MOLLY, it turned out, would not be ready for some time. The life of an opera singer, it seems, does not involve early mornings. Or indeed, in Molly’s case, mornings. While Miriam fumed, Morley suggested that he and I take a tour of Brighton.
We did all the usual things: Brighton Pavilion, though Morley strongly disapproved of George, the Prince Regent, and his relationship with Maria Fitzherbert, so much so that it was almost as though he were a family member who had betrayed him; the Pier, which was a ‘shot-in-the-arm’, apparently, though quite unlike any shot in the arm I’ve ever experienced; and Volk’s Electric Railway, which, inevitably, I had to drag him away from.
On the way back to the hotel, Morley spotted a brightly coloured sign pointing down a side street, inviting passers-by to ‘Come And Have A Look At My Little Stick of Rock’, which, I had to explain, probably referred to the song ‘With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock’, by someone called George Formby, an enormously popular and enormously ugly Lancastrian singer-songwriter and comedian. Morley was somehow not familiar with the work of Mr Formby: there were some gaps in his knowledge. ‘With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock’ contained rather salacious lyrics, which some readers will doubtless remember, including, ‘A fellow took my photograph, it cost one and three./ I said when it was done, Is that supposed to be me?/ You’ve properly mucked it up – the only thing I can see/ Is my little stick of Blackpool Rock.’ This didn’t amuse Morley, but nor did it deter him from insisting that we take a look at this little stick of Brighton rock, whatever it might be.
Rather disappointingly, it was a rock shop.
For anyone who has never enjoyed the pleasure of a stick of seaside rock, it is essentially a foot-long cylinder of hard, boiled sugar, about an inch in diameter, wrapped in cellophane, usually pink on the outside, and with a ring of bright red letters on the inside that spell out the name of whichever godforsaken seaside resort you happen to be visiting, and which somehow miraculously runs throughout the length of this vile confection. France has its pâtisserie, America has its cherry pie: England has rock.
‘Are you here for rock or the tour?’ asked the stout, red-faced, white-coated man in the shop.
‘We’re here for both,’ said Morley.
‘I’m not sure, Mr Morley,’ I said, ‘if we have time for—’
‘Yes, yes,’ insisted Morley, ‘most definitely, rock and the tour. It’s a tour of …?’
‘The rock-making factory,’ said the man.
‘Oh, goodie!’ said Morley.
‘We’ll just be able to squeeze you in.’
There was no one else in the shop.
‘That’ll be sixpence each, then. Or a shilling for both of you.’
‘But that’s the same,’ I said.
‘The sixpence includes a stick of rock,’ said the man. ‘And so does the shilling.’
We handed over the money.
‘So where’s the factory?’ asked Morley.
‘Follow me,’ said the man. ‘Mind the crowds.’ And he led us out of the front of the shop back onto the side street, onto another side street, and in through the door of a building that was clearly connected to the shop.
‘Long way round?’ said Morley.
‘Is the best way in,’ said the man. ‘Isn’t that what they say?’
Not as far as I’m aware.
‘Now, lads, just stand back there, if you would,’ he said, as we entered. ‘You are entering a hazardous area. Frank! Frank!’
A young man who clearly answered to the name of Frank appeared from somewhere at the back of the room, which had all the appearance of a mechanics’ workshop, though perhaps marginally less grimy.
‘So, “How does you make your Brighton rock, you ask?”’ said the man.
We had not asked, and certainly not in that fashion, but …
‘Basically, you boils your water, your sugar and your glucose syrup, you colours it red and pink and white, you makes your letters from the red, puts the white all around it, rolls it all up, adds the pink, pulls it out, and chops it up, and that, my dears, is that.’
‘Can I just ask—’ began Morley.
‘This is Frank, our apprentice. Say hello, Frank.’
‘Hello, Frank,’ said Frank.
‘Very good,’ said the man. ‘Now, make yourself useful, lad. This, ladies and gentlemen, is Where The Magic Happens!’
I was beginning to get the feeling that the rock shop man was something of a frustrated performer.
Frank unplugged a stopper in a big copper still and allowed some greyish mush to flow out into a big copper bowl set on a trolley. It was a revolting sight. The mushy contents of the copper bowl he then transported and poured out onto a metal bench that could have been as much as twenty or thirty yards long; it certainly ran the length of the workshop.
‘First, ladies and gentlemen—’
‘There are no ladies present,’ said Morley, who tended to take things literally.
‘But the question is, are there are any gentlemen here, sir? That is the question!’
This stumped Morley. The man continued.
‘We take our mixture of water, sugar and glucose syrup, which my lovely assistant Frank has prepared for us, and which has been boiled until it reaches a certain temperature.’
‘And what is that certain temperature?’ asked Morley.
‘That certain temperature, Frank, is?’
‘Around 260ºF, Stanley.’
‘Correct,’ said the man. He looked like a Stanley. ‘Next we take our hot syrup—’
‘Hot syrup,’ repeated Morley. ‘Interesting. Are you making notes, Sefton?’
I wasn’t, but then I did, though I should explain that the process of rock-making as explained by Stanley almost takes longer than the actual process of making rock. The whole enterprise, from the moment the syrup was poured to pulling the rock took less than an hour: the commentary on the making of the rock made it feel like we’d been there for a week. Morley, needless to say, absolutely loved it.
‘Which we call the batch, and which is poured onto this special metal table to cool it down.’
‘Special in what sense?’ asked Morley.
Stanley shook his head and beckoned us closer.
‘This table,’ Stanley said, ‘is special in every sense, boys and girls.’
It was, I have to say, a pretty special table: at least a couple of inches thick, enormously long, and with a steel bar running all around the edge.
‘This’ – Stanley tapped the steel bar – ‘stops the syrup from spilling over. And this’ – he tapped the top of the table – ‘is hollow, and can be heated or cooled by opening a couple of valves through which we run either hot steam or cold water.’
‘Gosh,’ said Morley.
‘Gosh indeed, little lad,’ said Stanley. ‘This is English engineering at its best! What is it, Frank?’
‘It’s English engineering at its best, Stanley,’ said Frank.
‘We now add some flavouring to the mix – traditionally peppermint, ladies and gentlemen, though I prefer aniseed. Or Anna Seed, as her friends call her. I thank you. We’re here all week.’ Frank poured something into the molten mush from a small tin bucket and stirred it with a stick.
‘Now as you can see, the batch begins to thicken as it cools down, becoming less like a liquid and more like my mother-in-law’s custard, which means it can be safely handled – though, like my mother-in-law’s custard, not safely consumed. Frank?’
Frank divided the batch into three parts, adding a small amount of red colouring to one part, a larger amount of red colouring to another part, and none at all to the third part. Coloured and divided into parts in this fashion, the stuff on the metal table now resembled nothing so much as the aftermath of an act of violent butchery.
‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, the sugar-boiler shuts off the cold water which has been cooling the slab’ – Stanley went and turned off a tap – ‘and he opens up the steam valve to keep the batch at a steady temperature.’ He turned on a different tap. ‘So that the sugar remains workable. Why do we do this, you ask?’
‘Because once sugar has cooled and hardened,’ said Morley, ‘it can’t be softened again by reheating, because of the properties of sugar crystals, which—’
‘Thank you, sonny,’ said Stanley, who was busy rolling out the batches into manageable, rolled-rug-size proportions. ‘We now give the rock to our assistant to pull.’
Frank then took what was by now a sort of enormous translucent sausage, draped it over a large hook that was fixed to the wall and proceeded to pull on it, lengthening it and folding it over itself, for a good ten minutes.
‘And what’s the purpose of all this pulling?’ asked Morley.
‘It gets the air into the batch, sir, encouraging the formation of those lovely sugar crystals that you seem to know so much about.’
In the process of pulling, the grey, uncoloured sugar sausage turned a milky white.
Once pulled, the batch was returned to the metal slab.
‘Now,’ said Stanley. ‘Drum roll, please, Frank.’ Frank tapped out a drum roll on the metal table. ‘Up until this moment, ladies and gentlemen, you have merely witnessed cookery. Now, you are about to witness sorcery! You are about to witness what few people in the Western world have ever seen—’
‘He’s very good, isn’t he?’ said Morley to me.
I remained silent.
‘The formation of rock letters that run through a stick of rock. In China and Japan, young men train for many years in their secretive culinary and martial arts. Here in England, I trained for no fewer than six years to become a lettered rock-maker. It is a difficult path, ladies and gentlemen, many are called but few are chosen.’
Frank gave a little round of applause.
In a funny way, the tension really was mounting: the closest I’ve ever seen to an act quite like it was when Morley and I toured the variety halls around Leeds for The County Guides: West Riding; I remember there was a very good act that involved dogs jumping through burning hoops, and another in which a woman opened jars in a most unusual fashion. Stanley stood before the metal table, much like a magician or an illusionist, with one large, opaque white roll of sugar mush, one slightly smaller, translucent pink roll of sugar mush, and a much smaller roll of red sugar mush. He took a slight bow and then – well, there is no easy way to describe exactly what Stanley did next. The simplest way to understand it would be to imagine a letter of the alphabet being formed, six foot long, made of red sugar, with the space all around it filled in with white sugar. Thus, the ‘I’, for example – which was easy – was made of a six-foot-long piece of red sugar, with two pieces of white sugar laid either side, the pieces joined together by being wiped with a damp cloth. You can only begin to imagine the terrible fiddle involved in making the ‘B’ and the ‘G’: the procedure, which involved shaping strips into rhombus shapes and ovals, is too complicated even to begin to describe in words, and indeed could barely be depicted in a diagram. Rock-making is a strictly heritable trade.
Morley was rapt. Even I was grimly fascinated.
Eventually, Stanley fitted all the different letters together, separating them using thin strips of white sugar gloop, to form a kind of thick white plank of unsightly stuff, six foot long and at least three feet wide.
‘Come, come!’ he said. ‘Roll up, roll up!’ He beckoned us closer and showed us the end of this thing, where one could just about read the words, ‘BRIGHTON ROCK’.
This unwieldy construction was then rolled over, moistened with the damp cloth and rolled around the thin pink batch, to produce what was now recognisably a giant stick of rock.
‘Another drum roll please, Frank!’ said Stanley. Frank obliged, while Stanley hoisted one end of this monster rock up on some chains on a pulley, stretching it out and then hacking it apart into workable lengths with enormous scissors. More rolling and pulling continued until the rock was thin enough to be chopped into foot lengths and wrapped in cellophane, the words ‘BRIGHTON ROCK’ somehow intact inside.
‘That,’ said Morley, ‘is amazing.’
‘Thank you, gentlemen, thank you. Thank you,’ said Stanley. ‘If you enjoyed it, tell your friends. And if you didn’t, tell them you did.’
‘Bravo!’ said Morley. ‘Encore! Encore!’
I took him quickly by the arm, pocketed my stick of rock, and exited.