The Norfolk Mystery. Ian Sansom

Speedway. Athletics … They’ve ruined cricket. And you fancy yourself as a writer, I see?’

      ‘I wouldn’t say that, sir.’

      ‘It says here, publications in the Public Schools’ Book of Verse, 1930, 1931 and 1932.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘So, you’re a poet?’

      ‘I write poetry, sir.’

      ‘I see. The modern stuff, is it?’

      ‘I suppose it is, sir. Yes.’

      ‘Hm. You know Wordsworth, though?’

      ‘Yes, sir, I do.’

      ‘Go ahead, then.’

      ‘Sorry, sir, I don’t understand. Go ahead with what?’

      ‘A recitation, please, Sefton. Wordsworth. Whatever you choose.’

      And he leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and waited.

      It was fortunate – both fortunate, in fact, and unfortunate – that while at Merchant Taylors’ I had been tutored by the late Dr C.T. Davis, a Welshman and famously strict disciplinarian, who beat us boys regularly and relentlessly, but who also drummed into us passages of poetry, his appalling cruelty matched only by his undeniable intellectual ferocity. If a boy failed to recite a line correctly, Davis – who, it seemed, knew the whole of the corpus of English poetry by heart – would literally throw the book at him. There were rumours that more than one boy had been blinded by Quiller-Couch’s Oxford Book of English Verse. I myself was several times beaten about the ears with Tennyson and struck hard with A Shropshire Lad. By age sixteen, however, we victim-beneficiaries of Dr Davis’s methods were able to recite large parts of the great works of the English poets, as well as Homer and Dante. We had also, as a side effect, become enemies of authority, our souls spoiled and our minds tainted for ever with bitterness towards serious learning. But no matter. At my interviewer’s prompting I began gladly to recall the beginning of the Prelude, as familiar to me as a popular song:

      Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze,

      A visitant that while it fans my cheek

      Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings

      From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.

      These words seemed to please my interviewer – as much, if not more so than they would have done Dr Davis himself – for he leaned forward across the Underwood and joined me in the following lines:

      Whate’er its mission, the soft breeze can come

      To none more grateful than to me; escaped

      From the vast city, where I long had pined

      A discontented sojourner: now free,

      Free as a bird to settle where I will.

      He then fell silent as I continued.

      What dwelling shall receive me? in what vale

      Shall be my harbour? underneath what grove

      Shall I take up my home? and what clear stream

      Shall with its murmur lull me into rest?

      The earth is all before me. With a heart

      Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,

      I look about; and should the chosen guide

      Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,

      I cannot miss my way. I breathe again!

      ‘Very good, very good,’ pronounced my interlocutor, waving his hand dismissively. ‘Now. Canada’s main imports and exports?’

      This sudden change of tack, I must admit, threw me entirely. I rather thought I had hit my stride with the Wordsworth. But it seemed my interviewer was in fact no aesthete, like our beloved Dr Davis, nor indeed a scrupuland like the loathed Dr Leavis, the man who had quietly dominated the English School at Cambridge while I was there, with his thumbscrewing Scrutiny, and his dogmatic belief in literature as the vital force of culture. Poetry, I had been taught, is the highest form of literature, if not indeed of human endeavour: it yields the highest form of pleasure and teaches the highest form of wisdom. Yet poetry for my interviewer seemed to be no more than a handy set of rhythmical facts, and about as significant or useful as a times table, or a knowledge of the workings of the internal combustion engine. I had of course absolutely no idea what Canada’s main imports and exports might be and took a wild guess at wood, fish and tobacco. These were not, as it turned out, the correct answers – ‘Precious metals?’ prompted my interviewer, as though a man without knowledge of such simple facts were no better than a savage – and the interview took a turn for the worse.

      ‘Could you give ten three-letter nouns naming food and drink?’

      ‘Rum, sir?’

      ‘Rum?’ My interviewer’s face went white, to match his moustache.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Anything else, Sefton – anything apart from distilled and fermented drink?’

      ‘Cod?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Eel?’

      ‘Satisfactory, if curious choices,’ my interviewer concluded. ‘You might more obviously have had egg or pea.’

      ‘Or pig, sir?’

      ‘A pig, I think you’ll agree, is an animal, Sefton. It is not a foodstuff until it has been butchered and made into joints. A pig is potential food, is it not?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘Tell me, Sefton, are you able to adapt yourself quickly and easily to new sets of circumstances?’

      ‘I believe I am sir, yes.’

      ‘And could you give me an example?’

      I suggested that in my work as a schoolmaster I had encountered numerous occasions when I had been required to adapt to circumstances. I did not explain that one such occasion was when I had been found in a compromising situation with the headmaster’s wife. Fortunately, my interviewer did not ask for further elaboration and we returned promptly to questions of more import: the lives of the saints; folk customs; Latin tags; the classification of plants and animals. During the conversation he would glance concernedly at the egg-timer on his desk and thrum his fingers on the table, as though batting against time itself.

      ‘You seem to have a reasonably well-stocked mind, Sefton.’

      ‘Thank you, sir.’

      ‘As one would expect. Languages?’

      ‘French, sir. Latin. Greek. German. Some Spanish.’

      ‘Yes. I see you were in Spain.’

      ‘I was, sir.’

      ‘A Byron on the barricades?’

      ‘I never considered myself as such, no, sir.’

      ‘No pasaran.’

      ‘That’s correct, sir.’

      ‘Unable to fight in Spain, I learned Spanish instead.’

      We spoke for a few minutes in Spanish, my interviewer remarking in a rudimentary way upon the weather and enquiring about the prices of rooms in hotels.

      ‘Your Spanish is certainly satisfactory, Sefton,’ he said. ‘Good. Do you have any questions about the position?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      My main question, naturally, was what the position was and what it might entail – I still had no clear idea. I cleared