Flaming Sussex. Ian Sansom
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memorably described as Morley’s ‘elegant outpouring of the lion a-roaring’, but which I might describe as his endless, pointless, glorious ramble.
While Morley was working on the proofs for Essex, I had been tasked with putting the finishing touches – ‘Semi-gloss ’em, Sefton, but semi-gloss only, please, we don’t want too much of your smooth and lyrical, thank you’ – to a number of articles, including something on ‘The Nature and Management of Children’, about which I knew precisely nothing; another titled, depressingly, ‘Conversations with Vegetables’; and another about the sound of tarmac for an American magazine that called itself Common Sense but which displayed no sign whatsoever of possessing such and which paid Morley vast sums for articles on subjects so strange that Miriam liked to joke that the magazine might usefully change its name to Complete and Utter Nonsense. (‘The Sound of Tarmac’, for example, was intended as a companion piece to two inexplicably popular articles we’d produced for the magazine, one on the quality of modern British kerbstones and another on regional, national and international variations in the size of flagstones. The Yanks couldn’t get enough of this sort of stuff.) My most recent work, gussying up one of Morley’s quick opinion pieces – eight hundred words for a magazine with the unfortunate title of the Cripple, a publication aimed at war veterans and the disabled, in praise of Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help, all about the importance of self-discipline in overcoming difficulties and achieving happiness – had left me feeling not so much self-helped as self-disgusted, as if I had drunk water from a sewer or a poisoned well.
Four months in, I was physically exhausted, I was enervated.
And I was envious.
At college I had naively believed that I was the master of my own destiny; in Spain, I had realised that none of us truly determines our fate; and now I was beginning to think that my entire life was a matter of complete insignificance. The real problem was that the longer I worked for Morley – a true literary lion, a working-class hero, an international figure who was big in Japan and who counted the Queen of Italy among his fans, and indeed frequent correspondents, a man who had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and who had then set about pulling up the bootstraps of the nation – the more I worked for this infernal writing machine, this actual living and breathing – there is no other word for it – genius, the more I was reminded of my own lack of drive and determination and brilliance and the more I came to despair of the possibility of ever making a significant contribution to the world of letters myself. I had long harboured dreams of becoming a writer, yet the only writing I did for myself now was the occasional postcard, my betting slips and IOUs. Writing for Morley, a master of the English language, I had become thoroughly disgusted with words. His facility both fascinated and appalled me. His achievements seemed incredible – and worthless. The last poem I had written consisted of exactly four words: ‘Vexed ears/ Wasted years.’ The County Guides were crushing me. I was beginning to feel no better than a broken, beaten dog.
My only consolation was that between books I was able to return to London, where I would enjoy all the things that city has to offer and would attempt to iron out the various knots and kinks that had formed in my mind and my body by consorting with the kind of people who had knots and kinks of their own to deal with – my kind of people.
Which is how I had ended up, on a Saturday night at the very end of October 1937, at the all-night vapour bath on Brick Lane in the East End.
IT WAS EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED. Frankly, if you can’t get exactly what you need in the East End on a Saturday night, there must be something wrong with you – something seriously wrong with you.
After the relaxation and rigours of the vapour bath, I had adjourned to a pub nearby for light refreshments and to enjoy the company of people who certainly looked like, but who may or may not have been, thieves, prostitutes and ponces. One should never judge by appearances, of course, according to Morley. One should be open-minded. One should take people as you find them. The only problem is, when you take people as you find them, you’ll often find that they’ll already have taken you – in every sense – for everything. After a couple of hours of drinking and singing around the piano, I somehow found myself taking up the generous offer of hospitality and a bed for the night by a sharp-suited Limehouse chap I’d never met before and a couple of his lovely female companions. I did not judge them by appearances, being entirely incapable of doing so – and it turned out, alas, contra-Morley, that this sharp-suited individual with his female companions was indeed a ponce with his prostitutes, but I was determined I was not going to allow them to prove themselves also as thieves.
I awoke early after our long and largely sleepless night, having eventually fallen into an unsettling dream in which I was sitting with a man at a large glass table, drinking champagne, him wearing a silk suit and brightly polished shoes, and with a set of scales before him and saying he had a special present for me. At least, I think it was a dream. What woke me was the sound of birds.
At St George’s, in the cottage that Morley had provided for me in the grounds of the estate, I would often wake to the sound of birdsong. All else there was silence, though if you listened carefully you could hear not only the sound of water bubbling and swirling in the faraway streams and in the cottage well, you could actually hear your blood coursing through your veins. It was unsettling, the country.
But in London: birdsong?
I remember being momentarily confused. I lay gazing at a crack in the ceiling above me, through which it would have been possible to insert my fist.
Was that the sound of birds?
Was I in Norfolk?
Or was I back in Spain?
Was I dreaming?
It was definitely the sound of birds. Lots of birds.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see empty beer bottles and cigarette butts piled in a saucer. The place, wherever it was, seemed dirty and unloved. I raised myself up on my elbow. There was a woman lying asleep beside me.
And then I remembered.
It had been a very long night.
I turned my head. My clothes lay discarded on the floor. The Limehouse chap and another woman lay sleeping in a bed opposite. There was a lighted cigarette smouldering in an ashtray on an upturned case by the bed, and what looked like a fresh glass of whisky perched precariously next to it.
I took some deep breaths and then coughed quietly in order to gauge any response.
Nothing.
Having thus determined to my satisfaction that my new friends were either fast asleep or at least innocently dozing, I rose quickly and quietly, intent on hanging on to whatever remained of my dignity and in my wallet, gathered up my clothes and fled from the room, down a dark stairway and along a corridor towards a door.
It was precisely at that moment, cold and ashamed, and the previous evening’s activities returning clearly to my mind, that I determined that I should no longer live my life as a slave to my whims and desires, or indeed as a slave to the whims and desires of others, but that I should once again attempt to master myself and my destiny. It was then that I determined that I had had enough of being used by life, by London, and by everyone. Morley believed that on our grand tour we were surveying one of the great wonders of the world – Great Britain – and London of course, as it always has, believed it was the great city in this Great Britain, but at that time, in those years, it felt nothing like great and I felt nothing but forever lost and losing, a man condemned to life on a slowly sinking ship.
Stumbling