I CAME DOWN to breakfast late the next morning, Morley having long since eaten, and his breakfast table having been cleared and converted into his portable office – typewriter before him, pens and pencils lined up in a row, fresh paper stacked neatly, books on the floor, and the ever-present egg-timer at his elbow. He was dressed, as usual, in bow tie, light tweeds and his stout brogue boots, spruce and ready for adventure.
‘Early start?’ I said, feeling rather grisly. It was difficult to measure up to Morley at any time of day or night, but particularly first thing in the morning. He didn’t mean to make people inadequate: in his presence, one simply felt that one was inadequate. It wasn’t a matter of shame or guilt, or, at least, it wasn’t always a matter of shame or guilt; it seemed merely a fact.
‘Ah, good morning to you, Ishbosheth,’ he said, without looking up.
‘Sorry?’ I said. It was too early in the morning.
‘Good morning to you, Ishbosheth,’ he repeated, still without a glance of recognition. I didn’t say that I didn’t know what on earth he was talking about; it was too often and too obviously the case for me to need to say so, and anyway Morley could sniff out incomprehension at a hundred paces, and so instantly clarified.
‘Second Book of Samuel, Sefton. Look it up.’
‘I shall, Mr Morley. Thank you.’
‘Now,’ he said, reaching down beside him and handing me a Bible, which sat conveniently stacked in his portable reference section, which included also a Pocket Oxford, which he insisted on calling ‘the mini-Murray’, a Roget’s, and Fowler’s The King’s English: ‘Roget, Murray and Fowler,’ he would say. ‘My business partners.’ He found the Second Book of Samuel for me. ‘There we are. No time like the present, and what have you.’
I took a deep sigh, Morley raised an eyebrow, and I dutifully read the story of Ishbosheth – one of those grisly and apparently pointless biblical stories, in which, in this case, a bunch of chaps come into someone called Ishbosheth’s bedroom and cut off his head.
On which merry note, and without further comment from Morley – who clearly felt he had proved his point – I ordered coffee and toast, while he turned back to the task in hand. He had brought with him on our trip the proofs of his latest book, Morley’s Last Words, another in his seemingly endless works of anthology, which he somehow produced alongside all his other work, without ceasing, sometimes as many as three or four volumes a year. His procedures in compiling the books were essentially the same as his procedures for composing all his books, and is the method he famously describes in How To Write – A Lot!, a little pamphlet published in 1935, in which he set out his modus operandi as an encouragement to others, though the effect was almost certainly the opposite. (Personally I felt the exclamation mark – another of his tics – was in itself off-putting enough, though he often defended its use stoutly in argument. ‘Readers must be herded!’ he would say. ‘For like sheep we have gone astray.’) In How To Write – A Lot! Morley ascribes genius merely to method and exertion of effort, conveniently overlooking the fact that there is always genius at work in the application of method, and forgetting also that encouragement by the great and the good can in itself be dispiriting. Nonetheless, for the purposes of explanation, and at the risk of dispiriting yet more readers, the method is perhaps – briefly – worth restating here.
Thus: for newspaper articles, speeches, lectures and the like, Morley’s first draft would always be composed straight onto the typewriter, ‘The rhythms of the typewriter,’ as he remarks in How To Write – A Lot!, ‘representing and resembling the very rhythms of our minds’ (the very rhythms of his own mind, perhaps, with its clicks and clacks and endless returns, but a rhythm quite unlike my own and, I fancy, the rhythms of others). He would then augment this first typescript with notes from his notebooks, and would type it again, making further corrections to the new typescript by hand. He would then type a third and final draft of the article, and send it away. In this fashion he could average a thousand words an hour, or precisely four turns of the egg-timer, enabling him to write three or four articles before lunch. When it came to the books, the process was similar. Once he’d finished a typescript of a book – having worked on each chapter in the fashion as outlined above – he would then send it to his publishers, who would send back the proofs, which Morley would then amend, sometimes as many as three or four times, until he agreed on the final proofs, which were sent for publication. ‘By application of this simple method,’ he concludes in How To Write – A Lot!, ‘a man may comfortably write whate’er he might, and indeed whate’er he will.’
And so as he continued at whate’er he might and whate’er he will on that dark morning, I sat and drank my coffee in silence.
‘Soap dish?’ he said suddenly, and apropos of nothing, as I crunched my way through a piece of hotel-hardened toast.
‘Sorry?’
‘Soap dish? How was yours?’
‘It was …’
‘And the enamel on the bath?’
‘Erm …’
‘Width of the bed?’
‘Was …’
‘Tooth tumbler? Notice anything strange?’
‘No. Should I have done?’
‘Unwashed tooth tumbler a major source of bacteria in hotels, I would have thought. Do you take no note of your surroundings at all, Sefton?’
‘Yes, I do, Mr Morley, but—’
‘I have already made a list of deficiencies, and suggested improvements, and given them to the management.’
‘I’m sure they appreciated that,’ I said.
‘They seemed to, Sefton, yes. Certainly, rather more than the chambermaid, who I had to show how to mitre a corner correctly. Rather ungrateful, I thought.’
‘Really?’ I took another sip of coffee.
‘Balsa cement,’ he continued, without pausing.
‘I didn’t have any balsa cement in my room, I don’t think …’
‘Not in your room, Sefton. Eighth wonder of the world.’ In the moments between correcting the proofs on Morley’s Last Words, it turned out, he was also mulling over an article that he was about to write for a newspaper on how to make a model of Mevagissy Harbour out of balsa wood. And in the moments between annotating the one thing and typing the other, at each turn of the egg-timer, he made a few brief notes for an article on British woodland birds from one of all four volumes of Thorburn’s British Birds which were set at his left elbow. He was, in other words, behaving exactly as always. Which made his next announcement all the more shocking.
‘Time to bear the sacred plume de littérature over another ridge, then?’ I said, having by now drunk enough coffee to raise my spirits. I knew Miriam had already arranged a number of trips and interviews with locals for us: there was an itinerary.
‘Terrible business last night,’ said Morley.
‘Last night?’ I said.
‘You haven’t heard then?’
‘Heard what?’
‘She’s dead.’
‘Who’s dead?’
‘The German girl.’
Sometime during the night, moments after we had been together, Hannah had committed suicide. She had set light to herself on Blakeney quay, having doused herself in petrol. The flames were seen by the night porter of the hotel, who had rushed down to try to save her.
Morley narrated the story as though reading a clipping from an old newspaper. I made out only snatches of detail: just before dawn; unable to quench the flames; locals shocked.
I was speechless.
Having recounted the news to me, Morley then got up and started gathering his papers.
‘Come on then, Sefton, up, up, please, and doing.’
‘I …’
‘What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?’
‘I’m sorry. I …’
‘What?’
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘Can’t believe what?’
‘That … I’m just … astonished.’
‘About the girl you mean?’
‘Of course.’
‘Ah. Yes, well. Terribly sad. But, abyssus abyssum invocate, I’m afraid, Sefton. Isn’t that right? Hell calls to hell. One tragedy bids forth another. In fact, it has often seemed to me there is nothing astonishing in this world, except our absolute inability to understand our capacity for making ourselves and others miserable. Definitely hanging, by the way, according to the doctor. Autopsy. Would have liked to see it myself. But. We have work to do. With Miriam away in London, you’ll be driving the Lagonda and in charge of logistics. I’ll meet you in the lobby in, say’ – he glanced at both wristwatches – ‘twenty-one minutes?’
I stared at him, disgusted. His buoyancy – though there was never anything forced or exaggerated about it, nothing unnatural – seemed nonetheless at that moment irresponsible, arrogant, childlike and appalling.
‘How can you keep on working, with …’
‘How can I keep on working, Sefton?’ He looked shocked. ‘Surely, rather, the question is how can one not? Do you know Bruegel’s The Fall of Icarus?’
‘No, I don’t think I—’
‘Worth looking up, Sefton, I’m afraid. Worth looking up. The Old Masters. Never wrong.’ He gazed fixedly into the middle distance for a moment. ‘And anyway, ink is our lifeblood and words – think you not? – our only friends. So. Doesn’t do to dwell on these things.’ With which he turned his back on me and strode sharply from the dining room.
I didn’t know what to do. Despite Morley’s admonitions, vast miserable spaces seemed to open up in my mind, horrible fantasies and imaginings, abysms of despair, and yet of course the normal business of the hotel continued all around me. I felt a buzzing in my head. It was Spain all over again. I smoked several cigarettes, went to my room, lay down. Got up.
And then drove with Morley to our first appointment in total silence.