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Flaming Sussex
Ian Sansom


From Beachy Head to Brighton, and from Chichester to Rye, Flaming Sussex sees our intrepid trio plunge once again into the dark heart of England‘Beautifully crafted by Sansom, Professor Morley promises to become a little gem of English crime writing; sample him now’ Daily MailAt about four o’clock on 5th November 1937, Miss Lizzie Walter, a teacher at the King’s Road Primary School in Lewes, said goodbye to her young pupils. The children clattered out into the dark streets, preparing for that night’s revelries – and Miss Lizzie Walter was never seen alive again.Hitler, Mussolini and Pope Paul V are on fire. Fireworks explode and flaming tar barrels are being dragged through the streets. Bonfire Night in Lewes is the closest England comes to Mardis Gras. In their fifth adventure, Morley, Miriam and Sefton find themselves caught up in the celebrations and the chaos.On the morning after the night before, Sefton goes for a swim in Pells Pool, the oldest freshwater lido in England – in the very centre of Lewes – where he discovers a woman’s body. She has drowned. Is it a misadventure or could it be … murder?Join Morley, Miriam and Sefton on another journey into the dark heart of England.





























Copyright (#ulink_dce58df7-528c-55f6-8187-50836b4918cd)


4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019

Copyright © Ian Sansom 2019

Cover design by Jo Walker

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

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008207359

Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780008207366

Version: 2019-04-11




Dedication (#ulink_3688806a-bf5c-52ad-a1f5-27dd5e62ee1b)


For Ciaran




Epigraph (#ulink_88554aa4-2030-57e4-bd10-6f6eb1ed541d)


God gives all men all earth to love,

But since man’s heart is small,

Ordains for each one spot shall prove

Beloved over all.

Each to his choice, and I rejoice

The lot has fallen to me

In a fair ground – in a fair ground –

Yea, Sussex by the sea!

RUDYARD KIPLING


Contents

Cover (#u133b3dca-9de0-5cbe-9bca-69e7c4aee50e)

Title Page (#uf1bc86ba-b3f1-5d65-86b5-39aa560c9f97)

Copyright (#u3c343f82-0ea9-5c8e-8222-1f286ea7c3f2)

Dedication (#ub9fd9d1b-f38c-57fd-a2b7-eeda382575e5)

Epigraph (#ud8ac18cd-47f9-5f34-8b2b-41c3d8b25a07)

Chapter 1 (#u3adc5e77-84d7-5adc-8844-754eb6cb143c)

Chapter 2 (#u3274ee82-656f-57d3-ba54-4832bb295a75)

Chapter 3 (#u9408f0eb-7ed8-59b9-8add-2efba10a6699)

Chapter 4 (#u0f42662c-40c2-5aab-afe7-1038c8ba018d)

Chapter 5 (#u8ba1196c-0628-5814-8a60-cbe59cf845f9)

Chapter 6 (#ub57596fe-2aa1-5cbd-b2d4-2681a19a092d)

Chapter 7 (#u6345abe9-2469-540f-81a2-0b72042632fc)

Chapter 8 (#u1fa81e9f-03e5-5043-92ac-9b459b6376b7)

Chapter 9 (#u73f5a3a6-6ed4-5ed4-8608-19b9ddd34375)

Chapter 10 (#u82665161-61a5-5c94-bb59-9b6ba8ada6e2)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)

Footnote (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Picture Credits (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Ian Sansom (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)











CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_9bbb9209-4ac9-5fbd-be8a-7ba88d7f856a)










LEWES, SUSSEX, FRIDAY, 5 November 1937.


At about four o’clock, Miss Lizzie Walter, a teacher at the King’s Road Primary School, said goodbye to her young pupils. The children clattered out into the dark streets of the town, preparing for the night’s revelries – and Miss Lizzie Walter was never seen alive again.

Lizzie lived with her parents, respectable working-class folk, at 11 Saddle Street. Her father was a tradesman, her mother a housewife. She was young, intelligent, hard-working, good-looking. She liked literature, music and art. She was dressed that day in a double-breasted brown tweed coat, but wore no hat.

It is about a twenty-minute walk from King’s Road School to Saddle Street and normally Lizzie would have returned home by four thirty, but because of the Bonfire Night preparations her mother and father felt no anxiety regarding her failure to return. Bonfire Night in Lewes is a famous night of revelry. They assumed that she had met friends and gone to join the celebrations.

It was not until six o’clock the following morning, when they discovered her bed had not been slept in, that her parents raised the alarm – and shortly after when I found Lizzie’s body floating in the lido at Pells Pool.

We had, at that point, been in Sussex for less than twenty-four hours.











CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_2ed45769-d826-588c-a01e-ee7395be14fd)







OF ALL OUR TRIPS AND TOURS during those years, our trip to Sussex was one of the darkest and most difficult: it was a turning point. We arrived, as always, intent on doing good and reporting on the good: we were, as so often, on a quest. We departed less than heroes. None of us could hold our heads up high.

The County Guides series of guidebooks, as some readers will doubtless be aware, but others may now well have forgotten, were intended by their once world-famous progenitor and my erstwhile employer, Swanton Morley, as a celebration of all that is good in England, volume after volume after volume of guides to the English counties, celebrating their variety and uniqueness. The County Guides – in their smart green uniform editions, at one time as familiar as the Bible or the old Odhams Encyclopaedia on the shelves of the aspirant working and middle classes – were hymns to the noble spirit of Britain. They were intended as uplifting literature – ‘up lit’ was the term coined by Morley in an interview in the short-lived Progress magazine in June 1939: ‘What this nation needs now is up lit.’

In reality, in every county we travelled to in those long years together, researching and writing the books, we seemed to encounter the very worst of human nature: downbeat doesn’t do it justice. Downcast, downfaced, downthrown and downright.

In Norfolk it was treachery, in Devon it was devilry, in Westmorland tragedy and in Essex farce, but in Sussex we encountered not only murder but mayhem and depravity: it was not just the burning of the crosses and the flaming tar barrels, the torchlit processions, the sheer anarchy of Bonfire Night in Lewes, it was the revelation to ourselves and to each other of our own terrible inadequacies. For ever after, Morley referred to The County Guides: Sussex as ‘flaming’ Sussex. (He had pet names for all the books, in fact: The County Guides: Essex was always Essex Poison to him, Westmorland was Westmorland Alone, Cheshire Rogue Cheshire, and etcetera and etcetera).




Before we arrived in Sussex, Morley, as usual, had drawn up a long list of what to see, with an even longer list of annotations. Having already produced our County Guides to Norfolk, Devon, Westmorland and Essex we had begun to develop a kind of routine. We would meet either in London or at Morley’s vast and eccentric estate in Norfolk, St George’s, where he would brief me and Miriam, his daughter, and we would then embark upon our adventure in his beloved Lagonda, Miriam at the wheel, Morley strapped in behind his typewriter, and me as general factotum.

For our journey to Sussex, Morley’s list began with Abbotsford Gardens (‘Open to the public on weekdays only, alas, but fabulous aviaries – and monkeys! – and light refreshments!’) and included, in addition to all those Sussex places one might reasonably expect to find in any good guidebook and gazetteer, many places that one might reasonably not, such as the Balcombe Viaduct (‘A marvel of Victorian engineering!’), the Pavilion in Bexhill (‘A marvel of modern engineering!’), the Rising Sun Inn at North Bersted (‘The Jubilee Stamp Room: one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. A whole room papered from floor to ceiling with postage stamps, said to number in excess of three million’), the Chattri (‘War memorial erected by the India Office and the Corporation of Brighton to commemorate the brave Hindu and Sikh soldiers who died in the Great War’), Chick Hill (‘Marvellous view to France’), Clapham Wood (‘Satanic mists, apparently!’), Climping (‘We must visit the Moynes!’), Frant (‘Lovely obelisk’), the Heritage Craft School near Chailey (‘The salvation home for cripples!’), some Knucker Holes (‘Bottomless, some of them, reputedly’), Mick Mills’ Race (‘Wonderful avenue in St Leonard’s Forest where the smuggler Mick Mills raced the devil and won’), Shoreham Beach (‘For the railway carriage homes, of course! England’s Little Hollywood!’) and the Witterings, for no good reason, both East and West.

I’ll be honest, I had absolutely no interest in Sussex.

The truth was, I shouldn’t even have been in Sussex.

Before we arrived in Sussex, I had decided to resign.

I had at that time worked for Morley for a period of exactly four months. This was late in 1937, after my return from Spain, where I had discovered, to my horror, the horrors of war. Perhaps I should have known better: now at least I knew the worst. Adrift in London, I had answered an advertisement in The Times and had found myself apprenticed to the most famous, the most popular – and certainly the most prolific – writer in England. During those four intense, turbulent months, Morley had somehow produced four books – Norfolk, Devon, Westmorland and Essex – in addition to his usual output of articles and opinion pieces on everything from the care of houseplants for the Lady’s Companion, to the etymology and usage of strange, obscure and pretty much useless words in John O’London’s Weekly, to endless wearying tales of moral uplift and derring-do for anyone who would have them, including the Catholic Extension, the Christian Observer and many and various – and thankfully now defunct – earnest freethinking journals.

As his assistant, it was my job not just to sharpen Morley’s pencils – though pencil-sharpening, pen-procuring, inkwell-filling, notebook-filing and all manner of other stationery-related activities were indeed a large part of my daily activities – but also to help him and Miriam correct proofs, take photographs, deal with correspondence, pack and prepare for our long journeyings round the country, and to perform all other duties as necessary and as arising, including providing physical protection, offering what would now probably be described as ‘emotional’ support and encouragement, and of course listening to what one biographer – borrowing a phrase, I believe, from Gilbert and Sullivan – memorably described as Morley’s ‘elegant outpouring of the lion a-roaring’, but which I might describe as his endless, pointless, glorious ramble.

While Morley was working on the proofs for Essex, I had been tasked with putting the finishing touches – ‘Semi-gloss ’em, Sefton, but semi-gloss only, please, we don’t want too much of your smooth and lyrical, thank you’ – to a number of articles, including something on ‘The Nature and Management of Children’, about which I knew precisely nothing; another titled, depressingly, ‘Conversations with Vegetables’; and another about the sound of tarmac for an American magazine that called itself Common Sense but which displayed no sign whatsoever of possessing such and which paid Morley vast sums for articles on subjects so strange that Miriam liked to joke that the magazine might usefully change its name to Complete and Utter Nonsense. (‘The Sound of Tarmac’, for example, was intended as a companion piece to two inexplicably popular articles we’d produced for the magazine, one on the quality of modern British kerbstones and another on regional, national and international variations in the size of flagstones. The Yanks couldn’t get enough of this sort of stuff.) My most recent work, gussying up one of Morley’s quick opinion pieces – eight hundred words for a magazine with the unfortunate title of the Cripple, a publication aimed at war veterans and the disabled, in praise of Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help, all about the importance of self-discipline in overcoming difficulties and achieving happiness – had left me feeling not so much self-helped as self-disgusted, as if I had drunk water from a sewer or a poisoned well.

Four months in, I was physically exhausted, I was enervated.

And I was envious.

At college I had naively believed that I was the master of my own destiny; in Spain, I had realised that none of us truly determines our fate; and now I was beginning to think that my entire life was a matter of complete insignificance. The real problem was that the longer I worked for Morley – a true literary lion, a working-class hero, an international figure who was big in Japan and who counted the Queen of Italy among his fans, and indeed frequent correspondents, a man who had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and who had then set about pulling up the bootstraps of the nation – the more I worked for this infernal writing machine, this actual living and breathing – there is no other word for it – genius, the more I was reminded of my own lack of drive and determination and brilliance and the more I came to despair of the possibility of ever making a significant contribution to the world of letters myself. I had long harboured dreams of becoming a writer, yet the only writing I did for myself now was the occasional postcard, my betting slips and IOUs. Writing for Morley, a master of the English language, I had become thoroughly disgusted with words. His facility both fascinated and appalled me. His achievements seemed incredible – and worthless. The last poem I had written consisted of exactly four words: ‘Vexed ears/ Wasted years.’ The County Guides were crushing me. I was beginning to feel no better than a broken, beaten dog.

My only consolation was that between books I was able to return to London, where I would enjoy all the things that city has to offer and would attempt to iron out the various knots and kinks that had formed in my mind and my body by consorting with the kind of people who had knots and kinks of their own to deal with – my kind of people.

Which is how I had ended up, on a Saturday night at the very end of October 1937, at the all-night vapour bath on Brick Lane in the East End.











CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_ccb5dbeb-ae32-5941-802e-41c9a4fab40f)







IT WAS EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED. Frankly, if you can’t get exactly what you need in the East End on a Saturday night, there must be something wrong with you – something seriously wrong with you.

After the relaxation and rigours of the vapour bath, I had adjourned to a pub nearby for light refreshments and to enjoy the company of people who certainly looked like, but who may or may not have been, thieves, prostitutes and ponces. One should never judge by appearances, of course, according to Morley. One should be open-minded. One should take people as you find them. The only problem is, when you take people as you find them, you’ll often find that they’ll already have taken you – in every sense – for everything. After a couple of hours of drinking and singing around the piano, I somehow found myself taking up the generous offer of hospitality and a bed for the night by a sharp-suited Limehouse chap I’d never met before and a couple of his lovely female companions. I did not judge them by appearances, being entirely incapable of doing so – and it turned out, alas, contra-Morley, that this sharp-suited individual with his female companions was indeed a ponce with his prostitutes, but I was determined I was not going to allow them to prove themselves also as thieves.

I awoke early after our long and largely sleepless night, having eventually fallen into an unsettling dream in which I was sitting with a man at a large glass table, drinking champagne, him wearing a silk suit and brightly polished shoes, and with a set of scales before him and saying he had a special present for me. At least, I think it was a dream. What woke me was the sound of birds.

At St George’s, in the cottage that Morley had provided for me in the grounds of the estate, I would often wake to the sound of birdsong. All else there was silence, though if you listened carefully you could hear not only the sound of water bubbling and swirling in the faraway streams and in the cottage well, you could actually hear your blood coursing through your veins. It was unsettling, the country.

But in London: birdsong?

I remember being momentarily confused. I lay gazing at a crack in the ceiling above me, through which it would have been possible to insert my fist.

Was that the sound of birds?

Was I in Norfolk?

Or was I back in Spain?

Was I dreaming?

It was definitely the sound of birds. Lots of birds.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see empty beer bottles and cigarette butts piled in a saucer. The place, wherever it was, seemed dirty and unloved. I raised myself up on my elbow. There was a woman lying asleep beside me.

And then I remembered.

It had been a very long night.

I turned my head. My clothes lay discarded on the floor. The Limehouse chap and another woman lay sleeping in a bed opposite. There was a lighted cigarette smouldering in an ashtray on an upturned case by the bed, and what looked like a fresh glass of whisky perched precariously next to it.

I took some deep breaths and then coughed quietly in order to gauge any response.

Nothing.

Having thus determined to my satisfaction that my new friends were either fast asleep or at least innocently dozing, I rose quickly and quietly, intent on hanging on to whatever remained of my dignity and in my wallet, gathered up my clothes and fled from the room, down a dark stairway and along a corridor towards a door.

It was precisely at that moment, cold and ashamed, and the previous evening’s activities returning clearly to my mind, that I determined that I should no longer live my life as a slave to my whims and desires, or indeed as a slave to the whims and desires of others, but that I should once again attempt to master myself and my destiny. It was then that I determined that I had had enough of being used by life, by London, and by everyone. Morley believed that on our grand tour we were surveying one of the great wonders of the world – Great Britain – and London of course, as it always has, believed it was the great city in this Great Britain, but at that time, in those years, it felt nothing like great and I felt nothing but forever lost and losing, a man condemned to life on a slowly sinking ship.

Stumbling as I reached the door, I thought I heard movement from my companions up above, and so fled from this latest prison of my temporary lodgings with new resolve – and into a scene of utter chaos.











CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_1bd7b917-07b5-5038-8da3-82f59b0f5ea5)







IT WAS THE SOUND OF BIRDS, and it was the sound as much as the sight that struck me, a cacophony of whistles and trills, accompanied by the bass-soprano of the voices of men and women, and the deeply disturbing sound of whimpering animals.

‘Pretty foreign birds! Pretty foreign birds!’

Out on the street, as far as the eye could see, piled one upon the other, there were cages full of birds: larks, thrushes, canaries, pigeons and parrots. There were also dogs and cats in boxes, and chickens and snakes and gerbils and guinea pigs and weasels and tortoises, and goodness knows what else, animals of every kind everywhere. Here, a new-born litter of puppies tumbling over each other in a child’s cot being used as a makeshift pen. There, a raggedy black rooster peering out of an old laundry basket. And endlessly, everywhere you looked, there were bulldogs and boxers and pit bulls straining at their leashes, restrained by men who looked like bulldogs, boxers and pit bulls straining at their leashes. It was a Noah’s Ark, with flat caps and cobbles.

I’d forgotten about the market.

On Sundays, in those days, the centre of London shifted; it went east to Bethnal Green and its environs, from the junction with Bethnal Green Road and Shoreditch High Street, onto Sclater Street and Chance Street and Cheshire Street: here, on Sundays, you could buy and sell just about anything. Petticoat Lane, down by Aldgate, became the people’s Piccadilly, the mecca for cheap, cheerful and ‘unofficial’ goods: on Sundays, the East End became the dirty, cracked dark mirror of the West.

And here I was, in the midst of it, Club Row Market – the place where the working men and women of London came for their animals. A nightmare of containment and enclosure.

As I shut the door behind me and entered the chaos, I remember looking up and noting that opposite, across the road, there was a wet fish shop with the traditional, unnecessary sign outside, ‘Fresh Fish Sold Here’. (This sort of signage was one of Morley’s many bugbears, addressed in one of his popular, hectoring Some Dos and Don’ts pamphlets, Shop Signage: Some Dos and Don’ts. ‘We know it’s “Here”, because it’s here, we know it is being “Sold” because it is a shop, and if not “Fresh”, then, frankly, what? So “Fish”, in short, for a fish shop, will suffice.’) A man in a white apron stood outside the ‘Fish’ shop, scooping jet-black, chopped, gelatinous jellied eels into white enamel bowls: the mere sight of it made me want to retch; I had to struggle to contain myself. Pausing mid-scoop, as if having sensed my dis-ease, the man in the apron looked across at me and scowled in disapproval. Gagging rather, I glanced away to see standing directly in front of me an elderly gentleman in a fez selling hot roasted nuts from a pan heated over a metal drum of embers set upon a simple wooden trolley. I could feel the heat on my skin. This man too looked directly at me and shook his head, acknowledging and also somehow regretting my very presence.

Which was when I realised I was naked.

Fortunately there were so many people jamming the street – it could have been a medieval fair, or a football crowd – that no one paid much attention as I huddled in the doorway and frantically pulled on my trousers, shirt, jacket and shoes. The problem was not that I was getting dressed, but that I was getting in people’s way.

‘Oi, oi,’ came one cry.

‘Oy, oy,’ came another.

‘Mind out the pave!’

‘You on the bash, mate, or what?’

‘Shove over!’

Hastily dressed, I looked back towards the hot-nut man, who nodded at my newly clothed state with calm approval. I put my shoulders back, took a deep breath, turned left and set off quickly down the street.

It was good to be back in the city.

People used to say that you could enter Club Row Market at one end leading a dog, lose it halfway down the street, and then buy it back at the other end. Certainly, it was a place where the usual rules of commerce did not necessarily apply: bruised and beaten dogs were covered in boot polish; cats were dyed; exotic singing birds turned out to be voiceless creatures, their song merrily whistled by their merry vendors as they merrily bagged them up and merrily took your money. Fortunately, it was a place where a man might easily get lost in a crowd.

It was a crisp, bright morning, though dark clouds on the horizon suggested that some cold grey London rain was soon to arrive and turn crisp and bright into dull and damp. I barged my way along the street, continually checking over my shoulder for sight of the Limehouse chap and his ladies – sight of whom, thank goodness, there was none. I barged past men and women hawking animals, bicycles, knives, tea-sets, stockings, second-hand suits and the day’s papers, all at half-price, fresh from outside newsagents in the West End. There were high-value goods at rock-bottom prices, ‘genuine’ articles almost as good as the real thing, and on every street corner urgent men and their accomplices were conducting Dutch auctions that left their customers with half of what they bid for, or nothing at all.

‘Brand new, madam. Never seen daylight or moonlight, or Fanny by gaslight.’

‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll even give you a bag to carry it away in.’

‘Pretty foreign birds! Pretty foreign birds!’

It was as good as a trip to the circus, or a day at the seaside. Traders were dressed to attract attention. There was a man singing ‘Cohen the Crooner’; a tall black man with a walking stick yelling, ‘I gotta horse! I gotta horse!’; and ye olde traditional English organ grinder with ye olde traditional English monkey. There was kosher restaurant after kosher restaurant: Felv’s, Strongwaters, Barnett’s. Entertaining and enticing as it all was, my only aim was to get away and to clear my head. Buying a dog, bagels or placing a bet were most definitely not part of the plan. Other people had other plans.

‘Hey! Hey! Hey, mate! Hey, hey! Buy a dog to keep you warm?’ offered a man with a couple of shivering puppies nestling under his overcoat. He thrust the pups towards me. They were either extremely friendly or more than a little starved, licking frantically at my fingers in the hope of finding some trace of food there, their tails wagging.

‘Look at that! They like you, mate. I could ’ave sold ’em ten times over this morning, but I want ’em to ’ave a good ’ome, see.’

‘No, thank you,’ I said, handing the puppies back and going to step round him.

‘For you, because they like you, I’ll do a special price.’

‘No, thank you,’ I said.

‘What, what’s the matter, mate? Not good enough for you?’ he said, blocking my way.

‘No, I just—’

‘These are bloomin’ good dogs, these. You sayin’ there’s somethin’ wrong with ’em?’

‘No, no.’

‘Full pedigree, these.’ Not only were they not full pedigree dogs, they were nowhere near half, a quarter, or one-eighth pedigree. ‘I’ve got their pedigree right ’ere if you want to see it.’ He patted his pockets.

Which made me think of my wallet. I checked in my jacket pocket – and was delighted to find it still safely there. Smiling with relief, I turned, triumphant, only to see the Limehouse chap approaching fast through the crowd.

A popular novelist might describe the Limehouse chap as swarthy and menacing, but this hardly did him justice. In the warmth and welcome of the East End pub the night before he had seemed the perfect drinking companion: garrulous, generous, good company. In the cold light of day I could see that he was in fact the sort of chap who looked as though he’d recently done some serious damage to good company and was intent upon doing exactly the same again, except worse, the sort of chap whose middle name would have been trouble, if he’d been the sort of chap who had a middle name, which I rather doubted. Even among the rather shady figures of Club Row, he stood out in the crowd like a dark silhouette.






Petticoat Lane: The People’s Piccadiily

Pushing past the puppy-seller – ‘You fuckin’ nark,’ he called after me as I went, a traditional East End greeting – I ducked down, squeezed between some cages and slipped into a shop.











CHAPTER 5 (#ulink_e85773e8-af4f-542b-af3c-10bca059fdfc)







THIS, I remember thinking, this sort of indignity, is exactly what I could do without. This was what I was trying to avoid. Running around London, running around the country, always running, always hiding, always skulking. It was not the life I wanted to live.

As luck would or wouldn’t have it, this particular skulk-hole was a tailor’s – a tiny tailor’s shop, not much bigger than someone’s front room, which I guessed was exactly what it was.

‘Can I help you, sir?’ asked a jolly round-faced man behind the counter, glasses perched on his rather sweaty forehead, waistcoat tightly buttoned over his belly, tape measure loose round his neck, tailor’s chalk in one hand, cigarette in the other. Behind him two young Mediterranean-looking men were at enormous sewing machines, hammering away, hard at work, surrounded by swatches of fabric and vast lengths of cloth, piles of brown paper and, hanging everywhere, what appeared to be half-made garments. The place was like a fabric abattoir.

I glanced out of the window behind me. The Limehouse chap might still appear at any moment, in which case I’d be trapped in this tiny place, unable to escape. I looked at the tailor, with an expression that if not entirely pleading was certainly seeking understanding, and the tailor looked at me, and at my suit, with an expression that switched from curious to concerned to calculating.

It had been a relatively mild autumn and the moths from Morley’s cottage had recently been making significant inroads into all my clothes, including this – once fine, now faded and moth-scarred – blue serge suit. Morley, of course, was something of an expert on the clothes moth, Tineola bisselliella, and on the many and various methods of deterrent: mothballs, camphor wood, bay leaves, cloves, lavender, conkers and all the other standard home remedies. But whatever the deterrent, the little larvae always seem to find a way through. You can wash and you can scrub, you can scatter mothballs far and wide, but again and again the moths will come, they will mate, the females will look for a nice warm place to lay their eggs, the eggs will hatch into larvae, and destruction will ensue. There was and there is, it seems, no solution to moths. Morley’s article on the clothes moth, published in the now long-since defunct Home Notes in August 1939, is titled ‘Eternal Vigilance: The War Against Moths’, and makes for depressing reading. ‘Eternal vigilance is required,’ Morley would often say: it was one of his favourite phrases. ‘Eternal vigilance. Or all is lost.’

Glancing at my suit for a moment, the tailor said nothing.

Then, ‘Sugar lump, my friend?’ he asked.

He indicated a bowl of sugar lumps on the counter top.

‘No, thank you,’ I said, again looking nervously behind me, and again he followed my gaze, then slowly took a sugar lump from the bowl, popped it in his mouth and crunched down on it with surprising force – chromsht, chromsht, chromsht – finishing it off with relish.

‘Sir is desperate; for a new suit, perhaps?’

I couldn’t possibly afford a new suit, even here. My suit was the suit I had bought when I inherited some money from my parents.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ I said. ‘I am desperate for a new suit.’

‘Then sir has come to the right place.’

I glanced again quickly outside.

‘Perhaps I can just use your changing room for a moment?’ I said, and gestured towards a tiny cubicle on the left, hung with a heavy, faded moss-green curtain.

The tailor shook his head. ‘No, no, no, sir. In order to fit the suit I would need to measure you up properly, in private. Total privacy. If you need a new suit.’

‘I really need a new suit,’ I said.

‘Good. Then come. Come. Quick.’

He lifted a part of the counter top, kicked open a hinged door in the counter and let me through, past the men at the sewing machines, who paid us no attention whatsoever, and through a door into a windowless kitchen-cum-fitting room, piled high with yet more fabric and pattern paper, which almost obscured the two vast, ancient, weirdly ornate full-length mirrors set on either side of the space, which gave the room the appearance of decayed imperial chaos.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘No need to thank me, sir,’ said the tailor, who proceeded to measure me up for a suit I did not want and could not afford while discussing cut, buttons and what he referred to as ‘suitage’.

Measurements completed, ‘And when would sir like to collect his suit?’ he asked.

I rather suspected that he knew I had no intention of coming to collect my suit. I also rather suspected that he had no intention of making me a suit.

‘I can come—’

‘We can have it ready in a week, sir.’

‘Well. A week, then,’ I said.

‘By which time the coast should be clear,’ he said.

‘The coast?’

He nodded out towards the front of the shop.

‘Ah,’ I said.

‘We do require a small deposit, of course, sir, for this special sort of service.’

‘Of course.’

I turned away and checked my wallet. Farthings, ha’pennies, thrupenny bits – and two ten bob notes. It was everything I had.

‘I’m afraid I don’t have—’

I turned back to find the tailor, plus the two Mediterranean lads, grinning, blocking the door.

‘We’ll take whatever you do have,’ said the tailor, leaning over and plucking the ten bob notes from my wallet.

I had entered the shop in order to avoid losing money to a merciless-looking thug: I’d ended up losing money to some harmless-looking hustlers.

I had enough money left to buy a cup of tea – and perhaps make a couple of phone calls, which I duly resolved to do. I was getting out.

The tailor and the two men turned and left, and I duly followed them, making my way back to the front of the shop, ready to leave.

‘Your receipt, sir,’ said the tailor, as I was opening the door onto the street. He was writing something on a pad.

I made no reply.

He then proffered the receipt towards me. ‘And we’ll see you next week, then.’

‘Yes,’ I said, turning back and taking the receipt, and turning towards the door again. ‘Next week, absolutely.’

The coast appeared to be clear.

‘Actually,’ I said, as I reached the door, ‘I wonder if I could just borrow your pad for a moment?’

The tailor swivelled the pad towards me.

‘And a pencil or pen?’ I asked.

He took his pencil from behind his ear, licked it ostentatiously and ceremoniously handed it to me.

‘With pleasure, sir.’

And so I scrawled my resignation letter to Morley – courtesy of M. Skulnik, Sclater Street, E1, estd. 1928 – pocketed it and, checking in every direction to make sure the coast was clear, ventured outside.

I’d had enough.











CHAPTER 6 (#ulink_291f33e9-2d94-56b9-affc-17d5a290445a)







WITH MY FINAL FEW COINS I made my phone calls and adjourned to a pie and mash shop off Sclater Street, whose sole recommendation was that it claimed to offer the cheapest cup of tea on the market. Under other less trying circumstances, I might well have adjourned to one of my favourite East End eating establishments, Bloom’s on Aldgate, or Ostwind’s, with its bakery in the basement, or Strongwaters, or Silberstein’s: a man could eat like a king in the restaurants around the Lane, while snacking on latkes and herring in between.

But I had rather lost my appetite.

The first call I made was to Willy Mann, a restaurateur and an associate of the infamous Mr Klein, an East End businessman in the loosest and broadest sense – which is to say, a crook – who had offered me work on a number of occasions since my return from Spain, work I had so far declined, on the basis it was beneath my dignity and against all my principles.

Mr Klein had wide-ranging business interests – in property, retail, wholesale, in precious metals and pharmaceuticals, the import and export thereof – none of which enterprises particularly appealed, and several of which were both highly illegal and extremely dangerous, but which, crucially, did not involve endlessly sharpening the pencils of the country’s leading autodidact, and which would, significantly, mean that I didn’t need to travel the length and breadth of the country in order to make a meagre living, and could safely remain in London without fear of threat or retribution from people like the Limehouse chap and the many and various others whom I had foolishly offended. Out of the frying pan and into the fire – a desperate bid for freedom.

The second call was to Miriam.

I’d intended simply to let Miriam know that I wouldn’t be joining her for our planned trip to Sussex, but she had somehow commandeered and then entirely redirected the conversation, letting me know that she needed to talk to me urgently, immediately and face to face. Which is how I had ended up, with Willy Mann, discussing the possible terms and conditions of working for Mr Klein, when Miriam arrived.

As always, one was instantly struck by her sheer raving beauty, her languorousness, her confidence and her charm. She had, as always, the appearance of someone who had recently raised herself to commanding heights from a position of reclining elegance – possibly reading Proust, or the Picture Post, with liquid refreshments, a handsome chauffeur and a strokable Pekinese all conveniently at hand. She certainly did not look like she belonged in an East End pie and mash shop, and she made no attempt to look like she belonged. She looked entirely – I think the phrase is – à la mode, in the most extraordinary red and white checked wool coat with fur shoulder detailing and a thick rolled red and white belt, over a creamy white crepe dress, and what appeared to me to be a hunting cap set with a monkey paw brooch. To say that she stood out against the white-tiled walls of the pie and mash shop and its many mirrors reflecting the dark, huddled masses inside and out, would be an understatement. She looked like a visiting dignitary, or indeed an ambassador not merely from another country but from an entirely other world.

‘Miriam,’ I said, getting up from the table. ‘You’re looking—’

‘Sensational, Sefton?’ she said.

‘That’s exactly what I was going to say.’

‘Good.’ She flashed me a smile.

‘Miss Morley,’ said Willy Mann, getting up and extending his hand.

‘Have we met?’ asked Miriam.

‘In Essex, miss.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Miriam. ‘Never mind.’ She settled herself at our table. ‘One of your regular haunts, Sefton?’

‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘Would you like … some pie and mash?’ Even the question seemed absurd.

‘It’s a little early in the day for me for pie and mash, thank you, Sefton.’ She stared at our mugs of stewed tea, and at Willy Mann’s plate of half-eaten burned brown pastry, grey minced mutton, creamy mashed potato and pool of thin green parsley sauce – and shuddered. ‘Though thinking about it, any time is a little early in the day for pie and mash.’

‘Can I get you anything, miss?’ asked the café owner, who’d appeared at our table on Miriam’s arrival, rightly anticipating that this was a customer who might expect a rather more attentive than average standard of service.

Before saying anything, Miriam looked up at the man, slowly and appraisingly. For a moment I thought she might actually finger his rather stained apron. He was a dark-skinned gentleman, extraordinarily handsome – perhaps from Ceylon – who spoke the most perfectly accented East End English. I was reminded of the old Jewish joke about the Chinese waiter in one of the East End’s many kosher restaurants who spoke perfect Yiddish. ‘Don’t tell him,’ the restaurant’s owner begged his customers, ‘he thinks he’s learning English!’

‘A cup of coffee would be wonderful,’ she said, after another moment’s pause. ‘If you can manage it.’ She had him, as they say, in the palm of her hand. The café owner flushed and became flustered.

‘I could do you tea, miss,’ he said apologetically.

‘Do you know, tea would be almost as equally wonderful, thank you,’ she said.

‘Are you sure we can’t tempt you, Miriam?’ I said, gesturing towards Willy’s pie and mash.

‘Quite sure, thank you.’

The café owner departed, doubtless to brew some fresh tea for Miriam, rather than serving the swill that he was happy to dish out to the rest of us.

‘So,’ said Miriam. ‘Here we are.’

‘Indeed,’ said Willy Mann, pushing around some mashed potato on his plate. ‘Here we are.’

I’d told Miriam that I’d be free to meet her at one o’clock. It was now midday: for the first and last time during our long relationship, she was early. This was awkward. I’d hoped to have concluded my business with Willy before having to deal with Miriam. As it was, we were all now going to have to deal with each other.

While I stared out the window, still scanning the street for the Limehouse chap, Willy and Miriam eyed each other up. Or at least, Willy eyed Miriam up, and Miriam allowed herself to be eyed: this was one of her techniques. So many men found her alluring, she seemed to have found the best way to deal with them was to allow them their admiration – and then, like a praying mantis, she would crush them mercilessly. Her ruthless impassivity was a technique I had observed in practice many times and it was, invariably, devastatingly, outrageously successful. To see Miriam at work among men was to witness something like a Miss Havisham, who just happened to look like Hedy Lamarr.

‘So what brings you to Club Row? Have you come for a dog, Miss Morley?’ asked Willy, rather teasingly, I thought.

‘Not exactly,’ said Miriam, ‘no.’ She looked at me. ‘Though I do love dogs. On more than one occasion a stray dog on the street has followed me home. Isn’t that right, Sefton?’ I had no recall of any stray dog ever having followed her home and wasn’t quite sure what she was referring to. ‘Dogs just seem to come to me,’ continued Miriam. ‘But they must be trained properly, don’t you think?’

‘Indeed,’ said Willy, who had lost all interest in his pie and mash and who was now staring at Miriam, fascinated. It was always the way. I wasn’t quite sure how she did it.

‘I like dogs who are – what’s the word, Sefton?’

‘I’m not sure, Miriam,’ I said. ‘Docile?’

‘No,’ said Miriam.

‘Ferocious?’ offered Willy.

‘No, no,’ said Miriam.

‘Loyal?’

‘No.’

‘Obedient,’ said Willy.

‘Yes. That’s it. That’s the word.’

‘Obedience is important,’ agreed Willy.

‘Isn’t it,’ said Miriam. And she laughed, throwing back her head in studied abandon.

I was beginning to see that this was not really a conversation about dogs at all, except perhaps that like a dog spying an open gate, Miriam was taking off in whatever direction her whim took her.

‘And, remind me, what is it you do, Mr …?’ she asked.

‘Mann,’ said Willy.

‘Mr Mann. Curious name.’

‘It’s German,’ said Willy.

‘Ah. Sprechen Sie Deutsch?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Willy. ‘My parents came here many years ago. Their first language was Yiddish.’

‘Ah. The Mame Loshn. Das schadet nichts,’ said Miriam. ‘I do like to practise my German whenever I get the chance.’

Miriam’s tea arrived, in an actual cup, in an actual saucer, with an actual jug of milk, the café owner also seemingly having donned a fresh apron for the sole purpose of visiting our table.

‘Can I get you anything else, miss?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Miriam dismissively, returning to her captivation of Willy Mann. ‘So what brings you here this morning, Mr Mann?’ The freshly aproned café owner shuffled away. ‘You have business in these parts?’

‘I have business in many parts of London,’ said Willy.

‘Well, lucky you,’ said Miriam. ‘But here in particular?’

‘Willy and his business partners help protect the local community from the Black Shirts,’ I said.

‘Is that right?’ said Miriam.

‘That’s certainly a part of what we do here, yes,’ said Willy.

‘Well, that’s very good of you,’ said Miriam. ‘And you do that entirely out of the goodness of your heart, do you?’

‘We do, miss. Absolutely we do.’

‘Gratis, for nothing and entirely for free?’

‘Well, of course a business like ours—’

‘A protection racket,’ said Miriam.

‘We wouldn’t call it that, miss.’

‘I’m sure you wouldn’t,’ said Miriam, taking a sip of her tea and wincing slightly. ‘But I would. Go on.’

‘A … service such as ours costs money, miss, as you can imagine.’

‘I can imagine, yes,’ said Miriam, who was looking around the café. ‘How much, exactly?’

‘Well, it depends, but let’s say as little as a shilling a week for your safety.’

‘A shilling.’

‘Very reasonable, don’t you think, miss?’

‘I certainly do not think,’ said Miriam. ‘There are by my count almost forty people currently in this establishment. If each of them paid you just a shilling each you’d have two pounds; is that correct?’

‘Your maths is impeccable,’ said Willy.

‘So that’s two pounds per week, making eight pounds per month from the patrons of this café alone.’

‘But not everyone in this café would be paying us a shilling a week.’

‘I’m sure they wouldn’t. They’d be far too sensible. And if they don’t?’

‘If they don’t what?’ said Willy.

‘If they don’t pay you their shilling. I presume there’s the implied threat of violence.’

‘We offer protection,’ said Willy.

‘Which of course implies a threat,’ said Miriam.

‘Not from us,’ said Willy.

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘So all your clients have willingly entered into a voluntary contract with you?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘A contract that essentially consists of you granting them protection in return for the payment of a small cash sum.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So in effect your clients stand in relation to you and your associates as, say, children, or women – or indeed property – who are in some way incapable of protecting themselves and who therefore need protecting?’

‘You could put it like that,’ agreed Willy.

‘Which makes them effectively chattels or slaves,’ said Miriam.

Willy was about to speak but Miriam held up her arm, commanding silence, and then turned to me. ‘I had thought, Sefton, that you might have kept rather better company.’

Willy did not look amused. He looked – well, he looked – emasculated.

‘Anyway,’ said Miriam, ignoring Willy’s obvious irritation. ‘I really shouldn’t be barging in on you boys. I’m sure you have lots to discuss. Racketeering. Extortion. Fraud. White slavery, also?’

Willy got up from the table.

‘You’ll excuse me, but I have other more serious business I need to attend to,’ he said.

‘Oh, really?’ said Miriam. ‘What a shame.’

‘It’s been a pleasure, Miss Morley.’ He didn’t offer his hand.

‘Hasn’t it just?’ said Miriam.

‘Sefton, you know where to find me,’ he said.

‘I do, thanks, Willy.’

‘Byesie bye!’ said Miriam. ‘Mahlzeit!’

And with that, he was gone.

I noticed then that the hubbub in the restaurant had died down. We were drawing attention to ourselves. Or, rather, Miriam was drawing attention to us.

‘Miriam,’ I said quietly, ‘you were really terribly rude to the poor chap.’

‘Oh, come on, Sefton. He’s big enough and ugly enough to take it,’ said Miriam, not at all quietly. ‘Well, maybe not ugly enough. But you know, you really have the most appalling taste in friends and acquaintances.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ I said.

‘And so you should,’ she said. ‘It’s a mark of your character. Anyway, enough about him. I’m so glad you called.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why? What is it you wanted, Miriam?’

‘Father’s in terrible danger.’











CHAPTER 7 (#ulink_299b9897-4724-525c-85da-218f8d83e697)







I HAD HEARD THIS LINE BEFORE. Miriam’s idea of her father being in terrible danger included his being overworked, underworked, unduly praised, under-appreciated, slighted, patronised, put-upon or indeed treated in any way other than the way in which Miriam treated him, which is to say with absolute, unquestioning devotion and utter dis-dain.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me what sort of danger, Sefton?’

‘What sort of danger, Miriam?’

‘He is being hunted.’

‘Hunted?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Hunted by?’

‘An American, of course.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘An American adventuress.’ If Miriam had had pearls to clutch, she’d have been clutching them.

‘I see.’

‘Americans being undoubtedly the most dangerous among all the world’s adventuresses.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ I said.

Morley was, admittedly, rather susceptible to the attentions of women whose interest and affection he was, alas, entirely incapable of returning. This had caused problems in the past, would cause problems in the future, and had indeed sown considerable confusion among a large swathe of the forty-plus, middle, upper and aristocratic single, divorced and widowed female population of Britain, Europe and North America.

‘Honestly, Sefton, this one has more hooks in her than the proverbial poacher’s hatband,’ continued Miriam, ‘and she is tickling him like a trout.’

‘Like a trout, Miriam?’ I said, smiling.

‘Precisely, Sefton. Like a trout.’

‘Tickling him?’ I said, smiling again, though to no answering smile from Miriam, who was most definitely not in a playful mood.

‘Like a trout, yes, as I said, Sefton. She adopts this low husky voice whenever she’s talking to him.’ Miriam had a low husky voice of her own, I should say, which she used to good effect, and indeed now for the purposes of mimicry. ‘“Mr Morley, you must have the biggest brain I have ever encountered.”’

‘Oh dear,’ I said.

‘It’s quite, quite disgusting,’ said Miriam, raising an eyebrow, the fashion back in those days having been for eyebrows to be plucked to a single line, a fashion that Miriam had mercifully resisted. ‘And anyway, where is Maryland?’

‘Maryland?’ I said.

‘Where she’s from, apparently.’

I wasn’t entirely sure I could have identified Maryland on a map of the United States.

‘Is it a land of Marys?’ I asked.

Miriam ignored this weak joke, a sure sign of her being both irritated and distracted; usually she’d have pounced without hesitation.

‘She was once a keen horsewoman, so she says, though frankly it’d take a shire horse now.’

‘I’m getting the impression you’re not over keen—’

‘And she claims to be an expert on posture, of all things – she’s the Lady President of the American Posture League. She’s written a book, God help us. Slouching Towards Gomorrah. And she’s a divorcee,’ she said. ‘Her first husband was called Fruity.’

‘Was he?’

‘I simply cannot take seriously a woman whose ex-husband is called Fruity, can you?’

‘No.’

‘And her second husband was called Minty.’

‘Minty? Are you sure, Miriam? You’re not making this up?’

‘Of course I’m not making it up, Sefton.’

I only asked because Miriam herself spent much of her time during those years with various unsuitable Fruitys and Mintys, while I spent much of my time when I wasn’t with Miriam in the company of Sluggers and Rotters and other ridiculously named low-life Soho characters. I rather miss the nicknames and sobriquets of the dog-end days of the thirties: they were, I see now, for all their squalor, the last days of innocence.

‘The woman is mounting a campaign, Sefton,’ Miriam continued, and she was certainly someone who knew a campaign being mounted when she saw one, so I suppose it must have been true.

‘What sort of a campaign?’

‘A campaign to marry Father, Sefton!’

‘Really?’

‘Yes! She might as well be wearing a veil and carrying a bouquet, for goodness sake. It’s quite ridiculous.’

‘Would you like another cup of tea, Miriam?’ I thought this might calm her down.

‘No, I don’t want another cup of tea. I want you to take this threat seriously.’

‘Of course I take it seriously, Miriam.’

‘Do you, though?’

‘Yes. Entirely.’

‘She is bogus, Sefton, that’s the problem.’

‘Bogus?’

‘Yes. She’s a singer.’

‘What sort of a singer?’

‘Opera. Allegedly.’

‘Allegedly?’

‘Well, I’ve never heard her sing. She may be terrible. Father seems to think she’s marvellous. And she’s American – did I say?’

‘Yes, you—’

‘American par excellence. She’s like … Uncle Sam—’

‘Uncle Samantha, perhaps?’

‘But I can tell you, I think her excellence is rather far from par.’

‘Far from par,’ I repeated.

‘Correct. She is flirtatious and gay.’

‘You’re gay and flirtatious, Miriam.’

‘Yes, but I’m twenty-one years old, Sefton, I’m supposed to be gay and flirtatious. This woman must be – I don’t know – fifty if she’s a day.’

‘Fifty?’ I said.

‘Fifty!’ said Miriam. ‘And she’s a terrible boozehound.’ Like Morley, Miriam had a habit of adopting hardboiled slang more suited to the pages of Black Mask magazine. Her other favourite tough-guy Americanisms included ‘the bum’s rush’, referring to what or where I never quite understood, and the term ‘spondulix’ for money. In later years she also adopted the habit of saying ‘OK’ in response to everything. I was surprised, though, I must admit, that this threatening American was a drinker: Morley strongly disapproved of what he called spiritous drink. She clearly had him under her spell, a spell that Miriam seemed determined to break.

‘She is cloying and giddy,’ she continued. ‘She is dramatic and frowsy. She has this dreadful false laugh, and these ridiculous eyebrows, and eyes that just … winkle you out.’

‘I’m getting the sense—’

‘She is a mean, snobbish, vile, raddled, primped, crisped and bleached sort of a beast, Sefton.’

‘I—’

‘With this ludicrous heaving embonpoint. Constantly projecting.’

‘She—’

‘She belongs in a straitjacket, frankly.’

‘That’s a bit strong, Miriam,’ I said.

‘A bit strong, Sefton? She is fake, man. Completely fake! She recently sang the virgin in Gounod’s Faust, for goodness sake.’

‘But—’

‘She is oval and—’

‘I get the impression that you’re really not keen,’ I said.

‘Whether or not I am keen, Sefton, is entirely beside the point. Theirs is a friendship that is frivolous, fraudulent, purposeless and dangerous.’ A more accurate description of Miriam’s own relationships with men it would be difficult to imagine. ‘She has a dangerous hold on him, Sefton. Like Wallis Simpson. And you know what they say about her and her Shanghai tricks.’

‘Speaking of friendships,’ I said, not wishing to encourage Miriam to speculate any further upon Mrs Simpson’s much rumoured amatory skills and virtuosities out loud in an East End pie and mash shop.

‘Yes?’ said Miriam, leaning forward in her chair. ‘Might I cadge a cigarette, Sefton?’ Cadge she did. ‘Would you mind?’ I dutifully lit her cigarette, she tossed back her head, took a deep gulp and relaxed. ‘Go on,’ she said, gesturing with her cigarette.

At this point, an almost total silence had descended upon the café, as more of the customers recognised Miriam’s defining and indeed dominating presence among us.

‘Miriam,’ I said, lowering my voice, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to resign.’

She did not respond.

‘Did you hear me, Miriam?’

She blew smoke from her nostrils – a trick that she performed when alarmed, cornered, frustrated or otherwise excited. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a man making pies: chopping up eels, making mash, concocting parsley sauce.

‘I’m leaving,’ I said.

She laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh.

‘Leave?’ she said, fixing me with a stare. ‘You can’t leave, Sefton.’

Miriam couldn’t leave: Morley was her father. But I could.

‘I wonder if you might give this to your father,’ I said quietly, handing her my resignation letter.

‘This?’ said Miriam with distaste, fingering my note written on the Skulnik receipt.

‘It’s my resignation,’ I said.

‘Hmm,’ said Miriam. She held the letter in her hand, regarded it from a distance, without reading it, and then, with clear regard for the audience in the café that was now watching her every move, took her cigarette and used it to set fire to the little piece of paper, which flared, blackened, and which she placed carefully in the ashtray on the table. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’ She fixed her gaze upon me.

The café owner at that moment approached our table.

‘Everything all right here?’ he asked.

‘Everything’s fine, thank you,’ said Miriam, flashing him a smile. ‘That will be all, thank you.’

The owner walked away, but looked back at me over his shoulder as he went, raising his eyebrows and widening his eyes, as if to say, ‘I thought you were onto a winner there, but good luck with that, mate.’ It was not an uncommon response to Miriam’s provoking and unpredictable presence.

‘You know I can just write another resignation letter, Miriam?’ I said.

‘You could, Sefton. But you won’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because whatever reason you may have had for offering your resignation, having now heard that Father is in danger, you won’t even consider resigning.’

‘Will I not? Why not?’

‘Because,’ she said, pausing for effect, ‘you are a good man, Sefton.’

‘I am far from that, Miriam,’ I said.

‘Well … If you say so. But if not because you’re good, then because we need you, Sefton.’ She placed her hand over mine, bit her lip, and looked away, as though overcoming silent tears. ‘I need you.’ This was another of her techniques: the pause, the hand, the lip, the look. I’d seen it all before. ‘To be honest, I had rather hoped to be spending the autumn in Florence – there’s no crush on the Cascine at this time of year and the faded light is quite magical.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ I said.

‘I promise you, Sefton,’ she continued, ‘that this will be your final outing. If you could just help me prevent this dreadful woman from getting her claws into Father, we’ll do Sussex, and then you can pop off and do whatever it is you want to do with Mr Mann and his dreadful schemes or whatever. And I can go off to Florence or somewhere. There we are. How’s that?’ She put out her hand for me to shake and seal the deal.

‘I’ll think about it, Miriam,’ I said.

‘Well, don’t think about it for too long, darling.’ With which she left, though not before I had to call her back in order to pay the bill, since I had no money.

‘You can pay me back when we go to Sussex together,’ she said, as she left the café.

‘Rock and a hard place, mate,’ said the café owner, as the door banged behind Miriam.

‘Indeed,’ I said.

I walked outside.

It was almost one o’clock. At precisely one o’clock the East End Sunday markets are supposed to close. At one o’clock, the market inspectors arrive and the traders and stallholders must pack up and leave; there is no more buying and selling to be done. And so at around ten to one there is a frenzy of final deals. This is the moment when ‘pedigree’ dogs change hands for pennies, when kittens are bagged up in job lots and when birds are offered, three for a tanner. Amid this chaos of buying, selling and bartering, on the other side of the road, I spotted a figure hurrying towards me.

It was the Limehouse chap.

Already exhausted from the conversation with Willy and Miriam, for a moment I almost thought it might be easier just to give up and abandon myself to my fate.

Then I decided to run.

And it was at that very moment that a large dog – a slavering boxer – a truly formidable-looking creature, quite enormous in size, broke free from its owner and came bounding towards me. Instinctively I stepped back, up against the window of the pie and mash shop. Without making a sound the dog reared up on its hind legs and placed its front paws squarely on my shoulders. Standing erect, the beast was as tall as me: we were face to muzzle.

I was trapped.

Which was when the Limehouse chap made his fatal mistake. Pushing through the crowd, he reached me just as the dog had settled its paws on my shoulders – and proceeded to grab the creature by its collar so that he could get at me.

The dog, believing that he was about to lose his new plaything, turned towards the Limehouse chap, gave a savage bark and butted him under the chin with his head. As I turned and began to slip away, the dog turned back towards me and the Limehouse chap found himself being pulled forward as he held on to the dog’s collar, putting his other hand out in an attempt to steady himself. His fist went straight through the plate-glass window of the café. There was a crash, the man gave a blood-curdling cry, the like of which I had never heard before, and the dog, startled and disturbed, reared up under him, propelling him through the broken window.

My last look, glancing behind me, dodging among the crowds and animals of the market, was the sight of the marble floor of the shop turning a bright crimson.

Someone was screaming ‘He’s dead!’ Whether it was the dog or the Limehouse chap I did not wait to find out.











CHAPTER 8 (#ulink_f8ee131e-9578-5cb0-8846-773cecb772af)







‘SEFTON! What took you so long?’ asked Miriam. ‘Come on. Come on in.’

As Miriam ushered me into her apartment, an elderly, most striking-looking dark-haired woman, wearing an array of brightly coloured beads that may have been Mexican, and carrying a stout wicker shopping basket that was most definitely English, hurried past in the corridor.

‘Well,’ she said, in what sounded to me like a French accent but may indeed have been Mexican, but which certainly was not English, ‘you kept this one quiet, Miriam.’

‘Finders, keepers, Ines,’ said Miriam. ‘Finders, keepers. Far too young for you anyway.’

‘They’re never too young, my dear. It’s just me that gets too old.’

‘Hello?’ I said.

Both the women ignored me.

‘Can I get you anything?’ asked Ines.

‘No thank you,’ said Miriam. ‘We’re going away for a few days.’

‘Lucky you, my dear.’

‘Work rather than pleasure,’ said Miriam.

‘The two are often the same, in my experience,’ said Ines, waving a hand as she disappeared down the corridor. ‘One of life’s paradoxes.’

‘Well, you’ve met the neighbours,’ said Miriam. ‘Come on then. Come in. Chop chop.’






The first thing that struck me about Miriam’s new apartment was a slight smell. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, though it was a smell so strong that one might almost have put a finger on it. Miriam seemed oblivious.

‘You found it then?’ she asked.

‘Evidently,’ I said.

‘Oh no, no,’ she said, ‘you’re beginning to sound like Father, Sefton. Please, don’t.’ The last thing I ever wanted to do was to sound like Swanton Morley – his manner, alas, was contagious – so I shut up. ‘Anyway, so we’re all set,’ she continued. ‘What do you think: do I look OK?’

She looked extraordinary. Whatever it was she was wearing – Schiaparelli, probably – it was banana yellow.

‘You look … all-encompassing,’ I said, which was all I could think of.

‘All-encompassing?’ she said. ‘Really? That’ll do.’

‘Do I look OK?’ I asked, attempting irony. I was still in my blue serge suit.

She put a finger to her lips and studied me carefully.

‘You look rather like you’ve spent the night sleeping rough, Sefton, actually,’ which was a fair description, since I had in fact spent a few nights sleeping rough – mostly on friends’ floors, but one night on Hampstead Heath, not to be recommended – having decided that it was probably best to try to keep a low profile, after the events at Club Row, and given my increasingly complicated relationship with a number of would-be employers, debt-collectors, former friends and newly acquired enemies. I loved London, but clearly the feeling was not mutual: every time I tried to make peace with the place, I seemed to become embroiled in some imbroglio.

Hence my decision to go back on the road with Miriam and Morley. At least then I’d be on the move and out of trouble. Miriam always told people that I had been saved by her ministrations and my work for her father. This was not in fact true. Basically, between 1937 and 1939 – like Britain and most of Europe – I was perpetually in crisis and continually on the run.

‘Well, what do you think?’ asked Miriam, referring not to her outfit, but to her apartment.

The new place was on Lawn Road, in Hampstead, in a most peculiar building called the Isokon, which, according to Miriam, was a triumph of modern design. ‘Don’t you think, Sefton? Isn’t it a triumph!’

I wasn’t sure it was a triumph, actually, though it certainly crushed and vanquished all the usual expectations of everyday human habitation, so maybe it was.

‘It’s the future, Sefton, isn’t it? Isn’t this what you were dreaming of when you were fighting in Spain? The International? The Modern? The New?’

It was pointless trying to explain to Miriam that in Spain, for whatever high-minded reason we’d gone, we all ended up fighting not for the International, the Modern and the New, but rather for own dear lives and for the poor bastards living and dying alongside us, and that whatever we were dreaming of, it was certainly not clean angles and white empty spaces, but loose women, strong drink and fresh food.

‘Father’s not a fan,’ continued Miriam. ‘He says it looks like the Penguin Pool at London Zoo.’

The Isokon did look like the Penguin Pool at London Zoo. It also rather resembled a cruise ship, and Miriam’s apartment a cabin. Indeed, the whole place made you feel slightly queasy, as if setting sail on a stormy sea. The apartment was so small and so unaccommodating in every way that Miriam had dispensed with most of her furniture. ‘I felt the furniture was disapproving, Sefton,’ she explained, though I had no idea how or what disapproving furniture might be. Every surface in the apartment was flat, white and forbidding. The place looked like a … It’s difficult to describe exactly what it looked like. Years later, with the benefit of hindsight, I suppose one would say that it looked like an art gallery, but at the time it was quite revolutionary even for an art gallery. Art galleries back then were still all oak-panelled and dimly lit. Even now a house that looks like an all-white ocean-going gallery would be unusual. And the Isokon was most unusual: above all, it was a building that took itself extremely seriously. It was a building that was clearly striving towards something, towards purity, presumably – which is always easier said than done. There was a bar somewhere in the place, apparently, and Miriam raved about the tremendous ‘community spirit’ among her fellow tenants, a spirit that found its expression in naked sunbathing, impromptu get-togethers, political discussions and all-night parties. Miriam loved it.

‘You would love it, Sefton!’ she insisted. ‘We all get together and talk about art and literature.’

It sounded absolutely horrendous. Miriam often misjudged me: I had neither the money nor the inclination to become a part of the Isokon set. During those years I may have been debauched, but I have never, ever been a bohemian.

The place was quite bare and undecorated. Not only was there little furniture, there were no shelves, cupboards or mantelpieces for the many flowers, bibelots and thick embossed invitations that seemed to follow Miriam wherever she went. (It was often the case during our time together that we would fetch up in some out-of-the-way village or town, only for gifts and letters bearing invitations miraculously to appear within hours of our arrival.) In the Isokon, this temple to simplicity and stylishness, in which there was no place for anything, everything had been piled on a small round inlaid table in the hallway, which accommodated newly published books, manuscripts, gloves, scarves, jewellery and stacks of the aforementioned invitations. Above the table there was a sort of mobile hanging from the ceiling, which looked to me like a few large black metal fish bones stuck onto a piece of wire.

‘That’s … interesting, Miriam,’ I said.

‘Do you think? I’m trying to write a piece about it for the magazine,’ she said.

‘Woman?’ I asked.

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I don’t write for them any more.’

‘But I thought you’d just got a job as columnist?’

‘No, no, Sefton. That was ages ago.’

‘That was about two weeks ago.’

‘Anyway. It was dreadfully dreary. They expected me to write about such terrible frivolities.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really.’

‘Such as?’

‘Accordion pleats or bishop’s sleeves or whatever other silly thing is in fashion.’

‘But I thought you were interested in fashion.’

‘Of course I am, Sefton, but I’m not interested in writing about it. People who write about fashion seem to me about as dull as people who write about medieval patristics.’ Thus spoke her father’s daughter. ‘People could go around in bustles and jodhpurs for all I care, Sefton – and I really don’t care.’

For someone who really didn’t care we seemed to spend much of our time packing and unpacking her clothes trunks.

‘Anyway, you know me, Sefton.’

‘I do?’

‘I have a taste for much stronger stuff, Sefton.’ Which was certainly true. ‘No. I’m now a contributing editor for Axis.’

‘Axis?’ I said. ‘Something to do with mechanics? Geometry?’

‘It’s an art magazine, silly. You must have heard of it.’

‘I can’t say I have, Miriam, no.’

‘Axis? Really?’

‘No.’

‘A Quarterly Review of Contemporary “Abstract” Painting and Sculpture?’

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘that Axis.’

From the teetering pile on the table she plucked the latest issue of the magazine, which I flicked through while she went to finish her packing.

‘That’ll be an education for you,’ she said, as she disappeared into her bedroom.






It certainly was. Most of the articles were entirely – one might almost say immaculately – unreadable, as if written from a strange place where the English language had been entirely reinvented solely to bamboozle and confuse. One contributor, for example, described some blobby sort of a painting as ‘rampageous and eczematous’; another described an artist whose work consisted entirely of everyday household objects hung on washing lines as having ‘traversed the farthest realms of the aesthetic to reinvent the very idea of objecthood’; Miriam’s article was perhaps marginally less preposterous than the rest, though equally vexatious. She described some artist’s series of abstract sketches as a work of ‘profound autofiction’: to me the work looked like a series of a child’s drawings of black and white squares and triangles balancing on colourful balls.

Miriam’s restless pursuit of knowledge of all kinds was of course quite admirable, her hunger for new experiences rivalling only her father’s great lust for learning. Having endured a privileged, if rather peculiar upbringing and education at some of the country’s best schools, and courtesy of one of the country’s best minds, Miriam often expressed to me her wish that she had gone to Cambridge or to Oxford to study PPE (which, to my shame, I usually referred to as GGG, or ‘Ghastly Girls’ Greats’, an easy alternative to Classics). ‘All these women who go to Lady Margaret Hall do make one feel terribly inadequate, Sefton.’ During our work together on The County Guides, Miriam slowly but surely reinvented herself, becoming more and more an autodidact in the manner of her father: she went to fewer tennis parties with girls called Diana and Camilla, took up the saxophone and the uilleann pipes, added Arabic and Mandarin Chinese to her many languages, and ranged widely in her reading, from Freud in German to Céline in French. She was naturally formidable: over time she became utterly extraordinary. It was sometimes difficult to see how anyone could possibly keep up with her.

When I occasionally asked why she had taken up with this unsuitable man or other, she would simply say, ‘Because everyone else is so boring, Sefton.’ Boredom was her bête noire. It could get her into terrible trouble. Her most recent boyfriend was a man so daring and adventurous that he had joined Britannia Youth, the neo-fascist group that specialised in sending impressionable young British schoolboys to Nazi rallies in Germany.

‘Roderick was just such fun!’ she said.

Roderick had lasted about two weeks.






‘Right,’ she said, barrelling out of her bedroom carrying a large handbag.

‘Crocodile?’ I nodded towards the bag.

‘Alligator, actually, Sefton. Can’t you tell? Are you ready?’

‘I am. Is that all you’re taking?’ I was confused. Miriam did not travel light. Part of the challenge of travelling with Miriam and Morley was travelling with Miriam’s clothes: for even the shortest journey she would pack Chinese robes, leopard-skin hats and kid leather gloves.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s it?’

‘The rest is already in the Lagonda, Sefton. László gave me a hand last night. Do you know László?’

‘I don’t think I do, no.’

‘You must know László.’

Miriam was always amazed when it turned out that I didn’t know anyone she knew – because of course she knew everyone who counted. I did not, however, to my knowledge, know anyone named László.

‘Bruno?’

‘No.’ As far as I was aware my life was both László- and Bruno-free.

‘Serge?’

Ditto.

‘Anyway, lovely chaps. They got the Lagonda all packed up for me. Now, what do you think?’ She gestured towards a brooch she was wearing.

‘It’s very pretty.’

‘Pretty, Sefton?’

‘Very pretty.’

‘Very pretty? For goodness sake, man, it’s a nineteenth-century Tiffany orchid brooch with diamond-edged petals.’

‘Yes, I thought so. And very pretty.’

‘It was a gift from a friend, actually.’

‘Very good.’ Miriam was forever receiving gifts from friends, always men – and always jewellery, though once there was the gift of a De Dion Bouton car, which for a moment rivalled the Lagonda in her affections. The men came and went but the gifts remained.

‘Do you know, Sefton,’ she told me on more than one occasion, ‘the perfect condition for a woman is either to be engaged, or to be widowed.’

We were about to leave the apartment, Miriam equipped with bag and key in hand.

‘Oh, I almost forgot.’ She dashed back into her bedroom and reappeared moments later carrying what looked like a small furry blanket clutched to her chest.

‘What is that?’

‘It’s a Bedlington, Sefton.’

‘A Whatlington?’

‘A Bedlington. A Bedlington Terrier.’

‘A dog?’

‘Yes, of course a dog.’

‘Oh, Miriam.’

‘What do you mean, “Oh, Miriam”?’

‘A dog, Miriam.’

‘I like dogs, Sefton.’

‘You didn’t get it at Club Row?’

‘I certainly did,’ said Miriam, offended. ‘There was a chap as I was leaving the market who was packing up for home and he had this little thing all on his own and—’

‘From Club Row? You’ll be lucky if he lasts a week,’ I said.

‘Sefton!’ She covered the dog’s ears. ‘Don’t talk like that around Pablo.’

‘Pablo?’

‘Picasso, yes.’

‘You’ve named your dog after the artist.’

‘Yes. Why shouldn’t I?’

A dog that looked less like Picasso it would be hard to imagine: he was a dog that looked like a Picasso. Everything about him was wonky, or wrong: rather than a dog, he resembled a lamb, except he was a lamb with a bluish, velvety sort of coat, a high arched back, a narrow but bulbous head, a tail that tapered to a point, and ears that hung down to what looked like two little white pom-poms. He had a mild, bewildered expression on his face and was without a doubt one of the most peculiar-looking creatures I’d ever seen. Miriam obviously adored him.

‘Take these,’ she said, thrusting a brown paper bag into my hands. ‘The chap threw in a bag of arrowroot biscuits.’

‘Marvellous,’ I said.

‘Now. Pablo has left a little present in the bedroom.’

‘Oh no.’ So this was the source of the smell.

‘And I just wondered if you’d be a darling and tidy it up, while I run down to the car? There’re some old newspapers in there that should do the job.’

‘Miriam!’

‘Thank you, darling! See you in a min!’






Pablo’s gift duly disposed of, I made my way down to the Lagonda, which was parked at the back of the building.

Miriam had donned her leather driving gloves.

‘Are we not waiting for your father?’ I asked.

‘Oh no, no, no,’ said Miriam. ‘Sorry, I should have said. We’re meeting him down in Brighton.’

‘Right.’

‘Come on, Sefton. In you pop. No time to lose!’

With Miriam driving, I was left in the passenger seat with the Bedlington, who instantly – quite understandably – became unsettled as Miriam started up the engine and gunned down towards Camden Town. I held on tight to the poor pooch and did my best to calm him: in return, he relieved himself over my trousers.

Damp and headachy, heading out of London, I listened as Miriam recapped for me some of the things her father wanted us to see in Sussex, including Arundel Castle – ‘The archetypal English castle, Sefton, according to Father. Norman and Early English, Gothic and Gothic Revival, Victorian and Modern, absolutely unmatched’ – and many other high points, including Beddingham, Seaford, Alfriston and Litlington, all places I’d never heard of and had absolutely no desire to visit.

‘Do you know Elgar?’ asked Miriam, somewhere around Crawley.

I admitted that I did know Elgar, forgetting, as so often, that for Miriam knowing someone of renown meant actually knowing them, rather than knowing of them.

‘Marvellous, isn’t he? Father and I have spent many happy hours with Elgar at Brinkwells in Fittleworth. He has marvellous views to Chanctonbury Ring. When did you visit?’

I had not visited. I had no desire to visit.

It had been a long day.

And I had no idea when we eventually reached Brighton that it was going to be an even longer night.






The Bedlington






A Late Night Sort of Town











CHAPTER 9 (#ulink_bb217315-8023-5996-8d4f-8399daeeaaa6)







DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCES partly within my control (poor map-reading) and partly without (slow-moving vehicles; cattle being driven along the road on the way to an abattoir; a family apparently moving house using a large cart, upon which they had balanced a dog in a kennel, some rabbits in a hutch, a canary in a cage, a goldfish in a bowl, some hens in a chicken house, a garden shed, bags of logs and several sacks of coal), we arrived rather late in Brighton. Fortunately for us, Brighton was and is, and with any luck will always be, the kind of town that stays up to welcome late-arriving visitors. Cruising into town on a chilly autumn evening around 10 p.m. – by which time most, if not all English towns and villages have long since shut up shop, pulled the curtains tight and retired safely to bed till morning – on the streets of Brighton there were still dog-walkers, cyclists, courting couples and children out playing. According to Morley in The County Guides: Sussex, ‘Eastbourne stands aloof, Hastings is of the people, but Brighton alone has a continental character.’ The place certainly had a character continental that evening, as if it were an English town holidaying late in the season somewhere in the south of France. And as it turned out, the evening became more and more continental as it wore on.

Molly Harper, Morley’s American adventuress, was giving a recital at the Theatre Royal, or, rather, had been giving a recital at the Theatre Royal. The performance was almost over by the time we arrived, which was a cause for great celebration on Miriam’s part.

‘Thank goodness for that, Sefton,’ she said. ‘I have absolutely no desire to hear the American Oval sing. It’s bad enough having to hear her talk. Come on, let’s find a quick drink, and then we shall go and rescue Father from her carmine clutches.’

We parked conveniently outside the theatre and persuaded – or, rather, Miriam persuaded – an usher to serve us in the bar, where we happily sat alone drinking gin cocktails until the audience departed, whereupon we made our way backstage and soon found Molly’s dressing room by following the tinkling sound of laughter.

‘Enter!’ came the cry, as Miriam knocked briskly on the door.

The first thing I noticed on entering was the large presentation basket of fruit – Fortnum’s, naturally – and numerous exquisite bouquets of flowers, which were most certainly not in season and therefore most certainly wildly expensive. Set among this extraordinary colourful display, like a life-size mascot Pierrot, was Molly Harper herself.

It has to be said that Miriam’s description of Molly was not entirely inaccurate: she did indeed have eyes that looked like they might winkle you out; she did indeed have rather ludicrous eyebrows, suggesting a look of constant surprise verging on astonishment; and she did, in that American fashion, appear in every way to be a slightly inflated version of herself. She had a ready laugh, for example, that to English ears rang rather hollow, and she was seemingly equipped with endlessly bubbling reserves of the kind of enthusiasm that is entirely alien to the slow and long-cooled Brit. Her entire manner and appearance – her eyebrows, her hair, her enthusiasm, her vivid painted nails – struck one as being rather more suitable for the stage than for any average everyday activities. Larger than life, she was also rather larger than her tight, billowing black and white evening gown naturally allowed. With her white arm-length buttoned gloves, her perpetual look of astonishment, and her raven-black soignée hair, she had all the appearance of a rather sinister, pampered silken panda.

What Miriam had not mentioned in her description, however, was that Molly looked very much like an older, fuller version of … Miriam.

Swanton Morley of course looked precisely as he always did: he was someone whose success had been achieved entirely by dint of his own efforts and by unchanging daily habits and rituals, which meant that there was little about him that ever seemed to alter. Photographs of him aged thirty resembled exactly photographs of him aged forty and fifty – not so much Dorian Gray as an immovable and immutable Easter Island statue. He always wore exactly the same clothes, or at least exactly the same sort of clothes, a uniform that he had chosen as a young man and which he had stuck with ever since, the Morley Style: the sober-coloured suits in finest tweed or worsted, the tightly buttoned waistcoat with its additional notebook and pencil pockets, the sharply cuffed trousers, the tailoring always stiff, conservative and redolent of an earlier age. His tailor was a man in Norwich, a Mr Barton Bendish, who kept premises in an arcade near the city’s market and whom Morley had known since childhood. Mr Bendish was, according to Morley, the equal of any tailor on Savile Row and a man capable of transforming even the stoutest and dowdiest John Bull into a super-sleek Sydney Greenstreet. He often suggested to me that he could provide me with an introduction to Mr Bendish, who would happily provide me with outfits similar to Morley’s own, an offer I always refused since at the time I cultivated a studiedly carefree appearance that was quite in contrast to Morley’s rather more sober-suited image. Though how I wish now that I had a Barton Bendish of my own. The only sartorial eccentricity Morley ever allowed himself were his brown brogue boots, always highly polished, and his bow ties, many of them patterned to resemble fine Scottish knitwear. This evening, at the Theatre Royal, he looked as well-tended as ever, in a three-piece light grey suit, with a red and white polka-dot bow tie – not merely smart, I thought, but actually elegant, as if the mere presence of a woman like Molly were slowly turning his tweed to silk.

Unchanging in appearance he may have been, but Morley was of course entirely unpredictable in conversation – and this evening was no exception.

‘Billy Button buttoned his bright brown boots,’ he was saying as we entered. ‘Good evening, Miriam. Good evening, Sefton.’

Molly beckoned us into the dressing room.

‘Billy Button buttoned his bright brown boots,’ she repeated, after Morley. ‘Your father is teaching me some English tongue-twisters, Miriam.’

‘Is he now?’ said Miriam.

‘Betty Blue was beating butter,’ said Morley.

‘Betty Blue was beating butter,’ repeated Molly.

‘Miriam?’ said Morley, nodding towards her. ‘Betty …’

‘I am not practising tongue-twisters, thank you, Father. It’s far too late in the evening.’

‘Never too late for tongue-twisting,’ said Morley.

‘Gig-whip, gig-whip, gig-whip, gig-whip,’ said Molly.

‘Oh yes, that’s one of our favourites,’ said Morley. ‘Gig-whip, gig-whip, gig-whip, gig-whip. Sefton?’

‘Gig-whip, gig-whip, whip-wig, wig-gip …’ I gave up.

‘Not as easy as it sounds, is it?’ said Morley.

‘Indeed,’ I agreed.

‘We’ve not met, have we?’ asked Molly, breaking off from her tongue-twisting but remaining seated among the flowers and fruit and extending her hand.

‘No. I’m Stephen Sefton,’ I said, leaning forward, not entirely sure whether to kiss her hand, shake it, or kneel before her and receive a blessing.

‘Ah, yes, Swanton has told me so much about you,’ said Molly. No one called Morley Swanton.

We shook hands.

‘All of it good, I hope,’ I said.

‘Hardly any of it good,’ Molly said with a laugh. ‘And all the better for that. Can I offer you a drink?’ She indicated some unopened bottles – champagne, wine, lemonade – on the dressing room table.

I looked at Miriam out of the corner of my eye. She gave a sharp, vigorous shake of her head.

‘I won’t, thank you,’ I said. ‘It’s been a long day. Miriam and I have just motored down from London. We should probably retire.’

‘You are clearly as self-disciplined as your famously abstemious employer,’ said Molly.

‘Perhaps not quite,’ I said.

‘You must have something,’ she said. ‘Here.’ She got up, took two bottles of what looked like American lemonade, pushed down the marbles in the two bottle tops simultaneously, one in each hand, and thrust them towards us. ‘A little trick I learned back home.’

‘Flexibility of the lips is very important, you see,’ said Morley, who was still on the subject of tongue-twisters.

‘Oh yes, flexibility of the lips is very important, isn’t it, Miriam?’ said Molly.

‘I have no idea,’ said Miriam, rather huffily.

‘Vowels as well as consonants suffer terribly from a lack of good lip movement,’ said Morley. ‘The lips are part of the resonating system, you see, which is what makes each human voice unique.’ His own voice was as rapid as ever and as strange, rattling like a kettle on the range. ‘The lungs and the diaphragm are the bellows, the larynx the vibrator, and this’ – he tapped a finger to his head – ‘the resonator. Molly has a magnificent resonator, Miriam.’

‘I’m sure she has, Father,’ said Miriam, as Morley and Molly started to make a humming sound together.

Miriam huffed.

Even by the high standards of embarrassment I had become accustomed to while working with Morley and Miriam, it was all rather embarrassing. Morley was clearly as fascinated with Molly as she was intent on fascinating him. They had first met, I later discovered, at a meeting of Morley’s so-called Bonhomie Club, a group of friends whom he brought together once a month in London, for the purposes of discussion, playing chess, and listening to music. Molly had been invited by Morley to give a recital, and the two of them had quickly become inseparable.

‘Your father, Miriam!’ said Molly, breaking her gaze and her hum with Morley. ‘He’s incredible. I mean, his life, his experiences. His capacity for hard work! I’m surprised it doesn’t simply sap all the energy out of him!’

‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll find other ways of sapping the energy out of him.’

‘His knowledge!’

‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,’ said Miriam.

‘“A little learning is a dangerous thing,”’ corrected Morley.

‘“Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,”’ said Miriam.

‘“And drinking largely sobers us again,”’ said Morley, completing the quotation. ‘Sefton?’ he asked.

‘Dryden?’ I suggested.

‘Pope!’ said Morley. ‘Essay on Criticism.’

‘Marvellous!’ said Molly, clapping her gloved hands together. ‘You know, you’re all just so … curious.’

‘That’s one word for it,’ said Miriam.

‘I’m terribly curious myself,’ said Molly.

‘Really?’

‘Oh yes. I married my first husband entirely out of curiosity.’

‘Isn’t one supposed to marry for love?’ said Miriam.

‘One is supposed to do a lot of things, my dear,’ said Molly. ‘Do you know the final trio from Der Rosenkavalier?’

‘Not off the top of my head,’ said Miriam. ‘No.’

‘“Hab mir’s gelobt”,’ said Morley.

‘Indeed,’ said Molly. ‘In which the Marschallin gives up her young lover, Octavian, when she realises that he is in love with Sophie.’

Molly closed her eyes for a moment and then quietly began to sketch out the melody with her – admittedly – extraordinary voice, a soft, clear, luminous soprano. Morley closed his eyes and hummed along.

I thought for a moment that Miriam might actually be physically sick, but fortunately we had the Bedlington with us, who made his presence known at this point by attempting to climb up onto Molly’s lap, interrupting the impromptu recital.

‘Well, well, who is this little fellow?’ Molly said, scooping him up.

‘This is Pablo,’ I said.

‘Pablito, surely,’ said Molly, petting him like a baby.

Miriam snorted derisively.

‘I met Picasso at a dance in Madrid some years ago. Did I ever tell you, Swanton?’

‘I don’t think so, my dear,’ said Morley.

‘Yes. I’d been performing – Teatro de la Zarzuela – and there had been a dinner in my honour and we all went dancing in this wonderful little taverna, and Picasso was there and he really was quite a … bull of a man.’

‘The minotaur of modern art,’ said Morley.

‘Exactly!’ said Molly. ‘The minotaur of modern art! How clever!’

Miriam sighed so loudly it sounded like a rushing wind had entered the room: her exasperation, I could tell, was reaching the point of no return and great regret. Thank goodness, there came a knock at the door.

‘Enter!’ cried Molly, though almost before she had uttered the word the door had already opened and a rather ugly bald-headed man with bulgy eyes poked his head around.

‘This is Giacomo,’ said Molly. ‘He’s my manager.’

‘Good evening.’

The Bedlington leapt down from Molly’s lap and snarled at Giacomo.

‘Is he yours, Sefton?’ asked Morley.

‘He’s mine, actually, Father.’

‘I see,’ said Morley, not entirely approvingly.

‘I might need to take him outside, actually,’ I said, having become keenly attuned to the dog’s toileting habits during our drive down from London.

‘Will there be anything else, madam?’ asked Giacomo, ignoring the dog, and indeed the rest of us.

‘Not tonight, thank you, no,’ said Molly, with which Giacomo disappeared as swiftly as he had appeared.

‘We’re staying at the Grand, Father, isn’t that right?’ said Miriam.

‘Yes,’ said Morley. ‘Perhaps I should come with you. Lots to plan for the next couple of days. We can take the dog, Sefton, if you’d be so kind as to ensure Molly gets back to her digs?’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘We’ll take the Lagonda,’ said Miriam.

‘Do you have a driver, my dear?’ asked Morley.

‘Oh, don’t worry about me, I can fend for myself,’ said Molly, rising. ‘And I have Giacomo, of course.’ She bestowed triple cheek kisses all round. ‘Now, we all have a busy week ahead of us. I shall see you tomorrow, Swanton. And you too, Miriam.’

‘Hmm,’ said Miriam.

And so Morley and Miriam departed, and I was suddenly left alone with Molly in her dressing room.











CHAPTER 10 (#ulink_4e883a20-dea1-56b8-b79c-ca8ad1a2ebd2)







THIS TAKES SOME EXPLAINING.

‘Well,’ said Molly, taking a deep breath and gazing at herself in the dressing room mirror.




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