The Norfolk Mystery (The County Guides) (25 page)

‘Yes, really. I thought everybody knew that. What are you having?'

‘I think I'll just stick to the coffee, actually.'

‘Shouldn't skip breakfast, Sefton. The fourth “B”, remember. One: breathing. Two: bath. Three, a good healthy evacuation of the bowels …'

The people at other tables were indeed all watching us intently again, and the poor head waiter had to set off on a round of conversation and napkin-straightening in an attempt to divert attention.

‘Yes, I remember, thank you, Mr Morley.'

‘And four. Breakfast! Most important meal of the day, and what have you. Breathing. Bath. Bowels. Breakfast. The four Bs. In that order, Sefton. Bowels
after
the bath, note. Not before. Loosened, you see.'

The head waiter was exercising considerable restraint, I thought, in not approaching our table and asking us to leave.

‘Some fresh hot buttered toast, perhaps?'

‘No, thank you.'

‘With a bit of bloater paste? Not a bad breakfast. Not good. But not bad.'

‘No, really.' My stomach turned at the thought of it.

‘Plain boiled egg, just? Porridge. You can't beat breakfast, Sefton. Prosopon of the day and what have you.'

From outside there was the sound of church bells ringing eight – which thankfully saved Morley from explaining the meaning of ‘prosopon' to me.

‘Ah, good,' he said, rising from the table. ‘Come on then. Let's go.'

‘To the church?'

‘Why?'

‘To look at the desecrated image of the Virgin Mary?' I said quietly, not wishing to attract attention.

‘We'll not let the Virgin detain us this morning, Sefton.'

This was too much: the head waiter was striding over towards us. Morley himself rose and prepared to leave.

‘Good morning!' he said, as the head waiter arrived at our table.

‘Gentlemen,' he said. ‘I'm afraid I am going to have to ask you to leave.'

‘Just on our way!' said Morley, popping a final slice of banana, like a large, thin lozenge, in his mouth. ‘Let's up, up and be gone, Sefton. No use sitting here like a couple of pigs with our hands in our pockets, eh?'

‘But what about breakfast?' I said. Two cups of coffee had finally started to excite my hunger.

‘Breakfast can wait, Sefton. Not good to be always thinking of your stomach, man. We have a book to write. Besides, we have an appointment.'

‘With?'

‘A Reverend Swain. Bit of background on local religious matters. Come in handy, won't it?'

I hurried after him as he made his way through the tables.

‘No time for the Virgin this morning, alas,' he said, ostensibly to me, but in fact to anyone – which was everyone – who cared to listen, over their eggs and bacon. ‘Best to leave that sort of matter to the professionals. Deputy Detective Chief Inspector for the Norfolk Constabulary can handle her.'

I smiled at the breakfasters placatingly, and made a hasty exit.

And so that morning we resumed our work on the
County Guides
and visited the Reverend Richard Swain, in the neighbouring parish of Morston. ‘He's certainly dressing the part, anyway,' said Morley, after our visit. ‘I'd certainly cast him in the role, wouldn't you?' Swain was indeed the very image of the clergyman, done out in black cassock and collar, ascetically thin, though simultaneously jowly, and completely bald, except for a couple of pure white angel-wing tufts of hair hovering over his ears and above such a vast expanse of ecclesiastical forehead that the upper part of his face seemed in fact to overhang the lower part, as if the mind were making a bid over the body for predominance. ‘Pop a zucchetto on him and rig him out in purple and you'd almost mistake him for a Renaissance Pope, wouldn't you?' remarked Morley. Indeed you would, though the rectory was a rather less than papal residence, being distinguished only by the bright shine of its shiny brown paint on its every lincrusta surface, and the deep sad brownness of the furniture cramming the brown room, with its brown upright piano and brown fireplace, before which the Reverend Swain sat while speaking to us. The place even
smelled
brown; and Morley later named the reverend ‘Father Brown'. (Morley was, as is well known, a great admirer of Chesterton, and had debated with him on a number of occasions, though in private he rather deprecated his conversion to Catholicism, which he regarded as a sign of mental and spiritual weakness.)

‘Terrible, terrible loss to the Church,' said Swain, who had that curious habit that clergymen sometimes have of leaning the head to one side when talking, in the manner of someone listening rather than speaking, which one presumes is intended to imply empathy and understanding, but which does also rather unfortunately give the appearance of mental incapacity. As he spoke he also fiddled with various pieces of pipe-smoking apparatus arrayed on the desk before him. It was like speaking with an elderly, pipe-smoking, holy orangutan, Morley later remarked.

‘Indeed,' said Morley, having solemnly offered the reverend his condolences on our arrival. ‘You knew him well?'

‘Very well, sir. Yes. Very, very well.' Swain also had a habit of puffing out his chest as he spoke, as though working a set of bellows. ‘We were at college together,' he puffed, his hands occupied with removing shag from a pouch and tamping it into a pipe plucked from a rack.

‘Really? And where was that, might I ask?'

‘Oxford,' said Swain, searching for matches. ‘I was studying Theology. He was Mods and Greats.'

‘Ah. Of course,' said Morley, as if this explained everything. ‘Which college?'

‘Balliol.' Matches found, the reverend set the tobacco alight, and with a few strong draws the pipe was set to full steam ahead.

‘Balliol College, Oxford,' said Morley. ‘“The tranquil consciousness of an effortless superiority,” is that right?'

‘I believe it is, Mr Morley, yes,' said the reverend guardedly, through a haze of smoke.

I must have looked more than usually puzzled, because Morley took a moment to explain.

‘Asquith,' he said. ‘On Balliol.'

‘Ah.'

‘You'll have to forgive him, Reverend. Sefton here's a Cambridge man.'

‘Forgiven, of course,' said Swain, nodding beneficently towards me. ‘And you, Mr Morley? You strike me as more Cambridge than Oxford. Am I right?'

‘Alas, I can claim no
alma mater
,' said Morley. ‘No mother to nourish me or to give me succour, I'm afraid. I had to raise myself.'

‘I see. Not a university man. Pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, then?'

‘That's one way of putting it, certainly.' Morley stood up a little straighter at this point, and I could hear the slight crackle of resentment, though it may have been his shoe leather. We had not been invited to sit, and so remained standing before the reverend, like supplicants.

‘Well, well done you,' said the reverend, peering up at Morley. ‘Well done you. This country needs more people like you, sir. Wouldn't you say, Cantab?' I assumed he was referring to me. ‘Can't all be left to us, can it? All of us, pulling together. Cooperating. It's what made us the nation we are today, is it not?'

‘I'm sure it is,' I said.

Puff, puff went the pipe.

‘Personally, I'm a great believer in self-improvement. Although I don't entirely approve of the profession of journalism, Mr Morley, I have to say.'

‘I'm sorry to hear that, Reverend.'

‘Nothing against you personally, you understand.'

‘Of course.'

‘A man such as yourself has to try to make his way somehow. But we all have choices, Mr Morley, don't we? Hardly a profession for a gentleman – journalism.' He made the word ‘journalism' here sound remarkably like a rhyming synonym for ‘communism', and was making the fatal mistake of ragging Morley. I did think for a moment of warning him. But then decided to leave him to his fate. Any intervention was pointless: the poor reverend was sweeping towards Niagara Falls in a barrel.

‘I might perhaps boast of some small few accomplishments, Reverend,' replied Morley, who was keeping his powder dry, ‘but I would certainly never dream of counting myself a gentleman.'

‘No. Well.' The Reverend Swain leaned back in his chair, clearly believing himself to have established proper rank. ‘Do I rightly detect you're a local?' He wagged a finger.

‘That's correct,' said Morley.

‘Ah, yes. I have an ear for it, you see,' said the reverend, grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat. ‘A musical ear, you might say. Tuned in, and what have you. And the study of the ancient languages, of course. One acquires a certain sensitivity, through one's education and long study.'

‘Of course. And do I rightly detect that you are also Norfolk born, Reverend?'

The long-studying reverend looked shocked. He shrank back in his chair rather. Removed the pipe from his mouth. Certainly to me he sounded thoroughly pure-bred, cut-glass and bell-tinklingly OK. But I was not Morley. And neither was the poor reverend.

‘Yes, that's right,' he agreed. ‘Or “Do I am, boy,” should I say?' He put on a broad Norfolk accent, which caused Morley to grimace. ‘Do I am, boy. Do I am. But how could you tell, Mr Morley?'

‘Just … hints,' said Morley. ‘There are always hints, Reverend, aren't there? If one listens carefully.'

‘Quite so,' said Swain. ‘Quite so.' He adopted a prayerful look and his angel-wing tufts of hair rose slightly, as if in thoughtful praise.

‘Though I have to admit,' said Morley, ‘that – unlike you – I am not blessed with a musical ear, nor do I have your sensitivity derived from the long study of the ancient languages.'

‘A good guess, then, eh?'

‘You could say that,' Morley continued, ‘though a guess based on my own – admittedly modest and non-varsity – studies and observations over a number of years, that the Norfolk accent tends to be characterised mainly by the lengthening of vowel sounds, the merging of syllables – “going” becomes “gorn” and etcetera – along with more specific phonological variations such as, often, pronounced yod-dropping and h-dropping, as well as larger intonational features such as the characteristic rise at the end of the sentence, all features captured clearly by Dickens, of course, as you will know, in his portrayal of the Yarmouth fishermen, the Peggottys in
David Copperfield
,
and perfectly clear and apparent in your own speech, Reverend, if one pays attention, beneath your very fine Oxford veneer.'

‘Hmm.' Swain's clerical dignity seemed not only ruffled, but crumpled. He laid his pipe down in an ashtray. ‘Hoist by my own petard, Mr Morley.'

‘Indeed, Reverend. Or branded on the tongue.'

‘Quite.'

‘The poor deceased reverend wasn't local, though, was he?'

‘No,' agreed the Reverend Swain, more than happy to change the subject. ‘He'd come and stay occasionally, while we were at Oxford.'

‘And after Oxford?' said Morley.

‘Our paths diverged.'

‘You lost touch?'

‘Entirely. Yes. Absolutely and entirely.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes.'

‘But your paths later converged again?'

‘Indeed, sir, and behold and lo! we ended up in adjacent parishes.'

‘Quite a coincidence,' said Morley.

‘Yes. We make our plans, Mr Morley. But God sometimes has other plans. Don't you find?'

‘“Man proposes: God disposes,”' said Morley.

‘Indeed. Shakespeare.'

‘Virgil, I think you'll find,' said Morley. ‘
Dis alitervisum
?'

Swain licked his lips. ‘Yes. Well done. You really are a veritable mine of … curious information, Mr Morley, aren't you?' He glanced at me, with an expression seeking, I thought, some conspiratorial disdain. I smiled beneficently back. ‘You remind me of a chap I was at school with. Great one for memorising trivia. You know. Cricket scores and what have you. Could recite parts of
Wisden
. Parrotface, we called him; the cruelty of young boys, Mr Morley, eh? He ended up as a music-hall mnemonist, as far as I recall.'

‘
Dis aliter visum
,' said Morley.

‘Milton?'

‘Virgil, actually, Reverend. No longer on the curriculum at Oxford, clearly?'

‘I was not a classical scholar, Mr Morley. I studied Theology.'

‘Common tellurian, I would have thought, Reverend, especially for a man with the benefit of a long education in the ancient languages.'

The Reverend Swain stopped leaning his head at this point, and looked at Morley square on and direct. ‘You're here to ask me about your book, Mr Morley, isn't that correct?
The County Guides
, or whatever they're called.'

‘Yes, that's correct.'

‘Well, perhaps you'd like to begin. I'm afraid I really don't have long.' He consulted his watch. ‘Church business. You understand. One's time is not one's own.'