I VERY HAPPILY WANDERED the ordinary streets of Colchester for half an hour or more – High Street and Crouch Street and Head Street, with their tobacconists and outfitters, and hardware shops, the confectioners and bakeries – slowly quelling any desire to vomit. Then, as is often the case in such circumstances, the tide of nausea having ebbed, I found myself feeling ravenously hungry. I’d not eaten since breakfast with Miriam back in Soho, which might as well have been a week ago, and so was delighted when I came across a brightly lit pie shop, McCluskeys, with a charming hand-painted sign depicting a shiny, steaming pie in a pie dish. (I should admit that McCluskeys was in fact to all intents and purposes just an ordinary house in an ordinary terraced street, with the kitchen and front room converted to commercial use – no Manze’s, but highly recommended nonetheless.) There was a queue of people outside with their pie basins and mugs for gravy and the promise of all sorts of pies – without oysters – within. So I joined the queue. The talk in the queue was of course of the events at the Oyster Feast, and of the death of the mayor, who was, I learned, ‘a lovely fellow’, ‘far too young’ and who most certainly ‘didn’t deserve the indignity of it’.
I’d only been waiting and eavesdropping on this fascinating back-street gossip a few moments when I noticed out of the corner of my eye a woman approaching. It was dark but there was something about her, something in the way she moved, something different. She had a bearing that was not a back-streets sort of bearing. And then I realised.
‘Miss Johnson?’ I said, as she approached. The aviatrix.
‘Ah, Morley’s assistant. I’m terribly sorry, I’ve forgotten your name. I met so many people this evening.’
‘Sefton,’ I said. ‘Stephen Sefton.’
‘Sefton, yes, that’s right.’
‘You’ve changed?’ I said, rather redundantly, since she obviously had.
‘Yes. I couldn’t put up with that evening garb the whole time. I’m much more comfortable in this.’ This was a fine fitted misty-blue woollen suit with a long skirt that vaguely resembled one of her flying outfits – and indeed she had a white silk scarf knotted cravat-style at her throat, as though she were about to mount a plane and roar off to Africa at any moment. Miriam would perhaps have described the outfit as practical and stylish, though she would of course have disdained the practical. ‘Mr Morley went on with his daughter. I just thought I’d take a stroll. Off again early tomorrow.’
‘Well, I’m just queuing for a pie here, Miss Johnson, if you’d like to join me?’ Which is one of those sentences that one never expects oneself to say and which indeed one is utterly surprised to find sayable even at the point of its saying. Amy Johnson’s reply was equally surprising.
‘Do you know, Stephen Sefton, that is the most welcome invitation I’ve received in a very long time.’
Which is how I ended up spending one of the most peculiar nights of my life, after what had already been one of the most peculiar days of my life, sharing a meat and vegetable pie with two mugs of tea with one of the most famous women in the world in Colchester’s back streets, discussing the meaning of life, flying, romance and the distant prospects of war. It was one of those intimate, unexpected evenings that one occasionally enjoys with total strangers, when one recognises in the other some deep quality or great fascination that goes unnoticed by those we know and love. The sort of evening that is often aided by alcohol, and which can often lead to complications.
‘Are you heading back to the hotel?’ asked Amy Johnson, after we left McCluskeys.
‘I’ll maybe call in to a public house on the way,’ I said.
‘Then I might join you, if I may?’ asked Miss Johnson. And join me she most certainly did. In the Abbey Arms on St John’s Green. And in the Live and Let Live. The Shoulder of Mutton. The Goat and Boot Inn. The Duke of Connaught, the Flying Fox, the Royal Standard, the Wig and Fidget. Some of the pubs alas refused to serve women in the public bars and some were without saloons, but in others we found seats and drank quietly, deep in conversation, until we were interrupted and moved on. Miss Johnson was recognised by men and women everywhere – that double-take I’d noticed occasionally with Morley, but multiplied many times and which preceded the inevitable request for autographs. If I learned anything from my years with Morley, and as I was reminded most forcibly that evening with Miss Johnson, it is to permit the famous their privacy. They have so little they have to protect it with their lives.
‘Can I ask you, Stephen, have you read my husband’s book?’ Miss Johnson asked me, once we were several pubs in; it may have been the Rose and Crown. Or the King’s Head.
‘Whose book?’
‘Jim Mollison. My husband. Playboy of the Air.’
‘I can’t say I have, miss, no.’
‘I’m so glad.’ She had produced her silver cigarette case and was gently tapping it on its side upon the table as she spoke. ‘Most of it’s entirely untrue, of course.’
‘I see.’
‘It’s amazing that you can live with someone for so long and yet apparently never know them at all, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I agreed.
‘I wonder if perhaps the fault was mine.’
‘There’s always fault on either side in these circumstances,’ I said, not wishing either to upset or offend her.
‘Yes,’ she said, ceasing in her tapping of the cigarette case. ‘But you see we women have to spend so much time putting ourselves over and winning men over, that sometimes we lose sight of who we really are. The carapace becomes us. We lose our inner selves.’ She took a rather mournful sip of her glass of gin. ‘Women are like oysters really, Stephen.’ She placed a hand on mine.
‘Are they?’
‘The harder the skin, the outer casing, the softer the heart. It takes something to prise you open, and then … You find you’re simply consumed. Just like that.’ She clicked her fingers and took up her cigarette case again.
‘I’m not sure I quite follow, Miss Johnson.’
‘No, of course, you wouldn’t understand. I shouldn’t be talking to you like this.’
‘No, no, it’s fine,’ I said, laying my hand gently on her arm. ‘Sometimes it’s easier to—’
‘You should ask Morley’s daughter all about it; she’ll know what I mean.’
‘Miriam?’
‘Pretty girl,’ said Amy Johnson. ‘Very pretty girl. When are the two of you getting married?’
‘We’re not getting married,’ I said.
‘Really? Oh. I assumed. Her engagement ring.’
‘Miriam is always getting engaged to someone.’
‘I see. So the two of you are not …’
‘No, no,’ I said. ‘For better or for worse, I am entirely single, Miss Johnson.’
She looked at me rather curiously at that point, I thought, with some kind of realisation. And then she started talking about some of the flights she was planning – big plans.
‘One must seize every opportunity that life presents one with,’ she said.
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ I said.
‘When it comes to flying, I mean.’
I couldn’t work out whether we were talking increasingly at cross-purposes or entirely along the same lines.
I went to get us another drink, for clarification.
The barman asked me if I’d heard the news.
‘What news?’ I asked, taking the opportunity to light a cigarette. ‘About the Oyster Feast? Yes.’
‘Len Starling.’
‘I don’t know Mr Starling, I’m afraid. I’m not from round here.’
‘The Town Sergeant.’
‘Ah,’ I said. The Town Sergeant was the busybody fellow in the Moot Hall who had presented the mayor with his oysters. The man in the white tie and white gloves and the blue coat with brass buttons. The White Rabbit.
‘Yes, what about him?’
‘They’ve taken him in for questioning, apparently.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘On suspicion of poisoning the mayor at the feast.’
‘Goodness me.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said the barman, setting our drinks on the bar. ‘Everyone knows about Len.’
‘Knows what?’
‘Nod’s as good as a wink to a blind man,’ said the barman, nodding over towards where I’d been sitting with Amy Johnson, meaning either something to do with Len Starling, or Miss Johnson, I wasn’t entirely sure – though when I turned to take our drinks back to the table, I understood.
Amy Johnson had gone.