Essex Poison. Ian Sansom

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?’

      ‘One hundred pounds?’

      For me, and indeed for almost anyone except for the very wealthy and the very lucky, one hundred pounds in 1937 was an unimaginable amount. For me, working for Morley, it was almost a year’s wages.

      ‘That’s a deal then,’ said Delaney. ‘Gentlemen, would you show Mr Sefton the door?’

      Gleason and MacDonald hauled me out of my chair and began to escort me – drag me, rather – to the door.

      ‘Oh, Mr Sefton, just before you go.’

      Gleason and MacDonald paused and turned me around just as we had reached the top of the stairs. I could see Delaney smiling, framed in the doorway like a painting of some all-powerful potentate: hand-grained features, black-enamelled hair, ivory teeth, the very image of the inscrutable and implacable.

      ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘I’d be interested to know: have you perhaps heard rumours about my methods for calling in debts? In those very very rare cases where people are not able or unwilling to make their payments?’

      ‘Yes, I have,’ I said.

      ‘Well’ – he chuckled – ‘the rumours, you will be delighted to hear, Mr Sefton, are not entirely true. Isn’t that right, boys?’ Gleason and MacDonald wholeheartedly agreed that not all the rumours were entirely true. ‘Not at all. Not at all at all at all. Just be careful going down the stairs now.’

      The Windmill Theatre sign winked red at me, I stepped forward, Mickey Gleason pushed, and I began to fall.

       CHAPTER 4

       THE MUSIC WRITERS’ MUTUAL PUBLISHING CO.

      NOTHING WAS BROKEN. That was the main thing. I was sure nothing was broken. I had managed to put out a hand to prevent myself from going head first but I had rolled and skidded and smashed my way down and was at the bottom of the stairs when I heard my Brigader friends rushing towards me. I’d curled into a foetal position to protect myself from the inevitable beating. I pressed myself into the cracked linoleum and waited for the first blow. Instead I felt a hand reach down to pull me up.

      ‘Sorry about this, mate, no hard feelings, eh?’ said Gleason.

      ‘Sure,’ I said, relieved, beginning to stand.

      Which is when MacDonald took a well-aimed kick that knocked me back against the door.

      ‘Just pay up, you swine,’ said MacDonald, or words to that effect, with his characteristic Glaswegian charm. The rest of what he said, and exactly what he said is, alas, unrepeatable. Suffice it to say, I was left in no doubt that it would be in my best interests to pay my debt to Delaney without delay or hesitation.

      When they finally pushed me out the door back onto Windmill Street – ‘See you in two weeks with your hundred pounds!’ called MacDonald with one final thump, as I staggered back – I noticed a tiny brass plaque indicating the name of Delaney’s offices, which I had never noticed before. The Rendezvous. Indeed it was.

      I was breathing hard – panic and pain, a bad combination. I checked my ribs. I needed somewhere to rest. Somewhere to gather my thoughts and tend my wounds. Somewhere safe.

      Some of the places I stayed in London in between assignments with Morley during our time together: Berwick Street, Dean Street, Greek Street, Wardour Street, in ‘hotels’, basements, flophouses and grand apartments, in mews, rows, streets, yards, courts, drives, circuses, both inside and out in the cold. There is nowhere, however, that I can particularly recommend: there is nowhere that remains the same. Time and money, tourism and sheer merchant greed have swallowed up the Soho that I knew and loved.

      My most reliable stopover during those years, the place I dragged myself to when all seemed lost and there was nowhere else to go, was the offices of the Music Writers’ Mutual Publishing Company, on the fourth floor of 14 Denmark Street – long since disappeared but fondly remembered.

      During my time at college – when I wasn’t drinking or suffering the after-effects of drinking – I had somehow become involved with the college Music Society. I was in a Gilbert and Sullivan and a couple of end-of-term concerts, and was a stalwart of the – often rather rowdy – revues, which is where I first met Ronald ‘Easy’ Pease, of the Pease family brewers of Batley. Ronald was studying music. He was a multi-instrumentalist who played the violin, the viola, the oboe, the flute, the French horn, the organ, the piano and – most proficiently and competently of all – the fool. Ron was a prankster, the sort of person who liked to enter a room and immediately set about causing mischief. He even looked like a puppy, with masses of dark unruly curls and big soulful eyes. He also had charm and money, which meant that he managed to escape rustication on a number of occasions for various incidents of drunkenness, vandalism, nudity and – after one memorable night out – for ‘fouling’ on the doorstep of the Master’s Lodge. (It probably helped that Ron’s father and grandfather had both attended the college before him and that the generously endowed Pease Building was an important addition to the college estate.)

      After college, Ron had attempted for a while to pursue a conventional career as an orchestral musician, but because he was an independent-minded sort of a fellow, and because he was of considerable