Flaming Sussex. Ian Sansom
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fuller version of … Miriam.
Swanton Morley of course looked precisely as he always did: he was someone whose success had been achieved entirely by dint of his own efforts and by unchanging daily habits and rituals, which meant that there was little about him that ever seemed to alter. Photographs of him aged thirty resembled exactly photographs of him aged forty and fifty – not so much Dorian Gray as an immovable and immutable Easter Island statue. He always wore exactly the same clothes, or at least exactly the same sort of clothes, a uniform that he had chosen as a young man and which he had stuck with ever since, the Morley Style: the sober-coloured suits in finest tweed or worsted, the tightly buttoned waistcoat with its additional notebook and pencil pockets, the sharply cuffed trousers, the tailoring always stiff, conservative and redolent of an earlier age. His tailor was a man in Norwich, a Mr Barton Bendish, who kept premises in an arcade near the city’s market and whom Morley had known since childhood. Mr Bendish was, according to Morley, the equal of any tailor on Savile Row and a man capable of transforming even the stoutest and dowdiest John Bull into a super-sleek Sydney Greenstreet. He often suggested to me that he could provide me with an introduction to Mr Bendish, who would happily provide me with outfits similar to Morley’s own, an offer I always refused since at the time I cultivated a studiedly carefree appearance that was quite in contrast to Morley’s rather more sober-suited image. Though how I wish now that I had a Barton Bendish of my own. The only sartorial eccentricity Morley ever allowed himself were his brown brogue boots, always highly polished, and his bow ties, many of them patterned to resemble fine Scottish knitwear. This evening, at the Theatre Royal, he looked as well-tended as ever, in a three-piece light grey suit, with a red and white polka-dot bow tie – not merely smart, I thought, but actually elegant, as if the mere presence of a woman like Molly were slowly turning his tweed to silk.
Unchanging in appearance he may have been, but Morley was of course entirely unpredictable in conversation – and this evening was no exception.
‘Billy Button buttoned his bright brown boots,’ he was saying as we entered. ‘Good evening, Miriam. Good evening, Sefton.’
Molly beckoned us into the dressing room.
‘Billy Button buttoned his bright brown boots,’ she repeated, after Morley. ‘Your father is teaching me some English tongue-twisters, Miriam.’
‘Is he now?’ said Miriam.
‘Betty Blue was beating butter,’ said Morley.
‘Betty Blue was beating butter,’ repeated Molly.
‘Miriam?’ said Morley, nodding towards her. ‘Betty …’
‘I am not practising tongue-twisters, thank you, Father. It’s far too late in the evening.’
‘Never too late for tongue-twisting,’ said Morley.
‘Gig-whip, gig-whip, gig-whip, gig-whip,’ said Molly.
‘Oh yes, that’s one of our favourites,’ said Morley. ‘Gig-whip, gig-whip, gig-whip, gig-whip. Sefton?’
‘Gig-whip, gig-whip, whip-wig, wig-gip …’ I gave up.
‘Not as easy as it sounds, is it?’ said Morley.
‘Indeed,’ I agreed.
‘We’ve not met, have we?’ asked Molly, breaking off from her tongue-twisting but remaining seated among the flowers and fruit and extending her hand.
‘No. I’m Stephen Sefton,’ I said, leaning forward, not entirely sure whether to kiss her hand, shake it, or kneel before her and receive a blessing.
‘Ah, yes, Swanton has told me so much about you,’ said Molly. No one called Morley Swanton.
We shook hands.
‘All of it good, I hope,’ I said.
‘Hardly any of it good,’ Molly said with a laugh. ‘And all the better for that. Can I offer you a drink?’ She indicated some unopened bottles – champagne, wine, lemonade – on the dressing room table.
I looked at Miriam out of the corner of my eye. She gave a sharp, vigorous shake of her head.
‘I won’t, thank you,’ I said. ‘It’s been a long day. Miriam and I have just motored down from London. We should probably retire.’
‘You are clearly as self-disciplined as your famously abstemious employer,’ said Molly.
‘Perhaps not quite,’ I said.
‘You must have something,’ she said. ‘Here.’ She got up, took two bottles of what looked like American lemonade, pushed down the marbles in the two bottle tops simultaneously, one in each hand, and thrust them towards us. ‘A little trick I learned back home.’
‘Flexibility of the lips is very important, you see,’ said Morley, who was still on the subject of tongue-twisters.
‘Oh yes, flexibility of the lips is very important, isn’t it, Miriam?’ said Molly.
‘I have no idea,’ said Miriam, rather huffily.
‘Vowels as well as consonants suffer terribly from a lack of good lip movement,’ said Morley. ‘The lips are part of the resonating system, you see, which is what makes each human voice unique.’ His own voice was as rapid as ever and as strange, rattling like a kettle on the range. ‘The lungs and the diaphragm are the bellows, the larynx the vibrator, and this’ – he tapped a finger to his head – ‘the resonator. Molly has a magnificent resonator, Miriam.’
‘I’m sure she has, Father,’ said Miriam, as Morley and Molly started to make a humming sound together.
Miriam huffed.
Even by the high standards of embarrassment I had become accustomed to while working with Morley and Miriam, it was all rather embarrassing. Morley was clearly as fascinated with Molly as she was intent on fascinating him. They had first met, I later discovered, at a meeting of Morley’s so-called Bonhomie Club, a group of friends whom he brought together once a month in London, for the purposes of discussion, playing chess, and listening to music. Molly had been invited by Morley to give a recital, and the two of them had quickly become inseparable.
‘Your father, Miriam!’ said Molly, breaking her gaze and her hum with Morley. ‘He’s incredible. I mean, his life, his experiences. His capacity for hard work! I’m surprised it doesn’t simply sap all the energy out of him!’
‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll find other ways of sapping the energy out of him.’
‘His knowledge!’
‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,’ said Miriam.
‘“A little learning is a dangerous thing,”’ corrected Morley.
‘“Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,”’ said Miriam.
‘“And drinking largely sobers us again,”’ said Morley, completing the quotation. ‘Sefton?’ he asked.
‘Dryden?’ I suggested.
‘Pope!’ said Morley. ‘Essay on Criticism.’
‘Marvellous!’ said Molly, clapping her gloved hands together. ‘You know, you’re all just so … curious.’
‘That’s one word for it,’ said Miriam.
‘I’m terribly curious myself,’ said Molly.
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes. I married my first husband entirely out of curiosity.’
‘Isn’t one supposed to marry for love?’ said Miriam.
‘One is supposed to do a lot of things, my dear,’ said Molly. ‘Do you know the final trio from Der Rosenkavalier?’
‘Not