‘AND WHO, MOREOVER, might be able to tell us something about his daughter’s tragic death,’ said Morley, out of Miriam’s hearing, as we left the tea shop.
‘Pardon, Mr Morley?’ I said.
‘We’re going to go and talk to Lizzie’s father,’ said Morley.
‘Right. Is that really a—’
‘I have taken the precaution of making enquiries, Sefton, and it turns out that Lizzie’s father is a trug-maker. Which is fortuitous, is it not, since we are simply tourists in Lewes out trug shopping?’
‘Erm …’ Sometimes I couldn’t see exactly how his mind worked, though I could see that it was working. Sometimes it was better not to think about it too much.
‘Not a word about Lizzie, understand? Trug shoppers, merely.’
‘Very well, Mr Morley.’
Mr Walter’s trug shop was a short walk from the White Hart, down a steep narrow street. The shop had clearly been a house at some time in the recent past, and in all probability was at least a semi-house still, having become an emporium of trugs with the simple addition outside of a sign and inside with an array of trugs. And arrayed they most certainly were: rectangular trugs, round trugs, square trugs, oval trugs, long shallow trugs, short fat trugs, stacked on the floor, piled on tables and chairs, and hanging from hooks in the ceiling. Morley and I manoeuvred ourselves inside with some difficulty. It was more like a trug cave than a trug shop, or a ‘truggery’, according to Morley, who was, obviously, completely and utterly thrilled by the place.
‘Good day, sir!’ he said, to a man sitting with his head low behind a table in the corner, by a fireplace lit with a poor fire. He was hunched, busy eating something, which he put aside when Morley spoke, looking up at us and slowly wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
‘Is it?’ he said.
‘Is it what?’ said Morley.
‘A good day, you said.’
‘Indeed,’ said Morley.
The man looked out beyond us. ‘A goin’ to rain,’ he said.
‘Well, yes, perhaps, but …’ said Morley. ‘Anyway, don’t let us interrupt you.’
‘It’s my elevener,’ said the man.
‘Would that be a Sussex churdle, might I ask?’
‘Would be and is,’ said the man.
‘Liver and bacon?’ asked Morley.
‘And apple,’ said the man.
‘And do I detect sage?’ Morley sniffed.
‘Bit reeky?’ said the man, sniffing at the churdle and then producing a well-used handkerchief from his apron pocket and placing it carefully over the half-eaten pie.
‘There. Now, can I help you?’
‘Is it Mr Walter?’ asked Morley.
‘It is.’
(And I will tell you what I thought then, to my shame. I thought, this – a man eating a churdle – does not look like a man whose daughter has been murdered. I’m ashamed now even to admit it, years later, to admit that what I expected to find was a grieving man, whatever that might be, for a man or a woman who has suffered such a terrible loss, what are they supposed to look like? How are they supposed to behave? This is one of the great lies of literature, actually, one of its many illusory promises: that people can be read and understood, that they will appear as they truly are, or at least if interpreted rightly. If I learned one thing working with Morley for all those years, producing all those words together, all those millions of words of seeking and understanding, it is this: that literature is a gigantic, terrible lie. No human can tell another human’s story. No place, no person, no face ever fully reveals itself. And it is a disgusting assumption, actually, that they should, like assuming that a man whose daughter has been murdered will always and should always look like a man whose daughter has been murdered. Mr Walter that morning looked like nothing so much as a man hunched in the cold, in the corner of a shop, eating a Sussex churdle.)
‘Excellent!’ continued Morley, who always took people and places at face value. ‘I am looking for a trug.’
Mr Walter simply raised an eyebrow and gestured towards his amazing stock, as if to say, are you blind, or stupid, or both?
‘Which size?’ he asked.
‘About …’ Morley stretched out his arms.
‘We’ve got everything from a pint up to a bushel, sir.’
‘Something in between a pint and a bushel, I would have thought.’
‘A number 6 or a number 7 then.’
He pointed up to a range of what were, apparently, number 6s and number 7s.
‘And they’re all willow and chestnut?’ asked Morley.
‘That’s what a trug’s made from, sir, yes.’
He got up slowly and brought down a couple of trugs from their hooks.
‘And where do you get your willow, may I ask?’ said Morley.
‘From the marsh,’ said Mr Walter.
‘Of course,’ said Morley. ‘The marsh.’
‘And the handle and the rim are sweet chestnut there. That’s the traditional method. Willow strips, chestnut frame and trim.’
‘Yes,’ said Morley, holding the admittedly very fine trug that Mr Walter had handed him. ‘Very fine, sir. Very fine indeed.’
‘We do all different shapes, as you can see, as well as different sizes.’
‘Well, I think this traditional shape is the one to go for, don’t you, Sefton?’
‘Yes,’ I agreed.
‘The word trug, after all, I believe, is derived from the Anglo-Saxon trog, meaning “boat-shaped vessel”.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that, sir,’ said Mr Walter.
‘I think I’m right in saying that the trug derives from the practice in the late eighteenth century – early nineteenth century? – when people would hollow out pieces of timber to make boat shapes and fixed handles to them, for various purposes.’
‘People use them to carry grain and measure out for planting mostly, sir,’ said Mr Walter. ‘But they did used to be made from a single piece of timber, sir, that’s correct. So they could measure liquids as well.’
‘Hence the pint-size trug?’ said Morley.
‘I suppose, sir.’
‘I don’t know if you’re familiar with the history of the modern trug, Sefton?’
‘I can’t say I am, Mr Morley, no.’
‘Well, I think they became popular – you’ll correct me, Mr Walter, if I’m wrong – after a Mr Thomas Smith of Herstmonceux showed them at the Great Exhibition in 1851 and Queen Victoria was so taken with them she ordered several for members of the royal family.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that, sir,’ said Mr Walter.
‘Legend has it he made his delivery of trugs from Herstmonceux to Buckingham Palace in a wheelbarrow.’
‘Dubersome folk, in Herstmonceux,’ said Mr Walter. ‘I should get back to work here, sir.’
‘Yes, yes, we don’t want to keep you, Mr Walter.’ Morley produced his wallet. ‘Yes, we’re just shopping for trugs.’
‘That’s what brings you to Lewes?’
I saw Morley peering out the back of the shop – the front room – towards the kitchen and beyond.
‘And we are writing a book about Sussex actually.’
‘Are you, now? You’d make a fine oration of anything, I’d say.’
‘I wonder if we might have a look at your workshop.’
‘I wouldn’t, sir,’ said Mr Walter. ‘It’s a bit of a rattlebone place back there.’
‘That’s perfectly all right,’ said Morley, who was already striding towards the kitchen and into the yard beyond. ‘The more rattlebone the better.’
Out back, in a tiny yard that had been converted into a tiny workshop, a man sat shaving away at a thin board. He was knee deep in wood shavings, as though he were emerging from a sea of pink-white foam.
‘Good morning!’ said Morley.
The merman looked up, nodded, and went back to work.
‘This is the heart of the operation, then,’ said Morley to Mr Walter. We had followed him outside – what else could we do? ‘The old HQ, eh? Just talk me through the process, would you?’
Mr Walter looked at me and looked as though he wasn’t sure where to start, but then which of us could explain our jobs from start to finish?
‘To start?’ asked Morley.
‘You take your sweet chestnut poles,’ said Mr Walter. ‘We call them batts.’ He pointed towards a pile of long sticks.
‘Very good,’ said Morley.
‘And we split them in two using a froe.’
‘A froe?’ said Morley.
‘That’s a froe,’ said Mr Walter, pointing towards what looked like a long-bladed axe, leaning up by the chestnut poles. ‘And a cleaving brake.’
‘A cleaving brake?’ asked Morley.
‘Stops the poles splintering.’
‘Actually, I’m going to ask my assistant to make some notes, if that’s all right with you, sir?’
And this, this I realised was the reason for our visit, and for the whole trug-shopping expedition: before I could reach for my German pocket notebook, Morley thrust into my hands the piece of notepaper we had pulled from Lizzie’s drawer, with her list of women’s names upon it.
‘You can use that, Sefton.’
‘Are you sure, Mr Morley?’
‘Absolutely sure. Waste not, want not. I think Mr Walter said a froe, Sefton. Isn’t that right, Mr Walter?’
‘That’s right, sir.’
I wrote down the word froe, at the bottom of the page, underneath the list of names.
‘Now let me have a look,’ said Morley. ‘I’m afraid my assistant’s writing is sometimes difficult to read. Just check that spelling for me would you, Mr Walter?’
And he held the piece of notepaper before him.
Mr Walter looked at the piece of paper and happily nodded his head.
‘That looks right,’ he said, without hesitation.
‘Just there,’ said Morley, pointing to the word, ‘below that list of names.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Mr Walter. ‘Froe. I have my letters, sir.’
And so we had what we needed: proof that the list was not written by Lizzie, for what father seeing his recently deceased daughter’s handwriting would not be shocked?
But we then had to persist for another twenty minutes in the charade of being interested in the making of a trug. Or, rather, I had to persist in the charade of being interested in the making of a trug: Morley really was interested, of course. I allowed my mind to drift while Mr Walter demonstrated the use of the wooden shaving horse, clamping the chestnut in and using a knife to trim the handles and the rims of chestnut to exactly the right width and thickness, and then the use of a steamer – a fire beneath an old iron drum – to bend and shape the wood for the frame, the willow boards cut and soaked and nailed into place … You certainly had to admire the craftsmanship.
‘What’s this book about Sussex then?’ asked Mr Walter, as we were preparing to leave with both our trug and our newly acquired trug-making knowledge.
‘It’s a guide to Sussex,’ said Morley.
‘What sort of a guide?’ asked Mr Walter.
‘A guide for admirers of nature, for lovers of antiquity, and for friends of the arts,’ said Morley.
‘Not for the likes of me, then,’ said Mr Walter.
‘Well, I—’
‘I’m not an educated man,’ said Mr Walter.
‘You must have been very proud of your daughter then,’ I said, realising immediately that I shouldn’t have said it.
‘What?’ said Mr Walter, his face suddenly contorting. ‘My daughter?’ He raised himself to his full height, his fists clenched. ‘What about my daughter?’
‘We – I – heard people saying something about … In the hotel.’ All I wanted to do now was to get out of the place as quickly as possible, now that the man’s pain was suddenly apparent.
‘Get out, the pair of you,’ he bellowed, ‘before I throw you out!’
‘I assure you,’ said Morley, ‘that we came here with good intentions, sir.’
‘And I assure you, sir, that if I ever see you near here again I will beat the both of yous senseless. Get out!’
And so we exited, through the truggery, with our trug.