Westmorland Alone

by Ian Sansom

  ‘Is it indeed?’

  ‘It is. A classic moral dilemma.’

  ‘You’d better write that down,’ the senior policeman instructed his burly colleague.

  ‘Really, Sergeant?’ asked the burly one.

  ‘Write it down,’ repeated the policeman. ‘It might be significant.’ He stared at Morley as if beholding a work of art. ‘The People’s Professor, well, well. Lads, you’ve read the People’s Professor?’ The two other policemen shook their heads.

  ‘Ah well,’ said Morley to me. ‘Non quivis suavia comedit edulia.’

  ‘What did he say?’ the policeman asked Miriam.

  ‘Not sure,’ she said.

  ‘Marvellous,’ said the policeman.

  ‘Notebook to hand?’ Morley asked me. This usually meant that he had seen some opportunity and was about to deliver an impromptu lecture, which he wished to be recorded for posterity. An opportunity this clearly was. I did not alas have a notebook to hand. These are merely my recollections.

  ‘Might I elaborate?’ he asked the policeman.

  ‘By all means, Mr Morley.’

  Morley turned to address the signalman, who was looking defeated and ashamed. ‘I’m so sorry you should have been faced with such a dilemma, young man. Mr Wilson, is it not, if I heard correctly?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. George Wilson.’

  ‘Well, Mr Wilson, I’m afraid you have been confronted with one of the fundamental questions in ethics.’

  ‘Has he?’ said the policeman.

  ‘Indeed he has. We might call it the “Changing the Points Problem”.’ (For a full elaboration of the problem, see Morley’s article, ‘The “Changing the Points Problem”’ in the Journal of Philosophy, vol.113, summer 1938: another article that caused more trouble than it was worth.) ‘Faced with the likelihood of causing harm to an individual or individuals, should one or should one not change the points?’

  ‘Course you should,’ said the wingnut-eared policeman.

  ‘Indeed. It seems like the obvious answer. Though alas in this case, as so often, there are complicating factors.’

  ‘Which are?’ asked the senior policeman.

  ‘Well, in this instance of course there is the complicating factor of causing harm to another individual or group of individuals.’

  ‘The people on the train,’ explained Miriam, who always liked to get in a word or two during Morley’s musings. She was not someone, under any circumstances, ever to be outdone or outshone. Her father in full flow was always a challenge to her.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Morley. ‘In which case, in the case of competing wrongs, as it were, our friend here can only have done wrong. The real question is therefore how wrong was the wrong?’

  ‘What?’ said George Wilson, the signalman, raising his voice. ‘What are you saying? I didn’t do wrong. I did what any signalman would have done. Eric, you tell him.’

  Eric the stationmaster remained silent; he might just as well have been blacking the grate in the waiting room.

  The crowd in the bar began to quieten.

  ‘Yes, yes of course you did,’ said Morley calmly. ‘You did what any of us might have done. If you had chosen not to change the points, all the children on the line might well have died. How many were there?’

  ‘Four or five.’

  ‘Which would have been a terrible tragedy. But how many people were on the train?’

  ‘We’re waiting for the full head count,’ said the senior policeman. He looked towards Eric the stationmaster.

  ‘We think it’ll probably be about five hundred,’ he said, from under his LMS cap.

  ‘So five hundred lives might possibly have been lost because of our friend’s decision,’ continued Morley.

  ‘But they weren’t!’ protested the signalman.

  ‘Thank goodness, no, though as it is …’ Morley looked sympathetically at me. ‘The loss of one child is of course a terrible tragedy.’

  ‘And many more injured,’ said the senior policeman. ‘The fireman seriously.’

  ‘Yes. But you can perhaps see that theoretically at least, from the purely utilitarian point of view, it might have been better for our friend here to have chosen not to change the points, possibly killing only four or five children rather than five hundred men, women and children.’

  ‘Father!’ said Miriam. ‘That is really a quite monstrous suggestion.’

  ‘But logically sound,’ said Morley.

  ‘You’re saying it was a lose-lose situation?’ asked the senior policeman.

  ‘Precisely so,’ said Morley. ‘Which is what makes it truly a dilemma: if it weren’t a dilemma it wouldn’t be such a—’

  ‘Dilemma,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Yes. Arguably, to participate at all in such an enterprise is wrong, because the moral wrongs are already in place, established and unavoidable, meaning that you, sir’ – he turned again to the signalman and spoke to him directly – ‘had no meaningful choice at all, but were, rather, condemned to doing ill, whatever your decision and whatever the circumstances.’

  In Morley’s reckoning these were doubtless intended as words of comfort, but to any normal human being of course they were a terrible insult.

  George Wilson the signalman was furious. ‘It wasn’t my fault!’ he said, getting up from the table.

  ‘No one is suggesting it is, sir!’ said Morley. ‘Please, sit down.’ George glanced around him at the silent crowd now gathered around us in the bar. ‘I’m simply drawing attention to the fact that in such circumstances it is impossible for someone to emerge blameless.’

  ‘It was the bloody gypsy children!’ said George. ‘It was nothing to do with me! Did you hear me?’ He had gone a deep shade of LMS red. ‘Did you hear me?’ He looked as though he were about to reach for Morley. Silence descended upon the bar.

  Thankfully, Miriam intervened.

  ‘I think it might be time to go to bed, Father, don’t you? It’s been a terribly long day.’

  Morley seemed to be genuinely surprised at all the fuss he’d caused. ‘I do hope I haven’t upset you, sir,’ he said to the signalman. ‘I was simply trying to tease out some of the—’

  ‘I think it might be best if you could go and tease them out elsewhere,’ said the senior policeman. ‘Just for now. We’ll take a full statement from you tomorrow. Very interesting though, Mr Morley, thank you.’

  ‘Come on, Father,’ said Miriam.

  George Wilson did not look or speak to Morley as he rose from the table and allowed himself to be led away. I got up to follow.

  ‘Not so fast, you,’ said the senior policeman, holding up a commanding finger. ‘We’ll also need a word with you, sir,’ he said. ‘You’re Stephen Sefton, is that right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  ‘Lot of people have been talking about you, sir.’

  ‘Have they?’

  ‘We have a few questions for you.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  The crowd of onlookers looked on expectantly. Miriam and Morley had disappeared. I was entirely alone.

  ‘But it can wait till tomorrow,’ said the policeman. ‘Why don’t you get some rest now.’

  I got some rest by drinking quietly by myself in a corner of the bar until all the passengers had been found beds for the night and the Band of Hope had packed up and gone and the Women’s Institute and the police, and the room was clear and all I could see was my reflection in the bar-room mirror.

  ‘I think you’ve had enough, sir,’ said the barman, some time after midnight.

  He was right.

  CHAPTER 7

  PENCILARIUMS AND PHARMACOPOEIAS

  I WAS PLAGUED BY TERRIBLE NIGHTMARES. I was being chased through a vast crowd of people who were moving around in a purposeless, random way – terrifying. Everywhere around me trees and houses had been levelled and there were rotting corpses. Delaney was there. He was in a white tuxedo, baring his teeth: white, perfect teeth. MacDonald and Mickey Gleason,
my old International Brigade chums, were there, dressed as guards, cracking their knuckles, and the varsity boys from Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court, caked in blood. The little girl was there too, Lucy, taking photographs. And then I became lost in a dark tunnel, running along the tracks, and suddenly a train was coming towards me, lights glaring, horn blowing. ‘Life is very like a train journey,’ writes Morley in Ringing Grooves of Change, using a metaphor that will perhaps be lost on the younger generations and those without memories of steam. ‘One sometimes enters long dark tunnels and the only thing to do is to shut up the window and wait for things to clear again.’

  I was horribly hung over and the room was full of the sour smell of whiskey and cigarettes. I knew a man once, a Brigader, who decided to drink himself to death: people said it took him almost a week. I began to wonder whether I should try to find the time. I thought I might spend the day in bed and then make myself scarce. But when I opened my door to go and use the bathroom at the end of the corridor I found that Morley had left a pile of clothes for me outside the room, with a note that read simply: ‘Nil desperandum! Took the liberty to kit you out afresh. Breakfast promptly. Estimated time of departure 9 a.m.’ I almost smiled. As so often, Morley was ahead of me. He had read my mood, or rather – more likely – he was proceeding simply and strictly by logic. He had worked out that the prospect of departure, any kind of departure, was going to be appealing to me. And also that I was going to need some new clothes, since my own had been ruined during the crash. Thinking ahead, he had successfully called my bluff, pulled me up short, taken me by the scruff of the neck, and set me back down again on the straight and narrow.

  ‘Ah, Sefton,’ he said, when I eventually presented myself at breakfast. ‘All ready for departure? You’re looking very smart.’

  ‘Off to do a spot of grouse shooting, are we?’ said Miriam, stubbing out a cigarette in a saucer.

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t, Miriam,’ said Morley. ‘It’s a filthy habit.’

  ‘Oh shush, Father. Has the season begun, Sefton? I do hope you’ll allow me to join you – I love a weekend hunting party.’

  The clothes were indeed of a kind that might have suited a country gent or a laird on his estate in Scotland – a particularly jolly laird with a taste for the more extravagant sort of hunting wear, for these were no rough tweeds and flannels. I was outfitted in plus-fours, enormous fat yellow socks, unyielding sunshine-orange brogues and a jacket that flared at the waist in a fashion that suggested the wearer might at any moment perform a pas de deux.

  ‘Where on earth did you get those ridiculous fancy dress clothes, Father?’

  ‘The night porter’s brother works at a rather fine gentleman’s outfitters in town. I’m afraid that at short notice this was the closest thing I could find to proper hiking gear.’

  ‘We’re not going hiking?’ I said.

  Miriam certainly didn’t look as though she were going hiking. She was dressed, as always, with her usual verve – one might indeed say panache, if it weren’t so early in the morning – in an outfit whose abundance of black ruffles and ruches suggested that even walking might prove a problem. Her make-up was perfect and her hair precisely and elaborately smoothed around her magnificent head, giving her the look of a very fine lacquerware painting. Morley of course was dressed in his customary outfit: bow tie, suit and brogues, ‘suitable for any occasion’, he would often claim, which indeed I can confirm, having seen him fell trees and chop logs, address meetings, read scripts on the BBC, go fishing, climb mountains, and entertain bishops, duchesses and lords, all in the self-same gear. ‘Ladies and gentlemen might be able to afford the privilege of dressing appropriately,’ he liked to say. ‘The rest of us must make do with the merely practical.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m up to hiking,’ I said.

  ‘No, no,’ said Morley. ‘No time for hiking. I have taken into account your and Miriam’s concerns about us proceeding with the book as planned – and we shall indeed be pausing in our enterprise—’

  ‘Out of respect,’ said Miriam.

  ‘And also out of necessity,’ said Morley. ‘I feel the police might require our assistance.’

  Miriam looked at me and raised her eyebrows. After last night’s performance I think we both rather doubted whether Morley’s assistance would be welcome.

  ‘They’re very keen to talk to you this afternoon, Sefton,’ continued Morley. ‘So I said I’d have you back after lunch.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said.

  ‘Not sure about what?’ asked Miriam, extravagantly rearranging herself at the table, causing something of a commotion. She was the sort of woman who couldn’t move without attracting attention.

  ‘Not sure that I can help them with very much,’ I said.

  ‘I think you’ll find you don’t have much choice in the matter, Sefton,’ said Morley. ‘Eye-witness and what have you. And anyway we have a pre-existing arrangement this morning to visit an archaeological dig near Shap – part of our original itinerary – and Miriam and I both agree that we should probably fulfil that obligation.’

  ‘It would be terribly bad manners to cancel at such short notice, Sefton,’ said Miriam. ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘Bad manners?’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Morley. ‘The main thing is we’re off again!’

  ‘That’s the departure?’ I said. ‘That’s where we’re going? To an archaeological dig at a place called Shap?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Morley. ‘Not far. And then we’ll have you back this afternoon for your little chat with the police. I hope that suits?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’ I said, feeling rather cheated.

  ‘There’s always a choice,’ said Miriam. ‘You could always stay here.’

  I looked around at the glacial breakfast room of the Tufton Arms – full to capacity with guests, police and survivors of the crash, picking over their cold damp toast and their tepid tea and eggs – and shivered.

  ‘I suppose I’ll come, then.’

  ‘Excellent!’ said Morley, clapping his hands. ‘Excellent!’

  ‘It’ll do you good,’ said Miriam, patting my arm.

  And so, after a hurried breakfast of coffee and cigarettes, and all done up in my ludicrous hunting outfit, I joined my companions in the Lagonda.

  Miriam, as always, was driving, and I was stuck in the back with Morley, who was doing his best to educate me in the local lore and legends of Westmorland, from tales of dobbies and hobthrusts and other little people, to ruminations on the etymology of Old Norse place names, to the nature of the allurements of Ambleside, ‘the hub of Wordsworth’s wheel of Lakeland beauty’.

  ‘And home to Harriet Martineau,’ added Miriam. ‘We mustn’t forget Harriet.’

  ‘Dear Harriet,’ said Morley absentmindedly, proceeding to praise the fascinations of Kendal, ‘the cloistered auld grey town’ and ‘possessor of perhaps the country’s most pleasingly punning motto, pannus mihi panus’, the majesty of Patterdale, ‘home to the mighty Helvellyn’, and the ‘soothing calm’ of Windermere and Witherslack.

  I did my best to stay awake.

  ‘Can you name how many lakes there are in the so-called Lake District, Sefton?’

  ‘Erm. No idea. Sorry, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘Ten?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Twenty?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thirty?’

  ‘Wrong, wrong, and wrong again. There is in fact only one lake in the Lake District.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Correct. Bassenthwaite. The rest are properly tarns, waters or meres.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘That’ll go in the book, of course.’

  ‘Jolly good,’ I said.

  ‘Make a note,’ said Morley, thrusting some notecards at me. ‘We don’t want to waste a minute, eh? Do you have a pencil?’

  He handed me a pencil – his favourite, a Ticonderoga No.2, imported specially from
America – sharp and ready to go.

  ‘We should probably be using a Lakeland, of course,’ he said. ‘Or a Derwent. Excellent pencils. If we get up into Cumberland we really must visit Keswick. Home of the English pencil – did you know?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Morley,’ I said. I had no idea that Keswick was the home of the English pencil and was less than interested, but was rather hoping that by pretending to knowledge I might avoid any kind of lecture – but no luck. With Morley, there was always a lecture.

  ‘Cumberland plumbago,’ he said. ‘Absolutely unbeatable. And the availability of cheap timber, of course. The extraordinary history of pencil production in this part of the world is surely something that should be more widely celebrated. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘One might perhaps consider constructing a shrine to the pencil, on the shores of Derwentwater.’

  ‘One might,’ I agreed.

  ‘A pencilarium!’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘There’s no such thing,’ said Miriam.

  ‘A Museum of Pencils then!’ cried Morley. ‘A temple to human ingenuity and humble engineering.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Father,’ said Miriam. ‘Who on earth would visit a museum of pencils?’

  ‘I would,’ said Morley. ‘A room devoted solely to the Koh-i-nor. And the Everlast mechanical pencil. Perhaps a working exhibition—’

  ‘Anyway!’ cried Miriam. ‘Let’s assemble, Father, not disperse’ – this being one of the phrases Miriam liked to use to refocus Morley’s attention. (Other phrases included ‘Interventions, not interjections’, ‘March, don’t waltz’ and ‘Reality, not illusions’.)

  ‘Yes,’ said Morley. ‘Quite right. Assemble, not disperse. Where were we, Sefton?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Ah, yes! You were making a list. The tarns, waters and meres in Westmorland and Cumbria.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘They are?’

  ‘Erm …’

  ‘In order of size?’

  ‘Erm …’

  ‘Descending order of size?’

  ‘Erm …’

  ‘Windermere; Ullswater; Derwentwater; Coniston Water; Haweswater; Thirlmere; Ennerdale Water; Wastwater; Crummock Water; Esthwaite Water; Buttermere; Grasmere; Loweswater; Rydal Water; Brotherswater.’