Essex Poison. Ian Sansom
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energy. He worked as if you were a horse or some show dog presented for grooming. He used a hard horsehair brush, which he worked in small circular motions all over the body to remove the top layer of dirt, before hosing you down and getting to work with his fingers, elbows and – occasionally – his entire fist. The experience was painful, but there was no doubt that it was also a pleasure, an honour even to be worked upon by a man with such skills. In the privacy of Klein’s, Darjeeling became your mother, your lover, your persecutor, comforter and friend.
Duly pummelled, exhausted and exhilarated, I thanked him – you left tips upstairs with Berrak – and worked my way weakly and slowly through the other rooms to the Russian Room, the hottest steam room known to everyone as the Oven. Between Darjeeling and the Oven there were three rooms: the Smoke Room, the Silent Room and the Golden Ring. The Smoke Room contained a red-hot wood-burning stove: the experience resembled that of being caught in a clearing in the smouldering remains of a forest fire. In the Silent Room one simply gazed at glowing hot rocks kept boiling in a pit, while in the Golden Ring men congregated for the privilege of schmeissing, a practice I have never encountered elsewhere, where complete strangers rubbed and scrubbed at one another with a hard raffia brush until the skin turned red and golden. I was not a great schmeisser; my one and only experience had involved a man, not a regular, who’d started pawing at me. (This sort of carry-on, though not unheard of, was generally frowned upon at Klein’s, though to make my point and to throw off my schmeisser I’d had to grab him roughly by the throat, pinch his nostrils and tell him that I wasn’t going to let go until he stopped. He stopped.) In Klein’s it was my preference to act as an observer rather than as a participant. Unfortunately, that night in the Oven, I became the object of unwelcome attention.
A GROUP OF WELL-BASTED REGULARS stood around the furnace in the centre of the room, as though gathered for warmth. They were – naturally – entirely naked, their towels slung over their shoulders. I recognised some but not all of them. There was Willy Mann, who owned a couple of restaurants up around Fitzrovia and who also ran a number of Klein’s businesses on his behalf. John Jacobs, who I knew was an art dealer of some kind, though of exactly what kind was never made entirely clear. And a tiresome American, Ned Price, who was some sort of journalist and who had arrived in London from Paris a couple of years earlier and who never tired of reminding us that London was not Paris, as if we didn’t already know. There were also three or four others who from the neck down looked almost feminine, rather Rubenesque – what Klein would have called zaftig – but who from the neck up looked like they had been hit repeatedly by Jim Corbett, John L. Sullivan and Joe Louis, slowly and repeatedly, and in relay. In suits they’d have looked menacing. In the flesh, and through the haze of the Oven, they were grotesque. (In an article, ‘Getting Ugly’, published in the popular magazine Photoplay in 1932, Morley writes about the work of the actor Lon Chaney, one of his great heroes, ‘The Man of a Thousand Faces’, who dared to play grotesques, and also about Boris Karloff and his relationship with the Hollywood make-up artist Jack Pierce, who was responsible for Karloff’s incredible make-up in Frankenstein. Morley loved monsters. ‘We should always remember,’ he writes, ‘that physical defects are not necessarily signs of moral deformity.’ Not necessarily. But Morley had never been to Klein’s.)
‘Well well,’ said Willy Mann, who spotted me as I entered. Willy was a humourless individual with the manners of a second-rate maître d’, who liked to think he knew a little bit of everything about everyone. ‘If it’s not the famous Stephen Sefton. Are we not honoured?’
The others turned to stare, and it was difficult not to stare back. It takes a moment to adjust to speaking to half a dozen naked men.
‘Where have you been, Sefton?’ asked Ned Price, ever the journalist.
‘I’ve been travelling,’ I said, which was true. The stone floor was hot beneath my feet.
‘Somewhere nice, I hope?’ said John Jacobs.
Devon and Westmorland – and Norfolk – were pleasant enough places. But I wouldn’t exactly have described our experiences there as ‘nice’: the Appleby crash had been national news; events in Devon had caused a minor scandal; Norfolk was a mess.
Willy Mann took me by the arm and leaned close towards me, lowering his voice.
‘How are you fixed at the moment, young man?’ Willy was only a few years older than me – not even thirty – but he referred to everyone as ‘young man’. He thought it made him sound avuncular and authoritative.
‘Fixed?’ I asked. He could easily have meant a number of things.
‘For work?’ he clarified.
‘I’m fine, thank you, Willy.’
‘You’re in gainful employment?’
‘You could say that.’ My work with Morley was certainly employment – of a kind. But gainful? In what sense it was gainful I wasn’t at all sure. Certainly I was paid; it got me out of London; but apart from Miriam it was sometimes difficult to see the benefits; indeed, because of Miriam it was sometimes difficult to see the benefits.
‘I’m guessing you could always do with a little something on the side?’ said Willy. ‘Am I right, or am I right?’
The Oven was beginning to work its effects on me. I usually lay down on one of the benches to prevent myself becoming dizzy. My head was beginning to feel cloudy.
‘Mr Klein has some business he needs taking care of,’ continued Willy. ‘And he needs someone … presentable to take care of it. A fresh face. A front man. Someone … educated. Someone … like you, Sefton.’
‘And what’s the business that needs doing?’ I asked, trying hard to focus on Willy’s face.
‘You’d have to talk to Mr Klein, if you were interested.’
‘What sort of thing is it?’
‘I can’t go into details, I’m afraid. It’s to do with a little land deal up around Becontree.’
‘Becontree?’
‘Out in Essex, where they’re building the big estates.’
‘No thanks, Willy,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to go to Essex.’
‘What have you got against Essex?’
‘Nothing. I just …’ I couldn’t even picture Essex in my mind. East of London? South of London? Essex was just another county. I’d had enough of other counties. If I could, I’d have stayed right here, in the Oven.
‘Well, anyway. The offer’s there. You let me know if you change your mind.’
‘I will, Willy, thanks. I …’
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