Westmorland Alone. Ian Sansom

THE INFERNAL STREETS OF SOHO

      LONDON WASN’T KILLING ME. The opposite.

      We had returned from Devon in a low mood. Things had not gone at all according to plan. Miriam was no doubt distracting herself with some dubious engagement or other and Morley was probably working on some mad side project – a history of war, perhaps, or of the Machine Age, or of Russian literature, or indeed of Russia, or of fish, of friendship, of God, of the gold standard, goodness only knows what. (See, for example, Morley’s War – And its Enemies (1938), Morley’s Forces of Nature in the Service of Man (1932), Morley’s Fish, Flesh and Fowl: A History of Edible Animals (1935), Morley’s Mighty Bear: A Children’s History of Russia (1930), Morley’s Studies in Christian Love (1934), Morley’s God: His Story (1936), and one of my favourites, published rather unfortunately in 1929, Morley on Money: How to Make It, How to Spend It, How to Save It.) I was just glad that I’d been granted a few days’ leave. I had been making the most of them.

      I had been drinking late in the Fitzroy Tavern, and had then found myself at an after-hours club just off Marshall Street which was frequented by some of my old International Brigade chums. The club was run by a big Kerryman named Delaney who ran a number of places around Soho. Delaney self-consciously styled himself as a ‘character’ – all thick Irish charm, topped off with faux-aristo English manners. He wore a white tie and tails, carried a silver-topped cane with a snuff-pot handle and came across as everyone’s friend, the debonair host, generous, witty and easy-going. He was not at all to be trusted. I had been introduced to him by a couple of lads from Spain, Mickey Gleason, a tough little Cockney with a beaten-up face, and a classically dour stick-thin Scotsman named MacDonald. Gleason liked to boast that he had saved my life in Spain, when in fact all he’d done was to cry a well-timed ‘Get down!’ when we had come under unexpected fire one evening near Figueras. And MacDonald had loaned me money – dourly – on my return. So I was in debt to them both, in different ways. Delaney had also been in Spain, apparently, though I hadn’t met him there. It was said that he’d been working as some kind of fixer. I rather suspected that he had enjoyed as much business with Franco’s forces as with the Republicans.

      Delaney’s places were famous for their wide range of entertainments and refreshments, and for the clientele. It used to be said that to meet everyone in England who really mattered one had only to stand for long enough at the foot of the stairs of the Athenaeum on Pall Mall: the same might just as truly be said of Delaney’s basement bars and bottle parties. Poets, artists, lawyers, politicians, doctors, bishops and blackmailers, safebreakers and swindlers: in the end, everyone ended up at Delaney’s.

      I’d started out drinking champagne with one of Delaney’s very friendly hostesses, a petite redhead with warm hands, cold blue eyes, sheer stockings and silk knickers, who seemed very keen for us to get to know one another better – but then they always do. She told me her name was Athena, which I rather doubted. Sitting on my lap, and several drinks in, she persuaded me into a card game where I soon found myself out of my depth and drinking a very particular kind of gin fizz, with a very particular kind of kick – a speciality of the house. My head was swimming, the room was thick with the scent of perfumes, smoke and powders, I had spent every penny of the money that Morley had paid me for our Devon adventure, I was in for money I didn’t have – and Athena, needless to say, had disappeared. My old Brigade chums Gleason and MacDonald were watching me closely. Even through the haze I realised that if I didn’t act soon I was going to be in serious trouble: Delaney was renowned for calling in his debts with terrible persuasion.

      I excused myself and wandered through to the tiny courtyard out back. There were men and women in dark corners doing what men and women do in dark corners, while several of the hostesses stood around listlessly smoking and chatting, including Athena, who glanced coolly in my direction and ignored me. She was off-duty. Out here, there was no need to pretend.

      I picked my way through the squalor, past beer crates and barrels, and went to use the old broken-down lavatory in the corner of the yard. When I tried to flush the damned thing I found it wasn’t working. I stood pointlessly rattling the chain for a moment and then climbed drunkenly up onto the seat and quickly discovered the problem. There was no water in the cistern. And there was no water in the cistern for a very good reason: the lav served as Delaney’s quartermaster’s store. I had found myself a little treasure-trove. A honeypot. I glanced up and thanked the heavens above. Through the rotting makeshift roof of the lav I could see the starry blue sky. It was a beautiful warm autumn evening. Suddenly, everything seemed OK. And anything seemed possible. I seemed to have shaken off my torpor. Without hesitation – without thinking at all – I decided that this unlikely Aladdin’s cave presented me with the perfect opportunity to make up for some of my losses inside. I dipped my hand in and helped myself to some supplies. I took only what I needed.

      I felt revived and reinvigorated. I considered returning to the game. I had a feeling my luck had changed. Athena and the other women had gone back inside and there were only one or two couples remaining in the yard. It would have taken a dousing with a bucket of cold water to get their attention. In the opposite corner to the lav was a convenient big black door out into an alleyway. I realised I could probably disappear and no one would notice.

      I unbolted the door, slipped into the alleyway, and started walking.

      The infernal streets of Soho were unusually quiet and I found myself once again wandering that blessed one-mile square, from Oxford Street to the north and Shaftesbury Avenue to the south, from Regent Street to the west and Charing Cross Road to the east, that strange other-world – or underworld – where so many of us come to escape, and where many of us find ourselves for ever trapped.

      Unfortunately I wasn’t able to return to my temporary lodgings, a place just off Wardour Street that generously, if inaccurately, described itself as a hotel. I doubted that the management would be willing to accept an IOU for payment and there was no way I was parting with my recently acquired pocketful of treasure and so, eventually, exhausted from my wandering and still trying to flush the various excitements of the evening out my system, I found myself lying down to nap on a bench outside Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court. This was ironic.

      In his Dictionary of Usage and Abusage (1932) Morley writes at great length, and with utter despair, about the common misuse of the term ‘irony’ by both the ill-educated and the over-educated. ‘An ironic statement,’ he writes, ‘is like a good lawyer or a politician. It says one thing but means another. An irony is not merely something odd or unusual. The word “ironic” should never be used to describe the merely unfortunate.’ My laying my head down outside Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court was not therefore, perhaps, strictly speaking, an irony. It was, however, at the very least, extremely unfortunate.

      Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court was the first court in which I ever appeared. It was shortly after I had returned from Spain. I had become involved with a woman who was involved with a man who had treated her badly. Fortunately at the time I had money and resources and was therefore able to employ a good lawyer who managed to get me off with only a fine on a charge of common assault. This encounter with the law was an experience I was determined not to repeat. Morley would probably have called this hubris.

      It was 3 a.m., I was cold and tired, and as far as I recall my reasoning went something like this: if the safest place to sleep rough is a police cell then the next safest is probably on the steps of a court. On both counts, alas, I turned out to be wrong.

      I found myself prodded awake by three varsity types who had clearly enjoyed a long night at the opera. They were all in evening dress. There was a fat blond buffoonish-looking one who wore a yellow gardenia in his buttonhole, a greasy-looking one, with brilliantined hair, and the other – the other might almost have been me, before everything that happened had happened.

      The first thing I knew was the greasy one tapping his cigar ash into my eyes.

      ‘Come on, man! Up! Up!’ He was leaning over me, breathing his fumes into my face. ‘Show some respect to your