Westmorland Alone

by Ian Sansom

  ‘Very rare, mandrake,’ said the woman. ‘Very rare.’

  ‘That’s outrageous!’ said Miriam.

  ‘Hey!’ I said. ‘Give the lady her money back.’

  Suddenly a man came, as if from nowhere, from behind the old woman and stood protectively beside her. He was wearing a white vest and a leather apron and had a wild head of dark hair shaved high and tight on the sides. With wide-set eyes and a long profile he looked remarkably like a horse preparing to charge; indeed, he had a horseshoe tattoo on one arm, and was carrying an actual horseshoe in his other hand. In the near distance behind the woman I noticed that he had a makeshift workshop set up: a forge by a fire in a clearing by some trees, beside a vivid gypsy caravan.

  ‘Problem, Mother?’ said the man.

  ‘No!’ she said. ‘These good people were just buying some of our mandrake.’

  ‘Good.’ He stared at me. ‘That’s all good then?’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s been something of a misunderstanding,’ I said.

  ‘Is that right?’

  At that moment Morley appeared beside us.

  ‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘Found you! Have you had a good afternoon?’

  ‘Very good, thank you, Mr Morley,’ I said.

  ‘Did you try your hand at quoits?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘What about the greasy pole?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh you should have, Sefton! Reminds of the time I was in Lucknow, fabulous place, and they had a not dissimilar—’

  ‘Did you find Mr Taylor, Father?’ asked Miriam.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid not, but there’s some wrestling about to start. I think we might just find him there, if we’re quick.’

  The horseshoe man had wandered back over to his anvil and was settling down to his bellows when Morley caught sight of it.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Well, well, well, well, well. What is this? Tinsmith? Blacksmith? Silversmith? Worth an investigation perhaps, Sefton? A quick photograph, at least? “Cumbrian Country Crafts”? I can see the caption now. Come on.’

  ‘We just need to sort something out here, Mr Morley, actually,’ I said.

  ‘Miriam can sort it out, can’t she?’ said Morley. ‘She’s a big girl. Come on, quick. We need to get back for the wrestling.’

  And so, reluctantly, I left Miriam arguing with the old woman over the price of the mandrake and made my way with Morley over to the man, fearing – in all honesty – for both Morley’s safety and my own.

  ‘What do you want?’ the horse-faced man asked, without looking up.

  But Morley’s attention had already wandered.

  ‘I was just admiring your wagon here, sir, actually,’ said Morley. ‘It really is a thing of tremendous beauty, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  ‘It is, and you may.’ The man stood up and looked proudly towards his caravan.

  ‘Did you build it yourself, may I ask?’

  ‘I did not, sir, no.’

  ‘Would you mind awfully if I asked who made it then? It’s just, I have always had rather a hankering after a vardo myself.’

  ‘You know the proper name?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Morley. ‘I am something of an enthusiast for the gypsy way of life.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Oh, very much so. Very much so.’

  ‘Well it’s a shame others don’t share your enthusiasm,’ said the gypsy, fixing his eyes suspiciously on me. ‘Lot of “misunderstandings” between us and the gorgio. No offence.’

  ‘None taken, sir,’ said Morley. ‘I understand completely. We are all, alas, as strangers to others, and sometimes even unto ourselves.’

  Morley was by now in reverie, up close to the caravan, examining the big bright yellow wooden wheels and the carriage’s incredibly ornate carvings.

  ‘Look at this, Sefton! I mean, just look at it!’

  ‘Made by Tom Tongs of Manchester, sir,’ said the man. ‘Finest vardo maker in the land – in my and many another’s opinion.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. It really is quite magnificent,’ said Morley. ‘Like a cathedral, almost. Have you ever been to Notre Dame?’

  ‘Can’t say I have, sir, no. Palace on wheels, I calls it,’ said the man.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Morley. ‘Couldn’t have put it better myself. A palace on wheels! A portable Versailles!’ Morley slapped the vehicle as if slapping the hindquarters of a prize-winning heifer. ‘And it weighs it, I’m sure. It must be, what?’

  ‘Fifty hundredweight, I would guess.’

  ‘My goodness,’ said Morley.

  ‘She’s a two-horse carriage, really,’ said the man.

  There was a horse tethered by the wagon, and a lazy-looking dog lounging on the steps that led up inside. Morley glanced across at the animals.

  ‘That’s why we’re here,’ said the man. ‘Our other horse died that we bought at Appleby. Blue roan mare. We used her as a sider.’

  ‘A sider?’

  ‘To go alongside,’ said the man.

  ‘Ah, of course,’ said Morley. ‘Well, sorry to hear that.’

  ‘I knew we shouldn’t have bought her. Something wrong with her. But you know what the fair’s like. Allowed my heart to rule my head.’

  ‘Yes, I think we’ve all experienced that,’ said Morley, stroking the caravan’s woodwork. ‘The Appleby Horse Fair, you mean?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the man.

  ‘I’ve never been, alas.’

  ‘You want to come next year, sir. It’s not like this. Proper gypsy fair, so it is. You get wagons all the way from Boroughbridge to Catterick Green; you could plot your way home by the fires at night. And horses everywhere. Piebalds, skewbalds, roans. Quite a sight.’

  Horse grazing in a field

  ‘Well, one year I would very much like to see that,’ said Morley. ‘Very much indeed. One of the great festivals and customs of the English year.’

  ‘That it is, sir.’

  ‘The Nottingham Goose Fair, the Durham Miners’ Gala, May morning at Magdalen College, Lewes Bonfire Night—’

  I coughed very loudly, sensing one of Morley’s long lists in the making.

  ‘Are you all right, Sefton?’

  ‘Yes, fine, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you should look in on us, if you do ever make it to Appleby for the fair,’ said the man.

  ‘I will,’ said Morley, ‘thank you.’

  ‘You know Appleby?’

  ‘Just a little.’

  ‘It’s up by Gallows Hill but you get the vardos everywhere, all up Boroughgate. We usually try to set up down there. Naughty and my mother like selling the potatoes and pig’s trotters. They do a roast potato with a trotter for a farthing, plus your salt and vinegar.’

  ‘That sounds delicious,’ said Morley. ‘And very good value.’

  ‘Aye, better value than the horse,’ said the man, sighing, glancing at his weary-looking animals.

  I’ll be honest: I rather doubted the man’s hard-luck story. I assumed that he had simply spotted Morley as an easy target – a soft touch. During our years together I saw Morley swindled out of hundreds if not thousands of pounds by men and women of all kinds and classes – businessmen, ‘artists’ and ne’er-do-wells – who clearly spied the same vulnerability in him. For someone so smart he could be incredibly stupid: I wondered sometimes if he made himself stupid for the benefit of others. I saw him give money to ex-servicemen who were clearly not ex-servicemen, to women pretending not to be prostitutes who clearly were prostitutes, and to children whose only appeal was the fact that they were indeed children. He was generous to the point of utter foolishness, if not complete idiocy. If I was right, and judging by the usual shape and structure of these scams, the man would avoid any direct appeal for cash, but would instead slowly reel Morley in with ever more pathetic tales of hardship: first, a dead horse; then, a dead child; a dead wife; a fatal illness. So far, the conversation was going exactly as I might have
predicted.

  ‘I should never have bought that horse. Should have stuck with a piebald. You can rely on a piebald.’

  ‘Yes, a good reliable horse, a piebald,’ agreed Morley. ‘I think I’m right in saying that George Washington preferred a piebald.’

  ‘So we’re stuck here for the moment. We just need to make enough money to buy a good horse – a mare, so we can breed a foal – and then we’re gone. Not asking for much, is it?’

  ‘No, no, not at all,’ said Morley.

  ‘Trouble is, people are always trying to move us on.’ He looked menacingly at me again.

  I looked menacingly back. I knew his game.

  ‘Yes,’ said Morley. ‘It’s the old story, isn’t it, I’m afraid. You are fugitives and vagabonds.’

  ‘I don’t know about that, sir.’

  ‘In the biblical sense, I mean,’ said Morley. ‘“When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.” Genesis, chapter 4, verse 12. The fate of many of us, I’m afraid, whether we know it or not.’ Morley looked at me and I looked down at the ground. ‘Anyway.’ He was now at the foot of the steps of the caravan, stroking the dog.

  ‘You’re good with the dogs,’ said the man, buttering Morley up even further.

  ‘I am an animal lover,’ said Morley. ‘Yes, certainly. Lurcher, is she?’

  ‘That’s right. A good dog, a good horse, and maybe a game cock, for fighting – that’s all a man needs, isn’t it, sir?’

  ‘Quite,’ said Morley. ‘Though I’m afraid I can’t share your enthusiasm for the fighting cock.’

  ‘Well, you’re not one of us, sir, are you? You wouldn’t understand. You can’t stop a cock from fighting. It’s not natural.’

  ‘“Don’t be natural, be spiritual,” says St Paul.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘He does indeed.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure I don’t know much about the Bible, sir, but I can tell you what I do know: St Paul bain’t keep cocks, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Ha,’ said Morley. ‘Very good. I like that. “St Paul bain’t keep cocks.” I might use that, if I may.’

  ‘Free to you, sir,’ said the man. ‘Free, gratis and without charge.’ He was totally transparent: get Morley into his debt, and then Morley would feel obliged to help him out.

  I thought it was probably time to go. ‘Mr Morley, we should probably head on here, if we’re to make the wrestling.’

  Morley ignored me and stepped back to gain a better view of the vardo.

  ‘You know, your paintwork reminds me of something,’ he said. ‘I just can’t think what.’

  The man looked up. ‘The purple and gold?’

  ‘Yes. Rather like Cleopatra’s barge, isn’t it?’

  ‘The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne?’ asked the man.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Morley. ‘That burned on the water.’

  ‘And the poop was beaten gold?’

  ‘That’s right!’ said Morley. ‘“Purple the sails, and so perfumed that / The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, / Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made / The water which they beat to follow faster, / As amorous of their strokes.”’

  ‘You know your Shakespeare then,’ said the man.

  ‘And so do you!’ said Morley. ‘So do you! Very impressive, sir. You are truly the scholar gypsy!’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, sir. Learned it from a book, just, a long time ago.’

  ‘Well, you learned it well,’ said Morley.

  ‘It was a good book. You should read it. You might learn something,’ said the man.

  ‘I’m sure I might,’ said Morley.

  ‘Morley’s Book for Boys. One and only book I ever read.’

  ‘I don’t believe you!’ said Morley.

  Neither did I. I assumed the man had saved this up as his coup de grâce: this was guaranteed to squeeze money out of Morley. He must have recognised Morley from somewhere.

  ‘Really?’ said Morley.

  ‘I can swear on the Bible I can read, sir. You ask me to read anything and I can read it.’

  ‘No, no, I believe you can read, my good man. But Morley’s Book for Boys? Really?’

  ‘I’ve got it in my vardo still. Taught myself to read with it.’

  ‘Well.’ Morley puffed out his chest a little, I thought; perhaps the only time I ever saw him do so during our years together. ‘That really touches me, sir, more than you will ever know.’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘It does, yes.’

  ‘Have you read it then?’

  ‘Not only have I read the book, sir. I wrote it.’

  The man looked at Morley for a long time, and then broke into a smile. If he was acting – and I was certain that he was – it was certainly a good act.

  ‘It’s you, isn’t it? I recognise your photograph from the book. You’re older.’

  ‘Aren’t we all.’

  ‘But you’re still Swanton Morley.’

  ‘For better and for worse,’ said Morley. ‘At your service. And you are?’ He reached to shake the man’s hand.

  ‘Noname,’ said the man, wiping his hand on his apron before shaking. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Noname?’ I said, in a tone that I hoped clearly suggested that he was called no such thing, and that this entire episode was a ridiculous sham.

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘That’s your name?’

  ‘It is, so it is.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever—’

  ‘You wouldn’t have done, sir. My mother, God rest her soul, took me to church to get me christened.’ He began climbing up the steps into his wagon. ‘And when the vicar asked what name she’d chosen she told him Jehovah.’

  ‘Jehovah?’ said Morley.

  ‘It’s a good old biblical name, sir,’ he said.

  ‘It certainly is,’ said Morley. ‘It is in fact arguably the good old biblical name.’

  ‘Anyway, t’ vicar kicked up a fuss and said she bain’t have that and so she said that was the name she’d chosen and if I wasn’t to be called Jehovah then I’d have no name. And so he christened me Noname, out of spite. But it’s served me well enough.’

  He wiped his hands again on his apron. ‘Swanton Morley. Well, well. Swanton Morley.’ He stood now at the top of the steps, looking down on us, for all the world as if he had indeed been picked out as a Jehovah but was equally proud to be Noname. ‘Do you want to come and look inside?’

  ‘I would be honoured, sir,’ said Morley.

  ‘The wrestling, Mr Morley?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Morley. ‘Plenty of time. Come on, quick look inside won’t take long.’

  Reluctantly I made to follow Morley up the steps into the gypsy wagon. Noname glowered at me.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Morley. ‘I forgot to introduce you. This is my companion, Stephen Sefton.’

  ‘Funny name,’ said Noname. ‘Never heard the like of that before. But I suppose if he’s a friend of yours, Mr Morley …’

  The inside of the wagon was all dark varnished wood but it was spick and span, with not a thing out of place. It reminded me of a little theatre, or an old London gin palace. There was a squawking parakeet in a cage in the corner, and a huge old oil lamp swinging from a chain, and piles of neatly stacked and brightly coloured Scotch blankets, and a little stove on the left, and a built-in bed at the back, half hidden by paisley curtains, and a woven basket full of cups and crockery by the stove.

  ‘Well, this is cosy,’ said Morley.

  ‘We like to keep the wagon nice and clean, sir,’ said Noname. ‘People say we’re dirty, but you can see for yourself.’

  ‘I’ve been in mansion houses that your wagon would put to shame, Noname,’ said Morley.

  ‘I’m sure you have, Mr Morley. I’ve met rich folk myself, and half of them live like dirty grunts, if you don’t mind my saying so. There’s not a lo
t you couldn’t learn from us gypsies.’

  Certainly not a lot about sweet-talking and thievery, I thought – and then tripped over a bucket by the door, which rattled loudly, setting off the dog barking outside.

  ‘Quiet, Rusty,’ shouted Noname, and the dog immediately became quiet.

  ‘You have him well trained,’ said Morley.

  ‘You have to have a dog well trained,’ said Noname. ‘You teach him who’s boss, or he’ll think he’s the boss of you.’ He straightened up the bucket I’d kicked over.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘S’all right,’ said Noname. ‘It’s just the jar pot.’

  ‘The jar pot?’ asked Morley.

  ‘The children collect jam jars, so we can reuse what the gorgio throw away,’ said Noname. ‘They make candle-holders, little bit of solder with a metal handle. Beautiful.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Morley. ‘If only we were all as conscientious and industrious.’

  ‘Conscientious and industrious is right,’ said Noname. ‘That is exactly right. People forget that about us.’

  The hypocrisy of the man!

  Morley looked the caravan up and down, peering into every nook and cranny, asking questions about this or that aspect of construction, and about gypsy life generally, which Noname eagerly answered, while carefully looking Morley up and down in return, carefully examining his every feature and every move. I found it rather creepy.

  ‘You know, it’s funny, Mr Morley,’ said Noname. ‘I always thought one day I might meet you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. I just … had a feeling, I suppose. An intuition. My father wasn’t around for most of my childhood, but it was him who gave me your book and I learned so much from it, I sort of felt like … I don’t know.’ He couldn’t take his eyes off Morley. ‘I almost felt like I knew you, Mr Morley. That’s stupid, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s not stupid at all, sir. Far from it. I think that’s why we all read books, is it not, Sefton?’ Morley asked me.

  ‘Yes,’ I readily agreed. I wasn’t listening to a word he said. I was planning an exit strategy. The gypsy had clearly set his sights on Morley and was planning some sort of elaborate con, while Morley, like a fool, had clearly warmed to the gypsy, as he seemed to warm to everyone: it was one of his great failings. The best I could hope for was to get us out of there without him losing the entire contents of his wallet.