Truss - The Man That Got Away

THE MAN THAT
GOT AWAY

For Anthony Goff

Fiction

A Shot in the Dark

The Lunar Cats

Cat Out of Hell

A Certain Age

Going Loco

Tennysons Gift

With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed

Non-fiction

Get Her Off the Pitch!

Talk to the Hand

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Tennyson and His Circle

Making the Cat Laugh

Today, in 1956, the English class system is essentially tripartite there exist an upper, a middle, and a lower class. It is solely by its language that the upper class is clearly marked off from the others.

Alan Ross, U and Non-U: An Essay in Sociological Linguistics, from Noblesse Oblige, edited by Nancy Mitford (1956)

Every Saturday night at 8

We want to drown our sorrows

So off we goes to the Waxworks

To look at the Chamber of Horrors.

Theres a lovely statue of mother there

We like to see it rather

Its nice to see her as she was

The night she strangled father.

Hilaire Belloc

Its my belief, Constable Twitten announced, that the person whos been in charge of all things criminal in Brighton since 1951 is in fact you, Mrs Groynes! And you have been operating from the very heart of the police station, where bally well no one takes any notice of you!

From A Shot in the Dark (2018), concerning the management of crime in Brighton in 1957

It was a blazing day in July. The threepenny deck-chairs on Brighton seafront were in high demand; ice cream was melting fast; the aroma of cockles in vinegar wafted on the breeze, mixed with the distinctive smell of unprotected human flesh being slowly and painfully cooked on the bone. What a day to be at the seaside! If you closed your eyes, you could faintly hear beyond the fluttering of the overhead bunting a romantic medley from The King and I played by the brass band of the Grenadier Guards. Holiday-making parents watched proudly from their deck-chairs on the shingle as their pasty, knobbly offspring cavorted in ill-fitting swimsuits under the scorching sun. If they considered the issue of infant catastrophic sunburn at all, it was only to make a (small) mental note to buy calamine lotion before the end of the day.

You look like a ruddy lobster, Charlie! mothers called, cheerfully. I shall have to pop into Timothy Whites, the way youre going!

Or, You mark my words, Dawn! Youll bleeding well suffer tonight!

This being 1957, of course, attitudes to tanning were not sophisticated. You exposed pale city skin to solar rays for the first time in twelve months; some of it went a nice colour while some of it burned; the burned stuff could ultimately be peeled off by a skilled relative, with the larger sheets preserved for a while as souvenir curiosities. As for sunstroke, the same blithe unconcern applied. A child screaming and delirious in the night was just the price you paid for a day at the seaside, like Nan breaking her last molar on a stick of rock, or having to beat your carpets outdoors for the next fortnight to get rid of all the sand.

Along the Prom, two young women immaculately dressed like flying-boat hostesses in white high heels, buttoned blue jackets, mid-calf skirts and smart little brimless hats smiled regally at the tourists as they walked.

Good morning, they said, in a general kind of greeting. What a lovely morning! Welcome to Brighton. Good morning. Good morning. What a charming day!

Cor! was the main response, and rightly so. These two elegant figures represented a body known as the Brighton Belles, attractive women hired by the council to make themselves useful to tourists during the summer.

Enquire of a Brighton Belle! ran the slogan on the posters on the wall outside the station, on hoardings and even on the sides of the buses. No one arriving in Brighton could miss the advertising, which depicted nicely dressed holiday-makers (small children holding multi-coloured beachballs aloft, mothers in headscarves and fathers in hats), all with happy cartoon question marks over their heads as they approached the blue-suited beauties.

Whatever you want to know,

Wherever you want to go,

Enquire of a Brighton Belle!

Incidentally, it had taken a small committee of men in suits around two hours to come up with that slogan. It was the grammar that worried them. Did you enquire of? Or enquire from? Opinion was divided equally, and there was an awkward impasse until the young clerk employed to take the minutes piped up unexpectedly that he couldnt listen to this any longer, and that enquire from was technically illiterate, so at last they had their answer.

But the members of the committee were not embarrassed. They were pleased to have undertaken such a lengthy deliberation in the public interest. At this time in Brightons iffy town-planning history, when great swathes of venerable Regency architecture were being demolished on a say-so to oblige the interests of dodgy developers, it was important that other matters municipal should appear to be above board.

Anyway, the slogan worked. Whatever they wanted to know and wherever they wanted to go, holiday-makers did enquire of a Brighton Belle. The whole scheme was a massive success. People asked the Belles everything they could think of: the quickest way to the station, how many pebbles were on the beach, which horse to back in the three-forty-five at Doncaster, where was the nearest place to spend a penny, how to tell the difference between heat rash and smallpox, and (most frequently) what time they got off work, and did they favour a Babycham, the genuine champagne perry?

It wasnt easy to become a Brighton Belle: the prerequisites eliminated 99 per cent of the female population at a stroke. You had to be tall, shapely and fair of face, with excellent posture; also well-spoken, courteous, blind to class difference and fluent in at least three foreign languages. You must be helpful and kind and a total pro at brushing off sexual advances without causing offence. Basically, you had to be Grace Kelly, only without the recent romantic attachment to a member of the House of Grimaldi (because you also had to be single).

And sometimes you didnt even wait to be enquired of.

Good morning, madam, I see youve written some postcards! said one of the Brighton Belles now, stopping to speak to a slightly startled pensioner, seated in a blue-and-white-striped deck-chair. I can post those for you if you like.

The pensioner a Mrs Tucker from Bow in East London, wearing a warm coat with a fur collar despite the temperature instinctively gripped her postcards tightly. She couldnt imagine why this uniformed glamour-puss with the cut-glass accent was bending over her with white-gloved hand outstretched.

Mavis? she said, uncertainly. Woss appnin? Woss she want?

Shes offering to post them, Mum, explained the buxom red-haired woman in yellow gingham, sitting beside her. In this womans hand was an open paperback book with a drawing of a Regency buck on the cover; shed chosen it randomly from the stall beside the Palace Pier, and the edges of its pages were browned and crisp from being displayed for weeks in the sun.

I expect posting other peoples cards is her job, poor thing, she said, looking up at the two Belles. Is it your job, dearie? she asked, sympathetically.