Flaming Sussex

‘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

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

‘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.’