by Ian Sansom
‘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.
&nb
sp; ‘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.
