The Norfolk Mystery (The County Guides) (10 page)

‘Erm …'

‘A house in
the middle
of a village. Significant, surely? Small village, house centrally located, with blackened chimney, suggesting hot fire, suggesting …'

‘I'm afraid I don't know, Mr Morley.' I was rather exhausted from his mental exertions.

‘What about a little one-man bakery, Sefton? No market here for bakers' vans from the town, or your Woolworth's.'

‘Ah.'

‘The baker's house, I'd warrant.'

‘I see.'

‘And there's the peep of history, you see, Sefton! By studying the small things we might be able to understand the larger things. As a leaf will tell us about a tree, and a rivulet about the river, and the minute reveals the day, and—'

‘Yes, all right, Father, we get the picture.'

‘People have come far too much to rely on the far-off voices of Savoy Hill, Sefton, in my opinion. We need to use our own eyes, Sefton. And own ears. This is our England that's disappearing, Sefton, right around us. The granary of England, Sefton. Destroyed by our mania for shop-bought bread.' He stared across at me. ‘You look like a man who eats shop-bought bread.'

‘I suppose I am, Mr Morley, yes. Or, I mean, I have eaten—'

‘That'll be a section in the book, Sefton. The Granary of England. Against Shop-Bought Bread. Make a note.'

I made a note.

The journey continued in like manner, with Morley variously interpreting the landscape and growing overcome with a sense of wonder at the world, while I made notes: lime trees; ash woods; sea-lavender; seals; squirrels; snakes; the history of flint-knapping. Idling at another junction, over the roar of the engine, we could just about hear the sound of birdsong.

From
Morley's Field List of British Birds (Simplified)

‘Birds, Sefton.'

‘Yes,' I agreed, feeling on reasonably solid ground.

‘Recognise them?'

‘Ah.' I had never learned birdsong.

Morley repeated the noises himself. ‘Now, what's that, Sefton?'

‘I'm afraid I don't know, Mr Morley.'

‘Have you no idea at all, man?'

‘I'm afraid not.'

‘Well, hie ye and buy a bird book. Hie ye and buy a bird book. Snipe, sandpiper. And the wonderful song of the thrush,' cried Morley. ‘Or the mavis, of course, as he is called hereabouts. Ah! The local names of birds – make a note, Sefton. Worth a little list in our book, isn't it? Hedgeman for the sparrow, ulf for the greenfinch. Are you familiar with them?'

I confessed that I was not.

‘We'll include a little checklist, shall we, in the
County Guides
? For bird-spotters? What do you think?'

‘I think it's—'

‘Spink, I think, is the local term for a chaffinch, isn't it? Miriam?' he shouted.

‘What?' she yelled back from the front.

‘Spink?'

‘What?'

‘Spink!' yelled Morley.

Miriam glanced around at me. ‘Sorry, Father, I misheard you.'

‘Which reminds me,' continued Morley, on another of his detours, ‘there's a man in Great Yarmouth who claims to be able to speak seagull language. Make a note, Sefton. We must remember to call in on him.' I made a note, and Morley began to sing: ‘“He sings each song twice o'er, / Lest you should think he never could recapture / The first fine careless rapture.” Good omen, isn't it? The song of the thrush. Let's on in careless rapture, shall we? To Blakeney!'

I glanced at my watch. It wasn't yet nine o'clock in the morning. It had already been a long day.

O
UR ADVENTURE PROPER BEGAN
, as all adventures begin – as Morley himself might say –
in media res
.

We arrived at the old seaport of Blakeney, the song of the thrush preceding us, by nine o'clock, exactly according to schedule. Unscheduled, however, were the vast cloud shadows and the creeping fog that came upon us as we arrived. I had never before travelled in Norfolk and was struck immediately by the remarkable combination of vast golden fields, green trees, wide never-ending skies, the flatlands and the fog, creating the illusion of a vast oasis in a desert. I mentioned it to Morley.

‘Very good,' he said. ‘Make a note. Just the thing we're after. Norfolk: an oasis.' He was given always to such phrases – summings-up, gists and piths. His goal was always ‘the telling fact'. ‘The telling fact,' he would sometimes murmur to himself, searching for it among the lumber of his mind. ‘All we need here, Sefton, is the telling fact.' It was the legacy, I suppose, of so many years spent as a journalist and editor: he thought in captions and headlines. ‘Minimum words. Maximum information,' was one of his many mottoes. ‘
Cacoethes loquendi, cacoethes scribendi
,' was another. He was a man of contradictions.

We had travelled – at accelerating speed, which seemed to thrill Morley almost as much as his daughter – on the winding road from Cley, over the bridge across the River Glaven.

‘Note,' cried Morley, in full flow, ‘there are three great rivers in Norfolk: the Great Ouse, the Yare and Stiffkey. Among the smaller rivers and tributaries the most beautiful is perhaps the Glaven, which rises in Bodham and flows down to Blakeney Point, through the majestic mills and quiet ponds of the lower Glaven valley.' He paused for breath, as I hurried to note it down. ‘Too touristy?' he said.

‘Well, it is perhaps—' I began, but he had already passed on to his next observation.

‘Wiveton Hall, majestic, halfway 'twixt the church and shore. And then the quaint charm of Blakeney, the name possibly derived from the Scandinavian, Blekinge in Sweden. Others say the name derives from the Black Island, the finger of land we know as …'

It felt like being dragged into the wheels of some kind of endless writing machine.

‘Am I speaking too fast for you, Sefton?' he would sometimes ask.

‘Perhaps a little fast, Mr Morley,' I would say.

‘I'll slow down then, shall I?'

‘Please,' I would say. And he'd slow down – for about a minute. And then he'd be off again: the crow-stepped gables on the houses; the cry of the bittern; the history of flint-tipped arrows. The entire duration of our trip – as on every trip – he perched high in the back of the car, the typewriter across his lap, tap, tap, tapping away, dictating to me, and glancing around continually at the scenery for all the world like a bird seeking where it might find to make its nest.

Blakeney: the Florence of East Anglia

The soft, grey morning fog was borne in from the sea, muffling Blakeney in silence as we drove down to the quay, swaddling and concealing the village from us as though a mother were wrapping it tight in a blanket of muted grey-blues and grey-gold. The place seemed not yet to have come awake – or to have come awake many hours ago, and left to go to work – and we drove through narrow, deserted streets. Out across the mudflats there were only wading birds, and a few walkers.

‘Holidaymakers,' pronounced Morley decisively as we parked at the quay.

‘Oh, Father, how can you tell from this distance?'

‘Distance is hardly the problem, I think, Miriam.' Morley consulted his watch. ‘Time, not space, my dear.'

‘Meaning?'

He consulted his watch. ‘Nine ten a.m. Two people out walking. What does that suggest?'

‘They could be going to work.'

‘With a walking stick?'

‘They might have a bad leg?'

‘Clearly not,' said Morley, peering after the disappearing shapes.

‘Fishermen?'

‘In grey mackintoshes and gum boots?'

‘Oh, whatever,' said Miriam, yanking on the handbrake.

Morley carefully levered himself from his seat, and then climbed down from the car, and sniffed the air.

‘Great day!' he announced.

‘No. It is not a great day. It is a
grey
day, Father,' said Miriam. ‘Grey, foggy, and—'

‘If there's enough blue to make—'

‘A pair of sailor's trousers—'

‘Is what I always say.'

‘We know,' said Miriam.

‘Gamey, isn't it?' continued Morley, sniffing again, while I scrambled after him as he began to stroll purposefully past the deserted pleasure boats along the quay. ‘Muttony, almost. Reasty. Wouldn't you say? Make a note, Sefton. Blakeney. Reasty. Do you know the word?'

‘No.'

‘Hmm. Sometimes said of bacon. But it'll do us here, don't you think?'

I took a sniff.

‘Smell of the tidal estuary,' continued Morley. ‘Yeasty. Rank. Gamey. Yes?'

‘Something rotten in the state of Denmark,' I ventured.

‘Strictly speaking, I think the Bard is referring to something rotten in the body politic at that point, Sefton. The smell here is simply a smell. We shouldn't get carried away with ourselves, should we? Now, camera. Miriam?'

Miriam duly produced the camera from one of the trunks and proceeded to give me a basic lesson while Morley offered a brief history on the development of photography.

‘It's the innovations in shutter speed and focal planes that makes them now so light, of course; and as for our Leica D.R.P. Ernst Leitz Wetzlar IIIa here … Best that money can buy, Sefton. Always worth getting the right kit, isn't it, Miriam?'

‘True, O King!'

‘I do wish you wouldn't say that, Miriam.'

‘Why? That's the response he's looking for, Sefton. You might as well get used to it. Book of Daniel,' she said.

‘Chapter three, verse twenty-four,' added Morley. ‘Do you remember your first 35mm, Miriam?'

‘I do, Father, indeed.' She glanced at me again.

‘The Coronet?'

‘Yes. Nice camera.'

‘And before that, what was it?'

‘A Contax, Father. And a Rolleiflex roll-film, that was rather fun.'

‘Yes, of course. Anyway, all set? Got the gist of it, Sefton?'

‘Say “Yes, O King,”' said Miriam.

‘Yes, Mr Morley.' I seemed as prepared as I was ever going to be.

‘You know the work of Gisèle Freund?' he asked, striding ahead.

‘I'm not sure—'

‘
Life
magazine.'

‘No, I don't think I—'

‘Anyway, that's not what we want. I'm thinking more Cartier Bresson, Brassai, Sefton. You know the sort of thing.'

I did not know the sort of thing, but agreed, and began making notes and taking photographs as instructed. It took me a while to get the hang of the thing, but eventually I seemed to work it out and started snapping away: the old Guildhall; detail of some of the fine Flemish brickwork; the little red-roofed cobble cottages jammed together among the boat sheds and alleyways. Instantly I liked the feel of the camera in my hands. It felt like a form of protection. Morley, meanwhile, continued composing aloud, on the hoof, as it were, adding captions to the photographs as quick – and often quicker – as I was taking them.