Essex Poison. Ian Sansom

all partition,’ said the woman. ‘No insulation. Walls are like paper. Look, the other problem is this damp in the bedroom. There’s mushrooms growing in here!’ She started to walk into the room leading directly off the hall, but Willy turned right instead and we followed into what was the one and only reception room, just big enough for a tiny square table on a rag rug on the lino floor, and an old iron fold-up bed concertinaed under the window. ‘And a fireplace in every room,’ continued Willy, gesturing towards the tiny brown-tiled hearth.

      ‘Gives no heat,’ said the woman. ‘We all have to sleep in here together in the winter, for the warmth.’

      ‘You’ve got electric lights, I see,’ said Miriam, gesturing at the bare bulb dangling over the table.

      ‘Doesn’t work half the time.’

      ‘Kitchen,’ said Willy, gesturing towards a room leading off the reception room, which accommodated a Baby Belling, a sink, a few shelves, and nothing else.

      ‘Kitchenette,’ said the woman.

      ‘A few chromium fittings and it’d be the equal of anything on Park Lane!’ said Willy.

      ‘What’s he talking about?’ said the woman.

      ‘And so concludes our tour,’ said Willy, beating a hasty retreat to the front door.

      The woman grabbed at Miriam’s arm as we caught up with Willy in the hall. ‘You’re not thinking of renting one of these, are you?’ she asked her.

      ‘No,’ said Miriam.

      ‘Good. Because my advice is don’t. These places are worse than the tenements.’

      ‘Surely not,’ said Miriam.

      ‘Teething troubles,’ said Willy. ‘Only to be expected. Rome wasn’t built in a day, eh?’

      ‘We’ve been here a year,’ said the woman.

      ‘Well, thank you, madam, for showing us round,’ said Willy.

      ‘Yes,’ said Miriam. ‘It’s really been an education.’

      ‘Bit of a whistlestop, I’m afraid,’ said Willy, striding away from the building as fast as he could, and lighting a cigarette. ‘But gives you an idea, I hope.’ He stood at a distance and admired the building. ‘What do you think?’

      ‘Absolutely ghastly,’ said Miriam. She was never shy of stating her opinions.

      ‘Can I offer you a cigarette?’ Willy asked Miriam.

      ‘I have my own, thank you.’ Which she did not.

      ‘It’s not for the likes of you, of course,’ said Willy, his eyes fixed on Miriam. I’d seen it before: men often became drawn into argument with Miriam, mistaking the argument for a kind of flirtation. I often made the same mistake myself.

      ‘Not for the likes of anyone, I wouldn’t have thought,’ said Miriam.

      ‘People need houses,’ said Willy.

      ‘People need homes more than they need houses,’ said Miriam, ‘and I’m afraid I find it difficult to see how your buildings could ever be regarded as homes.’

      ‘Matter of taste, perhaps?’ said Willy.

      ‘Nothing to do with taste,’ said Miriam. ‘And everything to do with quality – and intention.’

      Willy took another couple of quick, excited drags on his cigarette and then ground it out underfoot. ‘With all due respect, miss, I hardly think you’re an expert in housing.’

      ‘With all due respect, sir, I hardly think you and your Mr Klein are experts either, on the evidence of these buildings.’

      Willy laughed.

      ‘Hardly a laughing matter, is it?’ said Miriam. ‘Jerry-building? I’m sure there must be rules and regulations about this sort of thing, aren’t there?’

      ‘There are indeed, miss. And we know exactly what we’re doing, thank you.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Miriam. ‘I’m sure you know exactly what you’re doing. That’s hardly reassuring though, is it? Have you by chance visited the Karl-Marx-Hof municipal buildings in Vienna?’

      ‘I can’t say I have,’ said Willy.

      ‘Well, I have. Father and I visited, for some article he was writing. And I have to say, I thought they were a fine example of how to provide housing for the masses.’

      ‘I don’t know how they do things in Vienna, miss. But this is England.’

      ‘And might we English not expect housing of a similar standard to the Austrian?’ said Miriam.

      ‘Anyway,’ said Willy, realising that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Miriam, but playing a final gambit. ‘Perhaps I can take you for dinner sometime and we could discuss it further?’

      ‘I don’t think so,’ said Miriam. ‘I doubt we’d have anything to talk about beyond your blatant buccaneering, sir. We should really get on, shouldn’t we, Sefton?’

      ‘Yes,’ I agreed.

      Willy looked crushed – and determined. I’d seen the look before. There was not a man who didn’t think he was a match for Miriam, and who wasn’t.

      ‘Well, just remember Mr Klein’s offer, Sefton,’ he said to me. ‘Give it some thought, won’t you?’

      ‘I certainly will, Willy,’ I said.

      ‘He certainly won’t, Willy,’ said Miriam.

      I was glad to get out of Becontree.

       CHAPTER 8

       THE DAGENHAM GIRL PIPERS

      I CAN ONLY DESCRIBE THE SCENE that we eventually came upon in Colchester as ‘strange’. (Morley, I should say, did not like the word ‘strange’. He regarded it as lacking in specificity, ‘a terrible failing in a word’ – see Morley’s Vocabulary Builder: Words to Use and Words to Avoid (1932) – as if it were somehow its own fault.)

      Morley’s ambitious itinerary for our trip up through Essex suggested that after Becontree we were supposed to visit Epping Forest (‘Poor John Clare!’ read his scribbled notes. ‘Mad as a hatter!’), Romford’s famous brewery, Tiptree for the jam, the villages around Saffron Walden (‘Cromwell’s headquarters – the heart of Radical Essex!’), the Marconi works in Chelmsford (‘Inventive Essex!’), before finally heading to Colchester for the Oyster Feast. But after our tour with Willy Mann of the jerry-built houses of Becontree we were forced to cut short our peregrinations and to press on directly to Colchester to make it in time for the Oyster Feast. Miriam, needless to say, drove like a maniac. I shan’t even attempt to describe the Essex countryside: it all looked perfectly pleasantly blurred.