Essex Poison

by Ian Sansom

  ‘Usual sort of thing. Tyrannical father, daughter attempts to break free, ends up murdering him, Gothic depiction of a remote and backward community, contrasted with the fabulous glamour of the city. Sound familiar?’

  ‘Sounds terribly formulaic. I’m not sure I’ll be rushing to see it.’

  ‘Josephine Hutchinson has excellent eyebrows.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  ‘But she’s no Bette Davis.’

  ‘Well, who is?’

  ‘And George Brent’s no Bogart.’

  Miriam gazed out dreamily at the silent street before us. She was half lit by one of Colchester’s new electric street lights. ‘Who would you have play you in a film of your life, Sefton?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said.

  ‘Sheila Terry might be good – for me, I mean. Or Dorothy Lamour? Don’t you think?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe?’ She struck what I took to be a Dorothy Lamour pose.

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘And you could be Claude Rains.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a compliment.’

  ‘Or Peter Lorre?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I might write about it in my column. My imagined life on stage and screen. I imagine a lot of women share such fantasies.’

  ‘I’m sure they do,’ I said. ‘And how is the column?’

  ‘It’s coming along.’ She finished her cigarette, ground it out, and looked at me. I’d seen the look before. It meant ‘Don’t ask me any more questions.’ I ignored it.

  ‘Can I ask, do you ever feel like an oyster, Miriam?’ I said, recalling my evening of discussing the Meaning of Life, Death and Love with Amy Johnson.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘It’s just something that Amy said.’

  ‘Amy?’

  ‘Miss Johnson, the aviatrix. She said that women were like oysters and that sometimes it took something to prise them open, and then—’

  ‘Do you know, Sefton, I have never heard anything quite so revolting and preposterous in my life,’ said Miriam. ‘I’m surprised a woman like Miss Johnson was interested in sharing such … insights with you. Goodnight.’ And she swished before me into the hotel, head held high.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE ‘COTTAGING’ EXISTENCE

  ‘A FINE SUNDAY MORNING!’ said Morley. ‘Cerulean skies. Bright sunshine. Essex at its finest, eh?’

  ‘It is damp and it’s autumn—’

  ‘Nonetheless.’

  ‘And it’s Essex, Father.’

  ‘Nonetheless, nonetheless.’

  ‘And it’s Sunday,’ added Miriam, for good measure.

  ‘Sleep well, Sefton?’

  ‘I can’t say I did, Mr Morley, no.’

  ‘Hmm. Oh dear. Troubled conscience?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I didn’t know because my conscience was almost always troubled.

  ‘The role of insomnia in human life and in human history: rather interesting, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, Father,’ said Miriam truthfully, loudly buttering some toast. ‘It is not.’

  ‘The cause or the consequence of cruelty, do you think, Sefton? I’m never sure.’

  ‘Erm.’ It usually took several cups of coffee and cigarettes to bring me up to Morley speed in the morning and I was only one cup of coffee in.

  ‘Tyrants always lie awake, do they not? But saints also. Most works of man – for good and ill – are the product of disturbance and discomfort.’

  Miriam crunched her way through her toast.

  ‘Lack of sleep: too much energy, or too little conscience?’ continued Morley. ‘What do you think, Sefton?’ Breakfast with Morley was like sitting an Oxbridge entrance exam, every day, before 9 a.m. ‘Too much energy, too little conscience?’

  ‘One of the two, I’m sure, Mr Morley,’ I said.

  (For Morley’s definitive statement on the matter of sleep and sleeplessness see Morley Goes to Bed: On the History of Sleep and Insomnia, with Recommendations for Natural Sleep Remedies (1930), in which he rails against pharmaceutical sleep aids – ‘the chemical cosh’ – and recommends instead various old-fashioned techniques such as warm milk and lukewarm baths, and a very precise sleeping posture, involving lying on a hard mattress on the right side of the body, stretched out with the arms relaxed, palms cupped, head only slightly raised and with the face ‘not clogging the pillow’, which leads to wrinkling, apparently; plus of course the adoption of what he always liked to call ‘a healthy philosophy of life’. He cautions also against the consumption of alcohol, the use of tobacco, snuff, tea, coffee, sugar and all other treats or stimulants at any time of the day but in the evenings in particular. It was, in other words, not a regimen that anyone but Morley would have been able to follow.)

  Over breakfast Morley restated his firm opinion that Marden had almost certainly been deliberately poisoned, treating us to his latest theories about who the murderer or murderers might be. Miriam did her best to drown out the sound of these half-formed hypotheses with the scraping of toast, continual interruptions and requests to the waiting staff for different types of Tiptree jam. (‘So, logically, the murderer must be—’, ‘Do you have the Tiptree Greengage Conserve, by any chance?’ ‘The Mulberry?’ ‘The Blackcurrant?’ ‘The Quince?’) Since we were due to collect the Lagonda the following morning and this would in all likelihood be our last day in Colchester, Morley thought it might make ‘a pleasant diversion’ – in his words – to try to wrap up the mystery for the Essex police before we left.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they’d be absolutely delighted, Father, for you to stick your nose in where it’s not wanted – absolutely delighted! Don’t you think, Sefton?’

  ‘Delighted,’ I agreed.

  ‘Though can I say again – just to be clear – that this is an undertaking in which I will play no part whatsoever.’

  ‘But we need you, Miriam!’ said Morley.

  ‘Do you though, Father? Or are you simply intent on pursuing your own little investigation, whoever or whomsoever might be prepared to assist you? As usual.’

  ‘Oh no, no,’ said Morley, suggesting – rather cannily, I thought – that as well as wrapping up the small matter of the mystery of the death of Arthur Marden that we should also simultaneously be spending the day gathering more material for the book on Essex, in order to ensure our hasty departure on the morrow. ‘Surely an entirely sensible and legitimate use of our time, Miriam? And many hands make light etcetera, eh?’

  Eventually – after much father–daughter back and forth, and three rounds of toast and half a dozen pots of marmalade and jam later – Miriam kindly agreed to join us. By ten o’clock we were back on the road in the Cadillac. And I had a headache.

  Our first stop was to be Len Starling’s cottage, Morley to try to find out what exactly it was about his relationship with Arthur Marden that Mountjoy and his friends had suggested was ‘difficult’, Miriam and me to gather notes and photographs on Starling’s reputed ‘cottaging’ lifestyle. As usual, Miriam was driving, I was taking notes, and Morley was talking, talking, talking and talking, delivering himself on this occasion of a rather long short history of the English cottage, its construction, its symbolic meaning, its recent evolution and – well, I’ll abbreviate.

  ‘The true ornament of the English countryside,’ he enthused, as we negotiated the little lanes and avenues around Colchester, avoiding the interminable roadworks wherever we could, ‘the English country cottage! The cottage life! The cottage style! The dream of every Englishman!’

  I remember there was a moment during this discourse at which I glanced across at Morley in his foursquare tweeds, as he gesticulated his way through some fascinating point about the relationship between English Romanticism and the cult of the cottage, and it occurred to me that he was in fact the dream of every Englishman, Morley the English country cottage: low-born, high-minded, entirely natural and yet cultured, appropriate for all sites and circumstances, from the
retreat in the grounds of a stately home to a labourer’s humble dwelling, the very image of Olde Englande, embodied in one man.

  ‘The dream of every Englishman perhaps: but not every Englishwoman,’ said Miriam, who of course represented everything that was not English country cottage style. Hers was rather what one might call contemporary metropolitan international style: tailored, structured, extravagant, sparkling.

  ‘The cottage homes of England! / By thousands on her plains,/ They are smiling o’er the silvery brooks,/ And round the hamlet fanes,’ said Morley, foursquarely.

  ‘The cottage homes of England/ Alas, how strong they smell!/ There’s fever in the cesspool,/ And sewage in the well,’ replied Miriam, sparkling.

  I was never quite sure if they’d rehearsed these sorts of routines – they were so practised and so strange. But it was just what they did. They had a wide repertoire of light verse that they used to entertain each other. At least it wasn’t nonsense verse – it was really very very tiresome when they recited nonsense verse.

  Thus, in summary, our abbreviated journey.

  Len Starling’s cottage was indeed one of those cottages that Englishmen – and whatever Miriam said, doubtless some Englishwomen – dream of, a thatched and weatherboarded place of the kind that we had seen dotted here and there throughout our travels in north Essex, an echt English cottage, no larger than the size of half a tennis court, and utterly perfect of its kind: the weatherboard freshly painted white and the thatch as crisp as if it had only just been cut and trimmed by an ancient whiskery thatcher with his bill hook and his knife.

  If the cottage was symbolic and idyllic then the garden was – well, the garden really was something else. What it was, I wasn’t sure. The front of the cottage was separated from the road by a white wooden fence which was planted in behind with a bulging herbaceous border. Morley was quite envious. ‘Lovely big border,’ he remarked, as we climbed out of the Cadillac. ‘Isn’t it, Sefton? Absolutely gorgeous. A classic English border.’ (Morley suffered terribly from border-envy. He tended his own borders back at St George’s – or at least supervised the tending of his own borders – with relentless care, in an attempt to create an impression of naturalness that was in fact anything but. ‘Gardening is a cultural rather than a natural pursuit and phenomenon,’ he writes in Morley’s Lovers of the Green Way: Biographies of Great Gardeners and Their Gardens (1929), ‘and gardeners work like artists by tricks, devices, cunning and with sleight of hand.’) It was what was hidden directly behind this lovely big English border that was truly strange and surprising. Behind the border was an area that was the very opposite of gorgeous, the counterpoint to the border planting: it was a kind of blank space of shingle, which had been piled in mazy circles here and there, which looked to me just like so many messy scribbles in the sand. There were also half a dozen small rocks standing up like mini-dolmen, and a few grassy-looking plants.

  ‘My goodness,’ said Morley, as we strode up the winding stone path through this strange landscape towards the cottage. ‘What do you think, Sefton?’

  I thought it looked rather like the grim landscape at West Mersea.

  ‘If I’m not mistaken I think what we have here is a Japanese garden, is it not – in Essex! Do you remember visiting the Ryoanji temple garden in Japan, Miriam?’

  ‘I can’t say I do, Father, no.’

  ‘You were very young.’ Morley had stopped to gaze at the strange scene before us. ‘The dry landscape gardens of Japan! Might be worth a book, eh?’ (And eventually, inevitably of course it was: see Morley’s Great Gardens of the World: A Guide and Gazetteer, 1939.)

  ‘Come on, Father,’ said Miriam, pushing Morley along towards the cottage and indicating that I should do likewise.

  ‘Incredible culture of gardening in Japan. Serene planting, rocks used to symbolise landscape features, gravel intended to represent the sea, careful pruning: the entire effect meant to create a calm, relaxing, comforting atmosphere around the ryokan or the tera, if I remember correctly. Which is exactly what we have here, I believe. In miniature. In Essex!’

  ‘Yes, you said, Father,’ said Miriam. ‘Very good.’

  I had to admit, I rather liked it. It was rather different, and rather soothing: you somehow felt as though you were arriving somewhere else, in a different world, with different rules, a place slightly at a tangent.

  Miriam, entirely practical, knocked loudly on the door of the cottage.

  ‘I mean, as much as anything it’s all just rather witty, isn’t it?’ continued Morley, staring back at the garden. ‘The whole thing. The surprise of it, sort of tucked behind the border. You’d never know, would you? The opposite of the English country garden, behind what one supposes is an English country garden! Restricted palette, careful arrangement. A Japanese garden, in Essex!’ He really did like it. ‘I think Mr Starling must be rather a remarkable man? Don’t you think, Sefton?’

  I had no idea. But I could say this of him: he was certainly light on his feet.

  No sooner had the echo of Miriam’s knocking died away than the top half of the cottage’s front door swung open, as if on a cuckoo clock or in a stable, and there appeared Mr Starling – or least the top half of Mr Starling, as though he had been divided in two. He was in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, with no tie, and wearing a brown house apron, upon which he was busily wiping his hands.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Starling?’

  ‘And you are?’ He did not seem in welcoming mood. I remembered his sad and courageous face from the Oyster Feast. If anything he now seemed even sadder and braver. ‘What are you? Are you all journalists?’

  ‘No,’ said Morley hesitantly. This was, I suppose, strictly true: Morley was of course a journalist by profession and by instinct, Miriam had her new press card from Woman, but I was most certainly not a journalist, so strictly speaking, we weren’t all journalists. Morley clarified. ‘No, we’re not all journalists. And those of us who are journalists aren’t exactly journalists. Nulla dies sine linea, certainly, but I would describe us more as … littérateurs.’

  ‘No thank you,’ said Mr Starling, who was about to shut the top half of his door.

  ‘My name is Swanton Morley.’

  ‘Swanton Morley?’ said Mr Starling, hesitating. ‘The People’s Professor? You were at the Oyster Feast?’

  ‘That’s correct, sir.’

  ‘Well.’ Mr Starling adopted a rather more welcoming tone: Morley could sometimes have that effect on people. (I should say, he could also have the opposite effect.) ‘Well. What can I do for you, Mr Morley?’

  ‘I wondered …’ Morley sometimes found it difficult to lie. Fortunately it was not a difficulty that either Miriam or I ever really struggled with.

  ‘We’re writing a book about Essex,’ said Miriam. ‘As part of a series, The County Guides. You may have heard of them?’

  ‘I can’t say I have, miss, no.’

  ‘Well, you shall, sir,’ said Morley. ‘You shall.’

  ‘And so we were wondering if you might be able to …’ Miriam began, but clearly amid all her toast-scraping she hadn’t been listening very closely at breakfast and seemed to have forgotten the purpose of our visit.

  ‘We’re interested in cottaging,’ I said. ‘For the purposes of the book.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Starling. ‘Well, I can’t claim to be an expert, but I certainly do like to dabble. Please, come in.’

  And he opened the lower half of the door and we entered his cottage home. During all my years with Morley I never ceased to be amazed at how easy it was to gain access to people’s houses. It was just lucky none of us were thieves or ne’er-do-wells.

  Mr Starling’s stable door led directly into the front room of the cottage, which was furnished simply with a deal table, four chairs, an old leather chaise longue, a set of cupboards, and some faded watercolours hanging on the wall, depicting what I assumed were Japanese landscape scenes. There were simple flat-wick burner lamps and a couple of candles i
n holders on the mantelpiece above the fire.

  ‘I was just admiring your Japanese garden,’ said Morley.

  ‘Well, inspired by Japan, but also by the salt marshes of Essex, actually,’ said Mr Starling.

  ‘Ah!’ said Morley.

  ‘But that’s what I said—’ I began.

  ‘Yes, an interesting comparison and combination – which wouldn’t have occurred to me before, I have to say, Mr Starling. Quite delightful and very observant of you. Have you ever been to Japan?’

  ‘I have, actually,’ said Mr Starling. ‘I was at one time a personal assistant to a gentleman who worked with the Sumitomo Group.’

  ‘Aha!’ said Morley, giving a little bow. ‘Hajimemashite.’

  A conversation then followed in Japanese, in which Miriam and I were of course unable to participate. The conversation went on. And on: Japanese appears to be a language with an awful lot of words. (In the introduction to Morley’s Le Mot Juste (1927), his popular guide to language learning, there is a table indicating the number of essential and functional words required to communicate in different languages and Japanese indeed scores rather highly, just below Chinese and Korean, languages in which Morley could also boast at least some functional level of fluency.) Miriam examined her fingernails. I began quietly whistling a tune and eventually gave a loud cough, just to remind Morley that we were here for purposes other than for him to practise his Japanese. He took no notice, of course, but fortunately Mr Starling did.

  ‘Mr Morley?’ he said. ‘I think your friend here wants to ask you something.’

  ‘Yes, Sefton?’ said Morley.

  I looked at my watch, which was always a sure way to get Morley moving.

  ‘Ah, yes. Of course. Excuse us. It’s very rare that one gets the opportunity to practise one’s Japanese. I was asking Mr Starling about my essay, Miriam, do you remember, the one based on The Tale of Genji?’

  ‘I can’t say I do, Father, no.’

  ‘To do with the Japanese concept of mono no aware – difficult to translate.’

  ‘The pathos of things,’ said Mr Starling.