Essex Poison

by Ian Sansom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘The eleventh, the twelfth?’

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

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

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

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

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

  CHAPTER 3

  THE RENDEZVOUS

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

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

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

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

  The odds were definitely against me.

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

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

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

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

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed.

  ‘Difficult for you both.’

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

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

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

  ‘Are you a religious man, Mr Sefton?’

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

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Catholic or Protestant?’

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

  ‘Catholic,’ I said. Wise gamble.

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

  I nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘A writer,’ I said.

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

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

  He wasn’t far off.

  Gleason and MacDonald sniggered beside me.

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

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

  I could hear Gleason and MacDonald vigorously shake their heads.

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

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

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

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

  ‘Never?’

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

  ‘Of course.’

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

  ‘I’m sure.’

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

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

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And you obviously enjoy your work?’

  ‘Yes.’

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

  ‘I understand that.’

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

  ‘Yes. That’s right.’

  ‘You’re not interested?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘You’re absolutely sure now?’

  I hesitated. ‘Yes.’

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘I could just pay you back,’ I said.

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

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

  ‘A payment plan?’

  ‘A schedule of repayments,’ I said.

  Gleason and MacDonald sniggered again.

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

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

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

  ‘I—’

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

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

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