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‘There’ll be no trains in or out for a week, I reckon,’ continued the barman, as he was examining the bottles behind the bar. ‘So I reckon we’ll be getting through a lot of port and lemon.’ He nodded towards the crowd around the bar, mostly women. ‘So, Scotch: we’ve got Haig, Black and White, or Macnish’s Doctor’s Special. Irish, I’m afraid we’ve only Bushmills or …’ He held up a full bottle of Irish whiskey. ‘Bushmills.’
‘I’ll take a Bushmills then.’ I had converted to Bushmills at one of Delaney’s places: he served only Irish whiskey, his famous gin fizz, and other drinks even more distinctly suspect and of no discernible provenance.
‘There was a little girl killed,’ he said. ‘Is that right?’
I said nothing. I drank the whiskey and ordered another. And then another.
I could see her face in the mirror behind the bar. I could see her smile. I could feel her hand holding mine. I could hear her asking questions. She seemed to be everywhere. But the more I drank the quieter she became. I also took a pinch or two of Delaney’s powders – and eventually she was silent.
Morley, hectic and inquisitive as ever, had conveniently situated himself at the far end of the table at which the police had made their makeshift headquarters – the perfect location for a quiet spot of eavesdropping. He was armed with a cup of black tea, and was busy with his pen writing in one of his tiny German waistcoat-pocket-sized notebooks. He had about him his usual glow. Miriam was smoking and surveying the room with a look of pity and disgust. I sat down with them. I felt sick.
‘Ah, Sefton,’ said Morley. ‘The hero of the hour.’
‘Hardly,’ I said.
‘Come, come, we’ve heard all about your exploits, dragging people from their carriages and what have you, saving lives—’
I got up to leave, but Miriam gripped my arm and forced me to sit back down.
‘He’s had a shock, Father. Best to leave it.’
‘Of course!’ said Morley. ‘Yes, of course, quite upsetting.’
‘I wonder actually if, in the circumstances, we should perhaps call a halt to the book, Father,’ said Miriam.
‘Agreed,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Morley, to my surprise. ‘Perhaps we should.’
‘Really?’ said Miriam.
‘Till tomorrow morning, perhaps?’
‘What?’ I said.
‘Otherwise we would slip very far behind in our schedule, Miriam.’
‘Our schedule,’ I said, with contempt.
‘Is something wrong, Sefton?’ asked Morley.
‘Father,’ said Miriam, coming to my rescue. ‘I was thinking we should perhaps take a longer break?’
‘Agreed. Again,’ I said.
‘A longer break?’ In all my years with Morley I rarely saw him riled or succumbing to petty rages, but this suggestion made him spiteful. ‘Do you both want us to give up then?’ said Morley. ‘Just because there’s been a train crash?’
‘No,’ said Miriam slowly, as if speaking to an ignorant child. ‘But you’re right: there has been a train crash.’
‘And what on earth do you propose doing when real disaster occurs?’ asked Morley. ‘As it surely will.’
‘Real disaster?’ I said.
‘A war, or a famine? Another Spanish flu? A crash is an accident. It may be a tragedy. But it is not, strictly speaking, a disaster. Do you know what a disaster is?’
‘I think I do,’ I said.
‘Has there been great loss of life?’
‘A little girl died, Father!’ said Miriam.
‘Which is tragic, but as I say, it is not—’
I moved to get up again and again Miriam held me back.
‘I’m sorry but I have no intention of continuing to work with you on this book at this time, Mr Morley,’ I said.
‘And I have no intention of allowing you to give up our enterprise at this time, Sefton, simply because of misfortune. Would any great art ever have been created if we had given up because of some setback? Did any of us give up what we were doing during the Great War? Did I give up when my son and my wife—’
‘And did I give up when in Spain—’
‘Boys! Please!’ said Miriam, slapping the table with both hands. ‘I have no intention of allowing you two to bicker like children. Of course Sefton won’t be giving up on the project, will you, Sefton?’ She glared fiercely at me.
‘Well, it rather sounds like it to me,’ said Morley. ‘Tu ne cèdes.’
‘We are not talking about giving up, Father. But I do think we might at least pause in our endeavours until the tragic matters here are in some way resolved.’
Morley huffed. I gazed distractedly around the room.
‘You know you can be terribly insensitive sometimes,’ said Miriam.
‘Insensitive?’ cried Morley. ‘Me? Insensitive?’
Fortunately – before I walked off, or struck Morley for his self-righteous stupidity – our conversation was interrupted by a young man who had sidled over, obviously intent on talking to us. He looked as though he might be a butcher’s boy: his face was flushed, and he had that soft, odd, awkward manner of someone more at home with animals than with humans. He was not in fact though a butcher’s boy: he was a reporter from the Westmorland Gazette. (Morley, who had of course started out as a muck-raking journalist, had little time for practitioners of his previous profession. In private he referred to them unflatteringly as ‘Gobbos’, after Shakespeare’s word-mangling idiot in The Merchant of Venice. In Morley’s Defence of the Realm (1939) he describes journalists as ‘allowed fools, paid to express contempt for people, politics, religion and society as a whole’. Over the years he described journalists variously to me as ‘vampires’, ‘grave-robbers’, ‘cutpurses’, but also as ‘the just’, as ‘valiant heroes’, and as ‘seekers after the truth’. His feelings and ideas were often inconsistent and contradictory.)
‘The Westmorland Gazette!’ cried Morley. ‘Of course! Thomas De Quincey’s old paper, is it not?’
‘I believe so, sir, yes.’
‘Founded when?’
‘I’m not entirely sure, sir.’ The young chap’s red-flushed cheeks flushed all the redder.
‘Don’t know when? You write for the newspaper and you don’t know when it was founded?’
‘No, sir.’ The poor fellow had round, pleading eyes.
‘Do you know the date of your mother’s birthday?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And your father’s?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I rest my case,’ said Morley, though exactly which case he was resting I was not entirely sure. His metaphors and analogies were not always entirely clear or helpful. ‘I think you’ll find it was established in 1818.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘“Sorry, sir”?’ cried Morley, almost knocking over his cup of tea. ‘“Sorry, sir”? A little more gumption wouldn’t go amiss, young man. I’m not at all sure you’re cut out for this business. Well, do you have any questions for us?’
The young man began frantically flicking through his notebook.
‘Wordsworth one of the original backers, I think?’ said Morley. ‘Was he not?’
‘Of?’
‘The paper, man!’
‘I’m not sure, sir—’
‘Everybody knows it was Wordsworth! Late Wordsworth. Reactionary Wordsworth. Prefer the young Wordsworth myself, but never mind. And De Quincey was the first editor, I believe – or the second? – though he was so drugged with his laudanum that he refused to go to the office. Still the case with your current editor?’
‘Not as far as I’m aware, sir, no.’
‘And does the paper still take the Tory line?’
‘I’m not sure, sir.’
‘You’re not sure?’
‘I’ve only just started work at the paper, sir.’
‘Well, you’ll not be working there long at this rate, will you, man? Original motto of the paper?’
‘Erm …’
‘“Truth we pursue, and court Decorum: What more would readers have before ’em?” Rather good, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And do you pursue Truth and court Decorum, young man?’
‘I suppose I do, sir.’
‘Well, that’s a start, I suppose,’ said Morley. ‘Offices where, in Kendal?’
‘Yes, sir. On Stricklandgate.’
’You are a lucky young fellow. Probably the finest patch for a newspaper man in the whole of England, the Westmorland Gazette. From the hill farms of the Yorkshire Dales in the east to Furness in the west, and Helvellyn in the north to Morecambe Bay in the south …’
‘I suppose so, sir, yes.’
‘You suppose? You suppose? Well then, ask another question, man!’ Morley produced a pocket egg-timer and placed it on the table. ‘You’ve got three minutes.’
‘I just wondered if you’d give me a quote, sir, about the rail crash, and your role in—’
‘Give you a quote? One doesn’t give quotes, young man. People speak, and one shapes their words, like a mother bear licking a cub into shape.’
‘Well, if you wouldn’t mind—’
‘I am reminded of the words of the great Dean Swift, sir: “For life is a tragedy, wherein we sit as spectators awhile, and then act our part in it.”’
‘Is that a quote?’
‘It’s a quote of a quote.’
‘Ah.’
‘Just write it down,’ said Miriam. ‘It’ll do.’
‘I’m afraid I cannot comment on the accident until the police have conducted their investigation and compiled their accident report,’ added Morley. ‘Next question?’
‘Is it true that the train was speeding, and that—’
‘I refer you to my previous answer. Next question!’
‘Is it true that you rescued a number of people from the carriages?’
‘I can make no such claim. The person who did so is my assistant, Stephen Sefton, who is— Sefton?’
I had made myself scarce, slipping away from the table and behind Morley to the bar. I had absolutely no desire to hear him engage in Socratic dialogue with some poor young reporter from the Westmorland Gazette, and even less desire to appear in the Westmorland Gazette.
‘Sefton?’ called Morley across the packed room. I was only a few yards away, but the crowd was dense. ‘Sefton?’ I made no response. ‘He’s probably gone to get another drink. Do you indulge?’ he asked the boy reporter.
‘Indulge?’
‘In drink?’ said Morley.
‘Well, I have occasionally—’
‘Don’t,’ said Morley. ‘The best advice I can give anyone is the same advice my father gave me as a young man: don’t smoke, drink or fornicate, and never bring the police to the door.’
Such advice was too late for me, alas: I was already busy with another Bushmills and was immersing myself in the day’s Times, looking for news of the police searching for a man following an assault outside Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court. There was nothing that I could find. I sank the whiskey.
‘Three minutes!’ I heard Morley announce, snatching up his egg-timer. ‘That’s your lot, boy. You’re really going to have to work on that interview technique.’
The poor boy reporter got up and left, and I returned safely to the table.
