Westmorland Alone

by Ian Sansom

  ‘I hope your father comes round.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure he will,’ said Miriam. ‘Thank you! Thank you! Goodbye!’

  The woman strode away to church, umbrella aloft and we got back into the Lagonda, to find Morley already in there, hiding, lying down on the back seat.

  ‘What was all that about?’ he asked. ‘I hope your father comes round to what?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Miriam, shaking rain out of her hair, like a fancy dog. ‘It was a distraction, that’s all, as requested. And a very successful distraction it was too, was it not, Sefton? What did you think? Have I missed my vocation as an actress?’ She ran her fingers through her hair, flicking rain everywhere – I’m sure I’d seen a film in which an actress did the same. Miriam often acted roles, even when behaving instinctively.

  ‘Undoubtedly, Miriam,’ I said. I was now wet not only with my own rain, but with hers.

  ‘Sefton here picked himself up a couple of little treats, actually,’ she said, tossing the paper parcel into my lap. ‘Not that they’d be much use to you.’ Her taunting and teasing could be very tiresome. She looked at herself in the car’s rear-view mirror. ‘Do I look absolutely dreadful?’ She looked like a mannequin left out in the rain. ‘I’m going to have to get back and fix myself up again. Oh well. Any joy round the back, Father?’

  ‘All locked up,’ said Morley, ‘and I couldn’t open the door. Locked.’

  ‘I suppose with all those chemicals and medicines inside.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Morley. ‘Exactly. Couldn’t crack the blasted thing.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be picking locks anyway, Father.’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘Illegal.’

  ‘Exactly. And the only other way in would have been to break a window, but I thought it would attract too much attention on a Sunday morning.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miriam. ‘Never mind. Not to worry.’

  ‘Bit of a wasted trip,’ said Morley. ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Miriam. ‘We learned an awful lot from Gerald’s sister.’

  ‘It was his sister in the shop?’

  ‘That’s right. And I can tell you, there was no love lost between her and Maisie Taylor.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Maisie was a young woman of some renown, apparently,’ said Miriam. ‘Gerald’s sister absolutely hated her. Loathed her.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Morley.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she had something to do with Maisie’s murder. Didn’t you think, Sefton?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Really? Unmarried sister resents her brother’s attractive young wife, is determined not to let the shop fall into her hands, takes decisive action.’ Miriam was clearly warming to her fantasy. She was, after all, her father’s daughter, and I fancied she’d been reading too many of Morley’s beloved pulp fiction magazines. ‘In fact, maybe they did it together?’

  ‘Who?’ said Morley.

  ‘Gerald and his sister! Gerald finds out that Maisie’s been dispensing more than medicines on her rounds round the villages and confides in his sister, who encourages him to do the honourable thing and—’

  ‘Get rid of her?’ asked Morley. ‘It’s possible. It’s not something I’d have thought of. What did you make of Mr Taylor’s sister, Sefton?’

  ‘She seemed perfectly pleasant and polite to me, actually,’ I said. ‘Under the circumstances. And without a trace of malice.’

  ‘Oh come on, Sefton, she was a bitter, shrivelled-up old maid,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Well, let’s not jump to conclusions, Miriam,’ said Morley. ‘You only just met the poor woman.’

  ‘Well, she was, Father! Sefton, tell him!’

  ‘I speak as I find,’ I said. ‘And as I say, I found her perfectly pleasant.’

  ‘Really, Sefton? Well, you’re not a very good judge of human character, then, are you?’

  ‘Not if being a good judge of human character means going around accusing every unmarried woman of murder—’

  ‘Oh really!’

  ‘In which case,’ I continued, for good measure, ‘your new friend Nancy might have been locked up a long time ago.’

  ‘Nancy?’

  I was being spiteful. I suppose I didn’t like the way Miriam had been carrying on with Nancy the night before – all that pawing and exchanging of intimacies. And it felt like time to counter Miriam’s ludicrous suggestions with some ludicrous suggestions of my own.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Why not? Nancy might have had just as much cause to resent Maisie as Gerald’s sister. What if Nancy had a thing for Maisie—’

  ‘A thing, Sefton?’ said Morley. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘You know what he means, Father!’

  ‘And Maisie spurned her?’ I continued. ‘She was very quick to accuse Professor Jenkins of being involved in a relationship with Maisie. What if she was merely using that as a smokescreen to hide her own guilt? She’s clearly someone with her own agenda.’

  ‘Her own “agenda”?’ Miriam laughed. ‘Nancy? What is that supposed to mean? I think it simply means you’re jealous, Sefton, aren’t you? That you can see that Nancy might possess charms that you don’t?’

  ‘Children!’ said Morley. ‘This is Kirkby Stephen, it’s not … Los Angeles! I think we all need to get back to Appleby, and calm down, change out of our wet clothes, and then we can talk about this with some degree of common sense and rationality. We only came here to see if we could help poor Gerald Taylor, not to throw around baseless and vulgar accusations! We’re trying to help solve a little Lakeland unpleasantness, not add to the weight of the world’s woes!’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Miriam. ‘And well said, Father. Sefton is being utterly ridiculous.’

  We had got carried away, but before common sense and rationality could intervene we were presented with yet another unexpected example of Lakeland unpleasantness. Just as Miriam started the car, and as the rain began truly pouring from the heavens, a little girl came running down Kirkby Stephen’s deserted Main Street towards us. She was being chased by a gang of boys: it was like watching a small wet fox being run to ground by hounds. The boys raced after her, chanting the old song, familiar to me from the school playground, and doubtless familiar to generations of English children: ‘Ipsy Gypsy wed in a tent, / She couldn’t afford to pay the rent / So when the rent man came next day / Ipsy Gypsy ran away!’ They were yelling and running full pelt, but the little girl was outpacing them and heading straight for us. ‘Come back, you dirty gypo!’ they were calling.

  ‘Look! It’s Naughty!’ cried Miriam.

  ‘Naughty?’ said Morley.

  ‘The gypsy’s little girl from the Egremont Fair!’

  ‘Noname’s girl? What on earth is she doing here?’

  There was no time to find out.

  As Naughty approached the car, sopping wet, I got out one side and Morley swung open his door and got out the other. He commanded the boys to stop. Which, in fairness, they did; they’d have caused a terrible dent in the Lagonda otherwise. Naughty ducked in behind Morley. The rain was now chiselling down from a thunderous lead-black sky.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I demanded, coming round the car to confront them. They turned to face me.

  ‘She’s a thieving gypo!’ one of the boys said.

  ‘Has she stolen something from you?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But she was gonna. They’re all the same.’

  ‘My da’ says they caused the crash at Appleby, because they were playing on the line. It was in the papers.’

  ‘I think you’ll find the crash is still under investigation, boys,’ I said. ‘And you should leave this little girl alone.’ They stood looking at me, a bunch of wet, wretched children, stupid with second-hand rage. ‘Go on, off with you. You’ll all catch your death of cold in this weather. Go on, go off home.’

  ‘Why should we?’ asked one cheeky chap, who was probably no older than
ten. ‘Who do you think you are?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who I am, young man. You should have some respect for your elders, and for a poor little girl.’

  ‘She’s a dirty gypo!’ said the boy, rain-spray splashing up around his feet.

  ‘Do you have a sister?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, you’d do well to remember that this little girl might be your sister.’

  ‘Your sister’s a gypo!’ cried another of the boys.

  ‘No she’s not!’

  ‘Yes she is!’

  This caused general merriment, and then the boys started to fight among themselves.

  ‘Boys!’ I said. ‘Boys!’ It was pointless reasoning with them in this diabolic weather, and, besides, Miriam had by this time got out of the Lagonda.

  ‘Boys!’ she said, in her deepest tones. They turned, took one look at her, in her wet silken clothes, her hair slick, her make-up running down her face, like an Electra or a wraith summoned up out of the storm, and they ran off screaming down the street.

  Back in the Lagonda, Naughty was perched next to Morley. He had wrapped her in the car blanket and was saying something to her in his rough-and-ready Romani.

  ‘Now what, Father?’

  ‘I said we’d take her home.’

  ‘All the way back to Egremont?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Morley. ‘Apparently the gypsies are on the move.’

  CHAPTER 14

  GAVVER-MUSH

  WE DROVE FOR NO MORE than five minutes outside the town but suddenly we had escaped the squall. The rain simply stopped and we found ourselves looking back at black skies from under a bright sun. Westmorland was divided: here, new and fresh; there, foul and dark. Naughty directed us to turn left down a narrow lane, and then right, and left again, and then we parked and were off on a nature walk, our wet clothes sultry and steaming in the sunshine. The rain had brought down scuds of autumn leaves, which now lay in drifts like piles of copper pennies.

  ‘This way!’ cried Naughty. ‘This way! This way!’

  ‘English weather, eh!’ exclaimed Morley. ‘Hearty and unpredictable.’ He could have been describing himself.

  When Naughty grew tired I picked her up and carried her on my shoulders, wrapped in the blanket. Miriam was smoking, for the warmth, producing her own little smoke-clouds in the clear blue air, and Morley was picking grasses and flowers.

  ‘The mighty capsella bursa pastoris. They eat it in China, you know.’

  ‘Really?’ said Miriam, with a shiver. ‘Is it far to your mummy and daddy?’ she asked Naughty again. We were all wet and cold. ‘Honestly,’ she muttered to me. ‘I feel about as dismal as a cold wet dog on a cold wet night.’

  ‘Not far! Not far!’ cried Naughty.

  ‘I had it fried once,’ said Morley. ‘Terribly good. I’ve no idea why we don’t use it for culinary purposes ourselves. Very advanced in that sense, the Chinese. Though our gypsy friends use it in childbirth, I believe. It has wonderful healing properties.’

  We were going to need it.

  We were walking down a grassy avenue towards a river when in the distance a woman stepped out of a glade of sheltering trees to our left, took one look at us, laid down the heavy wicker basket she was carrying, and came charging towards us, her broad bright skirts a-flapping like a peacock in full plumage, screeching like a banshee.

  ‘You put my daughter down!’ she screamed at me. ‘You put her down, now! Do you hear me!’

  I did as I was told and Naughty ran off towards her.

  ‘Mummy!’ she cried. ‘Mummy! The nice man brought me home. Some boys were chasing me.’

  ‘I told you not to go into the town!’ said the woman. ‘You mustn’t go into the towns by yourself. It’s not safe. Are you OK? You’re soaking wet. Did you get caught in the storm? Who are these people?’ She looked up at us. Which is when I recognised her: she was the gypsy woman from the Egremont Fair, the woman who had offered to tell us our fortunes. She had not, it seemed, foreseen any of this.

  ‘It’s you?’ she said accusingly, at Miriam. ‘You were at Egremont.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Miriam, doing her best to appear authoritative and haughty, all appearances to the contrary.

  ‘What are you doing with my daughter?’

  ‘Saving her skin, actually,’ said Miriam. ‘Thank you very much. You really shouldn’t let her out of your sight. She’s far too young.’

  ‘And what would you know about it?’ said the gypsy woman. ‘You haven’t got children.’

  ‘How do you know I haven’t got children?’ asked Miriam.

  ‘Anyway, she’s safe now,’ said Morley. ‘That’s the main thing.’

  ‘Thank goodness,’ said the woman. ‘Come on, Naughty.’

  ‘The boys said we caused a crash, Mummy! They called me names.’

  ‘Don’t listen to the gorgio,’ said the woman. ‘You know what they’re like. They tell all sorts of lies.’ She turned towards us. ‘Thank you for bringing her back. But you can go now.’ She unwrapped Naughty from her blanket and tossed it at Miriam. ‘Yours? You look like you might need it.’

  ‘The nice man gave it to me, Mummy,’ said Naughty.

  ‘Well, thank you,’ said the woman thanklessly, taking Naughty’s hand. And then she turned and began walking away, down towards the river.

  ‘We’re friends of your husband, actually,’ Morley called after her.

  ‘I’m sure you are,’ said the woman, calling back.

  ‘Noname. We know Noname.’

  ‘Do you now?’ said the woman, half turning her head.

  ‘Yes, I’m Swanton Morley.’

  The gypsy woman stopped in her tracks and turned fully around to look at Morley.

  ‘You’re Swanton Morley?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘You were with him in Egremont?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘He’s told me about you.’

  ‘I wonder if we might have a word with Noname, to say goodbye?’

  ‘Daddy loves Swanton Morley!’ said Naughty. ‘Daddy reads to me from the book! Morley’s Book for Boys! He’s teaching me to read! Can you read?’ she asked Morley.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can.’

  ‘I can read some words.’

  ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘And I know your daddy is a very good reader. I’d very much like to see him,’ said Morley.

  ‘Can he, Mummy? Can he?’

  ‘Well,’ said the woman. ‘I don’t know. We’re very busy.’

  ‘Please, please, please, Mummy. Please, please, please.’

  In The Parenting Paradox (1928) Morley describes the relationship between parents and children as a classic version of the omnipotence paradox: the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. On this occasion the irresistible force proved to be overwhelming.

  ‘I suppose it mightn’t do any harm,’ said the gypsy woman. ‘Five minutes. Come on. Follow me.’

  She led us down through the meadow towards the river, where there was an ancient copse of trees. We saw the smoke from the fire before we saw the encampment. And then we heard shouting.

  ‘Gavver-mush! Gavver-mush!’

  By the river

  There was a rattling crash and a yell. The gypsy woman turned to us, panic-stricken. She pointed at Miriam. ‘You look after her.’

  ‘But—’

  And then she began to run.

  Morley and I followed.

  ‘Stay here,’ I shouted back to Miriam, who had scooped up Naughty.

  ‘Now, we’re playing a game,’ said Miriam, thinking on her feet. ‘We’re going to play hide and seek. You stay here with me and we’re going to count to one hundred.’

  We made it to the campsite – if you could call it a campsite. It was a clearing by the river, approached by a number of pathways through the copse, and there was a campfire, and Noname’s vardo, and another caravan and a tent – and all hell breaking loose.

 
Noname was thrashing around, being held by no fewer than four policemen.

  ‘I’ll have you!’ he was yelling. ‘I’ll have you!’

  ‘And we’ll stitch you up!’ shouted a policeman in response. ‘You bastard!’ They had Noname in a headlock, and an armlock, and one man was holding him from behind, and another from the front. Noname was certainly putting up a fight. Another gypsy, owner of the other vardo, I assumed, was being held by four more policemen: he was even more ferocious. It was a scene of total confrontation: the old gypsy woman from Egremont, Noname’s mother, was screaming at our old friend the chief inspector, who was also having to do his best to fend off Noname’s lurcher, which was snarling in a way that suggested imminent attack.

  ‘What on earth is the meaning of all this?’ demanded Morley, striding straight into the centre of things. ‘Rusty!’ he said to the dog. ‘Come on, boy, here. Heel. Good boy.’ The dog came over to his side. ‘Good boy.’ He gave the dog a treat from his pocket: he always kept dog treats. ‘You never know when you’ll need to treat a dog, Sefton,’ he liked to say. ‘And one day you might be glad of a treat yourself.’ His presence had an immediately calming effect.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ asked the chief inspector.

  ‘They say that I killed that woman, Mr Morley!’ said Noname.

  ‘Maisie Taylor?’ said Morley.

  ‘I didn’t touch her!’

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ said Morley.

  ‘Did you hear him?’ shouted the gypsy woman, who had now joined her mother-in-law and stood directly in front of the chief inspector, her hands on her hips. ‘Now get away and leave us alone!’

  ‘Are you arresting this man?’ asked Morley.

  ‘Not that it’s any of your business, Mr Morley.’

  ‘I’m a friend,’ said Morley.

  ‘Are you now? That would make sense. Well, he’s just accompanying us to the station. We’ve got a few questions for him.’

  ‘Questions about what?’

  ‘We’ve had a tip-off about your friend here.’

  ‘A tip-off?’

  ‘Yes. These folks made their way from Egremont late last night, apparently, having attempted and failed to sell a bicycle at the fair.’