The Norfolk Mystery (The County Guides) Read online

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Definitely Trunch.’

  ‘Trunch?’

  ‘You know the font canopy at Trunch?’

  ‘I can’t say I do—’

  He sniffed the air, as though he could actually smell the font canopy at Trunch, like the lure of wild game beckoning to him across the East Anglian tundra.

  ‘And Ranworth,’ he said. ‘Wonderful. And the crypt at Brisley – used for prisoners on their way to the Norwich jail, did you know?’

  ‘No, I can’t say I—’

  ‘The Labours of the Month at Burnham Deepdale. Early Gothic leaf carving at West Walton, curvilinear windows at Cley and at Walsingham. Oh, yes. It’s going to be a wonderful few days, Sefton. All on the list there, if you look.’

  I stared at the list as Morley continued to recite the wonders of many of Norfolk’s six hundred churches, and Miriam kept gunning the engine.

  ‘… the hammerbeam roof at Cawston, the giant St Nicholas in Yarmouth, the Seven Sacraments font at Dereham, the four great churches of Wiggenhall …’

  We paused briefly, and thankfully, at a crossroads, Morley and engine idling.

  ‘All sounds fas-cin-ating,’ yelled Miriam from the front, yawning loudly.

  ‘Yes, I think it will be.’

  ‘I was being ironical, Father.’

  ‘Oh? Were you? I do wish you wouldn’t, Miriam. It’s terribly bad manners.’

  ‘It’s the height of sophistication, actually.’

  ‘Really? Sefton?’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Morley?’

  ‘Irony?’

  ‘What about it, Mr Morley?’

  ‘An adjudication, if you please?’

  ‘On?’

  ‘Irony. Good thing, or a bad thing? What do you think?’

  ‘It certainly shows a certain … detachment,’ I said. ‘And an energy of response.’

  ‘Energy of response,’ he said. ‘I like that. Very nice, Sefton. That’s why we’ve hired you. He admires your energy of response,’ he called out loudly to Miriam.

  ‘Really?’ said Miriam. ‘I’m flattered, Sefton. I shan’t return the compliment, though, thank you. Now, which way?’

  ‘Left,’ said Morley.

  Miriam swung the vehicle left, and we began to pick up speed.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Morley, tapping at the keys, with one eye on the surroundings. ‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘Notable roof!’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Morley?’

  ‘A notable roof. There. See?’

  He pointed towards what looked like an entirely average Norfolk roof of blackish-red pantiles.

  ‘See?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Make a note,’ said Morley.

  I wrote down the words ‘Notable roof’.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Morley, notable in what sense?’

  ‘Blackish tinge around the chimney?’ he said.

  I turned and looked behind me as the house and its chimney vanished into the distance.

  ‘Yes.’ The chimney was indeed blackened.

  ‘And what make you of that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And he doesn’t care!’ cried Miriam.

  ‘Don’t care was made to care,’ said Morley. ‘And don’t know isn’t an answer.’

  ‘Yes it is!’ said Miriam.

  ‘A chimney fire, perhaps?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, come on. Go for the obvious answer first, Sefton, shouldn’t you? Before indulging in fantasies? A blackened chimney? Logical explanation? Primary cause?’

  ‘A hot fire?’

  ‘Aha! Exactly. And why would this particular house, among all the other houses in the village, have such a hot fire, do you think?’

  ‘Because the inhabitants are colder than the others?’

  ‘Possible, I suppose. Except that we know nothing of the inhabitants. Context?’

  ‘A house in a village?’

  ‘Correct. And moreover?’

  ‘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.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  OUR 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 st
ruck 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.

  ‘The town, with its little red-roofed cobble cottages. Marvellous, aren’t they, Sefton? The pantiled dormers, with their gentle slopes like the curves … like the curves of a woman’s body, eh? Actually, strike that, Sefton. Do you know the domes of Burma and India?’

  ‘Not personally, Mr Morley, no.’

  ‘Things of incomparable beauty. I’m a great fan of Indian architecture. All that copper and gold on the temples and the mosques. Sort of oriental versions of the roof of Westminster Hall, I always think. Don’t you?’ I did not answer: it did not matter. ‘Which of course – I think – is the biggest oak roof of its kind in England. We’ll need to check that. Timbers fashioned from oak which were saplings when the Romans ruled the land.’ He glanced at the roofs around him. ‘But these? They are like an Italianate city. Italianate, wouldn’t you say, Sefton? The alleyways and what have you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Florentine,’ he muse
d. ‘Yes. There we are. “Blakeney: The Florence of East Anglia.” That’ll do. Make a note.’ And on. And on.

  Miriam soon made her excuses and took herself off to the Blakeney Hotel down on the quayside, where, she informed us, she hoped to procure coffee, smoke cigarettes and, if at all possible, scandalise the natives – an objective, I fancied, that might not take more than a quarter of an hour. Morley and I meanwhile walked up through the streets, bidding good morning to the occasional passer-by, Morley noting both out loud and in his notebook some of the more notable roofs, gables and architectural features that took his fancy. Eventually we made it to the top of the village, a slight breeze coming up behind us, splitting the fog, and a church rising before us like a …

  ‘Galleon on the high seas,’ said Morley, who as usual was several steps ahead.

  As we approached the church I noticed a pair of owls were busy around an old alder.

  ‘Owls,’ said Morley. ‘Note.’ Which I already had. ‘And the arched roofs of the alder, gabled like porches,’ he added. Which I had not. He was always able to find and describe the unexpected, even among the unexpected. ‘And so, Sefton,’ he continued, striding through the graveyard, spreading his hands before him as if introducing a fairground attraction, or a troupe of music-hall performers, ‘as if coming to announce itself to us: the mystery of the church at Blakeney.’

  ‘The mystery?’

  ‘Indeed.’ He stopped in his tracks and turned to face me, the church looming behind him. ‘There is mystery all about us, Sefton, if only we would open our eyes and perceive it. Is this not the lesson taught to us by all the great mystics?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I agreed.

  ‘Look at these headstones, for example. Hundreds and hundreds. And each one with a story to tell if only we would let them tell it, eh?’ He knelt down by a gravestone. ‘The joie de vivre of the English stonemason, Sefton. Quite extraordinary. Humbling.’ He traced the words on the stone with his fingers. ‘Traditional English letter forms, Sefton. Quite unlike their continental counterparts: bolder strokes, thinner strokes; the abrupt transition from thick to thin. See? Inspiring, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, trying to sound inspired.

  He stood up. ‘Now, what is it that strikes you about the church, Sefton?’