had at that time worked for Morley for a period of exactly four months. This was late in 1937, after my return from Spain, where I had discovered, to my horror, the horrors of war. Perhaps I should have known better: now at least I knew the worst. Adrift in London, I had answered an advertisement in The Times and had found myself apprenticed to the most famous, the most popular – and certainly the most prolific – writer in England. During those four intense, turbulent months, Morley had somehow produced four books – Norfolk, Devon, Westmorland and Essex – in addition to his usual output of articles and opinion pieces on everything from the care of houseplants for the Lady’s Companion, to the etymology and usage of strange, obscure and pretty much useless words in John O’London’s Weekly, to endless wearying tales of moral uplift and derring-do for anyone who would have them, including the Catholic Extension, the Christian Observer and many and various – and thankfully now defunct – earnest freethinking journals.
As his assistant, it was my job not just to sharpen Morley’s pencils – though pencil-sharpening, pen-procuring, inkwell-filling, notebook-filing and all manner of other stationery-related activities were indeed a large part of my daily activities – but also to help him and Miriam correct proofs, take photographs, deal with correspondence, pack and prepare for our long journeyings round the country, and to perform all other duties as necessary and as arising, including providing physical protection, offering what would now probably be described as ‘emotional’ support and encouragement, and of course listening to what one biographer – borrowing a phrase, I believe, from Gilbert and Sullivan – 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
