LEAVING LEWES, we made a brief detour to the Martyrs’ Memorial, a granite obelisk that stands in a garden on the Cuilfail Estate, upon which the following words are inscribed:
IN LOVING MEMORY OF THE UNDERNAMED SEVENTEEN PROTESTANT MARTYRS, WHO, FOR THEIR FAITHFUL TESTIMONY TO GOD’S TRUTH, WERE, DURING THE REIGN OF QUEEN MARY, BURNED TO DEATH IN FRONT OF THE THEN STAR INN – NOW THE TOWN HALL – LEWES, THIS OBELISK, PROVIDED BY PUBLIC SUBSCRIPTIONS, WAS ERECTED A.D. 1901
DIRICK CARVER, OF BRIGHTON.
THOMAS HARLAND, AND JOHN OSWALD, BOTH OF WOODMANCOTE.
THOMAS AVINGTON, AND THOMAS REED, BOTH OF ARDINGLY.
THOMAS WOOD (A MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL) OF LEWES.
THOMAS MYLES, OF HELLIGLY.
RICHARD WOODMAN, AND GEORGE STEVENS, BOTH OF WARBLETON.
ALEXANDER HOSMAN, WILLIAM MAINARD, AND THOMASINA WOOD, ALL OF MAYFIELD.
MARCERY MORRIS, AND JAMES MORRIS (HER SON) BOTH OF HEATHFIELD.
DENIS BURCIS, OF BUXTED.
ANN ASHDON, OF ROTHERFIELD.
MARY GROVES, OF LEWES.
‘AND THEY OVERCAME,
BECAUSE OF THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB, AND
BECAUSE OF THE WORD OF THEIR TESTIMONY, AND
THEY LOVED NOT THEIR LIFE EVEN UNTO DEATH’
REV. XII. II (R.V.)
We took the road from Lewes to the sea, through Kingston, Ilford, Rodmell, Southease, Piddinghoe and on to Newhaven.
Morley was subdued. He seemed exhausted.
Whenever we left a county, there was for him always a sense of grief, of loss, that we had not encountered all we could have encountered, or discovered all we could have discovered. This time, as we drove through Sussex, the sense of loss was overwhelming.
‘We never made it to Hurstmonceux, then,’ he said.
‘Well, never mind, Father,’ said Miriam.
‘Or Battle.’
‘Where did the Battle of Hastings take place, Sefton?’ asked Miriam.
‘Hastings?’
‘Sefton!’ cried Miriam. ‘That hoary old chestnut. The Battle of Hastings occurred on a ridge several miles to the north-east, in the place we now call …’
‘Battle?’ I said.
‘Correct.’
‘No matter,’ said Morley. ‘We’ll not now see Battle.’
‘As it were,’ said Miriam. ‘Or perhaps we have already seen it, Father.’
‘Or Rye,’ said Morley.
‘Ditto,’ said Miriam. ‘And home to?’
‘Lots of people,’ I said.
‘Come on, Father. Rye? Home to, most notably?’
‘Henry James,’ said Morley.
‘A very large head, Henry James,’ said Miriam. ‘I think I would have preferred William, on the whole. Or Alice.’
‘Pevensey Castle,’ continued Morley, in his mournful listing of the many good things of Sussex that had gone unseen. ‘The birds’ egg collection at Hastings Museum.’
‘The birds’ egg collection at Hastings Museum, Father?’
‘One of the great birds’ egg collections in the world.’
‘I’m sure it is.’
‘Tarring,’ said Morley.
‘Tarring?’
‘Famous for its figs.’
‘Famous, Father?’
‘Commonly believed that Thomas Becket planted the first fig trees there. Perfect climate.’
‘Oh well, next time,’ said Miriam.
‘And Worthing, of course, the centre of the country’s tomato-growing industry – we never made it to Worthing.’
‘Too late in the season now anyway.’
‘But it would have been nice to have seen the tomato fields.’
‘Well, we may have missed the fallow tomato fields and the figless fig trees of Sussex, Father, but I think we got a pretty good sense of the place, don’t you?’
Morley gazed out at the countryside and was silent.
It meant nothing to me at the time, but over the years I have come to recognise Morley’s sense of grief and of missed opportunity as we toured the English counties. All those places. All those people. It seems more than likely that I too shall never now make it to Tarring, or to Rye, or to Hurstmonceux, or to Pyecombe, home of the finest shepherd’s crooks in the country, or the village of Robertsbridge, home of Gray-Nicolls cricket bats. Or indeed East Grinstead, the home of Sackville College, haunt of ancient peace. I know them only through the pages of The County Guides: Sussex, composed and written by our divers hands, in libraries, in grief and in shame, and elsewhere.
‘Do you know, Sefton,’ said Morley, as we approached Brighton, ‘if I could live anywhere in the world I think I might live in Sussex.’ (For the record, he also told me during our years together that if he could live anywhere in the world he would live in Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall and etcetera, all the way through to Wiltshire, Worcestershire and Yorkshire in all its Ridings. And this doesn’t include all the places in Scotland, Ireland and Wales where he would have wished to live. I think Dumfries and Galloway came out top, overall, over all the years.) ‘Withyham,’ he said, ‘near Crowborough. If I could live anywhere in the world it might be Withyham. A nice church, a good inn, close to Buckhurst Park.’
Again we drove in silence under darkening skies.
‘Sussex light,’ said Morley after a while, staring at the far horizon. ‘Might make an interesting little book.’
‘I’m sure it would, Mr Morley,’ I said.
‘Sussex light. Quite exceptional,’ he said. ‘It’s to do with the chalk. Very interesting, chalk.’
‘Is it, Father?’ said Miriam.
‘There’s an artist, Ravilious,’ he said. ‘Do you know him, Sefton?’
‘I can’t say I do, Mr Morley, no.’
‘We have a couple of his at home. He captures that chalky underlay of the light,’ said Morley, ‘that light that lies between things.’
Brighton appeared up ahead. Morley continued staring out towards the sea.
‘During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the sea inundated large areas of the Sussex coastland,’ he said. ‘And then of course other areas silted up, leaving us with what dear old Kipling calls “Our ports of stranded pride”. Rye. Old Winchelsea, disappeared. Even Pevensey Castle was once surrounded by the sea.’ He sighed. ‘Nothing lasts, Sefton, is perhaps what shapeshifting Sussex reminds us. Nothing – and no one.’
In all our years together I don’t think I ever heard him come quite so close to admitting to personal feelings for someone.
Miriam dropped me on the seafront. The pair of them were going to motor back to London and then up to Norfolk. I’d decided to spend a day or two in Brighton before heading back up to meet them and to start work on The County Guides: Sussex, which would largely be a cut and paste job from other sources: each book had its own unique process of composition; each its own sad story.
I went down to the beach. The blue-green swells were heaving against the pebbled shore, just as in Arnold’s poem, making a noise very much like the long withdrawing of a weary army. In the distance white sails leaned against the horizon. It was far too cold to consider swimming, except at the risk of one’s life.
I took off my clothes and plunged into the water.
I swam out for perhaps a hundred yards and then turned and looked. From this distance, I was surprised to say, England looked pure and untainted. You could almost imagine that all was not lost.