‘SEFTON! What took you so long?’ asked Miriam. ‘Come on. Come on in.’
As Miriam ushered me into her apartment, an elderly, most striking-looking dark-haired woman, wearing an array of brightly coloured beads that may have been Mexican, and carrying a stout wicker shopping basket that was most definitely English, hurried past in the corridor.
‘Well,’ she said, in what sounded to me like a French accent but may indeed have been Mexican, but which certainly was not English, ‘you kept this one quiet, Miriam.’
‘Finders, keepers, Ines,’ said Miriam. ‘Finders, keepers. Far too young for you anyway.’
‘They’re never too young, my dear. It’s just me that gets too old.’
‘Hello?’ I said.
Both the women ignored me.
‘Can I get you anything?’ asked Ines.
‘No thank you,’ said Miriam. ‘We’re going away for a few days.’
‘Lucky you, my dear.’
‘Work rather than pleasure,’ said Miriam.
‘The two are often the same, in my experience,’ said Ines, waving a hand as she disappeared down the corridor. ‘One of life’s paradoxes.’
‘Well, you’ve met the neighbours,’ said Miriam. ‘Come on then. Come in. Chop chop.’
The first thing that struck me about Miriam’s new apartment was a slight smell. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, though it was a smell so strong that one might almost have put a finger on it. Miriam seemed oblivious.
‘You found it then?’ she asked.
‘Evidently,’ I said.
‘Oh no, no,’ she said, ‘you’re beginning to sound like Father, Sefton. Please, don’t.’ The last thing I ever wanted to do was to sound like Swanton Morley – his manner, alas, was contagious – so I shut up. ‘Anyway, so we’re all set,’ she continued. ‘What do you think: do I look OK?’
She looked extraordinary. Whatever it was she was wearing – Schiaparelli, probably – it was banana yellow.
‘You look … all-encompassing,’ I said, which was all I could think of.
‘All-encompassing?’ she said. ‘Really? That’ll do.’
‘Do I look OK?’ I asked, attempting irony. I was still in my blue serge suit.
She put a finger to her lips and studied me carefully.
‘You look rather like you’ve spent the night sleeping rough, Sefton, actually,’ which was a fair description, since I had in fact spent a few nights sleeping rough – mostly on friends’ floors, but one night on Hampstead Heath, not to be recommended – having decided that it was probably best to try to keep a low profile, after the events at Club Row, and given my increasingly complicated relationship with a number of would-be employers, debt-collectors, former friends and newly acquired enemies. I loved London, but clearly the feeling was not mutual: every time I tried to make peace with the place, I seemed to become embroiled in some imbroglio.
Hence my decision to go back on the road with Miriam and Morley. At least then I’d be on the move and out of trouble. Miriam always told people that I had been saved by her ministrations and my work for her father. This was not in fact true. Basically, between 1937 and 1939 – like Britain and most of Europe – I was perpetually in crisis and continually on the run.
‘Well, what do you think?’ asked Miriam, referring not to her outfit, but to her apartment.
The new place was on Lawn Road, in Hampstead, in a most peculiar building called the Isokon, which, according to Miriam, was a triumph of modern design. ‘Don’t you think, Sefton? Isn’t it a triumph!’
I wasn’t sure it was a triumph, actually, though it certainly crushed and vanquished all the usual expectations of everyday human habitation, so maybe it was.
‘It’s the future, Sefton, isn’t it? Isn’t this what you were dreaming of when you were fighting in Spain? The International? The Modern? The New?’
It was pointless trying to explain to Miriam that in Spain, for whatever high-minded reason we’d gone, we all ended up fighting not for the International, the Modern and the New, but rather for own dear lives and for the poor bastards living and dying alongside us, and that whatever we were dreaming of, it was certainly not clean angles and white empty spaces, but loose women, strong drink and fresh food.
‘Father’s not a fan,’ continued Miriam. ‘He says it looks like the Penguin Pool at London Zoo.’
The Isokon did look like the Penguin Pool at London Zoo. It also rather resembled a cruise ship, and Miriam’s apartment a cabin. Indeed, the whole place made you feel slightly queasy, as if setting sail on a stormy sea. The apartment was so small and so unaccommodating in every way that Miriam had dispensed with most of her furniture. ‘I felt the furniture was disapproving, Sefton,’ she explained, though I had no idea how or what disapproving furniture might be. Every surface in the apartment was flat, white and forbidding. The place looked like a … It’s difficult to describe exactly what it looked like. Years later, with the benefit of hindsight, I suppose one would say that it looked like an art gallery, but at the time it was quite revolutionary even for an art gallery. Art galleries back then were still all oak-panelled and dimly lit. Even now a house that looks like an all-white ocean-going gallery would be unusual. And the Isokon was most unusual: above all, it was a building that took itself extremely seriously. It was a building that was clearly striving towards something, towards purity, presumably – which is always easier said than done. There was a bar somewhere in the place, apparently, and Miriam raved about the tremendous ‘community spirit’ among her fellow tenants, a spirit that found its expression in naked sunbathing, impromptu get-togethers, political discussions and all-night parties. Miriam loved it.
‘You would love it, Sefton!’ she insisted. ‘We all get together and talk about art and literature.’
It sounded absolutely horrendous. Miriam often misjudged me: I had neither the money nor the inclination to become a part of the Isokon set. During those years I may have been debauched, but I have never, ever been a bohemian.
The place was quite bare and undecorated. Not only was there little furniture, there were no shelves, cupboards or mantelpieces for the many flowers, bibelots and thick embossed invitations that seemed to follow Miriam wherever she went. (It was often the case during our time together that we would fetch up in some out-of-the-way village or town, only for gifts and letters bearing invitations miraculously to appear within hours of our arrival.) In the Isokon, this temple to simplicity and stylishness, in which there was no place for anything, everything had been piled on a small round inlaid table in the hallway, which accommodated newly published books, manuscripts, gloves, scarves, jewellery and stacks of the aforementioned invitations. Above the table there was a sort of mobile hanging from the ceiling, which looked to me like a few large black metal fish bones stuck onto a piece of wire.
‘That’s … interesting, Miriam,’ I said.
‘Do you think? I’m trying to write a piece about it for the magazine,’ she said.
‘Woman?’ I asked.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I don’t write for them any more.’
‘But I thought you’d just got a job as columnist?’
‘No, no, Sefton. That was ages ago.’
‘That was about two weeks ago.’
‘Anyway. It was dreadfully dreary. They expected me to write about such terrible frivolities.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘Such as?’
‘Accordion pleats or bishop’s sleeves or whatever other silly thing is in fashion.’
‘But I thought you were interested in fashion.’
‘Of course I am, Sefton, but I’m not interested in writing about it. People who write about fashion seem to me about as dull as people who write about medieval patristics.’ Thus spoke her father’s daughter. ‘People could go around in bustles and jodhpurs for all I care, Sefton – and I really don’t care.’
For someone who really didn’t care we seemed to spend much of our time packing and unpacking her clothes trunks.
‘Anyway, you know me, Sefton.’
‘I do?’
‘I have a taste for much stronger stuff, Sefton.’ Which was certainly true. ‘No. I’m now a contributing editor for Axis.’
‘Axis?’ I said. ‘Something to do with mechanics? Geometry?’
‘It’s an art magazine, silly. You must have heard of it.’
‘I can’t say I have, Miriam, no.’
‘Axis? Really?’
‘No.’
‘A Quarterly Review of Contemporary “Abstract” Painting and Sculpture?’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘that Axis.’
From the teetering pile on the table she plucked the latest issue of the magazine, which I flicked through while she went to finish her packing.
‘That’ll be an education for you,’ she said, as she disappeared into her bedroom.
It certainly was. Most of the articles were entirely – one might almost say immaculately – unreadable, as if written from a strange place where the English language had been entirely reinvented solely to bamboozle and confuse. One contributor, for example, described some blobby sort of a painting as ‘rampageous and eczematous’; another described an artist whose work consisted entirely of everyday household objects hung on washing lines as having ‘traversed the farthest realms of the aesthetic to reinvent the very idea of objecthood’; Miriam’s article was perhaps marginally less preposterous than the rest, though equally vexatious. She described some artist’s series of abstract sketches as a work of ‘profound autofiction’: to me the work looked like a series of a child’s drawings of black and white squares and triangles balancing on colourful balls.
Miriam’s restless pursuit of knowledge of all kinds was of course quite admirable, her hunger for new experiences rivalling only her father’s great lust for learning. Having endured a privileged, if rather peculiar upbringing and education at some of the country’s best schools, and courtesy of one of the country’s best minds, Miriam often expressed to me her wish that she had gone to Cambridge or to Oxford to study PPE (which, to my shame, I usually referred to as GGG, or ‘Ghastly Girls’ Greats’, an easy alternative to Classics). ‘All these women who go to Lady Margaret Hall do make one feel terribly inadequate, Sefton.’ During our work together on The County Guides, Miriam slowly but surely reinvented herself, becoming more and more an autodidact in the manner of her father: she went to fewer tennis parties with girls called Diana and Camilla, took up the saxophone and the uilleann pipes, added Arabic and Mandarin Chinese to her many languages, and ranged widely in her reading, from Freud in German to Céline in French. She was naturally formidable: over time she became utterly extraordinary. It was sometimes difficult to see how anyone could possibly keep up with her.
When I occasionally asked why she had taken up with this unsuitable man or other, she would simply say, ‘Because everyone else is so boring, Sefton.’ Boredom was her bête noire. It could get her into terrible trouble. Her most recent boyfriend was a man so daring and adventurous that he had joined Britannia Youth, the neo-fascist group that specialised in sending impressionable young British schoolboys to Nazi rallies in Germany.
‘Roderick was just such fun!’ she said.
Roderick had lasted about two weeks.
‘Right,’ she said, barrelling out of her bedroom carrying a large handbag.
‘Crocodile?’ I nodded towards the bag.
‘Alligator, actually, Sefton. Can’t you tell? Are you ready?’
‘I am. Is that all you’re taking?’ I was confused. Miriam did not travel light. Part of the challenge of travelling with Miriam and Morley was travelling with Miriam’s clothes: for even the shortest journey she would pack Chinese robes, leopard-skin hats and kid leather gloves.
‘Yes.’
‘That’s it?’
‘The rest is already in the Lagonda, Sefton. László gave me a hand last night. Do you know László?’
‘I don’t think I do, no.’
‘You must know László.’
Miriam was always amazed when it turned out that I didn’t know anyone she knew – because of course she knew everyone who counted. I did not, however, to my knowledge, know anyone named László.
‘Bruno?’
‘No.’ As far as I was aware my life was both László- and Bruno-free.
‘Serge?’
Ditto.
‘Anyway, lovely chaps. They got the Lagonda all packed up for me. Now, what do you think?’ She gestured towards a brooch she was wearing.
‘It’s very pretty.’
‘Pretty, Sefton?’
‘Very pretty.’
‘Very pretty? For goodness sake, man, it’s a nineteenth-century Tiffany orchid brooch with diamond-edged petals.’
‘Yes, I thought so. And very pretty.’
‘It was a gift from a friend, actually.’
‘Very good.’ Miriam was forever receiving gifts from friends, always men – and always jewellery, though once there was the gift of a De Dion Bouton car, which for a moment rivalled the Lagonda in her affections. The men came and went but the gifts remained.
‘Do you know, Sefton,’ she told me on more than one occasion, ‘the perfect condition for a woman is either to be engaged, or to be widowed.’
We were about to leave the apartment, Miriam equipped with bag and key in hand.
‘Oh, I almost forgot.’ She dashed back into her bedroom and reappeared moments later carrying what looked like a small furry blanket clutched to her chest.
‘What is that?’
‘It’s a Bedlington, Sefton.’
‘A Whatlington?’
‘A Bedlington. A Bedlington Terrier.’
‘A dog?’
‘Yes, of course a dog.’
‘Oh, Miriam.’
‘What do you mean, “Oh, Miriam”?’
‘A dog, Miriam.’
‘I like dogs, Sefton.’
‘You didn’t get it at Club Row?’
‘I certainly did,’ said Miriam, offended. ‘There was a chap as I was leaving the market who was packing up for home and he had this little thing all on his own and—’
‘From Club Row? You’ll be lucky if he lasts a week,’ I said.
‘Sefton!’ She covered the dog’s ears. ‘Don’t talk like that around Pablo.’
‘Pablo?’
‘Picasso, yes.’
‘You’ve named your dog after the artist.’
‘Yes. Why shouldn’t I?’
A dog that looked less like Picasso it would be hard to imagine: he was a dog that looked like a Picasso. Everything about him was wonky, or wrong: rather than a dog, he resembled a lamb, except he was a lamb with a bluish, velvety sort of coat, a high arched back, a narrow but bulbous head, a tail that tapered to a point, and ears that hung down to what looked like two little white pom-poms. He had a mild, bewildered expression on his face and was without a doubt one of the most peculiar-looking creatures I’d ever seen. Miriam obviously adored him.
‘Take these,’ she said, thrusting a brown paper bag into my hands. ‘The chap threw in a bag of arrowroot biscuits.’
‘Marvellous,’ I said.
‘Now. Pablo has left a little present in the bedroom.’
‘Oh no.’ So this was the source of the smell.
‘And I just wondered if you’d be a darling and tidy it up, while I run down to the car? There’re some old newspapers in there that should do the job.’
‘Miriam!’
‘Thank you, darling! See you in a min!’
Pablo’s gift duly disposed of, I made my way down to the Lagonda, which was parked at the back of the building.
Miriam had donned her leather driving gloves.
‘Are we not waiting for your father?’ I asked.
‘Oh no, no, no,’ said Miriam. ‘Sorry, I should have said. We’re meeting him down in Brighton.’
‘Right.’
‘Come on, Sefton. In you pop. No time to lose!’
With Miriam driving, I was left in the passenger seat with the Bedlington, who instantly – quite understandably – became unsettled as Miriam started up the engine and gunned down towards Camden Town. I held on tight to the poor pooch and did my best to calm him: in return, he relieved himself over my trousers.
Damp and headachy, heading out of London, I listened as Miriam recapped for me some of the things her father wanted us to see in Sussex, including Arundel Castle – ‘The archetypal English castle, Sefton, according to Father. Norman and Early English, Gothic and Gothic Revival, Victorian and Modern, absolutely unmatched’ – and many other high points, including Beddingham, Seaford, Alfriston and Litlington, all places I’d never heard of and had absolutely no desire to visit.
‘Do you know Elgar?’ asked Miriam, somewhere around Crawley.
I admitted that I did know Elgar, forgetting, as so often, that for Miriam knowing someone of renown meant actually knowing them, rather than knowing of them.
‘Marvellous, isn’t he? Father and I have spent many happy hours with Elgar at Brinkwells in Fittleworth. He has marvellous views to Chanctonbury Ring. When did you visit?’
I had not visited. I had no desire to visit.
It had been a long day.
And I had no idea when we eventually reached Brighton that it was going to be an even longer night.
The Bedlington
A Late Night Sort of Town