Death in Devon (The County Guides) Page 17

‘There we are, boys. A man proud of his product. Now, if Mr Reeder might allow us, perhaps we might see the cidering process? May we, sir? Might we?’ said Morley.

  Having gone so far, and having been thus flattered by Morley, Mr Reeder had no choice but to admit us further and he dutifully took us to an old stone barn out behind his farmhouse, which contained sacks and stacked boxes of apples, and various damp, stained clamps and presses that looked like ancient instruments of torture. In the very centre of the barn, like some sort of diabolical altar, was a large round stone trough, crusted thick with skin and pith, a stone wheel attached to a pivot point at the centre: a cider apple slaughterhouse.

  ‘Ah!’ said Morley. ‘Your cider mill? Smell that, boys.’ We all sniffed, expecting apples. There was instead a strong smell of horse manure.

  ‘Horse is out in the field,’ explained Mr Reeder.

  ‘Ah, what a pity,’ said Sefton. ‘It would have been good to see the mill in action. Though I wonder …’ I detected a disturbing glint in Morley’s eye: a telltale twitch in his moustache. ‘With your permission, Mr Reeder?’ He picked out a dozen boys, and organised them in getting harnessed to the reins of the giant stone wheel. ‘There we are, Mr Reeder!’ Some further fussing with the harness followed as the boys fought among themselves. ‘Whoa, boys!’ said Morley. The boys calmed. ‘A human horse for you, sir! Do with it what you will.’

  Mr Reeder hesitated for a moment but then decided to join in the pretence and proceeded to urge the boys forward: ‘Go on, boy! Walk on now.’

  ‘Now, boys,’ asked Morley, as they strained at the reins, ‘how many varieties are there of English apple?’

  ‘Ten?’ said one poor boy, gritting his teeth as he attempted to move forward.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Twenty?’ offered another, grimacing with effort.

  ‘No.’

  ‘One hundred?’ puffed another.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Five hundred?’ offered the most adventurous of all – and suddenly, gaining momentum, the boys and the big stone wheel began to edge forward.

  ‘Thousands, gentlemen! Thousands and thousands. Isn’t that right, Mr Reeder?’

  Mr Reeder had gone to fetch some sacks of apples, and Bernhard and I joined him in unceremoniously dumping the contents into the stone trough, as the wheel began to make its inexorable way around.

  ‘And what varieties do you use, Mr Reeder, if we might ask? It’s not a trade secret?’

  ‘We use everything but an All-Doer,’ said Mr Reeder. ‘Go on!’ he added, urging the boys forward.

  ‘Everything but an All-Doer?’

  ‘All-Doer don’t do.’

  ‘I see. An All-Doer is a variety?’

  ‘That’s right. Ashton Bittersweet and an Ashton Brown, they’re all right. But beggars can’t be whatever it’s called.’

  ‘Choosers.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The stone wheel was moving forward steadily now, crushing the apples in the trough. I had expected crunching, but it was instead a liquid kind of a sound, as though the primitive mill were itself gorging on the apples.

  ‘So you take whatever you can get?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mr Reeder, who was obviously delighted with the boys’ work. ‘Good Devon apples.’ He nodded over towards his sacks and boxes, pointing them out one by one, calling them out as if they were his own children. ‘Longstem, Blue Sweet, Hollow Core. Hoary Morning, Slack Ma Girdle, Keswick Codling, Sour Natural, Jacob’s Strawberry, Johnny Voun, Johnny Andre, Plumderity, Rattler, Buttery d’Or. Pig’s Nose—’

  ‘Pig’s Nose?’ said Bernhard, concerned.

  ‘An apple?’ said Morley. ‘I’m assuming, Mr Reeder, rather than a porcine appendage?’

  ‘Pig’s Snout,’ continued Mr Reeder, regardless.

  ‘Ditto,’ said Morley.

  ‘Thin Skin, Limberlimb, Butterbox—’

  ‘Poetry!’ exulted Morley. ‘Poetry, boys! Did you hear? Plumderity, Rattler, Buttery d’Or. You don’t know Ronald Hatton at East Malling, by chance, do you, Mr Reeder?’

  ‘Can’t say I do, sir, no.’

  ‘Research centre for the study of fruit trees, absolutely fascinating work. We must visit one day, Sefton. Just remembered. Make a note.’

  ‘Very good, Mr Morley.’

  ‘I think I’m right in saying, Mr Reeder – am I? – that Kentish cider tends to use a higher percentage of culinary and dessert fruit rather than the traditional cider apples, producing a cider rather lighter in body and flavour?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you, sir. I just makes Devon cider. Pure Devon cider.’

  The boys had found a rhythm now, and the mill crushed all beneath it.

  ‘Perhaps you could talk us through the process, Mr Reeder, if you wouldn’t mind?’

  ‘We make the pulp.’

  ‘This is the pulp?’ said Morley.

  ‘That’s right. And when the pulp is smooth, then we build the cheese.’

  ‘Cheese?’ said Bernhard, who was clearly enjoying this mad, impromptu educational outing, as were we all.

  ‘We build up some reeds with the pulp,’ said Mr Reeder, ‘so the juice can be squeezed out, and then we trim the cheese and press the cheese, and then we have our cider put into casks to ferment.’ He indicated a long row of casks stacked along the other side of the barn.

  We passed a pleasant hour going through the process in more detail with Mr Reeder and then, eventually, loaded with a sack of apples and a case of cider, made our way back down the lane towards the road.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Reeder,’ cried the boys.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Mr Reeder, waving us off.

  ‘Honestly, you two don’t know what you’ve missed!’ Morley told Miriam and Alex, as we arrived back at the charabanc and clambered aboard. ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.’

  ‘You too, Father!’ said Miriam, honking the horn on the Lagonda as she set off behind us. ‘You too!’

  CHAPTER 17

  ALOHA!

  THE BEACH AT CROYDE, according to Morley in The County Guides, is ‘not only a hidden gem: it is a jewel in Devon’s crown’. It is indeed a place of hidden and peculiar charms, lying on a little promontory between the vast stretches of Saunton and Woolacombe, accessible only via a steep route down below a few lonely thatched cottages. The charabanc parked by the cottages and we clambered down to the beach with our provisions, over wet rocks and sharp grass. It was low tide.

  ‘I feel like Chistopher Columbus,’ said Morley. He took a couple of his deep pranic breaths.

  ‘Perfect,’ he announced, holding his index finger aloft to check the wind. ‘Easterly,’ he said. ‘Splendid!’ and then speedily led the boys up towards the north end of the beach.

  For anyone who has never taken part in surfing, I should explain. Surfing requires an obsessive concern with detail, a great deal of patience, and an utterly illogical, death-defying determination to pit oneself against the uncontrollable forces of nature. It is, in other words, Morley’s ideal sport.

  At the far end of the beach great waves came barrelling towards the shore with a shocking ferocity, some of them as much as four or five feet high.

  ‘Chop, chop!’ said Morley, chivvying us along. ‘Come along, come along. We haven’t got all day.’ The boys reluctantly changed into their bathing costumes. And Morley changed also, though having done so he then popped a woollen pullover on top, giving him the appearance not so much of a man determined to do battle with nature but rather of a man preparing to use an outside lavatory late at night. The appearance was deceptive.

  Morley gathered the boys around down by the waterline and explained his purpose.

  ‘Aloha!’ he began. ‘Which is the Polynesian equivalent – as of course you know – of the Hebrew greeting Shalom aleichem, or the Arabic Assalum Akaylum.’ The boys exchanged glances. Not only did they not know that Aloha meant Shalom aleichem and Assalum Akaylum, they had no idea what on earth he was talking about. ‘Repea
t after me, gentlemen, Aloha!’

  ‘Aloha!’ the boys weakly chorused back.

  ‘Can’t hear you!’ said Morley. ‘Aloha!’

  ‘Aloha!’ bellowed the boys back.

  ‘Good! Anyway, gentlemen, we are gathered here today to pay homage to the wine-dark sea and her overwhelming and intoxicating power, a power governed only by the Good Lord Himself. Et dominabitur a mari usque ad mare, et a flumine usque ad terminos terrae.’

  Looks of incomprehension once again – I caught the gist only of terminos terrae.

  ‘Some of you may already be familiar with the history of surfing’ – again, there were more uncomprehending glances – ‘and so to be brief …’

  He was not brief, of course: he was Swanton Morley. From what I recall his ‘brief’ history began with an account of ritual practices in ancient Polynesia, continued into the late eighteenth century with the adventures of Captain James Cook, detoured into Australia and ended around the 1920s with a Hawaiian gentleman whose name I cannot now recall but who apparently won some Olympic medal or other and who went on to become a self-appointed ambassador of surfing. It was not an uninteresting tale, but at about ten minutes or more in duration it was at least nine minutes too long.

  ‘Now, gentlemen, I want to show you something.’

  Morley often carried with him a knapsack of the kind used by poachers – a dark brown, greasy canvas bag. From this unassuming bag he now produced, improbably, a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  ‘The Britannica is not a convenient pocket companion, boys, but until someone invents either a truly convenient pocket encyclopaedia – a pockepaedia, shall we call it – or a pocket large enough and capacious enough to contain a gentleman’s home reference library in toto, the Britannica it is and the Britannica it will have to be. I have brought this volume with me today, gentlemen, in order to show you this …’ He opened up the book to the entry on Hawaii. ‘This, boys, is my inspiration!’

  He held the book aloft, showing a photograph. The photograph showed men standing up upon the waves. I had certainly never seen anything quite like it: several boys gasped.

  ‘This is not what is sometimes called belly-boarding, boys. This is not stomach-skimming! This, gentlemen, is stand-up surfing!’ He struck a pose, resembling Christ on the cross, on a tightrope. ‘By the end of the day, gentlemen, it is my hope that you will all be standing tall, as God intended you to be, cresting the ocean waves! Proud, erect and nutbrown Adams, the lot of you!’

  I lit a cigarette and stared out to sea. My own costume consisted of my underwear: it occurred to me that I would make a rather unassuming Adam.

  ‘Now, first things first, gentlemen,’ Morley continued. ‘This, boys, is a surfboard.’ He tapped one of his long wooden boards that the boys had lugged down to the beach. ‘Anyone seen one of these before?’ No boy spoke. ‘As I thought. But it is my contention this morning, boys, that to be in Devon – never mind to live in Devon – and not to surf is like living in Scotland and never to have worn the kilt, or to be in Egypt and not to have scaled the pyramids, or to live in France and never … to have eaten snails.’ Some of the boys made gagging noises. ‘Surfing, boys, is your duty and your inheritance.’

  During this speech, Alex, standing behind us, had been assisting Miriam in getting changed. I looked around to see her giggling as he held a towel for her. Some duty.

  ‘My aim today, gentlemen, is to show you the rudiments of surfing, and perhaps to ignite an enthusiasm that will last for years, if not a lifetime. To surf, gentlemen, is to taste freedom. It is to experience knowledge of the world in its most powerful and intimate form: dark, flowing and profound. It is to embrace and to be embraced by what I believe Yeats himself … Sefton?’ – I nodded absent-mindedly in agreement, which was all I was required to do – ‘What Yeats himself described as the “white breast of the dim sea”. In years to come, gentlemen in England now-a-bed shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day …’

  ‘Father,’ called Miriam from behind us, as Morley looked set to launch into further horations.

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Morley, remembering himself and his audience. ‘For the purposes of my demonstration my lovely assistant will show you the moves, and will explain them to you. Miriam, would you like to wax the board?’

  Miriam strode before us in her emerald-green swimming costume. There was an audible intake of breath among the boys. Alex came and stood beside me, resplendent in his own gleaming white costume, complete with embroidered crest and initials on his chest.

  Morley meanwhile had produced from a leather tobacco pouch a small hard ball of wax, which he held aloft.

  ‘This, gentlemen, is beeswax, which I have mixed with a small amount of coconut oil and some standard rosin, in order to assist the surfer to grip the board. Miriam, could you show the boys how to rub the board?’

  The talk of breasts and rubbing was becoming too much for some of the boys and there was a sudden outbreak of sniggering. (For a man who adored wordplay and wordgames, Morley seemed inexplicably oblivious to all forms of double entendres and bawdy: his book of limericks, for example, Morley’s Limericks for All Occasions (1930) entirely misses the mark. So dull and so innocent are they, one might almost use his limericks as lullabies.)

  Morley held the board up straight as Miriam proceeded to wax it lengthwise, then crosswise and finally in a circular motion. The slow rubbing motion as she did so clearly caused some excitement and consternation among the boys. One raised his hand.

  ‘Yes?’ said Morley.

  ‘Permission to go for a pee, sir?’

  ‘If you must, boy,’ said Morley. ‘If you must. Now. Note, Miriam has finished her rubbing when small bumps of white wax have appeared on the board. This process must of course be often repeated. When the white wax appears lumpy and dirty it should be scraped off with a long hard smooth edge.’ This proved too much for another boy, who also begged permission to pee. Worse was to come.

  ‘Miriam will now demonstrate to you boys the basic techniques for surfing: paddling out to the waves, and standing erect on the board. Miriam, if you wouldn’t mind?’

  Miriam obliged by lying flat down on the board, her feet dangling over the end.

  ‘First, you lie down on the board, as demonstrated. Not too far forward, not too far back. You will have to manoeuvre yourself into a comfortable position.’ Several of the boys were in extremely uncomfortable positions. ‘You then begin to paddle, like so.’ Miriam made as if to paddle. ‘Hands lightly cupped, as you can see. Your hand should enter the water smoothly, sweeping low, almost as if you were caressing the wave. As with swimming, too much splashing is a sign of poor style. So, nice and smooth, just as Miriam is demonstrating. Stroke, stroke. Caress, caress. Stroke. Any questions?’

  Silence again, as the boys watched in awe.

  ‘Next, you slide your hands along the side of the board, ready to push up.’ Miriam did so. ‘And so with your hands flat on the deck, you raise your body off the board into position, thus.’

  Miriam was now in a position poised over the board. She resembled Josephine Baker, mid-routine. She looked at the boys gathered in a tight circle around her, her eyes at waistlevel. The atmosphere was tense.

  ‘Father,’ she said. ‘It might be an idea before we go any further for the boys to go and accustom themselves to the water, don’t you think?’

  ‘But we’re only halfway through the demonstration,’ said Morley.

  ‘Bit of vigorous exercise, and a dose of cold water, to get their organs moving,’ said Miriam. ‘Warm up. Stretch the arms and the shoulders. Essential, I’d say.’

  Before she could finish speaking the boys had sped off down towards the sea, where they thrust themselves into the cold comforting waves.

  ‘Well,’ said Morley. ‘I rather think that could have waited until we were finished.’

  ‘I rather think not,’ sai
d Miriam, winking at me and glancing down. ‘Sefton?’

  I too raced down to the water and doused myself in the waves.

  Once the boys and teachers had reassembled, Miriam went through the rest of the procedures: up into crouching position, the slide into the stand, arms out for balance.

  ‘Now, anyone like to try?’ asked Morley. A dozen hands shot up, for the privilege of being the first to lie down where Miriam had been. Once every boy – and Bernhard and Alex and I – had been through the routine, Morley explained several other manoeuvres that seemed far beyond our capacities.

  ‘Very good,’ concluded Morley eventually. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Into the sea?’

  ‘Incorrect,’ said Morley. ‘What we do next is this.’ And he promptly sat down, arranged himself into a yogi-like cross-legged position, and stared out to sea.

  ‘No man—’ he began.

  ‘Or woman, Father,’ said Miriam.

  ‘No man or woman should venture out into the seas without first watching the waves. Are they too big to risk? Are they suitable at all for us to surf? From what direction do they come? As beginners you will prefer the gentle rolling wave to the heavy pounding break, but as your skill increases you will be able to tell what to expect. You will learn to read the waves, as a salty sea dog.’ He continued to stare out, yogi-like, for some time. And then he leapt up again.

  ‘Now, Miriam, would you like to demonstrate how to surf?’

  Miriam strode proudly down towards the waves, her surfboard carried under her arm. It was a vision as from a dream.

  ‘Note the carrying position,’ said Morley. ‘Never, under any circumstances, drag your board along, boys. Why not?’

  ‘Because it would damage the board?’ said one boy.

  ‘Correct,’ said Morley. ‘And more importantly and obviously?’

  ‘It would remove the wax?’ said another boy.

  ‘Précisément!’ said Morley. ‘Your board needs to remain smooth and waxed.’

  Miriam by this time had paddled far out on the board. Waves crashed over her.

  ‘Note,’ said Morley, ‘the way in which Miriam raises herself up from the board to allow the wave to pass between her body and the board, and then she sinks back down onto the board and continues to paddle out …’