know,’ said the woman. ‘But I blame her.’

  ‘Maisie?’

  ‘One doesn’t like to speak ill of the dead.’

  ‘No, no, of course not.’

  ‘But she was always … Turning people’s heads. Even after they’d married. I told him I don’t know how many times. But he’s so soft, my brother.’

  ‘Not that soft,’ I muttered.

  ‘Sorry, darling?’ said Miriam. ‘Did you say something?’

  ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘Just talking to myself.’

  ‘Men!’ said Miriam to the woman. ‘You have keep an eye on them all the time. He wasn’t the jealous type then?’

  ‘No, no. The opposite. I sometimes wondered if he was happy to turn a blind eye.’

  �
�I see.’

  ‘He was potty about her, the little …’ She composed herself and picked up her Bible. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t be talking like this. It’s just … It’s all happened so quickly.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Miriam understandingly. ‘Of course. When was the last time you saw her?’

  ‘Maisie? Friday morning.’

  ‘The morning of the crash?’

  ‘That’s right. She always insisted on doing the rounds.’

  ‘The rounds?’

  ‘With the medicines. Prescriptions.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘She had the bike, you see, with the big wicker basket and all. She fancied herself as a – goodness knows what … flying around, dispensing her … Anyway. I really should go. Sorry to trouble you with my woes.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Miriam.

  ‘These should do you for a little while.’ She patted the brown paper parcel.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ said Miriam. She laughed, mock-innocently. ‘You know, I’ve no idea how much these things cost. Darling?’ She looked at me. I looked back at her. She produced her purse.

  ‘No, no, I wouldn’t take money for those,’ said the woman.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No. It doesn’t seem right, on a Sunday.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It’s my good deed for the day.’ How Miriam had persuaded the woman that she was doing us a favour I had no idea.

  ‘Well, thank you. I’m so glad we stopped by.’

  ‘You got here just in time, actually,’ said the woman. ‘I’m going to be shutting up the shop for a few days after I’ve been to church. We’ll have the funeral to arrange. And Gerald with the police. I’m going to get him to come and stay with me.’

  ‘Yes, that is a good idea,’ said Miriam. ‘After all your troubles.’

  The woman walked over towards the door, weighed down with her troubles and her Bible, and ushered us back out into the drizzle. Church bells were ringing in the distance.

  ‘Must hurry,’ she said. ‘Good luck with the wedding. Family has to stick together – you remember that.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Miriam, waving the brown paper parcel in thanks. ‘Thank you again.’