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 Houses 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.
‘Come on, leave him,’ he told them. ‘He only asked for a smoke.’ This gallant fellow then shook a cigarette from its packet, offered it to me, and lit a match for me to light it. In the tiny flare of the match, and in the light cast from the open kitchen door, it struck me that the man bore a passing resemblance to a young Cary Grant, if Cary Grant had been a lightweight boxer, who had also trained as a priest: he had movie-star-cum-mauler-cum-monastic features, debonair yet also rough and incorruptible, hair perfectly parted, a confident chin, a truly good-looking young fellow, though perhaps with something lacking about him, something contrite and sorrowful.
‘I fight anyone who’s not from round here,’ insisted the other man. ‘He’s not from here, I’m going to fight him.’
‘Shut up,’ said my Cary Grant lookalike.
‘Do you know who I am?’ said the other man.
‘I’m afraid I have no idea,’ I said.
‘I’m one of the Cowley Brothers,’ he said.
‘Uh-huh,’ I said.
‘I said leave it, Joe,’ repeated the Cary Grant lookalike. ‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘You better watch who you’re calling stupid!’ said the man who was one of the Cowley Brothers, and who was clearly keen to take on anyone who wasn’t from here.
‘Come on,’ said my new friend, ignoring the Cowley brother, as if he were less than an irritant. ‘Come inside.’ And so I followed him into the Town Hall kitchens.
Safely inside the kitchens, which were a proverbial hive of feast-related activity, my saviour introduced himself as Billy Ball. ‘Everyone calls me Bouncing,’ he said. ‘For obvious reasons.’ He was indeed an energetic sort of fellow. ‘Don’t take any notice of Joe. The Cowleys are all crazy. They’d fight their own shadow.’
He explained that he was one of the senior waiting staff at the Oyster Feast. ‘And what are you doing here?’ he asked, not in a challenging way but in an entirely friendly fashion.
I said I was a journalist, which wasn’t actually true, but which was the pretext on which I had gained entry to the Town Hall and which therefore seemed like a prudent answer. I also said that I was writing a book about Essex, which had the more obvious merit of being true, and in the grand scheme of things I thought that the small lie and the bigger truth probably balanced each other out. Billy Ball not only took my explanation at face value, he was impressed – which of course made me feel rather embarrassed at my rather tricky moral equivalencing.
‘I’ve never met a journalist before,’ he said. He wasn’t meeting one now, but I thought it better for him to persist in this misapprehension rather than my having to go back outside and explain myself to the Cowley brother. I suggested that I was intending to write something about behind the scenes at the Oyster Feast. He was delighted.
‘Here, I’ll show you how the lads prepare the oysters,’ he said.
‘No need,’ I said.
‘No no,’ said Billy. ‘Come on.’
There were three men working away at a long table in the middle of the kitchen, furiously shucking and laying oysters onto silver platters. Crates and baskets of fresh oysters were arriving at an alarming pace.
‘Mind if we join you?’ asked Billy.
‘Be our guest,’ said one of the men, without looking up.
‘Many hands,’ said another.
‘Make light work,’ said the third.
‘He’s a journalist,’ said Billy, nodding towards me.
‘Is he?’ said the third man.
‘Writing about the Oyster Feast,’ said Billy proudly.
‘Tell your readers it’s a waste of money,’ said the first man.
‘Shush,’ said Billy. ‘Take no notice of him.’ He grabbed an oyster from a basket set in the middle of the table. ‘Here we are then,’ he said. ‘We give them a quick scrub, just for appearance sake.’ Scrub he duly did. ‘And then we take one of these.’ He picked up from the table a vicious-looking short pointed knife.
‘Not a butter knife, mind,’ said one of the men at the table.
‘Or a screwdriver,’ said another.
‘Definitely not a screwdriver,’ said the third man.
‘A proper Essex oyster knife,’ said the first man.
‘And then we do this,’ said Billy.
‘Careful, Billy,’ said the first man.
‘I’m being careful,’ said Billy. Holding the oyster shell firmly in one hand, he inserted the knife at the hinge point between the upper and lower shells of the oyster, then began rotating it slightly, first one way then the other.
‘You’ve got to be careful,’ said the first man.
‘Or you’ll have your ruddy fingers off,’ said the other.
‘As Charlie here can show you!’ said the first man.
The third man standing at the table held up his left hand, grinning, displaying just three and a half fingers.
‘The knives are sharp,’ said the first man.
‘And strong,’ said the second.
‘You could gut a man,’ said the third, ‘with an oyster knife.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Anyway,’ continued Billy, ‘once you’re in, you move the knife across here – as close as possible to the upper shell so you that you sever the muscle that holds them together, without scrambling the meat.’
‘You don’t want to scramble the meat,’ said the first man.
‘That’s right,’ agreed the second man.
‘Never,’ agreed the third.
‘There we are!’ announced Billy – and with that the two parts of the oyster shell came apart and there was the oyster, creamy white, the colour of bacon fat, glistening on the lower shell. ‘Look at that. Beautiful. Nice and firm, isn’t she?’
‘Just as nature intended,’ said the first man.
‘Not bad for an amateur,’ said the second man.
‘Takes a few goes,’ said the third man.
‘But you soon learn how,’ said the first.
‘Like undoing a brassiere,’ said the second.
‘Right,’ I said.
‘Look,’ said Billy, ‘that little muscle there, that’s what keeps it shut.’
I studied the tiny white oyster muscle as Billy carefully transferred the oyster to a tray of ice, to join another half-dozen or so.
‘Oysters should always be served on the round,’ explained Billy. ‘The lower shell. Never on the flat, the upper shell.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘You want to keep as much liquor as possible, don’t you?’
‘It’s all about the liquor,’ said the first man.
‘Is it?’ I asked.
‘That’s what makes ’em special,’ said the second man.
‘Essex oysters,’ the three men said together. ‘Essex water.’
‘Right,’ I agreed.
‘Go on then,’ said Billy.
‘Go on what?’ I said.
‘Have a go.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Go on,’ repeated Billy. ‘Be good for your article, wouldn’t it?’
‘I should really be getting back to the feast.’
‘Only take a minute now,’ said Billy, and thrust the knife into my hand. ‘Quick, now. The lads need a dozen per platter.’
The three shuckers paused in their work and stood watching me, oyster knives in hand. I had no choice.
I took an oyster from the basket, scrubbed it, took it firmly in my right hand and then attempted to dig into it with the oyster knife in my left.
‘Leftie, are you?’ said the first man.
‘Don’t want any lefties round here,’ said the second.
‘Be careful!’ said the third. ‘Injury to one is an injury to all!’
I had a few more tentative digs. It was more difficult than it looked. I nearly stabbed my palm in the process several times.
‘Careful!’ said the first man.
‘Careful!’ said the second.
‘Careful!’ said the third.
‘Would he be better holding it on the table?’ said Billy.
‘He would,’ said the first man.
‘He might,’ said the second.
‘He could,’ said the third.
So I held the oyster tight to the table while I used the knife to slide between the upper and lower shells, eventually managing to crack it open, severing the muscle, the oyster, and indeed my hand in the process. The end result was not a pretty sight.
‘Not bad,’ said the first man.
‘For a first attempt,’ said the second.
‘Bloody mess,’ said the third.
‘Only a nick,’ said Billy, examining my hand. ‘Here, come and rinse it under the tap.’
Alas, it was more than a nick.
‘That might need dressing,’ said Billy. ‘I’ll go and fetch the first-aid kit.’
While Billy went for the first-aid kit I sat and watched and bled as the oyster shuckers returned to their task and waiters and waitresses arrived with empty platters, and then left again with full ones. The feast was in full swing. When Billy eventually returned he quickly dressed my hand with a bandage and took a platter himself.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you back up.’
On the way up to the Moot Hall – up worn stone stairs – Billy told me all about his life and times.
‘I’m an honest hard-working man,’ he insisted. I didn’t think for a moment he wasn’t. On the contrary. As well as working in the evenings as a waiter at various functions in the Town Hall he also worked for a local jeweller’s, Hopwood, Son & Payne, ‘47 High Street. Watch and Clock Makers, Goldsmiths, Silversmiths, Jewellers, Opticians, Souvenirs & Pawnbrokers,’ explained Billy. He was at pains to point out that he wasn’t just a shop boy. He was a bona fide watch and clock repairer – ‘Bona fide self-taught,’ as he put it – and was the shop’s roving repair man, heading out around the highways and byways of Essex on his Triumph, collecting, delivering and occasionally even fixing watches and clocks as he went. And he’d just picked up a new job as a rider on Sunday nights on the Wall of Death at Southend’s Kursaal amusement park.
‘You’re a very busy man,’ I said.
‘I like to keep myself busy,’ he replied. ‘It’s not good to have time on your hands, is it?’
‘That’s good coming from a watch and clock repairer,’ I said.
Billy laughed. I liked him. He had a genuine sweet nature about him; keen to help and eager to please.
As we made our way up the final few steps towards the Moot Hall we were greeted by a scene of chaos. Guests were rushing from the Oyster Feast, waiters and waitresses standing staring in amazement.
‘What’s happened?’ Billy asked one of the waiters. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘It’s the mayor,’ the waiter said.
‘Mr Marden?’
‘Is he all right?’
‘Not really,’ said the waiter. ‘He’s dead!’