I couldn’t believe it, of course. Not when they told me the first time. A tiny community living all on its own in the middle of modern England! It seemed impossible.
And yet it fitted with the facts. The fact that there was no electricity in the vicarage, only candles. The fact that every item of household furnishing was pre-twentieth century. And the fact that the inhabitants of Morbing Vyle knew nothing at all about what was happening in the outside world. In the end, I had to believe it.
They visited me several times a day over the next few days. They fed me, and changed my sheets, and Mr Quode emptied my chamber pot. They were very kindly, but very bizarre. Sometimes I wondered if I was still in a dream and hadn’t yet woken up to proper reality.
They told me that they grew their own vegetables for food. They also kept and slaughtered their own animals. They had a well for drawing water, and tools and implements of every kind. Everything they needed was either already in the vicarage, or could be reconstructed out of existing articles.
They were even managing to build the new church entirely on their own. Working on the church seemed to be their main occupation during the day. They told me that the construction had been begun by their predecessors in the vicarage, eighty years ago. They themselves had come to Morbing Vyle at different times over the past forty years.
Mr Caulkiss and his wife had arrived in 1939, just before the start of the Second World War. Mr Caulkiss had been a brilliant young scientist – at least, that’s what he said. Apparently he had developed new theories in fundamental physics, dealing with motion and energy. But he had become disillusioned with the directions that his fellow-physicists were taking. “Materialist-minded morons!” he trumpeted contemptuously. “Phhh! Phhhh! Couldn’t see what was in front of their noses!”
He stomped up and down the nursery floor, reeling off incomprehensible mathematical formulae. He was obviously conducting some sort of scientific proof. Then suddenly he stopped and demanded in a fierce voice:
“And how did I discover all this? Eh?”
I wasn’t sure if he was addressing me or not. “I don’t know,” I murmured. “I do!” Craylene piped up brightly. “I remember how! It was in that book you brought home!”
“Exactly!” Mr Caulkiss raised his bony fist in a gesture of triumph. “A single treatise published in 1899. He was on the right track before any of us were born! All the essential principles laid down even then! He was so far ahead of his time that his work was totally ignored!”
“Who is this person you’re talking about?” I asked innocently.
The answer came from all four of them simultaneously, as if with a single voice. “The vicar of Morbing Vyle.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Craylene continued the story.
“That was when we knew we had to come here! I wanted to come too. I was the one who found the route. I led us to Morbing Vyle.”
“And did you meet this – vicar?”
“Of course not.” Mr Caulkiss huffed through his nose. “But I was able to inspect his manuscripts. And use his laboratory. I have followed on with the great work that he began.” But when I wanted to know what kind of work it was, Mr Caulkiss wouldn’t answer. He just showed his teeth in a horsey smile. “Later,” he said. “Later.”
Mr Quode told me his story too. It seemed that he had been a chef in a top-class London restaurant. But a single recipe had changed his life, a recipe in an old handwritten book of recipes for Pate à la Morbing Vyle. The mere memory made Mr Quode go wet and dribbly at the lips. He kissed the tips of his fingers. “Mmmmmmah!! Quelle delice!!”
After Pate à la Morbing Vyle, he had tried out other similar recipes from the same book:
Quiche Morbing and Vol-au-Vyle. All equally exquisite. But who had invented them? He had inherited the book from a distant aunt. Who had she copied them down from?
Once again, all four voices breathed the answer in unison: “The vicar of Morbing Vyle.” I looked round at their intent faces, almost glittering at me.
“The same as the other one?” I asked. “The same vicar?”
They nodded.
“He must have been very talented,” I remarked. “In such different areas.” Mr Caulkiss guffawed and Craylene tittered and Melestrina raised her mighty eyebrows. “The greatest chef the world has ever known,” said Mr Quode, pressing his hand over his heart. “Compared to him, I am but a lowly worm crawling along in his footsteps.”
And that was how Mr Quode had been drawn to Morbing Vyle. He had found his way to the place in 1949. He had married Melestrina when she arrived, two years later.
As for Melestrina, I could almost have guessed her previous life. She had been an actress.
She had travelled around with a small repertory company, playing Shakespeare and the classics.
One time they had come to do ‘Macbeth’ at the New Morbing Town Hall. Melestrina had taken the role of Lady Macbeth.
“Ah, my greatest public performance ever,” she sighed. “That night I was inspired. Such depth! Such power! Such darkness! My own life simply ceased to exist! I became Lady Macbeth!” She spread her arms and lifted her chin and throbbingly declaimed:
“The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here;
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty!”
But the audience hadn’t appreciated her acting at all. They refused to applaud. And afterwards a note had been slipped in under the door of her changing room. Melestrina wouldn’t repeat the whole of what it said, but it told her to ‘Get out of New Morbing!’ and ‘Go back to your vicar!’, and it called her ‘a daughter of Morbing Vyle’.
And then she had felt the pull. Growing out of the mere name of ‘Morbing Vyle’, the mere mention of ‘the vicar’. She had succumbed to an overwhelming fascination.
“I was called!” she cried, in dramatic rapture. “Through the forest I came! Nothing could stop me!”
I must admit, I didn’t like the sound of this overwhelming fascination. It was uncomfortably similar to my own experience. We had all been drawn to Morbing Vyle by some inexplicable irrational attraction. I felt distinctly reluctant to tell them my own story.
But there was no way out of it. I had heard their stories and now they wanted to hear mine.
So I told them about life in Australia, then about Cambridge and the University. Mr Caulkiss sniffed disapprovingly when I mentioned the topic of my postgraduate research. But generally they just listened and nodded politely. It was only when I described how I had discovered the name of ‘Morbing Vyle’ that their eyes lit up. And when they heard how I had come to New Morbing and found the signpost, they were absolutely delighted.
“It’s the same!”
“The same as us!”
“He was called!”
“He felt the pull!”
They couldn’t do enough for me then. Mr Caulkiss shook my hand. Melestrina embraced me upon her mighty bosom. Craylene fussed and puttered and patted all over me. And Mr Quode stood stroking my coat where it hung on the bunk, quite melting with pleasure. I was like a long-lost son come home to them.
And yet they didn’t altogether trust me. In spite of the warmth and friendliness, they took care to keep me under constant surveillance. I discovered how it was done just a day or so later.
∨ The Vicar of Morbing Vile ∧
Fourteen
It was on the morning of the fourth day since I had first woken up. I was getting tired of being an invalid. I decided that I felt strong enough to go across and take a look out of the window. I was all alone in the nursery, as I supposed.
I swung my legs out over the side of the bunk. The air was nippy, and cold draughts blew up through the cracks between the floorboards. I pulled the floral bedspread from my bunk and wrapped it around my shoulders.
I wasn�
�t as strong as I’d thought. I crossed to the window by way of the chest and desk and playpen, making sure that I had something to catch hold of every few steps. I was thankful when I reached the window and was able to lean against the sill.
There were metal bars across the window, fixed in the bricks outside. I peered through the glass. The nursery was on the upstairs floor and I had a wide panorama, looking down from above.
Directly below was a sort of courtyard. It was enclosed by a long low building running parallel to the back of the vicarage. Beyond the long low building was a stretch of bare earth. And beyond the bare earth was a forest.
A forest! I guessed at once that this must be the very same forest which the Caulkisses and Quodes had mentioned. The forest through which I had passed on my way to Morbing Vyle. I studied it carefully, hoping that the sight might jog my memory.
A dreary and dismal sight it was. A forest of dead trees, all burned by some terrible fire. I gazed out over black charcoal branches and gaunt shells of trunks and white ash on the ground…The dead trees curved round to right and left as far as the eye could see.
It gave me a sinking feeling just looking at it. But still no memory stirred in my head. The forest was as strange and new as if I had never seen it before.
Then suddenly my attention was distracted. Something had moved behind me, something on the nursery floor! I whirled around and stared in amazement.
There on the floor lay a pair of my underpants. Motionless now – but strangely humped and bulging! How could they have got there? I could have sworn they hadn’t been there a moment ago.
And then I almost jumped out of my skin. All at once the fly parted and two small blue eyes appeared in the opening. Something was watching me out of my own underpants!
“Get out of there!” I yelled. I took a couple of lurching steps and tried to make a grab for whatever it was. But my underpants took off in a flash. They scuttled away across the floor. They came to a halt on the other side of the nursery, resting up against the chest with brass handles.
I was too weak for rapid pursuit. I decided to use strategy instead. I pretended to lose interest. I pretended that all I wanted to do was to go back to bed.
The chest was actually quite close to my bunk. But I deliberately went round by the opposite direction. I made a great show of moving very slowly. When I came up to the bunk I slid the bedspread from my shoulders and spread it out over the bed.
Still no movement from the thing in my underpants. I sat down on the edge of the bed and lifted the sheets – as if to swing up my legs and climb in. But I didn’t. Instead I stretched out my legs and swung suddenly the other way. Success! I brought my feet down hard on top of my underpants, pinning them to the floor.
There was a tiny squeak. Then the bulge started to struggle. It wriggled and twisted and squirmed between my feet. It was as active as an eel. I reached forward to take hold of it with my hands. I thought I had it trapped.
But I was wrong. All at once my underpants were empty and a small pink shape went streaking across the nursery floor. It moved like lightning, a convulsive blur of head and legs. Before I had time for a proper look, it had climbed up and over the railings into the playpen.
There was a brief flurry as it disappeared down amongst the toys in the playpen. Books and crayons and furry animals pitched and tossed wildly this way and that. Then the flurry ended, and everything settled down in a quiet heap once more. But at the bottom of the heap were two small blue eyes, peering out at me, steady and unwinking.
I was too exhausted for any further attempts. I had a burning sensation in my lungs, and my legs were trembling. I crawled back into bed and pulled the sheets up over me.
But I couldn’t relax. I lay at an angle facing the playpen. For the whole morning, I kept watch on the eyes that were watching back at me. I didn’t dare go to sleep.
∨ The Vicar of Morbing Vile ∧
Fifteen
“There’s something in this room! It’s been hiding in the playpen!”
The Caulkisses and Quodes clustered around my bunk.
“No!”
“Oh!”
“Oh no!”
They had shocked expressions on their faces. Melestrina clasped her hand dramatically across her brow.
“How horrible!”
“Dear, dear, dear!”
“You poor thing!”
Mr Caulkiss tut-tutted and Mr Quode was full of sympathy. Craylene fluttered and patted so vigorously that she dislodged her make-up and sent a cloud of powder into the air. “It keeps watching me,” I complained. “It was running around in my underpants.” Mr Quode scooped up my underpants from the floor. He squeezed and fondled and felt them all over.
“Nothing there now!” He shook his head. His cheeks had gone quite flushed. “Nothing to worry about,” said Mr Caulkiss.
“Relax and be comforted!”
“There there there!”
“How can I relax?” I was beginning to get angry. “I’m telling you, it’s still there in the playpen!”
“What is?”
“I don’t know! You have to investigate! I want you to catch it!”
Still they hovered and dithered.
“Quickly!” I shouted.
Melestrina took her hand from her brow. “So be it!” she declared. “I go!” And she went.
“Right at the bottom!”
Melestrina leaned forward into the playpen. Her massive bosom dropped over the railings and swung heavily back and forth. She dug down into the heap of toys and books and playthings. “Hah!” There was something at the very bottom of the heap. “What find is this?” It was a toy bucket. She held it aloft in both hands. I could see tiny pink toes and fingers poking up from within, wriggling and weaving.
“What is it?”
“This,” cried Melestrina, “is my only son!”
“Our only son,” added Mr Quode.
Melestrina clutched the bucket to her bosom.
“Panker!” she cried.
“We call him Panker,” added Mr Quode.
“Show me!” I demanded.
She came across and tilted the bucket so that I could see. Inside was a small fat baby, completely naked, like a mollusc in its shell. As the bucket tilted towards me, the tiny toes and fingers whizzed about faster than ever. And there in the soft creased flesh were two blue eyes, staring and unwinking.
“I see.” I tried to sound calm and rational. “And why is he like that?”
“Like what?”
“Hiding inside a bucket.”
“He likes hiding inside things.”
“Such is his inclination.”
“Let every man be free to follow his own inclination!”
“Praise the Lord!”
“O praise Him!”
There was a shrill squeak from baby Panker. Melestrina lifted the bucket to her ear and listened. A whole series of little squeaks poured forth.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s he doing now?”
“Baby talk,” said Mr Quode.
“What’s he saying?”
Melestrina finished listening. She lowered the bucket to the ground.
“He says he owes you an apology. He’s very sorry for having frightened you.” There was another diminutive squeak. Melestrina turned the bucket upside down on the floor. Immediately it scuttled away at top speed, across to the far side of the nursery. “He also thinks that you’re much better and stronger now. He suggests that you might be ready to get up for a while.”
“Ah!” Mr Caulkiss nodded. “A good idea! How would you like to get up?”
“Today? Now?”
“Yes indeed. You can sit in the parlour.”
“Okay.”
Mr Caulkiss trumpeted through his nose. “He agrees!”
“O body well recovered!” cried Melestrina. “O health aright!”
“Isn’t he strong!” exclaimed Mr Quode.
And Craylene clapped her hands until she disappeared complet
ely behind a cloud of powder. Then Mr Caulkiss gave them each their orders. Melestrina was sent off to light a fire in the parlour. Craylene carried my glass of water downstairs. And Mr Quode hurried away to find a dressing gown for me to wear.
“You can have one of my very best!” he promised.
∨ The Vicar of Morbing Vile ∧
Sixteen
So they took me downstairs. I shuffled along in Mr Quode’s mauve silk dressing gown and best leather slippers. My legs were no longer so weak, but I was very giddy in the head. Mr Caulkiss supported me on one side and Mr Quode on the other.
Outside the nursery was a dark corridor. The walls were panelled with old stained wood, almost black with age. Along the floor ran a strip of grey linoleum, cracked like crazy paving.
We moved slowly down the corridor. We passed one closed door on the left and one closed door on the right. I didn’t like to lean too heavily on Mr Quode: there was a soft yielding quality about him that I didn’t exactly trust. But I didn’t exactly trust Mr Caulkiss either: he was so stiff and angular, he seemed ready to buckle and collapse at any moment.
We came to a landing at the top of a steep staircase. Mr Caulkiss and Mr Quode yoked my arms over their shoulders. Then we went down, one step at a time. Mr Quode quivered and giggled and pressed closely against me. Mr Caulkiss clung to the wooden banister and lowered his bony frame as if descending a mountainside.
But I had firmer support from the rear. Melestrina followed one step behind, holding on to my dressing gown collar with a single powerful hand. Whenever Mr Caulkiss or Mr Quode weakened, she hoiked me immediately upright again. Her hoik was so powerful that one time my feet actually left the ground.
Meanwhile Craylene went on ahead, calling out:
“Bear up!”
“Over to the left!”
“Careful!”
“Steady!”
Halfway down the staircase was an old framed photo hanging on the wall. It depicted a small quaint church and an ivy-covered vicarage. The very same photo that I had seen in the book on ecclesiastical history! I stared at it as we passed, but I didn’t say anything.
The Vicar of Morbing Vile Page 5