Cheyney Behave

 

 The rush of metal and glass, brick, tarmac concrete and flesh makes London what it is, and buries the past. But glimpses of an older London remain, often in books. They stand obstinate like boulders in a fast river, each creviced in past lives and attitudes, thoughts fossilised in words.

                             Oxford Circus 1943 Arthur H Nellen

Peter Cheyney’s heroes and villains inhabit a London now gone, as alien in their prejudices and outlook on life as any Arcadian Greek. It would be easy to sneer at them as smug and small minded with very poor teeth, except for the fact that Cheyney’s heroes have exceptionally good teeth considering the amount of alcohol and nicotine they ingest.

John le Carre was recently asked about what spy books that might have influenced him as a child. His answer was interesting. He duly bowed his head to Kipling, Conrad, Buchan and Greene, and then referred to the:

‘…awful, mercifully-forgotten chauvinistic writers like Peter Cheyney and Co. And an anti-German rabble-rouser called E. Phillips Oppenheim who practically launched World War One singlehanded.’ 

             John le Carre’s judgement, though true to a point, is flawed, partly from class, and by his own talent as a writer. Cheyney was chauvinistic, and pretty awful as a writer, but he shouldn’t be forgotten mercifully or otherwise. Cheyney’s success as the most highly paid writer of his time do not necessarily make his books great, but it does show that his work reflected the attitudes and mood of a huge swathe of the population, amplified it an played it back to them. And we’re talking about the popular mood, not that necessarily of the educated but of people who bought his work in droves.

            Books are treasure troves of the past, and people reading Conrad J.B Priestly or Greene might recognise a particular version of it, filtered through the author’s imagination. It will though have, or represent, a relatively narrow class base.

            Cheyney’s books travelled with soldiers to the battlefields of Europe, and were found in the homes of the ‘Resistance’. His ‘Dark’ series had relevance and brought a new degree of realism to the spy novel with its soiled glamour, its weary brutality.

Peter Cheyney’s world might make one shiver with horror or suppressed glee at his robust and thoughtless chauvinism, his narrow certainties that ‘pansies’ were abominable and foreigners not to be trusted.  He is, though, reflecting an uncomfortable fact that the real heroes of World War II were not the moral icons that the media then and now prefer to portray – the awkward bits cut out.  The heroes of World War II would be homophobic, racist bigots by our standards, but heroes nevertheless. It was the ordinary man with the ordinary prejudices of the time – and the aspirations that Cheyney portrayed. Those less literate than Greene or le Carre made Cheyney rich because he wrote what they wanted to hear, and so provides a reader today a fascinating insight into a world long gone.

Clay Cross gets Frugal

 

“I think they’re trying to kill us, Clay.” She said it quietly, like she was talking about shoes. We were on the Monmouth road, the tunnels coming up fast. The car in front of us was a dark number, its driver lining up a part for a funeral cortège. I’d made to overtake it more than once and every time the car had veered out. An old lady hitting the sherry, maybe. There were plenty of those in Monmouth, along with funeral technicians who shared the embalming fluid with the corpse…one for you, one for me. Hell, maybe the little old lady was a funeral technician. That would make sense. More sense than a killer waiting for me and Sheri on a quiet road to Monmouth.

            “Why’s that?” I said from the corner of my mouth. The other corner was clamped hard on a Marlborough light.

            “A motorbike has been tailing us for some time, but you knew that, Clay.”

            “I guess.”

            “And if it comes any closer, it’ll be kissing my sweet derriere.”

            “Well he sure as won't be kissing mine, but you’re right, kid. Something ‘s screwy going on here.” And then I remembered. “You got it safe?”

            She patted the book and smiled. Placed it between her thighs. “It’s safe, Clay.”

 I glanced to my right where a white fiat was bent on sharing my space. I veered out, the bump and scrape a friendly hint. The jerk didn’t respond, just stared kind of fish-eyed at something ahead. Maybe he had designs on the old broad who drank embalming fluid with corpses. Maybe he was stupid. One thing for sure, between the three of them they seemed intent on making us into some kind of sandwich – and let me tell you, I ain’t that mouth friendly.

“This reminds me of the Spencer case,” Sheri whispered, retrieving her pearl handled cold 45 from her purse.

“You don’t say.”

“She met with an ‘accident’.”

“What kind of accident?”

“The death kind of accident – just like this – crowded in as she was entering a tunnel.”

“So they all got it.”

Sheri snickered. Sexy as hell. “You’d think wouldn’t you, only  the motor bike and car in front plumb vanished – the driver of the fiat likewise never traced. Poof.”

 Her lips pursed turning the sound into something you’d dream of later that night. Poof! poof !

“Motive, Sheri. Who wanted her dead?”

“Well, she had a boy friend. Word is he was some kind of oily little bed-hopper; Guy named Dodi.”

“Dodi? Ain’t that a girl’s name?”

Sheri shrugged. “Egyptian I think.”

Rameses, Tutankhamen, Dodi. I wasn’t convinced. “You think he put the finger on her?”

“No, he died with her in the crash.”

“Hmm.”

“She had a husband.”

“Ahh.”

“Only he don’t seem like no killer.”

“As every bent lawyer whines; half of death row could plead that one. Who else had it in for her?”

“Well she’d compiled some kind of dossier on illegal arms trading – landmines – that kind of thing. Word is government ministers were involved, along with half the Secret Service.”

“Jeez, she had no chance then.” I knew how things worked. Paint her as some kind of flake-head, an accident waiting to happen, her boyfriend a sex fiend and lush. These boys had power. I listened as Sheri proceeded to tell me how much power.

“She knew that. A year or two before her death she’d met up with her lawyer, Lord Mishcon.”

“A goddamned lord, what was she, a princess?”

Sheri gave me her Mona Lisa smile. “She left him a note, confiding her fears that ‘Efforts would be made to get rid of her…like an accident in her car’.”

“What did the jury make of that?”

“Scotland Yard kept it to themselves.”

As I said, these boys had power. The dame had no chance. “Okay, so she knows an accident is being planned for her, and she’s rich – so why not buy a chauffeur, get herself some kind of body-guard?”

“She had both. Her driver was a guy named Henri Paul.”

“French. That the best she could do?”

“Hmm.” Her lips curled.

“You’re saying he was got at.”

“The line is he was driving while drunk; but those with him earlier that morning say different.”

“Go on.”

“The night before, he vanished for three hours. No trace or record of his movements - and get this, Clay.” Sheri paused.

I hoped she wasn’t planning pausing too long. The tunnels were coming up fast, and we were still no nearer to clearing this.

“Henri Paul had regular, unexplained, but quite sizable amounts of money going into his several bank accounts two or three months before her death.”

“And he died in the crash. Hell, and ain’t that convenient.” And then I remembered: “She had something they wanted, too – some kind of dossier, you said.”

Sheri squeezed her thighs tight and the car swerved. “She had something – only after the crash her personal stuff vanished.”

 Dead driver, vanishing dossiers, missing cars… “Hold on, cup-cake. Just hold on there. The cameras would have picked up their number plates.”

Sheri sighed. “You’re right, only the cameras weren’t working on that particular tunnel on that particular night.”

Who were these guys? And who was the dame that had lured them from out of the shadows? “And the inquest bought all this?”

“Hmmm.”

The way she said ‘Hmmm,’ man it was poetry, but I knew there was something behind that hmmm. There always was with Sheri.

“There was another inquest ten years later.”

“When the trail was nice and cold.”

“Maybe, but the jury clearly smelt a fish. They returned a verdict of unlawful killing by the drivers of the vehicles involved.”

“You mean these ones here.” The tunnels were closing in on us fast. “Hold on, kid.” I swung the car hard to the right, smashing the fiat off the road, then hauled on the brakes. The car jerked to a sudden halt. The biker who’d shown such interest in Sheri Lamour’s derriere swung into the air and kissed asphalt instead.

There was just the little old lady who had suddenly discovered acceleration. Maybe she was thirsty, maybe she feared death. Either way she’d never have to worry about embalming fluid again.

Tyres chewed dirt and gravel screamed in all directions as we hurtled through the tunnels and screamed into Monmouth town. I was on her tail and gaining fast, my right foot aching on a pedal that was damn near scraping the road.

            Monmouth passed in a blur and we were on the Hereford road, straining up one of those goddamned hills the Welsh are always singing about for want of anything better else to do. It was a long, gleaming-wet road, built for the hunter and its prey. I was screaming, consumed by the lust for revenge. Screaming and howling as if some nameless beast had taken possession of my soul. But the guy I still thought of as the little old lady had one more trick. She vanished in shadow whilst I was still making my jungle noises and licking imagined blood from my teeth.

            Sheri pointed as the side road came into view, dropping steeply into an unlit abyss. Hell! I thought, stomach caught between teeth.

We plunged onto the road like a comet from the infinitesimal voids of space, missing a paint van and avoiding a lamppost by inches. What-the-hell! We were gaining and no back alley-dodging-hide and seek was going to stop us now. I was near enough to see a shadow hunched, ape like over the wheel. Someone else was in the car; face stark in panic, his gun aimed at Sheri Lamour.

Sheri smiled and it was obvious why. The jerk was scared and just then wouldn’t have aimed straight with a slide rule. The ‘old lady’ and Tonto were reaching retiring age and Sheri was about to make the presentation.  A pearl handled colt 45 with silencer attached don’t fire no gold watches, but he got the message - in the head. The dark car crashed as its driver got his. “Nice shooting, Sheri,” I breathed, trying without success to disguise the envy.

“That’s for the princess,” she breathed.

“And the book,” I said. “The Frugal Way. Tell me it’s safe.”

Sheri unleashed her thighs and held it up triumphantly.

“They didn’t look the Frugal Kind,” she breathed.

 

Caught in time

The large iPad appeared from nowhere, as did the picture of a Canadian living room and two children playing. I touched the screen and immediately one of the children collapsed on the floor. An irate mother rushed out from the kitchen and stared accusingly, as though, somehow, she could see me. I put the screen to one side and sent B out on a panic shopping spree: Parsley, ham, eggs – wine.

“We will still be able to see Battleship Potemkin.”

It was a statement not a question, and I lied accordingly. “Of course. They’ll all be gone by nine.”

“It starts at eight.”

“They’ll be gone by eight.”

“It’s seven o’clock now.”

“No, half six.”

Jane nodded reassuringly from the far corner, a large glass of wine in her hand. Wine bends the truth.

“You must be fast readers,” says B as the door slams behind her. I return to the cooking. Fast reading is one thing fast eating another. Then there was the Canadian contingent including the vengeful mother, whose child I’d knocked over.  How had she recognised me? I knew that she had. And that we wouldn’t be finished by nine.

Pans bubbled on hobs; in the oven something was burning. It was then I remembered I’d forgotten the rice.

A text message to B – We need rice.

No!

That was more unreal than knocking a child over via a virtual screen.

 A knock on the door.

Canadian voices.

I looked at the clock.

Two minutes before the alarm

But I’d already re-entered time, the problem fading as I stretched.

Angry mothers, Potemkin, reading clubs and burnt food – gone, forgotten – escaped. It’s the beauty of dreams. Do what you want. No price to be paid. No consequences. You can escape them in a breath, which is akin to death, in a way.

An uneventful life

Accidents happen when you least expect them. I was eating an apple in the kitchen staring at the rain pelting across the window, and pondering on a chapter that was causing some difficulty. It was a three apple job – it could easily have been a four apple ponder – but for the accident.

I raised the apple – a Braeburn – to my mouth and chomped down with some force – so much force that the apple sheared in a crunch and the entire north face of the Braeburn continued its upward trajectory and hit my nose with even greater force.
I never realised before that apples sting. I felt my nose had come off. Wondered what I was going to say and how long the pain would last. In the mean time I destroyed the evidence, consuming the offending fruit in vengeful bites, but swallowing carefully in case the Braeburn planned a counter-attack.

My nose continued to throb. One nostril seemed blocked, by blood or an errant pip. It was time to see how bad it was, consider how much of the truth to tell my wife. Hit by an apple? For God’s sake. I entered the bathroom with some trepidation and stared into the reflection of a virginal nose, a nose unscathed, blameless, unblemished.

I felt cheated.

Send in the Penguins

The Romans were supreme pragmatists, expert at ‘borrowing’ the best military tactics and weaponry from those they conquered. The British, too, are noted pragmatists, operating on the maxim of ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.’ As the British Empire reached its peak so, too, did the eccentricity of its top Generals, their ability to recognise what was broke, or indeed a dead parrot, floundering in complacency.
The Boer war proved something of a shock, our eventual victory a close run thing, and immediately afterwards the Elgin Committee was established to explore what had gone wrong.

Some pushed for the abolition of the sword and lance as viable weapons for cavalry. Sir Ian Hamilton argued that ‘compared to a modern rifle the sword or lance can only be compared to a medieval toy.’

Leading generals were not impressed and continued to champion the use of lance and sword as cavalry weapons of choice.

General French and General Douglas Haig – key figures in World War I – were the most vociferous against reform, arguing the virtues of slashing and stabbing; the shock of the charge.
























General Brabazon went one step further – the tomahawk. He argued that the power and momentum of a cavalry charge - with men swinging tomahawks - would sweep all before it. It had, he argued, proved highly effective on the Afghan frontier – which is clearly where we’re going wrong now.

Lord Esher, a man of dry wit, recorded Brabazon’s appearance at the commission:

‘He drew graphic pictures of a cavalry charge under these conditions, so paralysing to the imagination of the Commissioners that they wholly failed to extricate the General or themselves from the discussion of this engrossing subject.’
















It was an interesting position to take because the Boer war had clearly demonstrated the devastating effect of artillery and long range rifles. Generals with their powerful, aristocratic connections, however, carried some clout.

The Elgin Commission did what the British always do in such circumstances.

Compromised.

The cavalry would be allowed to keep their swords but, much to the disgust of traditionalists, they would carry rifles as well, and learn how to dismount and fire.

I love eccentricity and so, clearly, did General Brabazon* but was the tomahawk any more eccentric than the lance – a nine foot bamboo cane, tipped and reinforced with steel?

The British tomahawk would have been made from English oak, steel from Coalbrookdale, and decorated with pigeon feathers, perhaps coloured. They’d have made a pretty sight charging against machine guns. It could have been worse. We could have had Generals arguing for blow-pipes.

We could of course have sent in the penguins.


















*Ordered to shave off his beard, the younger Brabazon also shaved off one half of a large and luxuriant moustache, startling observers on the regimental parade ground.

Group think

I hate groupthink and what’s worse, there’s no escape. I’ve been there: Catholic, Marxist, teacher, musician – even writer – the effect is the same. Consciously or unconsciously you censor your mind. You can say that you don’t – like St Peter said he’d never deny Christ. And then the cock crowed.

The truth is you tailor your words and, if you’re not careful, your thoughts to a wider group view. There is a liberal/radical consensus, a tribe that can be insufferably smug, as though believing they are the repository of all that is truthful and good.

There are ‘rednecks’ gun lobbyists, euro sceptics, Tories, Neo Cons, Protestants, Catholics, Wiccan, Jedi and atheists - more tribes than you can shake a stick at and the bottom line is that each of them have probably the same measure of goodness and generosity of spirit. It’s just hard to discern and sometimes harder to acknowledge this without howls of protest from whichever tribe you happen to find yourself in.

The most insidious group think in this country is the BBC. You never get the news. You get an interpretation. It is good that I sit in the dark and alone with only a teapot for company when I put on the Today programme. The gloom is punctuated with much irritation, sometimes loud curses my wife wouldn’t tolerate. It’s the complacency, occasional self-importance, giggling undertone, snide asides and pharisaic questioning nudging the listener along the right tracks. Over the years it's become worse, a sly, benign intolerance.

The boast is objectivity, allowing every voice to be heard - only some voices are more equal than others. It is easy to ‘encourage dissident views’ if you select carefully and control the debate, then what you’re getting is the illusion of impartiality; not free ranging but battery thought.

The main stream media patronises and infantilises large swathes of the population and relentlessly pushes its sense of the truth. And yes, you may say, Fox news is worse; better the BBC than News Corporation. Well, in my opinion, what’s worse is having only one ‘tribal’ view. Having a yin but no yang.

Humans are tribal. I like to think I’m not but I am. I belong to the tribe that loathes anyone who ‘knows’ the truth. And the BBC reminds me of the Renaissance Catholic Church in that respect. It has many virtues and the vices of a monopoly. Ah, time for another cup of tea - or something stronger.

There’s always tomorrow.

‘Alas, I now repent me sore that I ever suffered you to go away, I care for match nor nothing, so I may once have you in my arms again; God grant it! God grant it! Amen, amen, amen ... God bless you both, my only sweet son and my only best sweet servant and God send you a happy and joyful meeting in the arms of your dear old dad.’

Now who the hell, wrote that? Not me for sure. Nor have I ever exclaimed: ‘God's wounds, I will pull down my breeches and they shall also see my arse,’ though I have many times felt inclined to do so. And, on one memorable occasion, Jarvis Cocker did.

No, the guy responsible for both these remarks was our own dear, sweet dad, James 1st of England and 6th of Scotland.

The second remark is both funny and crude, especially coming from the mouth of a king. The first is just downright weird. As paternal letters go it makes Victorian sentimentality acerbic in comparison. James is not just wearing his heart on his sleeve; he’s embroidered it with jewels and flashing neon lights. The weirdness is that his love for his son, the ill-fated Charles 1st, is fused with his more carnal love for his ‘best sweet servant’ the Duke of Buckingham.

I’ve never had that problem. The Duke of Buckingham leaves me cold. But could I ever write a letter like that to my own children? My ‘sweet son’ would shudder being in the arms of his ‘dear old dad’. My daughter hugs me regularly.

My own father wrote me a brilliant letter shortly after I was born. He was at sea. It’s a strong letter, wistful, loving, hoping for great things. And yes, I think there is a case for fathers to write at least one letter to their daughter or son. It’s something treasured and never forgotten.

I’ve not done it yet. My father was wise, writing his shortly after I was born. The later you leave it the harder it becomes – a bit like writing a Will. You don’t want to think about death and posterity.