Essex Poison

by Ian Sansom

  ‘I have no doubt that one day it will be possible, my dear. Tiny cameras perhaps ingested or inserted, the equivalent of little windows into the human body?’

  ‘Oh Father, really,’ said Miriam.

  ‘And I have no doubt that were we blessed with just such a window into the human stomach at this very moment it would prove conclusively that the oysters are perfectly good to eat,’ said Morley. ‘All this disorder’ – he gestured around us, at the increasingly offensive scene, and then tapped his head with his forefinger – ‘is not physical but mental. Honestly. Nothing that a good strong Mazawattee and a ginger snap wouldn’t cure. Mental. Mental. Entirely – entirely – mental.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. Entirely entirely mental.

  ‘You two are not feeling any ill effects at all, are you?’

  ‘No,’ agreed Miriam and the woman, rather too swiftly, methought.

  ‘There we are then. Sefton? What about you?’

  I was in fact beginning to feel more than a little off-colour, though I hadn’t actually eaten any oysters. In Spain there were often occasions in camp when the combined stench of one’s fellow volunteers, corned beef stew, sour milk and Spanish cigarettes was capable of turning one’s stomach – plus the ever present stench of fear, of course. And death. That sweet, seamy, bloody smell.

  ‘I’m absolutely fine,’ I said.

  ‘There we are. Proof positive,’ said Morley, slapping me heartily on the back – which very nearly made me throw up. ‘Disdain not the succulent bivalve. We used to feed you oysters when you were young, Miriam. Do you remember? All mushed up. Excellent baby food. Should be marketed as such. “Oysters for Infants, Adults and the Valetudinary. Oysters for All!” You know Henry VIII liked to start a meal with three or four hundred?’

  ‘That’s disgusting!’ said Miriam.

  ‘Symbolic foodstuff, you see,’ continued Morley, ‘the oyster. Consumption of large numbers signifying power. And traditionally associated with sex and death, as you know. I think I’m right in saying that at one time the oyster cellars of New York were to be identified by their glowing red lights …’

  ‘As in …?’ asked the woman.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Morley. ‘I believe that in the old days one might go to an oyster bar to enjoy not only the taste of a juicy bivalve but also the pleasant company of women – in private booths provided specially for the purpose. Roistering and oystering.’

  ‘How appalling,’ said Miriam.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the other woman. ‘I suppose it served a practical purpose. Two birds with one stone, as it were.’

  ‘Exactly. Law of similarity, you see,’ continued Morley. ‘Ginseng, rhinoceros horn: they all resemble the human genitalia in one way or another, do they not?’

  ‘Father!’ said Miriam. ‘Do spare us your ramblings, please. We are in polite company.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be concerned on my account,’ said the woman. ‘I’ve heard it all before. That’s why it’s assumed that those who consume oysters possess enhanced sexual powers, is it, Mr Morley? The resemblance?’

  ‘Precisely!’ said Morley.

  ‘Oysters?’ said Miriam, who could at times be as shockingly prudish as she could be shockingly shocking. ‘Human genitalia? If not for the company’s sake, Father, do please exert some self-control! Things are bad enough as they are, without you free-associating on the theme of human genitalia.’

  ‘Free-associate on, Mr Morley,’ said the woman. ‘Don’t mind me. I rather admire a man with a vivid imagination.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met,’ I said, holding out my hand to this remarkable woman who clearly seemed more than able to appreciate and understand Morley’s – shall we say idiosyncratic? – conversational manner. He had a terrible propensity to pelt people with facts and ideas and associations. Most people – rightly – tended to duck. This delightfully unflappable woman seemed more than prepared to fling ideas right back at him.

  ‘Oh, how silly of me!’ said Morley. ‘I forgot. Stephen Sefton, my assistant, this is—’

  But at that moment a hush fell upon the crowd – and even upon Morley – as four ambulance men brought the body of Arthur Marden on a long white stretcher from the Town Hall. He had been stripped of his heavy regalia and his hands had been folded on his chest like some dead Plantagenet on his tomb. There were gasps of horror from the crowd. A Dagenham Girl Piper had the good sense to step forward and drape a tartan cape over him. Some people began loudly sobbing.

  ‘Oh, how morbid,’ said Miriam disapprovingly. ‘You’d think they’d save it for the cemetery.’ Like her father, Miriam sometimes rather lacked normal human sympathy and emotions. ‘Life’s not made of barley sugar, you know,’ she often liked to remark – when in fact her own life was of course made almost entirely of barley sugar.

  Morley at least had the restraint and good manners to allow the stretcher to pass before continuing with his introductions.

  ‘Yes, Sefton, sorry, as I was saying, this is Amy Johnson, the aviatrix.’

  ‘It’s an honour to meet you,’ I said, as the doors slammed on the ambulance and poor Arthur Marden was driven away.

  Amy Johnson! Amy Johnson was at that time perhaps one of the most famous women in the world, the Bette Davis of the skies. Like everyone else, I was more than familiar with Miss Johnson’s empire-wide flying exploits and her many crashes and near-misses – in her personal as well as her professional life. Her many adventures, and the many ups and downs of her often tempestuous relationship with Jim Mollison, the equally famous aviator, meant that she was rarely out of the newspaper headlines. Amy Johnson was a bona fide celebrity. How on earth could I not have recognised Amy Johnson? I can only explain that she was far more glamorous in real life than she appeared in photographs; I’d only ever seen her in flying gear and goggles, climbing in and out of aeroplanes. She was dressed that evening in a gown that may well have been a Schiaparelli for all I knew; it was certainly, according to Miriam, ‘scrummy’. She was also – of course – entirely goggle-free.

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you,’ said Amy Johnson, whose manners were as impeccable as her flying was daring.

  ‘I thought they were rather good, the oysters, actually,’ said Morley.

  ‘Rather like licking the bottom of a boat though, don’t you think, swallowing an oyster?’ said Miriam.

  ‘I was thinking something else entirely,’ said Amy Johnson, grinding out her cigarette beneath her heel.

  ‘Have you all just met this evening?’ I asked Amy Johnson.

  ‘That’s right. I’ve been reading Mr Morley’s work for years, of course, but we’ve never met. Although it turns out that the same man taught us to fly, funnily enough.’

  ‘Yes. A Captain Matthews,’ said Morley. ‘Taught us both. Highly recommended.’

  ‘You can fly?’ I asked Morley, astounded.

  ‘Naturally, Sefton. In years to come I believe flying will be as natural a daily activity as riding a bicycle or driving a car. An entirely safe and reasonable means of transport. There’ll be aerodromes everywhere. Entire communities will be built around them. Homes will be provided with hangars and …’

  Another man a few feet away succumbed to the effects of crowd hysteria, causing even Morley – thank goodness – to pause in his aeronautical reflections. (For those wishing to enjoy his reflections at greater length I would point them towards the little-known articles he wrote for Aero Digest magazine during the 1930s under the unfortunate pseudonym Ayre O’Naut. Morley’s many and various pseudonymous works include his humorous – or at least purportedly humorous – pieces for Punch, as R.I.B. Tickler, and the health and fitness articles he wrote for Physical Fitness magazine as Mr Mussel. His use of false names and pseudonyms was partly an attempt on his part to avoid the Jack of all Trades label that was often – fairly or unfairly – applied to him and his work, partly to allow him to publish multiple articles in the same issue of a magazine, and partly simply to allow him to i
ndulge in his simple love of wordplay: see his long-running and often pun-packed ‘Notes of an English Gardener’, for example, as Mr Greengrass in Nature magazine, and his perfectly serious and unintentionally hilarious advice column as the rather astringent Mr Pickle in the Daily Express.)

  ‘Positively Boschean, isn’t it?’ Morley remarked, at this latest addition to what was now no longer a trickle but a veritable tide of human ooze and effluvia.

  ‘Mmm,’ agreed Miriam. ‘More Pieter Bruegel the Elder, wouldn’t you say, Sefton?’

  I grunted. ‘But you don’t even drive, Mr Morley,’ I said.

  ‘That’s only because I’m too busy to do so,’ said Morley. ‘Driving for me alas is a necessity—’

  ‘Which I take care of, Father, on your behalf, like so much else,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Thank you, my dear, you do, yes, indeed,’ agreed Morley jovially. ‘Flying on the other hand remains a pleasant leisure activity. An indulgence.’

  ‘Isn’t it just,’ said Amy Johnson. ‘You know the only time I really feel free is when I’m up in the air.’

  ‘Did you fly in today, Miss Johnson?’ asked Morley. ‘I forgot to ask.’

  ‘Yes, as it happens, into Stapleford Tawney. Booked out again first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Essex has an aerodrome?’ I said. I had not entirely caught up with the aeroplane age.

  ‘It has several, actually,’ said Amy Johnson.

  ‘Oh, do keep up, Sefton,’ said Miriam. ‘This is 1937, man! It’s not the 1920s!’

  The fetid stench and the pathetic sight of men and women staggering around in confusion and despair was now such that whenever and wherever it had occurred it would have been difficult to concentrate on the conversation. I didn’t care whether or not the chaos was the result of crowd hysteria, bad oysters, and how much or how little it resembled the work of painters I’d only half heard of. I’d had enough.

  ‘Do you know, I might excuse myself actually,’ I said.

  ‘Are you OK, Sefton?’ asked Miriam, managing a disapproving eyebrow-raise. ‘Not feeling funny at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not even just a little bit?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A teensy-weensy bit queasy? Just a little bit queer? In need of the smelling salts?’

  ‘I’m absolutely fine, thank you.’ I was in fact on the very point of heaving – as I’m sure Miriam herself must have been, though she’d never have admitted it. ‘I might just go for a little stroll.’

  ‘We’ll see you back at our lodgings then, shall we?’ said Morley, whose physical constitution was as strong as the proverbial ox’s and whose mental make-up was entirely impervious to even the most noxious powers of suggestion.

  ‘Yes,’ I readily agreed. ‘Where are we staying?’

  ‘Just there,’ said Morley, pointing to a hotel a few yards away from the Town Hall. ‘The George.’

  ‘Very convenient,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Dates from the fifteenth century, I believe,’ said Morley. ‘Old coaching inn. One can just imagine the merchants of old travelling down from Yarmouth and Harwich, can’t one, on their way to London, stopping off to rest and refresh themselves there. A slice of bloody rare roast beef and a tankard of foaming ale, eh?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Morley,’ I said, just.

  ‘Or perhaps half a dozen oysters and couple of gins?’

  ‘I’m going to take a little rest myself,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Very well, my dears,’ said Morley.

  ‘Goodbye, Miss Johnson,’ I said, striding quickly away.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE AVIATRIX

  I VERY HAPPILY WANDERED the ordinary streets of Colchester for half an hour or more – High Street and Crouch Street and Head Street, with their tobacconists and outfitters, and hardware shops, the confectioners and bakeries – slowly quelling any desire to vomit. Then, as is often the case in such circumstances, the tide of nausea having ebbed, I found myself feeling ravenously hungry. I’d not eaten since breakfast with Miriam back in Soho, which might as well have been a week ago, and so was delighted when I came across a brightly lit pie shop, McCluskeys, with a charming hand-painted sign depicting a shiny, steaming pie in a pie dish. (I should admit that McCluskeys was in fact to all intents and purposes just an ordinary house in an ordinary terraced street, with the kitchen and front room converted to commercial use – no Manze’s, but highly recommended nonetheless.) There was a queue of people outside with their pie basins and mugs for gravy and the promise of all sorts of pies – without oysters – within. So I joined the queue. The talk in the queue was of course of the events at the Oyster Feast, and of the death of the mayor, who was, I learned, ‘a lovely fellow’, ‘far too young’ and who most certainly ‘didn’t deserve the indignity of it’.

  I’d only been waiting and eavesdropping on this fascinating back-street gossip a few moments when I noticed out of the corner of my eye a woman approaching. It was dark but there was something about her, something in the way she moved, something different. She had a bearing that was not a back-streets sort of bearing. And then I realised.

  ‘Miss Johnson?’ I said, as she approached. The aviatrix.

  ‘Ah, Morley’s assistant. I’m terribly sorry, I’ve forgotten your name. I met so many people this evening.’

  ‘Sefton,’ I said. ‘Stephen Sefton.’

  ‘Sefton, yes, that’s right.’

  ‘You’ve changed?’ I said, rather redundantly, since she obviously had.

  ‘Yes. I couldn’t put up with that evening garb the whole time. I’m much more comfortable in this.’ This was a fine fitted misty-blue woollen suit with a long skirt that vaguely resembled one of her flying outfits – and indeed she had a white silk scarf knotted cravat-style at her throat, as though she were about to mount a plane and roar off to Africa at any moment. Miriam would perhaps have described the outfit as practical and stylish, though she would of course have disdained the practical. ‘Mr Morley went on with his daughter. I just thought I’d take a stroll. Off again early tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, I’m just queuing for a pie here, Miss Johnson, if you’d like to join me?’ Which is one of those sentences that one never expects oneself to say and which indeed one is utterly surprised to find sayable even at the point of its saying. Amy Johnson’s reply was equally surprising.

  ‘Do you know, Stephen Sefton, that is the most welcome invitation I’ve received in a very long time.’

  Which is how I ended up spending one of the most peculiar nights of my life, after what had already been one of the most peculiar days of my life, sharing a meat and vegetable pie with two mugs of tea with one of the most famous women in the world in Colchester’s back streets, discussing the meaning of life, flying, romance and the distant prospects of war. It was one of those intimate, unexpected evenings that one occasionally enjoys with total strangers, when one recognises in the other some deep quality or great fascination that goes unnoticed by those we know and love. The sort of evening that is often aided by alcohol, and which can often lead to complications.

  ‘Are you heading back to the hotel?’ asked Amy Johnson, after we left McCluskeys.

  ‘I’ll maybe call in to a public house on the way,’ I said.

  ‘Then I might join you, if I may?’ asked Miss Johnson. And join me she most certainly did. In the Abbey Arms on St John’s Green. And in the Live and Let Live. The Shoulder of Mutton. The Goat and Boot Inn. The Duke of Connaught, the Flying Fox, the Royal Standard, the Wig and Fidget. Some of the pubs alas refused to serve women in the public bars and some were without saloons, but in others we found seats and drank quietly, deep in conversation, until we were interrupted and moved on. Miss Johnson was recognised by men and women everywhere – that double-take I’d noticed occasionally with Morley, but multiplied many times and which preceded the inevitable request for autographs. If I learned anything from my years with Morley, and as I was reminded most forcibly that evening with Miss Johnson, it is to permit the famous
their privacy. They have so little they have to protect it with their lives.

  ‘Can I ask you, Stephen, have you read my husband’s book?’ Miss Johnson asked me, once we were several pubs in; it may have been the Rose and Crown. Or the King’s Head.

  ‘Whose book?’

  ‘Jim Mollison. My husband. Playboy of the Air.’

  ‘I can’t say I have, miss, no.’

  ‘I’m so glad.’ She had produced her silver cigarette case and was gently tapping it on its side upon the table as she spoke. ‘Most of it’s entirely untrue, of course.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It’s amazing that you can live with someone for so long and yet apparently never know them at all, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed.

  ‘I wonder if perhaps the fault was mine.’

  ‘There’s always fault on either side in these circumstances,’ I said, not wishing either to upset or offend her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ceasing in her tapping of the cigarette case. ‘But you see we women have to spend so much time putting ourselves over and winning men over, that sometimes we lose sight of who we really are. The carapace becomes us. We lose our inner selves.’ She took a rather mournful sip of her glass of gin. ‘Women are like oysters really, Stephen.’ She placed a hand on mine.

  ‘Are they?’

  ‘The harder the skin, the outer casing, the softer the heart. It takes something to prise you open, and then … You find you’re simply consumed. Just like that.’ She clicked her fingers and took up her cigarette case again.

  ‘I’m not sure I quite follow, Miss Johnson.’

  ‘No, of course, you wouldn’t understand. I shouldn’t be talking to you like this.’

  ‘No, no, it’s fine,’ I said, laying my hand gently on her arm. ‘Sometimes it’s easier to—’

  ‘You should ask Morley’s daughter all about it; she’ll know what I mean.’

  ‘Miriam?’

  ‘Pretty girl,’ said Amy Johnson. ‘Very pretty girl. When are the two of you getting married?’

  ‘We’re not getting married,’ I said.