Ian Sansom - Essex Poison

‘It’s OK, Mr Delaney,’ said Grace, in a voice like Betty Boop’s.

‘Run along, Grace,’ said Delaney, and innocent young Grace got up and ran along. She glanced at me as she walked out and I thought perhaps I saw some hint of fellow feeling, but I may have been mistaken. It’s easy to misread the glance of a half-dressed, half-bored, half-drugged beautiful woman. Much of Delaney’s business was based on exactly such misunderstandings.

Delaney allowed more smoke to gather around him before he spoke.

‘Are you a religious man, Mr Sefton?’

My guess was that ‘yes’ was probably the right answer. To say ‘no’ might have led to serious problems. ‘Yes’, as always, opened up possibilities. It kept my options open.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Catholic or Protestant?’

I was neither, but I knew that Delaney was from Kerry and I was banking on the average Kerryman being of the Catholic persuasion.

‘Catholic,’ I said. Wise gamble.

‘Good. So. I am myself a devout Roman Catholic.’ I could feel Gleason and MacDonald behind me nodding in approval at this announcement, as if Delaney had revealed that he were in fact the Holy Father, or indeed the Son of God himself. ‘You’ll doubtless agree with me then that theft is a sin. A grievous sin.’ More grievous a sin, I was given to presume, than his own activities as the owner of illegal drinking clubs, brothels, and as a wholesaler, distributor and retailer of drugs, drink and women.

I nodded.

‘The only question then is how you might go about putting things right between us, Mr Sefton. What’s upsetting is not only that you stole from me but that you stole that which I might willingly have given.’ Or sold, he might more properly have said. As well as his clubs, Delaney controlled a large part of many of the other businesses that kept Soho so … lively. ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘we could of course go to law over the matter.’ He laughed to himself at the thought of this clearly ludicrous suggestion. Going to law with a complaint about my own modest misdemeanour would only lead to questions about his own vast empire of sin. We would not be going to law over the matter. ‘Fortunately for you I’m not a man who believes in punishment, Mr Sefton. I believe rather in making amends, in restitution. In making good.’ He took up his cigar from the ashtray and applied it delicately to his lips, producing a few more pale rings of smoke. The tip glowed like the neon signs outside. ‘I like to think of myself not so much as a businessman, more as a problem solver.’ Again, Gleason and MacDonald nodded vigorously at this generous self-assessment. ‘And the good news is, I think I have a solution to our little problem.’ I feared as much. Beware big men in fancy suits offering simple solutions : this was not, I think, one of Morley’s maxims, one of his proverbs or wise sayings, though it might have been. The closest I can find in Unconsidered Trifles (1934) is from Horace, faenum habet in cornu, longe fuge , ‘stay away from the bull, he has hay on his horns’. What can I say? Delaney had a lot of hay on his horns.

In Spain I had gone ‘absent’ once for a few days, having been unable to reconcile what was happening all around me with what I thought was going to be happening in a true people’s republic. When I was caught trying to board a ship in Barcelona I was immediately sentenced to a week’s work in the Brigade’s disciplinary battalion. No one ever mentions the disciplinary battalion: no one spoke about it then; no one speaks about it now. We were billeted separately from others and forced, unarmed and ill-equipped, out into no-man’s-land at night, to dig trenches and erect barbed-wire fences, out among the vermin and machine-gun fire, on reduced rations and subject to ridicule and abuse. There were twelve of us on the Monday. By Friday, only ten of us remained, two men having been shot dead beside me. The crack of rifle fire overhead had reduced us to crawling in the mud among the rats to go about our work. One week’s disciplinary work.

I had a pretty good idea of how men like Delaney solved problems. They got rid of them. They used their disciplinary battalions.

‘My friends here tell me that you acted bravely in Spain,’ said Delaney. I glanced round at Gleason and MacDonald, who stood staring straight ahead. Acting bravely in Spain meant killing people before they killed you. It wasn’t exactly chivalric. It was a matter of survival. ‘Brave. Educated. Intelligent. When I look at you, Sefton, what I see is not what other people might see: a common thief, a cheat, a liar, a bitter and confused young man who has lost his way and wasted every opportunity in his life.’ As a summing-up you wouldn’t necessarily have wanted it on your gravestone but it wasn’t entirely inaccurate. ‘No. No. When I look at you, Sefton, what I see is leadership potential.’ What I saw was trouble. ‘Men like you can be very useful in my line of business. So.’ Delaney quietly and leisurely cleared his throat. ‘I’d like to offer you an opportunity,’ he said. I had a bad feeling I knew what was coming: in my experience, opportunity always comes with a cost, and often at a serious inconvenience to the opportunee. ‘If you were to come and work for me, Mr Sefton, I think we’d probably be able to write off your gambling debts.’ He stroked his chin. ‘And in time I think we’d also be able to overlook the unfortunate incident concerning the theft of goods. Though it might take us a while of course to really learn to trust one another. What do you think?’

Well. That was two job offers in one evening: first from Willy Mann on behalf of Mr Klein, and now from Delaney on behalf of Delaney. I had a feeling that Delaney’s offer was going to be harder to refuse. (On this theme – let us call it the Perennial Problem of Saying No – even Morley admits to a number of difficulties and confusions. In Morley’s Tried and Tested Temptations: Thinking About God, the Devil, Sin and Salvation (1931), for example, he provides a very troubling and troubled little gloss on Matthew 4:8–9: ‘Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.’ Writes Morley: ‘All of us will have been subject at some time to the temptation of intellectual pride. Intellectual pride is spiritually most damaging, an affliction of perhaps the most damaged among us, a sin that represents not only a defect of the will but which also betrays and betokens the deep scars of emotional wounds.’ Anyway.) Nonetheless.

‘That’s a very kind offer,’ I said. ‘But I’m afraid I’m going to have to turn you down, Mr Delaney.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Delaney. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’ I had the feeling he was not a man who was used to being turned down. ‘I’m not a man who is used to being turned down,’ he said.

‘It’s just, I’m currently working for someone else,’ I explained.

‘I see. And who is this … “someone else” you’re working for?’ asked Delaney. ‘Anyone I know?’

‘A writer,’ I said.

Delaney laughed – loudly, uproariously, as if I were Frank Randle on stage at the height of the summer season in Blackpool.

‘A writer? Very good. And he pays you money? Or he pays you in stationery supplies?’

He wasn’t far off.

Gleason and MacDonald sniggered beside me.

‘I work for Swanton Morley,’ I said, expecting some sort of recognition. Morley wasn’t exactly unknown. He was at the time, and had been for many years, England’s best known and best loved journalist, editor and publisher.

‘Never heard of him,’ said Delaney. ‘Boys?’