Copyright

4th Estate

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017

Copyright © Ian Sansom 2017

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Ian Sansom asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008146740

Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 9780008147068

Version: 2017-11-14

Dedication

To Trinity

Epigraph

I come not from Heaven but from Essex.

WILLIAM MORRIS, A Dream of John Ball (1888)

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter 1: London, Underground

Chapter 2: In the Oven

Chapter 3: The Rendezvous

Chapter 4: The Music Writers’ Mutual Publishing Co.

Chapter 5: A Topographical Cremeschnitte

Chapter 6: The Boulevards of Becontree

Chapter 7: This is England

Chapter 8: The Dagenham Girl Pipers

Chapter 9: The Role of Pageantry

Chapter 10: The Oyster’s Lonely Subterraqueous Sigh

Chapter 11: The Aviatrix

Chapter 12: Bluebeard’s Castle

Chapter 13: A Kind of Knocking

Chapter 14: A Mechanical Aphrodisiac

Chapter 15: What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

Chapter 16: Flitration & Purtefication

Chapter 17: An Average Essex Affray

Chapter 18: A Few Discreet Enquiries

Chapter 19: Loose Screw

Chapter 20: The ‘Cottaging’ Existence

Chapter 21: Proof! Proof!

Chapter 22: Kursaal

Chapter 23: Up and Down and Round and Round

Chapter 24: Oil and Dirt

Chapter 25: In the Trenches

Chapter 26: Jumbo

Chapter 27: Paradise, Norfolk

Acknowledgements

Picture Credits

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Ian Sansom

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1
LONDON, UNDERGROUND

BERRAK THE TURK was busy smoking narghile and reading the newspaper while simultaneously dispensing hot sweet mint tea from the tarnished silver urn perched on the edge of the counter. He was dressed as always in a wrinkled white shirt and was seated on the long, low lumpy leather sofa that served as his office and command centre, old newspapers and his dictionary piled beside him, an enamel bowl of sugar cubes and bright green mint leaves close to hand. The wall behind him was exposed brick, painted a mottled pale blue, presumably intended to resemble a clear summer day. But the wall oozed and trickled silently with damp, making it look rather more like a mourning sky in autumn. The dusty bookcase beside the desk was piled high with worn and ragged towels and beneath the hiss and glare of the crooked gas chandelier hung a stained board marked with prices: the prices never changed and bore no resemblance to what you paid. The gramophone was playing a scratchy ’78 of classical classics, the same record that was always playing, ever since I had been coming; there was no other record. Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp minor; even I knew that the second movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 was about to follow. I wondered if Berrak ever grew tired of it. He showed no signs of doing so.

‘Selam! Selam! Mr Sefton, you are back. You have returned! Nasilisiniz? We haven’t seen you for so long.’

I had been away with Morley and Miriam in Westmorland, where things, it must be admitted, had not gone entirely to plan. For every good memory from those years there is always something else, something that can’t be avoided or denied: some death or disaster, some terrible discovery or disappointment. I’d learned in Spain that dread and despair are constant companions to adventure and during my time with Morley, for all its good, it often felt as though I were somehow being buried alive in yet more bad memories and that there was no escape. I had to do everything and anything to help me breathe.

‘Mr Sefton!’ continued Berrak. ‘It is very good to see you. Very very good.’ He shook me warmly by the hand. At least Berrak never changed. ‘My uncle was asking about you.’ He offered me tea. ‘Smoke?’ I declined both the tea and the smoke. ‘Uncle will be pleased.’

Berrak’s uncle was not his actual uncle. He may well have had a dozen actual uncles back home in Turkey but his English uncle was a Mr Klein, the owner of the Russian Turkish Baths and Berrak’s employer. I had met Klein on a number of occasions. We’d got on well. He was an educated man – neither Russian nor Turkish nor indeed English but from Poland, via Hackney – tiny, barely feet five tall, and fascinated by literature and by art, and with almost as many opinions as he had business interests. Klein made and sold his own rouges and fragrances (‘Klein’s Perspiration-Proof Make-Up’), he made and sold wigs (formed of real human hair), he ran a chain of haberdashers and hairdressers (patronised by the stars of British cinema), he rented properties and owned part shares in cinemas (including the beautiful old Capitol cinema in Winchmore Hill), he sold furs and jewellery, and he had the baths. He was a businessman in the very broadest sense. When I had first returned from Spain he had been kind enough to offer me work in the import and export branch of one of the businesses based down at St Katharine Docks, but I had been unable to take him up on the offer – not being in a fit state at the time to do anything but patronise his baths and go drinking. Sometimes I wondered what my life might have become if I had thrown in my lot with Mr Klein rather than with Morley. Things might have worked out better – or maybe not. Different, certainly.

‘It is very delighted to see you, Mr Sefton,’ said Berrak. He was paid to make people feel welcome, of course, but, nonetheless, he was good at his job. ‘We are all very glad to see you! I will tell Mr Klein you were here. Immediately, hereupon and in a jiffy.’

I had known Berrak for two or three years. I knew nothing about him except that he was a keen student of the English language and was always eager to try out the new words that he learned from his dictionary and from the newspapers.

‘Some people came here asking for you.’

‘When?’

‘Today. Yesterday. The foretimes.’

‘Did they say who they were?’

‘They said they were your friends.’

‘I see. What did they look like?’

Berrak shrugged his shoulders. The narghile didn’t only contain tobacco.

‘Was it a man and a woman?’

Berrak shrugged again. He could be intolerably vague, as well as unconditionally welcoming; perhaps the two things were related. He was in many ways the perfect doorman and receptionist, though one wouldn’t want to have relied on him as a witness. I paid my money and he handed me a greasy metal token and a threadbare towel that had perhaps once been royal blue but which was now a very definite shade of grey.

I went to Klein’s Russian Turkish Baths not to get clean – there were plenty of places in London you could go to get clean. (Probably the best baths in those days were on Grange Road in Bermondsey, a palace in marble and stone, but they were always crowded with women doing their washing and children in the swimming baths.) I went to Klein’s, and to the old Ironmonger Row Baths, and one or two other places in Soho that offered other services, for the same reason in those years that I went to bars and to pubs, and to bottle parties: to escape.

The effect of entering Klein’s was profound and instantaneous. You walked down the corridor away from the reception and into a world that was warmer, hazier and altogether more pleasant than that which you left behind – the effect of heat and damp, of low lights and lowered voices. A few Moorish-style lanterns on the wall lit the way to the changing room.

I undressed and showered: you always showered before bathing. The rusty spigots that served as showerheads spat out a trickle of warm water that ran into a gutter that circled the room like a castle moat, and which was always almost-but-not-quite full to overflowing with a foaming tide of suds. Berrak probably needed to spend less time smoking narghile and more time slopping out, but then again this was all a part of the charm of the place. Klein’s was neither a true Turkish hamam nor a Russian banya: it was a step down and away from the city into the secret and endless comforts of the River Lethe and the waters of forgetfulness. Some people said that the water was diverted from the River Fleet itself. It was London, underground.

Leaving the changing room, I walked down more slippery stone steps and through and along another corridor, inhaling the rich, thick damp vapour as I went. Pipes overhead hummed and belched and rattled with steam. It was as though the building were alive, an actual being, welcoming you and embracing you. I felt my shoulders relaxing and my chest expanding with every breath. I had spent the evening gambling and drinking – gin, cheap white wine, and whatever else I could get hold of. I was feeling pretty tight.

The corridor led to a tiny pool not much larger than a water tank, which you climbed up and into via stepladders. There was nothing down here – ten, twenty feet beneath High Holborn – but darkness and the sound of running water. Set around the pool was a series of steam rooms of varying heat, set aside for various activities. Mixed bathing was permitted at Klein’s, but I never once saw a woman there. It was a place for men to be men – and to forget to be men.

I had paid Berrak for the masseur, a tough little Lascar who everyone called Darjeeling, though of course that can’t possibly have been his name. I’m rather ashamed now to admit that I never bothered to ask him what he was really called. He had permanent quarters established in one of the cooler steam rooms. I knocked, stepped in and handed him my token. As was his custom he immediately set to work without a single word.

The Darjeeling Room, as everyone called it, always smelled the same: of sweat, cheese and tobacco. It was a place where time stood still and where Darjeeling practised the ancient arts that he may have learned in India, or in the navy, or perhaps indeed from a book like Morley’s Scientific Massage: Principles and Techniques (1922), in which Morley recommends the vigorous application of talcum, vaseline and lanolin, not only for the purposes of improving muscle tone and relieving pain, but also in order to ‘align the body’s organs and to release the natural flow of human energy’. Darjeeling was not much interested in alignment and releasing human energy. He worked as if you were a horse or some show dog presented for grooming. He used a hard horsehair brush, which he worked in small circular motions all over the body to remove the top layer of dirt, before hosing you down and getting to work with his fingers, elbows and – occasionally – his entire fist. The experience was painful, but there was no doubt that it was also a pleasure, an honour even to be worked upon by a man with such skills. In the privacy of Klein’s, Darjeeling became your mother, your lover, your persecutor, comforter and friend.

Duly pummelled, exhausted and exhilarated, I thanked him – you left tips upstairs with Berrak – and worked my way weakly and slowly through the other rooms to the Russian Room, the hottest steam room known to everyone as the Oven. Between Darjeeling and the Oven there were three rooms: the Smoke Room, the Silent Room and the Golden Ring. The Smoke Room contained a red-hot wood-burning stove: the experience resembled that of being caught in a clearing in the smouldering remains of a forest fire. In the Silent Room one simply gazed at glowing hot rocks kept boiling in a pit, while in the Golden Ring men congregated for the privilege of schmeissing, a practice I have never encountered elsewhere, where complete strangers rubbed and scrubbed at one another with a hard raffia brush until the skin turned red and golden. I was not a great schmeisser; my one and only experience had involved a man, not a regular, who’d started pawing at me. (This sort of carry-on, though not unheard of, was generally frowned upon at Klein’s, though to make my point and to throw off my schmeisser I’d had to grab him roughly by the throat, pinch his nostrils and tell him that I wasn’t going to let go until he stopped. He stopped.) In Klein’s it was my preference to act as an observer rather than as a participant. Unfortunately, that night in the Oven, I became the object of unwelcome attention.

CHAPTER 2
IN THE OVEN

A GROUP OF WELL-BASTED REGULARS stood around the furnace in the centre of the room, as though gathered for warmth. They were – naturally – entirely naked, their towels slung over their shoulders. I recognised some but not all of them. There was Willy Mann, who owned a couple of restaurants up around Fitzrovia and who also ran a number of Klein’s businesses on his behalf. John Jacobs, who I knew was an art dealer of some kind, though of exactly what kind was never made entirely clear. And a tiresome American, Ned Price, who was some sort of journalist and who had arrived in London from Paris a couple of years earlier and who never tired of reminding us that London was not Paris, as if we didn’t already know. There were also three or four others who from the neck down looked almost feminine, rather Rubenesque – what Klein would have called zaftig – but who from the neck up looked like they had been hit repeatedly by Jim Corbett, John L. Sullivan and Joe Louis, slowly and repeatedly, and in relay. In suits they’d have looked menacing. In the flesh, and through the haze of the Oven, they were grotesque. (In an article, ‘Getting Ugly’, published in the popular magazine Photoplay in 1932, Morley writes about the work of the actor Lon Chaney, one of his great heroes, ‘The Man of a Thousand Faces’, who dared to play grotesques, and also about Boris Karloff and his relationship with the Hollywood make-up artist Jack Pierce, who was responsible for Karloff’s incredible make-up in Frankenstein. Morley loved monsters. ‘We should always remember,’ he writes, ‘that physical defects are not necessarily signs of moral deformity.’ Not necessarily. But Morley had never been to Klein’s.)

‘Well well,’ said Willy Mann, who spotted me as I entered. Willy was a humourless individual with the manners of a second-rate maître d’, who liked to think he knew a little bit of everything about everyone. ‘If it’s not the famous Stephen Sefton. Are we not honoured?’

The others turned to stare, and it was difficult not to stare back. It takes a moment to adjust to speaking to half a dozen naked men.

‘Where have you been, Sefton?’ asked Ned Price, ever the journalist.

‘I’ve been travelling,’ I said, which was true. The stone floor was hot beneath my feet.

‘Somewhere nice, I hope?’ said John Jacobs.

Devon and Westmorland – and Norfolk – were pleasant enough places. But I wouldn’t exactly have described our experiences there as ‘nice’: the Appleby crash had been national news; events in Devon had caused a minor scandal; Norfolk was a mess.

Willy Mann took me by the arm and leaned close towards me, lowering his voice.

‘How are you fixed at the moment, young man?’ Willy was only a few years older than me – not even thirty – but he referred to everyone as ‘young man’. He thought it made him sound avuncular and authoritative.

‘Fixed?’ I asked. He could easily have meant a number of things.

‘For work?’ he clarified.

‘I’m fine, thank you, Willy.’

‘You’re in gainful employment?’

‘You could say that.’ My work with Morley was certainly employment – of a kind. But gainful? In what sense it was gainful I wasn’t at all sure. Certainly I was paid; it got me out of London; but apart from Miriam it was sometimes difficult to see the benefits; indeed, because of Miriam it was sometimes difficult to see the benefits.

‘I’m guessing you could always do with a little something on the side?’ said Willy. ‘Am I right, or am I right?’

The Oven was beginning to work its effects on me. I usually lay down on one of the benches to prevent myself becoming dizzy. My head was beginning to feel cloudy.

‘Mr Klein has some business he needs taking care of,’ continued Willy. ‘And he needs someone … presentable to take care of it. A fresh face. A front man. Someone … educated. Someone … like you, Sefton.’

‘And what’s the business that needs doing?’ I asked, trying hard to focus on Willy’s face.

‘You’d have to talk to Mr Klein, if you were interested.’

‘What sort of thing is it?’

‘I can’t go into details, I’m afraid. It’s to do with a little land deal up around Becontree.’

‘Becontree?’

‘Out in Essex, where they’re building the big estates.’

‘No thanks, Willy,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to go to Essex.’

‘What have you got against Essex?’

‘Nothing. I just …’ I couldn’t even picture Essex in my mind. East of London? South of London? Essex was just another county. I’d had enough of other counties. If I could, I’d have stayed right here, in the Oven.

‘Well, anyway. The offer’s there. You let me know if you change your mind.’

‘I will, Willy, thanks. I …’

As I spoke I felt my legs buckling and I began to fall sideways: one of the grotesque men caught me by the arm.

‘Oh God, get him out,’ said Willy Mann.

‘Not used to the heat any more, Sefton?’ said Ned Price.

‘Good to see you, wouldn’t want to be you!’ said John Jacobs, as the door to the Oven slammed behind me and I found myself abandoned, flat on my back in the cool of the pool room.

I somehow pulled myself up onto the stepladder and went up and up and then head first into the pool, all the way down to the bottom. I could feel the burn in my chest and the thrill of light-headedness as the cool water began reviving and cleansing me. I sat at the bottom of the pool for as long as I could before I thought my lungs might explode. Coming gasping to the surface felt like being born again. I felt free. I could breathe once more.

Half an hour later, entirely refreshed and dressed, I said goodbye to Berrak and stepped back out onto London’s streets. Klein’s had worked its magic. My mind was clear.

No sooner did the big scarred metal door of Klein’s bang conclusively shut but two men instantly approached and fell into step behind me.

‘What date is it, Mickey?’ asked a voice.

‘The eleventh, the twelfth?’

‘The thirteenth I thought, isn’t it? October the thirteenth?’

‘The thirteenth, well, well. Unlucky for some, eh, Sefton?’

It was my old friends Mickey Gleason and the Scot MacDonald.

‘There’s someone who’d like to see you,’ said MacDonald.

‘Very much,’ said Mickey. ‘You’ve been missed, Sefton.’

CHAPTER 3
THE RENDEZVOUS

Smoke rings slowly spooled and unspooled around Delaney’s smooth fat brilliantined Irish head as he sat by the window overlooking the Windmill Theatre, which extended its chest out over Great Windmill Street and bellowed in neon, ‘CONTINUOUS PERFORMANCE’, ‘REVUDEVILLE’, ‘THE ONLY NON-STOP SHOW IN THE WEST END’.

As usual, Delaney wore a suit the colour of whipped cream and a large diamond ring that might more properly have graced the fingers of some shrivelled, pale-skinned dowager duchess. He was a plush Miss Havisham: the two of them would have got on well. He sat perfectly still. He didn’t move, except to touch his cigar to his lips, slowly and leisurely, as though silently blessing it: Delaney was the sort of man who had time to kill; he was the sort of man with cigars silently to bless. He was a man with wide margins, broad horizons and narrow sympathies. A man who knew the power of being still.

Traffic sounded outside, though it was by now perhaps three or four o’clock in the morning – long past the witching hour. If you are awake and you are in Soho and it’s three o’clock in the morning it’s probably safe to assume that you’re looking for trouble, or that trouble has already come to find you. The sky was as black as your hat, or the devil’s arse – depending on what kind of company you keep. But it was also orange and flashing red from the Windmill. It was set-lighting from hell.

We had been talking for some time. I had been trying to explain to Delaney what had happened to a package of his that I had accidentally-on-purpose picked up at one of his clubs, and why I’d had to make a quick exit without paying my gambling debts. It was a complicated conversation, made all the more complicated by the fact that I was accompanied by my old International Brigade chums, Mickey and MacDonald, who were flanking me like guards, standing heavily at my shoulder as if I were on trial, while Delaney, in contrast, was sitting opposite me, accompanied by an attractive brunette, perched happily on his lap, perhaps twenty years his junior, perfectly proportioned, and dressed in nothing but a corset underneath her silk robe. Her eyes were half shut, out of pleasure or boredom or something else it was difficult to tell, though I was pretty sure that if Delaney had stroked her any more she’d be purring.

The odds were definitely against me.

The room, like many of Delaney’s clubs, was all red plush and cheap-opulent upholstery. Gas-lit, potted palms, reproduction art in gilt frames, and with a day-bed big enough to accommodate at least three blondes. Thick-set filing cabinets sat obediently under the windows, and an inconveniently large desk boasted nothing on it but a telephone. It was a room, like Delaney, that suggested big business and low life. This was Soho and this was exactly the sort of place and the sort of carry-on that had made Delaney such a success in Soho.

‘You are a normal healthy young man, Mr Sefton, are you not?’ asked Delaney. ‘A normal red-blooded young man?’

‘Yes.’ I had the strong feeling this was going to be a trick question.

‘It must be difficult for you then, to have to be explaining yourself in the presence of our innocent young friend Grace here.’ Grace wriggled innocently in his lap.

‘Yes,’ I agreed.

‘Difficult for you both.’

‘It’s OK, Mr Delaney,’ said Grace, in a voice like Betty Boop’s.

‘Run along, Grace,’ said Delaney, and innocent young Grace got up and ran along. She glanced at me as she walked out and I thought perhaps I saw some hint of fellow feeling, but I may have been mistaken. It’s easy to misread the glance of a half-dressed, half-bored, half-drugged beautiful woman. Much of Delaney’s business was based on exactly such misunderstandings.

Delaney allowed more smoke to gather around him before he spoke.

‘Are you a religious man, Mr Sefton?’

My guess was that ‘yes’ was probably the right answer. To say ‘no’ might have led to serious problems. ‘Yes’, as always, opened up possibilities. It kept my options open.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Catholic or Protestant?’

I was neither, but I knew that Delaney was from Kerry and I was banking on the average Kerryman being of the Catholic persuasion.

‘Catholic,’ I said. Wise gamble.

‘Good. So. I am myself a devout Roman Catholic.’ I could feel Gleason and MacDonald behind me nodding in approval at this announcement, as if Delaney had revealed that he were in fact the Holy Father, or indeed the Son of God himself. ‘You’ll doubtless agree with me then that theft is a sin. A grievous sin.’ More grievous a sin, I was given to presume, than his own activities as the owner of illegal drinking clubs, brothels, and as a wholesaler, distributor and retailer of drugs, drink and women.

I nodded.

‘The only question then is how you might go about putting things right between us, Mr Sefton. What’s upsetting is not only that you stole from me but that you stole that which I might willingly have given.’ Or sold, he might more properly have said. As well as his clubs, Delaney controlled a large part of many of the other businesses that kept Soho so … lively. ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘we could of course go to law over the matter.’ He laughed to himself at the thought of this clearly ludicrous suggestion. Going to law with a complaint about my own modest misdemeanour would only lead to questions about his own vast empire of sin. We would not be going to law over the matter. ‘Fortunately for you I’m not a man who believes in punishment, Mr Sefton. I believe rather in making amends, in restitution. In making good.’ He took up his cigar from the ashtray and applied it delicately to his lips, producing a few more pale rings of smoke. The tip glowed like the neon signs outside. ‘I like to think of myself not so much as a businessman, more as a problem solver.’ Again, Gleason and MacDonald nodded vigorously at this generous self-assessment. ‘And the good news is, I think I have a solution to our little problem.’ I feared as much. Beware big men in fancy suits offering simple solutions: this was not, I think, one of Morley’s maxims, one of his proverbs or wise sayings, though it might have been. The closest I can find in Unconsidered Trifles (1934) is from Horace, faenum habet in cornu, longe fuge, ‘stay away from the bull, he has hay on his horns’. What can I say? Delaney had a lot of hay on his horns.

In Spain I had gone ‘absent’ once for a few days, having been unable to reconcile what was happening all around me with what I thought was going to be happening in a true people’s republic. When I was caught trying to board a ship in Barcelona I was immediately sentenced to a week’s work in the Brigade’s disciplinary battalion. No one ever mentions the disciplinary battalion: no one spoke about it then; no one speaks about it now. We were billeted separately from others and forced, unarmed and ill-equipped, out into no-man’s-land at night, to dig trenches and erect barbed-wire fences, out among the vermin and machine-gun fire, on reduced rations and subject to ridicule and abuse. There were twelve of us on the Monday. By Friday, only ten of us remained, two men having been shot dead beside me. The crack of rifle fire overhead had reduced us to crawling in the mud among the rats to go about our work. One week’s disciplinary work.

I had a pretty good idea of how men like Delaney solved problems. They got rid of them. They used their disciplinary battalions.

‘My friends here tell me that you acted bravely in Spain,’ said Delaney. I glanced round at Gleason and MacDonald, who stood staring straight ahead. Acting bravely in Spain meant killing people before they killed you. It wasn’t exactly chivalric. It was a matter of survival. ‘Brave. Educated. Intelligent. When I look at you, Sefton, what I see is not what other people might see: a common thief, a cheat, a liar, a bitter and confused young man who has lost his way and wasted every opportunity in his life.’ As a summing-up you wouldn’t necessarily have wanted it on your gravestone but it wasn’t entirely inaccurate. ‘No. No. When I look at you, Sefton, what I see is leadership potential.’ What I saw was trouble. ‘Men like you can be very useful in my line of business. So.’ Delaney quietly and leisurely cleared his throat. ‘I’d like to offer you an opportunity,’ he said. I had a bad feeling I knew what was coming: in my experience, opportunity always comes with a cost, and often at a serious inconvenience to the opportunee. ‘If you were to come and work for me, Mr Sefton, I think we’d probably be able to write off your gambling debts.’ He stroked his chin. ‘And in time I think we’d also be able to overlook the unfortunate incident concerning the theft of goods. Though it might take us a while of course to really learn to trust one another. What do you think?’

Well. That was two job offers in one evening: first from Willy Mann on behalf of Mr Klein, and now from Delaney on behalf of Delaney. I had a feeling that Delaney’s offer was going to be harder to refuse. (On this theme – let us call it the Perennial Problem of Saying No – even Morley admits to a number of difficulties and confusions. In Morley’s Tried and Tested Temptations: Thinking About God, the Devil, Sin and Salvation (1931), for example, he provides a very troubling and troubled little gloss on Matthew 4:8–9: ‘Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.’ Writes Morley: ‘All of us will have been subject at some time to the temptation of intellectual pride. Intellectual pride is spiritually most damaging, an affliction of perhaps the most damaged among us, a sin that represents not only a defect of the will but which also betrays and betokens the deep scars of emotional wounds.’ Anyway.) Nonetheless.

‘That’s a very kind offer,’ I said. ‘But I’m afraid I’m going to have to turn you down, Mr Delaney.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Delaney. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’ I had the feeling he was not a man who was used to being turned down. ‘I’m not a man who is used to being turned down,’ he said.

‘It’s just, I’m currently working for someone else,’ I explained.

‘I see. And who is this … “someone else” you’re working for?’ asked Delaney. ‘Anyone I know?’

‘A writer,’ I said.

Delaney laughed – loudly, uproariously, as if I were Frank Randle on stage at the height of the summer season in Blackpool.

‘A writer? Very good. And he pays you money? Or he pays you in stationery supplies?’

He wasn’t far off.

Gleason and MacDonald sniggered beside me.

‘I work for Swanton Morley,’ I said, expecting some sort of recognition. Morley wasn’t exactly unknown. He was at the time, and had been for many years, England’s best known and best loved journalist, editor and publisher.

‘Never heard of him,’ said Delaney. ‘Boys?’

I could hear Gleason and MacDonald vigorously shake their heads.

‘Swanton Morley. He writes for the newspapers. Writes books. He’s very … popular.’ The word died on my lips.

‘Well, if you don’t mind my saying so,’ Delaney said with a grin, ‘he’s clearly not that popular, Mr Sefton, is he?’ Delaney reminded me of someone in the way he spoke – the chimpish bravado – but I couldn’t for the life of me remember who it was.

‘Maybe not,’ I agreed. ‘You’ve never read one of Morley’s books?’ Everyone had read at least one of Morley’s books.

‘I am proud to say, sir, that I have never read any book.’

‘Never?’

‘I’m sure I may have read parts of books. But the average man does not read whole books, Mr Sefton. In this day and age I think you’ll find that the average man looks elsewhere for his entertainment. Which of course is where I come in …’

‘Of course.’

‘… as an entertainment provider. And I think I probably have a pretty good understanding of what is “popular”. A much better understanding, I dare say, than either you or your “writer”.’

‘I’m sure.’

Delaney glanced over towards the flashing neon of the Windmill Theatre.

‘In my position, Mr Sefton, in my line of work, you might say that I am blessed every day with a profound insight into the workings of the average human mind.’ He rolled his cigar between forefinger and thumb, savouring it – and there it was again, that reminder of someone else, that performance, that knowing nod and wink of the king or the jester. ‘And I’m afraid it is not always a pretty sight. You work full-time for your writer?’

‘I do.’

‘And you obviously enjoy your work?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that’s good, that’s very good.’ Delaney rubbed a cigary finger along his protuberant bottom lip. ‘Yes, good. Because I want you to be clear, Mr Sefton, that I am offering you what is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join us in what we might call the new entertainment economy.’

‘I understand that.’

‘And yet you seem to be telling me that you’re not interested, is that correct? Just so we’re clear, you understand?’

‘Yes. That’s right.’

‘You’re not interested?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘You’re absolutely sure now?’

I hesitated. ‘Yes.’

‘Well,’ said Delaney, sighing deeply. ‘That is unfortunate, Mr Sefton. Very unfortunate.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. I was disappointed myself.

‘Mmm. Well, as I say, it is a shame, because if you’re really not in a position to accept the offer it would mean that you and I still have a little bit of a problem to resolve, wouldn’t it?’ He rolled the tip of his cigar around the edge of the ashtray.

And in that moment I realised who Delaney reminded me of: he reminded me of Morley. They had a different repertoire of gestures and lines, of course, but it was a repertoire of gestures and lines nonetheless, a kind of performance, a top-of-the-bill performance in both cases, a captivating performance, a performance almost entirely uninhibited by petty concerns about the audience, which is ultimately what made it a great performance, a carefree performance closely resembling and mimicking the expression of the natural self, but a performance nonetheless. I always felt that I would never know Morley, in the same way I hoped I would never really know Delaney – perhaps because they would never truly know themselves. They were actors, being themselves. Which made them both utterly unlike average people, who are too busy living their lives to be bothered much with acting – and which is of course what made both Morley and Delaney so fascinated by the average and the everyday. They were not average and everyday, neither of them, and never could be.

‘I’m afraid I am at something of a loss then, Mr Sefton. I have offered you a solution to the problem, which you have refused. Perhaps you should tell me what you think we should do?’

‘I could just pay you back,’ I said.

‘Really?’ Delaney gave a sinister little laugh. ‘Well, if I had known you were simply going to pay me back then there’d have been no need for this long discussion, would there? This rig-marole.’ He rolled the ‘r’ of the rigmarole. ‘A cheque is acceptable, but I would prefer cash. You might be so kind as to visit my cashier downstairs on the way out. I’m assuming you have the money with you now?’

‘I was wondering actually if we could arrange some sort of … payment plan?’

‘A payment plan?’

‘A schedule of repayments,’ I said.

Gleason and MacDonald sniggered again.

‘Well, I suppose it’s not an unreasonable request,’ said Delaney. Gleason and MacDonald immediately stopped sniggering. ‘How about if I give you to the end of the month to pay me in full?’

‘I was hoping actually that you might be able to extend the period of repayment a little longer,’ I said. The end of the month gave me about two weeks. I was thinking more like two years – maybe until 1939. Or 1940. By then things might have calmed down. I might have straightened myself out.

‘Longer?’ said Delaney. ‘You want longer?’ Delaney examined the tip of his cigar. ‘Oh dear. I am disappointed, Mr Sefton. You see, that just shows a lack of … ambition, don’t you think?

‘I—’

‘Also I don’t know if you’re familiar with traditional banking practices, but I’m afraid it’s really not common practice for the borrower to determine the terms of repayment. It is the lender, rather, who holds all the cards, as it were.’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘Good. So we’re agreed then that you’ll be paying me back at the end of the month, payment in full, in cash. Plus the small matter of compensation for the stolen goods, of course; shall we say we’ll double the amount and round it up to, what, one hundred pounds?’

‘One hundred pounds?’

For me, and indeed for almost anyone except for the very wealthy and the very lucky, one hundred pounds in 1937 was an unimaginable amount. For me, working for Morley, it was almost a year’s wages.

‘That’s a deal then,’ said Delaney. ‘Gentlemen, would you show Mr Sefton the door?’

Gleason and MacDonald hauled me out of my chair and began to escort me – drag me, rather – to the door.

‘Oh, Mr Sefton, just before you go.’

Gleason and MacDonald paused and turned me around just as we had reached the top of the stairs. I could see Delaney smiling, framed in the doorway like a painting of some all-powerful potentate: hand-grained features, black-enamelled hair, ivory teeth, the very image of the inscrutable and implacable.

‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘I’d be interested to know: have you perhaps heard rumours about my methods for calling in debts? In those very very rare cases where people are not able or unwilling to make their payments?’

‘Yes, I have,’ I said.

‘Well’ – he chuckled – ‘the rumours, you will be delighted to hear, Mr Sefton, are not entirely true. Isn’t that right, boys?’ Gleason and MacDonald wholeheartedly agreed that not all the rumours were entirely true. ‘Not at all. Not at all at all at all. Just be careful going down the stairs now.’

The Windmill Theatre sign winked red at me, I stepped forward, Mickey Gleason pushed, and I began to fall.

CHAPTER 4
THE MUSIC WRITERS’ MUTUAL PUBLISHING CO.

NOTHING WAS BROKEN. That was the main thing. I was sure nothing was broken. I had managed to put out a hand to prevent myself from going head first but I had rolled and skidded and smashed my way down and was at the bottom of the stairs when I heard my Brigader friends rushing towards me. I’d curled into a foetal position to protect myself from the inevitable beating. I pressed myself into the cracked linoleum and waited for the first blow. Instead I felt a hand reach down to pull me up.

‘Sorry about this, mate, no hard feelings, eh?’ said Gleason.

‘Sure,’ I said, relieved, beginning to stand.

Which is when MacDonald took a well-aimed kick that knocked me back against the door.

‘Just pay up, you swine,’ said MacDonald, or words to that effect, with his characteristic Glaswegian charm. The rest of what he said, and exactly what he said is, alas, unrepeatable. Suffice it to say, I was left in no doubt that it would be in my best interests to pay my debt to Delaney without delay or hesitation.

When they finally pushed me out the door back onto Windmill Street – ‘See you in two weeks with your hundred pounds!’ called MacDonald with one final thump, as I staggered back – I noticed a tiny brass plaque indicating the name of Delaney’s offices, which I had never noticed before. The Rendezvous. Indeed it was.

I was breathing hard – panic and pain, a bad combination. I checked my ribs. I needed somewhere to rest. Somewhere to gather my thoughts and tend my wounds. Somewhere safe.

Some of the places I stayed in London in between assignments with Morley during our time together: Berwick Street, Dean Street, Greek Street, Wardour Street, in ‘hotels’, basements, flophouses and grand apartments, in mews, rows, streets, yards, courts, drives, circuses, both inside and out in the cold. There is nowhere, however, that I can particularly recommend: there is nowhere that remains the same. Time and money, tourism and sheer merchant greed have swallowed up the Soho that I knew and loved.

My most reliable stopover during those years, the place I dragged myself to when all seemed lost and there was nowhere else to go, was the offices of the Music Writers’ Mutual Publishing Company, on the fourth floor of 14 Denmark Street – long since disappeared but fondly remembered.

During my time at college – when I wasn’t drinking or suffering the after-effects of drinking – I had somehow become involved with the college Music Society. I was in a Gilbert and Sullivan and a couple of end-of-term concerts, and was a stalwart of the – often rather rowdy – revues, which is where I first met Ronald ‘Easy’ Pease, of the Pease family brewers of Batley. Ronald was studying music. He was a multi-instrumentalist who played the violin, the viola, the oboe, the flute, the French horn, the organ, the piano and – most proficiently and competently of all – the fool. Ron was a prankster, the sort of person who liked to enter a room and immediately set about causing mischief. He even looked like a puppy, with masses of dark unruly curls and big soulful eyes. He also had charm and money, which meant that he managed to escape rustication on a number of occasions for various incidents of drunkenness, vandalism, nudity and – after one memorable night out – for ‘fouling’ on the doorstep of the Master’s Lodge. (It probably helped that Ron’s father and grandfather had both attended the college before him and that the generously endowed Pease Building was an important addition to the college estate.)

After college, Ron had attempted for a while to pursue a conventional career as an orchestral musician, but because he was an independent-minded sort of a fellow, and because he was of considerable independent means, conventions could pretty much be disregarded and after a couple of years of professional musicianship, and a couple more of entirely reckless behaviour, he eventually settled into the unlikely profession of musical arranger and lyricist, a profession that guaranteed only an irregular income but which he supplemented by happily working as an agent for the old pawnbroker on Denmark Street who specialised in musical instruments. This brought him into contact with exactly the kind of people he most liked and admired: artists, jazz musicians, reprobates and thieves. Ron’s ‘career’ was indeed almost as precarious and unpredictable as my own, the only difference being that he could afford for a career to be precarious and unpredictable, since he was one day destined to inherit a fine house in Chelsea, a place in the country, an estate in Scotland and at least one-third of a brewery. He was utterly unreliable, incapable of taking anything even half seriously, and a very good friend, but most importantly, he was the sole proprietor of the Music Writers’ Mutual Publishing Company, and had kindly provided me with a key to his office on the fourth floor of 14 Denmark Street, which meant I had a place in Soho where I could occasionally sleep when necessity demanded.

Necessity now most definitely demanded.

It was fast approaching dawn. Denmark Street was deserted. I let myself into the building and went through the lobby towards the stairs. Ron’s lease prohibited using the office for anything but commercial purposes but if you paid your rent and didn’t cause too much trouble you could get away with almost anything. There were plenty of people in the building who were getting away with almost anything. You’d often find musicians sleeping in the lobby, and pimps, and the sort of people who come out at night and then mysteriously disappear during the day, or when their bills are due. The first floor was always the busiest: on the first floor there were a couple of rooms used by prostitutes, so there’d be people in and out – as it were – at all times. Ron used to go mad because the prostitutes would hang their underwear in the shared bathroom and make a terrible mess. (I was there in fact the night that Ron decided enough was enough and started throwing their underwear down into the street, tossing silk panties and brassieres onto passing pedestrians: you scored points if you managed to land a pair of knickers on an unsuspecting bowler. I was also there the night that Ron decided his office was too small, and since the office next door was empty we just broke right through, making a big hole in the wall: for a while we called ourselves the Hole in the Wall Gang, until we realised it wasn’t funny. The building was falling apart, even without our jolly japes. We were young, carefree and hellbent on destruction.)

The lobby was empty. Not even the girls were working. I was glad no one was around. I wasn’t in the mood for conversation. Many years later, during the course of our travels, Morley, Miriam and I had to contend with the sad case of a sweet-shop owner who had apparently fallen down her stairs and broken her neck. I had been lucky in my single-flight fall from Delaney’s office – at worst I had maybe sprained an ankle – but I was bruised all over from my little chat with MacDonald and felt like I’d been mauled by whatever creature it is who is the most proficient at mauling: some lean, mean-featured pitiless Scots sort of creature, no doubt. I dragged myself up the stairs, let myself into Ron’s office and wearily settled myself into an armchair, clearing away piles of unanswered post and musical scores. Sleep came instantly.

CHAPTER 5
A TOPOGRAPHICAL CREMESCHNITTE

I WAS WOKEN what seemed like only moments later by the sound of a piano playing and the unmistakable smoky-sweet stench of Russian tea. I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming or if Ron had arrived early at the office. Knowing Ron, this seemed highly unlikely; and sure enough, when I half opened my eyes I saw that it was in fact Morley, Morley with his moustache and his grin, Morley seated at Ron’s piano, singing and strumming a song in a minor key.

Once I built a railroad, I made it run

Made it race against time

Once I built a railroad, now it’s done.

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower up to the sun

Brick and rivet and lime

Once I built a tower, now it’s done

Brother, can you spare a dime?

‘Ah, Sefton, good morning!’ He raised his cup of tea towards me in greeting.

I was about to reply when there came a horrible sharp dinning in my right ear: I wondered for a second if I had perhaps burst an eardrum after my fall down the stairs. I hadn’t: it was just Miriam, with a trumpet to her lips, attempting some sort of reveille.

‘How did you find me?’ I managed to ask them, through my confusion.

‘Really, Sefton. It doesn’t exactly take a Miss Marple to track your movements,’ said Miriam. She laid down the trumpet and was about to pick up a trombone.

‘I’ve got a bit of a headache, actually,’ I said.

‘I’m not surprised. You look dreadful. What on earth’s happened to you? Have you been in another fight?’ I saw that her eyes had alighted upon the xylophone in the corner.

‘Please,’ I said. ‘I really do have a—’

‘Well, if you will insist on drinking and carousing, Sefton, what on earth do you expect?’

‘A most singular method of enjoying oneself, if you don’t mind my saying so,’ added Morley. ‘Not at all good for one. The old ivory dome.’ He tapped a finger to his head. ‘One has to take care of it, you know. I was at Madison Square Garden when Max Baer beat Primo Carnera – goodness me, that was a fight. Couldn’t you take up chess instead? Do you know Max Euwe?’

‘I can’t say I do,’ I said.

‘World champion? Defeated Alekhine?’

‘I must have missed that,’ I said.

‘Good dose of Eno’s Fruit Salts will see you right,’ said Morley.

‘Mmm,’ I agreed.

‘Or this,’ said Miriam, and she thrust her left wrist under my nose. ‘Have a sniff. It’s Schiaparelli’s Shocking. My new scent. Given to me by an admirer. Do you like it?’

I took a quick sniff. It smelled like all other perfume.

‘Well?’ said Miriam.

‘Very nice,’ I said, finally beginning to gain full consciousness.

Miriam and Morley certainly had a way of waking a man up in the morning.

Morley was opposite, at the piano, looking as spruce and as chipper as ever: bow tie, light tweeds, dazzling brogues. Miriam was doing her best to lounge on Ron Pease’s office chair – and her best was more than good enough. She somehow looked at this unearthly hour as she always looked: as though she had just finished a photo-shoot, perhaps for Vogue magazine, or some publicity stills for MGM. Her eye make-up was fashionably smudged, her white dress and matching jacket exquisite. She was also sporting some sort of barbaric necklace that looked as though it might recently have been wrenched from the neck of an aboriginal tribesperson, and then set with diamonds, the sort of necklace that one sometimes sees in the window of Asprey – the sort of necklace that might cost at least one hundred pounds or more.

I put the thought immediately from my mind.

‘Who let you in?’ I asked.

‘Well, it’s a surprisingly busy little building, isn’t it?’ said Morley. ‘A charming young lady from the first floor escorted us up. I think she said her name was Desiree?’

‘I think you’ll find her name is probably not Desiree,’ said Miriam, looking knowingly at me.

‘Sorry?’ said Morley.

‘“That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain – At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark.”’

‘Hamlet?’ said Morley. ‘I can’t see the relevance, my dear.’

‘Denmark. Street,’ said Miriam.

‘Anyway,’ I said.

‘Yes, quite,’ said Morley. ‘Anyway. No time to lose, eh, Sefton? Another book to write.’

‘Sorry, did we finish the last one?’

‘Yes, we did,’ said Miriam.

‘Westmorland,’ said Morley. ‘Almost finished.’

‘In your absence,’ said Miriam.

‘Few tweaks, few i’s to dot and some t’s to cross, but we should have it done by the end of next week, Miriam, shouldn’t we?’

‘I would have thought so, Father, yes.’

‘So, ready for the printers and into the shops by the end of October, I would have thought. Excelsior!’

‘Right,’ I said.

Morley was publishing books almost faster than I could read them. I’d been in his employ since early September, working on The County Guides, and we’d already covered Norfolk, Devon and Westmorland. I’d travelled more widely in England within a month than I had in the previous twenty-six years of my pre-Morley existence.

‘You’ll be thrilled to hear, Sefton, that our next county is Essex,’ said Miriam.

‘Essex?’

‘That’s right,’ said Morley. ‘When you think of Essex, Sefton, what do you think of?’

‘When I think of Essex.’ When I think of Essex? It was not a place I had ever given a first – let alone a second – thought to. ‘When I think of Essex I think of …’ I thought of Willy Mann asking if I’d like to work for Mr Klein on some project.

‘Oysters!’ said Morley. ‘Correct! And cockles, sprats, whitebait, flounder, dab, plaice, sole, eels, halibut, turbot, brill—’

‘Yes, Father, we get the picture.’

‘Lobster, haddock, whiting, herring, pike, perch, chub—’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Gudgeon, roach, tench—’

‘Father!’

‘Winkles. But above all the Ostreaedulis! The English native!’

‘Sorry? The English native …?’

‘Oyster, Sefton! It is our privilege, sir, to have been invited as guests of honour to the annual Oyster Feast in Colchester!’

‘Very good,’ I said.

‘Colchester, ancient capital of England. Camulodunum – the fortress of Camulos! A place arguably more important historically than London itself. Home to the mighty Coel and his daughter Helena, not to mention the mighty Boadicea.’

‘And tell him, Father.’

‘Tell him what, Miriam?’

‘Father’s terribly excited, Sefton, because one of the fellow guests at the Oyster Feast is going to be—’

‘Oh yes!’ cried Morley. ‘The aviatrix!’

‘The who?’ I asked.

When I think of Essex

‘The aviatrix!’ repeated Morley.

‘By which he means the famous female aviator Amy Johnson.’

‘Really?’

‘Apparently, according to Father.’

‘Well, I very much look forward to—’

There came the sound of bells ringing outside. St-Giles-in-the-Fields. This was one of the disadvantages of staying at 14 Denmark Street: the close proximity to Christian bell-ringing, which could play havoc with a hangover, though frankly Morley and Miriam more than matched the din. At the last stroke of the bell, Morley checked all his watches: the luminous wristwatch, the non-luminous wristwatch and his pocket-watch. He doubtless had an egg-timer concealed somewhere about his person, but there was no need to consult it on this occasion.

‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Not bad. I’d better push on, though, chaps. I’ll see you there this evening?’

‘Father is travelling up by train,’ said Miriam. ‘We’re going to take the car. Now, I do expect to see you there on time, Father.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘There’s an exhibition at the Royal Albert Hall,’ explained Miriam. ‘Father’s very keen to go.’

‘Ah,’ I said.

‘By the Ford Motor Company,’ said Morley.

‘At the Royal Albert Hall?’ I said.

‘That’s right!’

‘You’re not allowed to buy any more motorcars, though, Father. Understand?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Morley.

‘We have quite enough already.’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘If you were going to buy another we’d have to sell one.’

Morley was an absolute car fiend. He was an autoholic. To my knowledge he never parted with a car, any more than he ever parted with a book, or a typewriter.

‘You’re just looking, remember?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Morley. ‘I thought it was worth a visit,’ he explained to me. ‘Because we’re going to Essex. I tried to persuade Miriam that we should visit the Ford Works at Dagenham but she wasn’t keen.’

‘I thought Father going to an exhibition would be just as good. Don’t you agree, Sefton?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. I probably had as little desire as Miriam to visit a motor vehicle manufacturer – probably less.

‘They’re bringing all the men and machines from Dagenham anyway,’ said Morley. ‘So it’ll be as if we were actually witnessing them constructing an actual vehicle in an actual factory!’

‘In the Albert Hall?’ I said. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, yes. Quite remarkable, isn’t it? Way of the future, Sefton. Arts, crafts and manufacturing joining together to usher in the Age of the Automated Arts. I wonder if we might organise some sort of society, actually … The AAA. Sort of an RSA for the twentieth century. What do you think, Miriam?’

‘I think we need to concentrate on the task in hand, Father.’

‘Yes, yes, of course. Very good. So, I have taken the liberty of drawing up a little list here of places in Essex for you two to visit on the way to Colchester, for the purposes of research for the book.’

He handed me a complicated diagram that looked as though it were a sort of geological map.

‘One needs to think of Essex, Sefton, as like a series of layers.’

‘Ah,’ I said.

‘Like a cake?’ said Miriam.

‘Precisely like a cake, Miriam,’ said Morley. ‘A sort of topographical cremeschnitte, in five parts: the coast, the marshes, the farms, the villages, and the towns dominated by London.’

‘OK,’ I said.

‘Our account of Essex will begin here, on the very bottom layer of the cake, as it were. In Becontree.’

‘Becontree?’ asked Miriam. ‘Must we?’

‘In years to come, Miriam, mark my words, Becontree will be regarded as one of the great wonders of the world. New housing for tens of thousands of workers? Quite extraordinary. Like something created by the pharaohs. It was a market garden at one time, of course. Now a sort of city planted on the Nile delta! A testament to the spirit of our age!’

‘Becontree?’

‘Fit for heroes, Miriam, remember. Fit for heroes! Think of yourselves as the companions of Columbus, setting forth to a New World, discovering the future!’

‘Becontree though?’ repeated Miriam.

‘Yes!’ insisted Morley, rather tetchily. ‘Now, some photographs of the Dagenham Borough Council building, Sefton, if you wouldn’t mind? Quite a thing, I’m given to understand. Early Saxon settlement, Dagenham.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, Daecca’s home, I think.’

‘Right.’

‘I remember it as a village, of course.’

‘Very good.’

‘So, some sort of atmospheric shots of the great boulevards and avenues, if you would.’

‘The great boulevards of Becontree?’ said Miriam.

‘If you would, Sefton,’ said Morley, ignoring Miriam.

‘Certainly, Mr Morley.’

‘And on from the delights of Becontree, Father?’

‘Well, I thought we’d make a sort of clockwise journey, up from Becontree, to Romford, Brentwood, Chipping Ongar, Dunmow – Maid Marian laid to rest at Dunmow Priory, I believe. Some nice shots of Dunmow, Sefton. You know the story of the Dunmow Flitch of course?’

I must admit I had momentarily forgotten the story of the Dunmow Flitch.

‘A flitch of ham awarded to a married couple who can live without quarrelling for a year and a day.’

‘Ha!’ cried Miriam.

‘And then across to Colchester and back round via Manningtree – the Witchfinder General was from Manningtree, I believe. Full of witches, Essex.’

Miriam raised a finger and pointed at me. ‘Don’t you dare say a word, Sefton.’

‘I wasn’t going to,’ I protested.

‘Thank you, children. And then on to Clacton, Southend, etcetera, etcetera, further details to be confirmed. If we have time I’d very much like to call in on Margery and Dorothy, if Dorothy’s at home in Witham. She’s a bit of a gadabout. Margery’s bound to be there at Tolleshunt D’Arcy. We could hardly visit Essex without calling on the county’s two greatest living writers.’

‘Margery Allingham, Father?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh no.’

‘What? Why? What’s wrong with Margery?’

‘She’s just a little … strange, Father, isn’t she?’

‘Margery?’

‘Yes.’

‘But she’s a writer, Miriam. And a very fine one at that.’

‘That’s no excuse, Father.’

‘Have you read Margery, Sefton?’ asked Morley.

‘No, I can’t say I have, Mr Morley.’

‘No? Goodness me, man. Sweet Danger is in my opinion one of the great detective books of this century!’

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely. You should read it immediately! I rate her rather more highly than Agatha, actually.’ Morley glanced around him, lowered his voice, and put a finger to his lips. ‘But don’t tell Agatha I told you.’

‘You have my word, Mr Morley.’

‘Dorothy’s fine though,’ said Miriam. ‘I don’t mind visiting Dorothy. She’s a hoot.’

‘The divine Miss Sayers,’ said Morley. ‘Now, she is a little strange, Miriam.’

‘I rather like her,’ said Miriam.

‘Well, of course you would, my dear: the most likeable thing about Dorothy is that she doesn’t care whether you like her or not.’

‘Exactly,’ said Miriam.

‘Anyway, social calls permitting, I think a couple of days should do it, shouldn’t it, for Essex?’

A couple of days chasing around Essex: another utterly lunatic enterprise, of course, just like all the others. But I had no reason to stay in London and every reason to get away. It would give me time to work out how to find a hundred pounds.

‘Great,’ I said.

‘What time is your train out of Liverpool Street later, Father?’ asked Miriam. ‘There’s a special train hired, for those invited to the Oyster Feast, Sefton.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes,’ said Morley. ‘Same every year, apparently. Tradition. Very good of them. And quite appropriate – in a sense Essex begins and ends at Liverpool Street Station, don’t you think?’

‘Indeed it does, Father,’ said Miriam. ‘Indeed it does. The rot sets in almost as soon as one leaves the station. Before, in fact. It’s a perfectly horrid place.’

‘I quite agree with you about Liverpool Street Station, my dear, but I think you’ll find you’re entirely wrong about Essex. Entirely lacking in the great beauty of Devon, of course, or indeed the wildness of Westmorland, or the sheer splendour of Norfolk, but it does make the most of what little it’s got.’

‘Hardly a recommendation, Father.’

‘Anyway,’ said Morley. ‘Must run!’

‘The time, Father, of the arrival of your train?’

‘I’ll send you a telegram,’ said Morley.

‘To where?’ said Miriam. ‘We’ll be in the Lagonda. And you’ll be on the train.’

‘Ah,’ said Morley. ‘Good point. You know, one day someone needs to invent some kind of mobile communication device. A sort of pocket telegram machine.’

‘I’m not sure it’d catch on, Father.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Morley.

‘It would just involve people telling each other they were on board trains.’

‘Ha!’ said Morley. With which he got up from the piano stool and dashed for the door. ‘Good luck then, you two. Until we meet again in Essex!’

‘Very good,’ said Miriam. ‘Goodbye, Father.’

‘No slacking,’ he called from the corridor.

‘No shilly-shallying,’ replied Miriam loudly.

‘No funking,’ I mumbled.

‘Although …’ said Miriam, turning towards me, and adopting her lounge position on the chair. ‘While the cat’s away the mice shall play, eh, Sefton?’

I needed a cup of coffee and a pick-me-up.

And a hundred pounds.

CHAPTER 6
THE BOULEVARDS OF BECONTREE

DENMARK STREET is ideally situated in Soho, if for no other reason that it marks a kind of boundary and thus provides a perfect and speedy exit onto High Holborn and all roads east. I managed to persuade Miriam that I was in urgent need of a hearty breakfast, and this hearty breakfast once duly procured – in a neat little café opposite Foyle’s run by a family of natty Italians, with whom Miriam insisted on practising both her rudimentary Italian and her highly advanced arts of flirtation – we were soon heading off in the Lagonda across London.

London in 1937 was of course entirely different to the London of today, which has seen so many changes that have rendered many parts of it almost unrecognisable. If one aspect, one characteristic remains the same, however, it is this: for all its ugly wounds and gashes, and for all its hasty rebuilds and reconfigurations, east London remains the undisputed territory of the poor. Morley had a curious map on the wall of his study back in St George’s which showed an aerial view of the city marked prominently with all its churches, as though the Church Triumphant were massing and converging and sailing up the Thames towards Parliament, spires aloft like mainsails. To set out in the opposite direction, to move away from the centre, to go east, has always been to go against this flow of the great and the good and the godly, away from money and power, away from Christopher Wren, and out into unpredictable territory of Hawksmoor’s baroque, and crumbling Georgian terraces, and the squat fat brick and concrete mansion blocks that were then already replacing the old Victorian terraces. To go east was and is – and shall surely forever remain – to venture into the wild.

‘Dreadful,’ said Miriam as she gunned the Lagonda out along the Commercial Road and on into Poplar. ‘Can you imagine actually living here?’

‘I rather like it, actually,’ I said, as we proceeded at alarming speed onto the East India Dock Road and caught full sight of the great wharves of London’s docks, with their vast cranes towering above and behind like some giant backstage machinery for scene-shifting and which made the east London streets seem like a stage set where at any moment absolutely anything and everything might happen: tragedy, comedy, history, farce; the East London Palace Theatre of Varieties. It felt thrillingly alive, a place where things were being made rather than merely consumed, a place where lives were actually being lived and not simply performed, where a cat might look at a king, where a fool and his money might soon be parted, and where a little of what you fancy does you good. There were young children swinging high and wide around the lampposts, and mothers young and old were pushing prams, and people were going about their daily business, street sellers with barrels of herrings and bagels, and butchers and bakers and fishmongers, their goods spilling out onto the streets, a cornucopia of bread and fishes and strings of sausages, and men unloading vans, and newsstands, and cars and bikes and horses and carts: it was a kind of people’s paradise …

‘Oh come on, Sefton, don’t attempt your old communist nonsense with me. You’d rather live here, or in a nice flat in Kensington?’

‘To be honest I’d rather be living entirely elsewhere,’ I said.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Miriam. ‘Everywhere is elsewhere, isn’t it? Otherwise nowhere is anywhere.’ She had certainly inherited her father’s eccentric logic. ‘But anyway’ – the subject had strayed away from Miriam’s favourite subject, Miriam, for long enough – ‘I have great news.’

‘Who’s the lucky man this time?’

‘Not that sort of news, silly.’

‘What then?’

‘I’ve been offered a column in a new magazine for women.’

‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘What’s it called?’

‘The magazine? Woman, silly,’ said Miriam, ‘obviously,’ and, ‘Get out of the way, you little beast!’ she screamed, as we swerved in order to avoid a child no more than four or five years old, and dressed all in white, as though in an advert for Omo, who had run into the street chasing a ball, chased by a rather grubbier-looking older girl who fortunately swept up the young one in her arms before she made irreparable and very messy contact with the Lagonda. ‘Damned children! Aren’t they supposed to be in school?’

‘How much are they paying you?’

‘Paying me?’ said Miriam. ‘I have no idea, Sefton. I didn’t ask about payment.’

Which was really the great difference between us. Miriam was someone who never asked, or had to ask about payment: I was someone who was only ever really interested in payment. I wondered if she might be paid as much as a hundred pounds.

‘And what are you going to write about?’

‘My silly, empty way of life, what do you think?’ She flashed me a sarcastic smile.

‘Seriously though,’ I said.

‘Seriously though, Sefton, I am going to tell the truth about the lives of young women today.’

‘I’m sure people will be absolutely fascinated,’ I said.

‘I’m sure they will, actually,’ she replied. ‘I think it’s about time that women spoke out about their real lives, rather than pretending all the time to be second-rate men.’

‘I’d hardly describe you as someone pretending to be a second-rate man, Miriam,’ I said. ‘You’re more like a …’ I was going to say another species, but decided to hold my tongue.

‘Superior man?’ said Miriam.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Sui generis?’

‘Exactly,’ I agreed.

‘Good. Well, at least we’re agreed on one thing. Now do be a darling and light me a cigarette and remind me of the route, would you?’ (She was at this time, as far as I recall, happy to accept any cigarette from anyone: this was before she took up smoking exclusively De Reszke Minors, with their famous ‘Red Tips for Red Lips’, with whom she had some kind of advertising arrangement, connected to her column in Woman. Frankly, in the early years, if you’d offered her a pipe filled to the brim with good old-fashioned stinky Balkan Sobranie she’d have smoked it.)

We were now following the A13 out of London and into Essex: through Canning Town, with the views of Bow Creek and the Beckton Gas Works, and then on and up past Barking where finally you get to see the famous Becontree estate looming on the horizon. If you’ve ever been you’ll know that there is a kind of perpetual grey fog hanging over the place: all those houses and all those people, all that coal and wood being burned to keep them warm and alive, as though Becontree itself were an actual being, a slumbering beast, curled up and breathing out its slumbering beastly fumes into the unforgiving Essex sky.

From a distance the Becontree estate at first gives the appearance of a frontier town in Westerns – one half expects on arrival to find the old clapboard bordello ringing with the cries of good-time girls and grizzled crap-shooters, the saloon doors banging open as you stride in and order a whiskey and the conversation suddenly dies and you realise you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the sheriff’s office is under siege, and the gunslinger is in his buckskin shirt, squinting through the sun’s glare, riding onto Main Street to confront the bad guys in the big black hats – just as in the novels of Zane Grey, another of those writers beloved by Morley whose work seemed to me almost entirely without worth. (Morley’s great paean to the Western is of course Home on the Range: Life in the Wild West (1933), a book perhaps more wildly inaccurate even than any of his others, but which contains an intriguing account of his meeting with Buffalo Bill himself, when the old cowboy had been touring Europe during the early years of the century. Buffalo Bill, according to Morley, was much more than a showman. ‘Few men have done as much for our understanding of the lives of the American Indian,’ according to Morley. ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West was a circus with a purpose.’) But in reality Becontree was no Deadwood. It was no Dodge City, no Tombstone, Arizona. Borderland Essex in the late 1930s was like no other place at no other time. It was a place situated somewhere between the present and the future, stranded in a now that never was and could never be – a place entirely between the wars.

As we made our way down Becontree Avenue I was struck first of all not by the buildings but by the extraordinary sight of what seemed like never-ending rows of privet hedges leading off in every direction, all short and trimmed at regulation waist height and which made it look as though the actual buildings of Becontree were some kind of a weird garden planted in behind the hedges, almost as an afterthought, square, overgrown red brick flowers and shrubs. The Becontree hedges, perhaps more than anything else, sum up that dream of another England that Morley so admired and cherished, a perfect, planted petit-bourgeois green and pleasant land.

‘Ghastly,’ said Miriam.

A brightened, whitened East End

It was certainly strange – like a brightened, whitened East End, as though having been boil-washed and run through the mangle. There were tramways and cheap cars and uniform shopfronts all with identical awnings. There were long monotonous rows of houses, each with a handkerchief patch of garden out front, all equivalent in size and shape, except for those few homes set further back from the road around miniature greens, and odd corner sites that had young trees planted, and fresh, ugly churches. It all looked terribly clean and also rather Dutch; something to do with the pitch of the roofs, perhaps, and also the fact that everywhere one looked there were men and women on bicycles, furiously pedalling, as if the life of the nation itself depended on the men and women of Essex getting to work on time. And yet somehow, for all it looked longingly towards Europe for its architectural inspiration, it also seemed inevitably and undeniably American: the wide streets clearly built not for boulevardiers and bicycles but for cars and trucks and lorries, and the low-rise buildings not the stuff of the Low Countries but rather of the New World, the only ornament and interest the advertising hoardings that glued the streets together with Parkinson’s Biscuits, Eno’s Fruit Salts, Lavvo and Pumphrey’s Lemon Curd. We pulled over beneath a sign for Bile Beans, in a spot designated by another sign for ‘PARKING’, in front of a shop called Clifford’s, at the corner of Becontree Avenue and Valence Avenue. A convoy of lorries piled high with sand and gravel came thundering past, spraying fine dust and diesel fumes in their wake.

‘What on earth is this place?’ asked Miriam.

‘This,’ I said, ‘is the modern world. I’ll maybe get a few photographs,’ I said, ‘and then we can be on our way.’

‘Well, if this is the modern world, Sefton,’ said Miriam, ‘I want no part of it.’ Which of course is what made Miriam so thoroughly modern.

As I was carefully framing a shot for Morley, featuring the dusty boulevards of Becontree, and while Miriam sat smiling regally at the passers-by ogling both her and the Lagonda – not an everyday sight in south Essex, either of them – a man came sauntering proprietorially along the pavement towards us. His hat was pulled down tight on his head, his hands deep in the pockets of his double-breasted overcoat, and he had the kind of bullying walk that suggested he was prepared to pick a fight with anyone, at any time, and preferably now. It was Willy Mann, Mr Klein’s business agent and fixer. The last time I’d seen him was just the night before, when he was all shiny and naked in the Turkish baths: now, thank goodness, he was cooled off and dressed, though no less menacing.

‘Well, well,’ said Willy. He was the very definition of shifty, with a habit of moving and shrugging inside his clothes, as though avoiding a punch, or calculating his next blow. ‘Sefton, again.’ He nodded towards my cuts and bruises. ‘Trouble?’

‘Hello, Willy,’ I said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on.’

‘A joke, presumably?’

‘Don’t encourage him,’ said Miriam, lighting a cigarette.

‘Hello, hello,’ said Willy, removing his hat and going to shake Miriam’s hand. ‘You’re not with him, surely, a fine young lady like yourself?’

Fortunately Miriam was accustomed to compliments from men far more accomplished than Willy and was more than ready with a put-down.

‘“With him” in the strict sense of being accompanied by him, sir, yes.’ She paused and took a long thoughtful drag on her cigarette, effectively establishing her dominance over the conversation, over the cigarette, and of course over Willy. ‘But certainly not “with him” in the broader sense of having, possessing and thus, crudely and colloquially speaking, being in a relationship “with him”, if that’s what you’re asking, certainly not, no.’ She took another long draw on her cigarette and raised an eyebrow at Willy. ‘So it rather depends in what sense you were using the term, doesn’t it?’

‘Goodness me. Lively one,’ said Willy to me. ‘Not her who roughed you up, was it?’

‘I haven’t laid a finger on him,’ said Miriam.

‘More’s the pity, eh?’ said Willy, nudging me.

Miriam gave a furious little growl at this and flashed her ruby-red fingernails at Willy, cigarette aloft, one of her more alarming gestures, suggesting a panther – or some blonde equivalent thereof – about to pounce. ‘I suppose you’d better introduce me to your witty little friend here, Sefton,’ she said wearily to me. ‘Since you are “with” me, though only in the strict and obvious sense.’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘This is Willy Mann, Miriam. Willy, this is Miriam Morley.’

‘Very pleased to make your acquaintance,’ said Willy, with, I thought, rather too much feeling in his ‘very’: Miriam tended to have an instant mesmerising effect on men. I recall there being one or two chaps in fact who proposed marriage within an hour of meeting her. I hoped Willy wasn’t going to embarrass himself.

‘And where do you boys know each other from?’ asked Miriam.

‘Sefton and I—’

‘Have a lot of mutual friends,’ I interrupted.

‘I didn’t know you had any friends,’ said Miriam, blowing smoke, as she liked to, as though in an aside.

‘Sefton always likes to play his cards close to his chest,’ said Willy. ‘I didn’t have you down as a man to be driving a Lagonda, for example.’

‘I think you’ll note that I’m driving the Lagonda, actually,’ said Miriam, from the driver’s seat. ‘Sefton is my passenger.’

‘Indeed,’ said Willy. ‘All the more remarkable, Sefton.’

‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘what are you doing up around these parts, Willy?’

‘I might have asked you the same thing, old chap. Not your usual stomping ground, is it?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Miriam, on my behalf. ‘But here we are. And why are you here, Willy?’

‘Mr Klein has business interests up here,’ said Willy.

‘Ah, yes,’ I said, vaguely remembering what Willy had explained to me the night before.

‘And who is this Mr Klein when he’s at home?’ asked Miriam.

‘He’s a businessman,’ said Willy. ‘Good friend of ours.’

‘And what would be Mr Klein’s business in Becontree, of all places, if you don’t mind my asking?’ Miriam was cursed with her father’s curiosity.

‘Do you have half an hour?’ asked Willy.

‘No,’ I said.

‘It rather depends,’ said Miriam.

‘I thought perhaps I might show you something,’ said Willy.

‘Did you now?’ said Miriam. ‘And I wonder what that might be?’

She had a habit sometimes, I noticed, when she was talking to men, of moving her cigarette between her fingers very slightly and very carefully. She was doing it now – a subtle and expressive gesture.

‘You’ll have to trust me to find out,’ said Willy.

‘Hmm. What do you think, Sefton? Should we trust Willy here to show us something? Or should we not?’ And she again moved the cigarette ever so slightly between her fingers. She had us both in the palm of her hand.

CHAPTER 7
THIS IS ENGLAND

AS SO OFTEN, with so many people, and so many things, what Willy actually had to show us was something of an anticlimax. What he had to show us was a building site on Klein’s new development on the edge of Becontree. He was shouting facts and figures at us, vainly trying to impress Miriam, as lorries went thundering past.

‘You see, apart from the construction,’ he yelled, ‘there’s all the haulage and the materials themselves. So in the average house you’ve got perhaps forty thousand bricks, plus your lime and sand and cement, and then there’s your plaster and roofing tiles, fireplaces and what have you. Which is about a hundred and fifty tonnes worth per house, which has all got to be hauled to site somehow – plus your excavations. So you’re looking at quite a job.’

‘And quite a profit,’ said Miriam.

‘Exactly,’ said Willy.

‘So Mr Klein builds the houses, he provides the materials, and he provides the means by which the materials are transported? Is that right?’ said Miriam.

‘That’s right.’

‘Quite a business model.’

‘I didn’t know he was into haulage as well,’ I said.

‘Indeed he is, Sefton,’ said Willy, as a lorry nudged its way slowly through the building site towards us.

‘Quite the all-rounder, your Mr Klein,’ said Miriam.

‘You could say that. He was rather hoping in fact that Sefton here might be able to assist us with one or two of our current projects.’

‘Sefton!?’ Miriam laughed.

‘Yes.’

‘Assisting your Mr Klein?’

‘Yes.’

‘Has he met him?’

‘Thank you for that vote of encouragement, Miriam,’ I said.

‘Well anyway, he’s too late, isn’t he, your chap,’ said Miriam. ‘Sefton’s already in steady employment – working for me.’

‘And I’m sure you work him pretty hard,’ said Willy.

‘You have no idea,’ said Miriam.

I wondered how much Mr Klein might be paying.

The lorry was now reversing its way perilously close to the Lagonda.

‘There we are,’ said Willy. ‘That’s what I like to see. Another lorryload down from the quarries.’ And as if on cue, the lorry upended its vast load of sand, close enough to the Lagonda to coat it in a fine pale yellow mist.

‘Little bit close for comfort,’ said Willy. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘Lovely lorry,’ said Miriam, taking no notice of Willy: she never really cared about the things that other people cared about. I thought for a moment she’d said ‘lovely lolly’.

‘A Thornycroft Trusty,’ she continued. ‘The lorry.’

‘How on earth do you …’ began Willy. ‘This is quite a girl you have here, Sefton.’

Miriam was quite a girl, but she certainly wouldn’t thank Willy for telling her so.

‘Father’s a great admirer of Thornycrofts,’ she said. ‘He has a little Handy that he runs on the estate.’

‘Really?’ I said.

‘Who’s your father?’ asked Willy. ‘Not that it’s any of my business.’

‘Swanton Morley,’ said Miriam. ‘Not that it’s any of your business.’

‘The People’s Professor?’

‘The very man.’

‘Good stock then,’ said Willy, as if appraising a prize cow. ‘I am impressed by your choice, Sefton.’

‘Might I refer you to my earlier answer about being “with” Sefton only in the strict sense of being accompanied by him, sir. He has no more “chosen” me than he has chosen the weather. I am an entirely separate entity.’

‘An entirely separate and unpredictable entity,’ I added.

‘Thank you, Sefton,’ said Miriam. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

‘Anyway,’ said Willy, interrupting Miriam’s teasing, ‘this is the finished article.’ He pointed to a large plain, pebble-dashed building to our left. It looked rather … municipal.

‘It’s certainly spacious,’ said Miriam.

‘It’s maisonettes, actually,’ said Willy.

‘Oh,’ said Miriam. ‘I thought you meant the whole building.’

‘No, no! That’s a dozen flats there, miss,’ said Willy.

‘How continental,’ said Miriam.

‘They’re very well appointed inside,’ said Willy.

‘I’m sure they are.’

‘Perhaps we’ll make a house call, shall we?’ said Willy. ‘See it for ourselves? Come on.’

‘We should really be getting on, Willy,’ I said.

‘Nonsense,’ said Miriam. ‘Bit of colour for the book, eh, Sefton? Some photographs? Also, some material for my new column.’

‘You’re not a journalist, are you?’ asked Willy, suddenly alarmed.

‘No, no, silly!’ said Miriam. ‘I just write about my life for a woman’s magazine.’

‘Talents that know no end,’ said Willy, who was clearly smitten, as so many before and after were smitten.

We picked our way amid piles of sand and gravel and pallets containing bricks and long white wooden A-frames and beams and trusses and Willy rapped officiously on the door of one of the ground-floor maisonettes in the pebble-dashed building. A climbing rose had been rather forlornly planted by the door, nailed and tied with string to some sort of frame made from scavenged wood.

A woman answered almost immediately, wearing a pinny and a sharp expression. Willy explained that he was a representative of the firm that was building the maisonettes and wanted to show some visitors round.

‘Good!’ said the woman.

‘Excellent,’ said Willy.

‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

‘So,’ continued Willy, walking straight past her into the narrow hallway, indicating for us to follow. There was just room for the four of us to stand shoulder to shoulder.

‘I’ve written to you three times,’ said the woman. ‘And I’ve spoken to your foreman goodness knows how many. Where have you been?’

‘As you can see,’ said Willy, opening a narrow door to a tiny bathroom to the right. ‘All the houses come with indoor sanitary facilities.’

‘Well, well,’ said Miriam. ‘How marvellous.’

‘It doesn’t flush,’ said the woman. ‘It’s not worked for months. We’re having to slop it out.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Miriam.

‘Have you brought your tools?’ continued the woman. ‘Are you going to fix it now?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Willy. ‘I represent the builders rather than the landlords, madam, I’m afraid,’ said Willy. ‘I thought I explained.’

‘We need this fixed,’ said the woman.

‘And I’m sure it will be fixed,’ said Willy. ‘If you don’t mind?’ He leaned past the woman and tapped a wall. ‘Solid brick construction throughout, as you can hear.’ The wall gave a hollow echo in response. ‘Homes for heroes!’

‘It’s all partition,’ said the woman. ‘No insulation. Walls are like paper. Look, the other problem is this damp in the bedroom. There’s mushrooms growing in here!’ She started to walk into the room leading directly off the hall, but Willy turned right instead and we followed into what was the one and only reception room, just big enough for a tiny square table on a rag rug on the lino floor, and an old iron fold-up bed concertinaed under the window. ‘And a fireplace in every room,’ continued Willy, gesturing towards the tiny brown-tiled hearth.

‘Gives no heat,’ said the woman. ‘We all have to sleep in here together in the winter, for the warmth.’

‘You’ve got electric lights, I see,’ said Miriam, gesturing at the bare bulb dangling over the table.

‘Doesn’t work half the time.’

‘Kitchen,’ said Willy, gesturing towards a room leading off the reception room, which accommodated a Baby Belling, a sink, a few shelves, and nothing else.

‘Kitchenette,’ said the woman.

‘A few chromium fittings and it’d be the equal of anything on Park Lane!’ said Willy.

‘What’s he talking about?’ said the woman.

‘And so concludes our tour,’ said Willy, beating a hasty retreat to the front door.

The woman grabbed at Miriam’s arm as we caught up with Willy in the hall. ‘You’re not thinking of renting one of these, are you?’ she asked her.

‘No,’ said Miriam.

‘Good. Because my advice is don’t. These places are worse than the tenements.’

‘Surely not,’ said Miriam.

‘Teething troubles,’ said Willy. ‘Only to be expected. Rome wasn’t built in a day, eh?’

‘We’ve been here a year,’ said the woman.

‘Well, thank you, madam, for showing us round,’ said Willy.

‘Yes,’ said Miriam. ‘It’s really been an education.’

‘Bit of a whistlestop, I’m afraid,’ said Willy, striding away from the building as fast as he could, and lighting a cigarette. ‘But gives you an idea, I hope.’ He stood at a distance and admired the building. ‘What do you think?’

‘Absolutely ghastly,’ said Miriam. She was never shy of stating her opinions.

‘Can I offer you a cigarette?’ Willy asked Miriam.

‘I have my own, thank you.’ Which she did not.

‘It’s not for the likes of you, of course,’ said Willy, his eyes fixed on Miriam. I’d seen it before: men often became drawn into argument with Miriam, mistaking the argument for a kind of flirtation. I often made the same mistake myself.

‘Not for the likes of anyone, I wouldn’t have thought,’ said Miriam.

‘People need houses,’ said Willy.

‘People need homes more than they need houses,’ said Miriam, ‘and I’m afraid I find it difficult to see how your buildings could ever be regarded as homes.’

‘Matter of taste, perhaps?’ said Willy.

‘Nothing to do with taste,’ said Miriam. ‘And everything to do with quality – and intention.’

Willy took another couple of quick, excited drags on his cigarette and then ground it out underfoot. ‘With all due respect, miss, I hardly think you’re an expert in housing.’

‘With all due respect, sir, I hardly think you and your Mr Klein are experts either, on the evidence of these buildings.’

Willy laughed.

‘Hardly a laughing matter, is it?’ said Miriam. ‘Jerry-building? I’m sure there must be rules and regulations about this sort of thing, aren’t there?’

‘There are indeed, miss. And we know exactly what we’re doing, thank you.’

‘Yes,’ said Miriam. ‘I’m sure you know exactly what you’re doing. That’s hardly reassuring though, is it? Have you by chance visited the Karl-Marx-Hof municipal buildings in Vienna?’

‘I can’t say I have,’ said Willy.

‘Well, I have. Father and I visited, for some article he was writing. And I have to say, I thought they were a fine example of how to provide housing for the masses.’

‘I don’t know how they do things in Vienna, miss. But this is England.’

‘And might we English not expect housing of a similar standard to the Austrian?’ said Miriam.

‘Anyway,’ said Willy, realising that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Miriam, but playing a final gambit. ‘Perhaps I can take you for dinner sometime and we could discuss it further?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Miriam. ‘I doubt we’d have anything to talk about beyond your blatant buccaneering, sir. We should really get on, shouldn’t we, Sefton?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed.

Willy looked crushed – and determined. I’d seen the look before. There was not a man who didn’t think he was a match for Miriam, and who wasn’t.

‘Well, just remember Mr Klein’s offer, Sefton,’ he said to me. ‘Give it some thought, won’t you?’

‘I certainly will, Willy,’ I said.

‘He certainly won’t, Willy,’ said Miriam.

I was glad to get out of Becontree.

CHAPTER 8
THE DAGENHAM GIRL PIPERS

I CAN ONLY DESCRIBE THE SCENE that we eventually came upon in Colchester as ‘strange’. (Morley, I should say, did not like the word ‘strange’. He regarded it as lacking in specificity, ‘a terrible failing in a word’ – see Morley’s Vocabulary Builder: Words to Use and Words to Avoid (1932) – as if it were somehow its own fault.)

Morley’s ambitious itinerary for our trip up through Essex suggested that after Becontree we were supposed to visit Epping Forest (‘Poor John Clare!’ read his scribbled notes. ‘Mad as a hatter!’), Romford’s famous brewery, Tiptree for the jam, the villages around Saffron Walden (‘Cromwell’s headquarters – the heart of Radical Essex!’), the Marconi works in Chelmsford (‘Inventive Essex!’), before finally heading to Colchester for the Oyster Feast. But after our tour with Willy Mann of the jerry-built houses of Becontree we were forced to cut short our peregrinations and to press on directly to Colchester to make it in time for the Oyster Feast. Miriam, needless to say, drove like a maniac. I shan’t even attempt to describe the Essex countryside: it all looked perfectly pleasantly blurred.

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