Essex Poison

by Ian Sansom

  And it got blurrier. The Lagonda had started juddering and had picked up a distinct knocking sound somewhere just past Ongar.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Miriam, above the sound of the roar of the engine.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘We should stop and get it looked at.’

  ‘It’s probably fine,’ said Miriam. ‘It’ll stop in a minute.’

  It didn’t stop in a minute. Or indeed in five or in ten minutes.

  ‘I really think we ought to stop, Miriam.’

  ‘We are not stopping,’ said Miriam.

  ‘I think we should.’

  ‘You can think what you like, Sefton. I am not going to miss the Oyster Feast for the sake of some pathetic grumbling engine, thank you,’ said Miriam.

  ‘You may not have a choice, Miriam,’ I said.

  ‘Well you see, that’s the difference between us, isn’t it?’ said Miriam, looking at me pityingly, with one of her hard-edged sideways stares. ‘You don’t seem to understand that there is always a choice, Sefton. And this,’ she continued, stamping her foot violently on the accelerator, causing the car to jolt forward, ‘is my choice.’

  Essex was jerked out of my vision. The Lagonda kept making its unhappy sounds and Miriam kept on thrashing it mercilessly. I made one last attempt to intervene.

  ‘The Lagonda is a very finely balanced car,’ I shouted, somewhere around the Rodings. ‘If you don’t treat it right you’re going to end up doing it serious damage.’

  ‘And I Am a Very Finely Balanced Woman, Sefton,’ yelled Miriam back at me. ‘And exactly the same applies.’

  Controlling the Lagonda with sheer willpower, and not inconsiderable strength, she pushed it to the very limits, tearing through the roads of Essex towards Colchester, slow into corners, fast out, continually over-revving – a terrible habit of hers – until somehow we all arrived in one piece. Just. The car smelled of misery and burned fuel. It would clearly require some serious mechanical care and attention, but Miriam didn’t care. She was triumphant: she’d taught the machine obedience; she’d shown it who was boss.

  ‘See,’ she said. ‘I told you it’d be fine. Come on then. Let’s not hang around, now we’re here. We have oysters to eat!’

  We had parked some distance away from the centre of the town, there being roadworks everywhere; it seemed like every street was being dug up at once. Despite her admonitions to me, Miriam spent a long time carefully reapplying her make-up in the car and then changing into evening wear – a scarlet gown with green evening coat and long black gloves – which was no mean feat, even on the accommodating and well-appointed back seat of the Lagonda, the outfit requiring much energetic wriggling and a helping hand with the zip. (With my eyes shut tight, I should say – which was also no mean feat.)

  We then left the poor vehicle and trudged up a steep hill amid a crowd of men, women and children who were most definitely not dressed in evening wear but who were all busy consuming roasted chestnuts and cramming themselves into the streets around Colchester’s magnificent Town Hall, a vast and bewildering building that had all the appearance of a stout English yeoman’s version of a Venetian palazzo. ‘A fine example of Victorian baroque,’ according to Morley in Essex. ‘Built between 1898 and 1902 for the princely sum of £55,000, making it one of the most expensive public buildings in England, Colchester’s Town Hall contains many offices, grand public rooms, the magnificent mayor’s parlour and of course the famous Moot Hall, the whole thing topped off with a huge and ornate tower that is in effect a giant gauntlet thrown down to the town’s upstart rival, Chelmsford.’

  Morley was a great fan of Colchester’s rather strange and aggressive architecture, controversially describing the town in The County Guides not as ‘picturesque’ but rather as ‘picaresque’, a ‘town that seems to invite adventure’. As well as the Town Hall, and the presence of so many Roman ruins, and the barracks – all of which contributed to the town’s peculiar air of menace – there was also the presence of Jumbo, the vast building in the centre of the town, which dominates the skyline much as the Empire State Building dominates New York, or the Eiffel Tower Paris, the only difference being that Jumbo is not a world-famous tourist attraction or a state-of-the-art office building but an enormous, ugly, red brick water tower. Built in the late 1800s, the building apparently received its nickname from a local clergyman, whose rectory fell beneath its enormous shadow. ‘If not exactly one of the seven modern wonders of the world,’ writes Morley of Jumbo in The County Guides, ‘then it is most certainly one of the seven modern wonders of Essex.’ He did not specify the other six.

  Dusk was falling and Jumbo was brooding as Miriam and I came to a halt before the Town Hall. We could go no further: the crowd was too dense. Above the sound of mass roasted-chestnut munching came a low moaning sound in the distance; Miriam raised one of her expressive eyebrows at me and asked if I knew what it was.

  A giant gauntlet

  The upstart rival

  ‘I think I know what it is,’ remarked some wag standing next to us in the crowd. ‘I hear it once a week, regular as clockwork, on a Saturday night when I get home from the pub. That’s the good old sound of an Essex girl, if you know what I mean, miss.’

  Miriam, thank goodness, did not respond in kind to this crude provocation and fortunately the moan soon became a drone and eventually a definable tune: it was in fact the sound of the Dagenham Girl Pipers.

  The Dagenham Girl Pipers. According to Morley in The County Guides: Essex, nothing sums up the odd, eccentric spirit of the county more clearly than the Dagenham Girl Pipers. For anyone who has never been lucky enough to see the actual kilted Cockney sparrows in full fig and full flow all I can say is that their name is an entirely complete and proper summary. They are from Dagenham, they are girls, and they are pipers – facts and states that in and of themselves are of course unremarkable, but as Morley always liked to say, there is nothing new under the sun, except in combination. Formed in 1930 by Reverend Joseph Waddington Graves – ‘lovely man,’ according to Morley, who had interviewed him for some newspaper or other, ‘Canadian, absolute loon’ – the Dagenham Girl Pipers initially consisted of just a dozen keen young girls from his Sunday School but within a few short years they had become a fully professional touring troupe who skirled their way round Europe in their distinctive Royal Stewart tartan.

  They are from Dagenham, they are girls, and they are pipers

  The crowd burst into applause as the girls appeared at the bottom of the road in their fabulous costumes – kilts, tartan socks, black velvet jackets and tam o’ shanters – bellowing on their bagpipes, a vision guaranteed both to haunt and delight even the hardiest and hardest-hearted onlooker, perhaps even a Scot, and all illuminated by the town’s remarkable bright modern street lighting, which made it look as though the girls were performing on a West End stage, rather than a tarmacked Essex street in early autumn.

  ‘Those lassies certainly know how to blow,’ remarked the wag standing by us, as we all watched the girls, utterly entranced, as they marched up to the Town Hall, promptly stopped blowing, laid down their pipes, and launched into a complex choreographed reel and sword dance.

  ‘Don’t they just,’ said Miriam. ‘And they know how to move. A winning combination, I would say.’

  If anything, the evening then got even stranger. Following the Dagenham Girl Pipers came a procession of schoolchildren wearing papier mâché shell heads, a troop of Lancers from the local barracks on their horses, the band of the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers banging out ‘The Men of Merry England’, and a long solemn line of dignitaries, including Morley, who didn’t spot us waving and shouting frantically in the crowd. This motley crew paraded up to the doors of the Town Hall and disappeared inside.

  ‘Now what?’ asked Miriam.

  ‘Now they all go and get drunk on our money!’ said the man standing next to us.

  ‘Well, we’d better go and join them, hadn’t we, Sefton?’

  CHAPTER 9
/>
  THE ROLE OF PAGEANTRY

  FORCING OUR WAY THROUGH THE CROWD, we eventually made it to the doors of the Town Hall, which would not have disgraced the Florence Baptistery. (Indeed, it is ‘Essex’s answer to the Porte del Paradiso’, according to Morley in Essex.) Miriam’s name was included on the guest list for the Oyster Feast with Morley, but alas my name was not and so I was invited – politely but firmly – to leave the building.

  ‘He’s with me,’ protested Miriam, linking her arm with mine in a gesture of pleading affection.

  ‘But he’s not on my list,’ said the man guarding the door, who was dressed in cheap, ill-fitting beadle-style ceremonial robes, which made him look like a cut-price lord mayor.

  ‘That may be,’ said Miriam. ‘But I’m sure you’ll agree that I cannot possibly be held responsible for any errors on your list. He’s with me.’ And she began dragging me towards the door.

  ‘’Fraid not, miss,’ said the man, who stood before the door with arms wide. ‘If he’s not on the list he’s not getting in.’

  ‘Well, really!’ said Miriam. ‘If that’s the attitude you’re going to take I’ll speak to your superior, if you don’t mind, and we’ll see what he has to say about it.’

  The beadle duly called over another man, dressed in slightly less cheap and better fitting ceremonial robes, who also insisted that I would not be gaining entry to the Oyster Feast, since I was not on the list, and who furthermore suggested, after what can only be described as a heated exchange, that if Miriam continued to protest and cause trouble she might prefer to leave with me and not attend the Oyster Feast herself. I was all ready to leave but Miriam suddenly had a brainwave, grabbed at my arm, hissed at the men, and dragged me away from the door and began fishing around in her handbag.

  ‘Honestly!’ she kept exclaiming, as she dug around in the bag. ‘The sheer cheek of them!’ Anyone with the temerity to refuse or challenge Miriam’s will or whims – right or wrong – was liable to be accused of sheer cheek. It was one of her favourite terms of disparagement – along with ‘the brass neck on them!’ and ‘the bodger on their bonce!’ – which was ironic, since she was the only person I knew to be actually in possession of sheer cheek, a brass neck and indeed a bodger on her bonce, whatever that was. Her handbag contained, I can confidently state, since she handed the entire contents to me, opera glasses, a corkscrew, matches, a cigarette case, several lipsticks, volume one of George Bernard Shaw’s blue Pelican The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, and her brand-new press card, which had apparently been issued to her by Woman magazine, in recognition of her recent appointment as a columnist.

  ‘Perfetto!’ she proclaimed, triumphant; she often slipped into Italian when excited, usually at the most inappropriate moment. Reclaiming the other items, she left me holding the press card and tugged me a few yards away from the entrance to the Town Hall.

  ‘That should get you in,’ she whispered.

  I looked at the press card and pointed out that it seemed to be issued in her name.

  ‘Well of course it’s issued in my name, silly. It’s my press card.’

  ‘Which means I can’t use it,’ I said, pointing out the obvious.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so blasted feeble, Sefton. Just put your thumb over my name and you’ll be fine. The one and only time I’ll be under your thumb, mind!’ she said, throwing back her head and marching straight over to the entrance and proceeding inside with a little backward wave of her hand. ‘Make the most of it! See you inside!’

  During my years with Morley I became a rather accomplished and convincing liar – it requires sheer cheek, a brass neck and a bodger on the bonce – and I did indeed manage to make my way into the Town Hall that evening, thumb firmly over Miriam’s name, the beadles far too occupied to prevent me, and then up the stairs to the Moot Hall, where the Oyster Feast was due to take place. Members of the press were allowed to mill around outside the doors, obstructing the waiters who were busy hurrying in and out.

  From my occasional glimpses inside, and from what Morley explained to me later, what appeared to happen was this.

  As every schoolboy knows, every year the Essex oyster fishery is declared open by Colchester’s mayor. The oystermen present the mayor with their produce and the mayor then invites important guests to the Moot Hall for the Oyster Feast, a grand civic occasion that also acts as a useful advertisement for the local oyster industry. Though it is perhaps now hard to believe, the kind of brouhaha that these days surrounds a film premiere was then guaranteed the Oyster Feast. The mayor that year was a local businessman – ‘a classic chamber of commerce sort of chap’, according to Morley – named Arthur Marden, a local quarry owner, who was a rather witty-looking fellow with thinning ginger hair, freckles, and an endearing amused expression on his face. The guests at the grand civic reception included Mr Ormsby-Gore, Secretary of State for the Colonies, Sir Holman Gregory K.C. and indeed the aviatrix, Amy Johnson – about whom much more later.

  The Oyster Feast is an event of great pageantry but – according to Morley, at least – of no great antiquity, dating back only to the late nineteenth century. What it lacks in age it more than makes up for in enthusiasm. (‘Reminds me rather of the theatre-state of Bali,’ Morley remarked to me later that evening. ‘Ever been?’ I had – of course – never been to Bali. ‘Rather impressive,’ according to Morley. ‘And also indicative, all forms of ritual amounting to much more than mere drapery and dramatics, don’t you think, Sefton?’ I agreed, since that was all that was required. ‘Pageantry plays an altogether more substantial role in our personal and political affairs than we care to admit, does it not? In the kitchen. In the boardroom. In the bedroom.’ I suppose it does.)

  The Moot Hall itself looks rather like a cross between a gaudy hotel ballroom and some crazy baroque Italian church. There are colonnades, a big barrel-vaulted ceiling, lots of stained glass, an organ, and also lots of massive and rather second-rate-looking oil paintings. In addition, on that evening the Hall was decked throughout with roses, the scent powerful enough to mask the strong competing smells of women’s perfume and rather musty macho civic pride. ‘It’s all very Essex, isn’t it?’ remarked Miriam. By the time I got my first peek into the Hall all the guests and dignitaries were already seated, impatiently jangling and glittering in their chains of office and fine jewellery.

  As we journalists stood at the door – or the journalists and me, I should perhaps say, my credentials being not my own and belonging entirely to Miriam and Woman magazine – a little man came striding past us and into the Hall, all done up in white tie, white gloves, a blue coat with brass buttons, and carrying a threatening-looking gold mace.

  ‘Who’s he?’ I asked the journalist beside me.

  ‘The White Rabbit,’ I was told.

  ‘Seriously though?’

  ‘That’s Len Starling, the Town Sergeant.’

  I thought Mr Starling the Town Sergeant had a rather sad and courageous sort of a face as he marched through the Hall and set the mace before the mayor’s throne, which sat at the far end on a raised dais. The mayor – Arthur Marden – sat in his robes looking endearingly amused, weighed down with the considerable medallions of his office and the mace now before him. He did his best to nod solemnly through his permanent smile, in response to which Mr Starling bowed, turned and marched swiftly out of the Hall, only to enter again moments later carrying a vast silver platter bearing oysters, which he proceeded to parade slowly to Mayor Marden, who this time stood solemnly to receive it, smiled, chose an oyster from the platter and noisily slurped it down. And so the feast began.

  Amid all the oyster-slurping there were interminable speeches in praise of the brilliance and the renown of the function, and the brilliance and the renown of the guests, and the brilliance and the renown – and the famed hospitality – of the mayor, jovial Arthur Marden. These speeches were followed by equally interminable toasts to the king, the royal family, the armed services, the clergy, the Hou
ses of Parliament, the town and trade of Colchester, the oyster fishery, to health, happiness, education, the arts, the sciences, women, society … and so I slipped outside quickly to smoke.

  Down the side and round the back of the Colchester Town Hall is rather dark and dingy, the opposite of the inside, but one is granted a magnificent view of what I later learned is the town’s Dutch Quarter, so named not because it looks particularly Dutch – though it does look rather pleasant and quaint – but after the Flemish weavers who settled in the area during the reign of Elizabeth I. A small group of men who may well have been Flemish weavers – but who were in fact mostly kitchen staff, waiters and who did not look particularly pleasant or quaint – stood by the open kitchen door, smoking and talking in conspiratorial fashion. I approached innocently enough and asked if I might cadge a cigarette. I was not met with what one would call the warmest of Essex welcomes.

  ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ asked one of the kitchen staff, cigarette clamped between his teeth. He had a mean face, like a small dead bird, caught with a worm in its beak.

  ‘And who the fuck do you think you are?’ I responded. It was the only sensible reply.

  ‘You’re not from round here,’ he said, immediately squaring up to me.

  ‘You’re right about that,’ I said. ‘Congratulations.’ Stupid but not blind.

  ‘I fight anyone who’s not from round here,’ said the man.

  Anyone who’s ever been in the wrong place at the wrong time, who has ever stepped inside the wrong pub or onto the wrong street on the wrong side of town will know how easy it is to find oneself unexpectedly in just such a situation and that it’s most certainly not a good situation to find oneself in. I reckoned I maybe had a chance of taking the man on in a fight, but I stood much less chance when faced with him and half a dozen of his companions, who were now gathering all around me. Fortunately I was saved by the actions of one brave man, who stood the others down.