Lizzy May – Chapter 14

Beware the Sandwiches

‘Anyone for Sandwiches?’ by Steve Fendt

Winter 1978

Your grandfather had rooms in Dyer’s Buildings, in Holborn. I used to visit him there.

This would be the mid-Thirties, the time we’re talking about now.

Dyer’s Buildings is an ancient alleyway off busy High Holborn. It dates from medieval times, when the dyers’ guild built almshouses there. In the interwar years, it was a place where many law professionals had their offices, alongside all kinds of craftsmen’s workshops, from cobblers to jewellers to bookbinders.

Beautiful Victorian terraces stood opposite each other, with only a narrow alley between, closed to vehicle traffic. Two people holding hands could reach out and touch the walls on both sides with their fingertips, if they stretched.

The buildings behind the façades were a rabbit warren of twisting wooden staircases and rooms stacked to their ceilings with ledgers and books. They smelled of leather and dust and sealing wax, and the old horsehair wigs the barristers wore.

During the day Dyer’s Buildings was filled with the jangling of telephones and the coming and going of messengers, clerks, barristers and solicitors. Late in the evenings and at weekends it was a hushed, magical place.

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Percy was a senior legal clerk at this time, and making very good money. It was a job that relied on personal contacts as well as a detailed knowledge of the law. ‘A good clerk knows everyone at the Bar, from the most junior barrister to the most senior judge,’ he used to say. ‘He also knows the law better than his own solicitor.’

Percy’s rooms were small and cramped, with barely space to set down a coffee cup, but it was unusual for clerks to have their own premises at all. Usually they worked in solicitors’ offices.

I know there was professional jealousy on that score: other clerks felt he was giving himself airs with his private rooms, his immaculate suits and his gold watch chain.

It was a profession of fusty, timebound tradition, you see. Then along came Percy Edward Bullen, doing things differently, using his RAF veterans’ network and his contacts from the Lodge.

The Lodge? Percy was a Freemason, like many of his legal colleagues, and policemen and journalists besides. They were all thick as thieves, as they say.

It was a generational thing, this new, impatient, entrepreneurial spirit.

The men of our generation had fought in the Great War, had seen the politicians and generals fail dismally, their friends gunned down in swathes, cities bombed and passenger ships torpedoed. They had little respect for rules, authority, or doing things a particular way just because ‘That’s the way we’ve always done it around here.’

‘Damn that nonsense,’ your grandfather would say. ‘I’ll do whatever I can bally well get away with.’

He would use tradition shamelessly when it met his purposes, and thumb his nose at it when that suited him better.

Over the years, he’d become bored with general legal work: the divorces and neighbours’ disputes; the drafting of wills, leases and contracts which were the main business of his father-in-law’s suburban practice. He’d climbed as high as he could. The only way up now was to become a solicitor himself, and that required years of legal study.

He was in his mid-forties, and didn’t feel he could spare the time. He decided to take a sideways step instead, go freelance, specialise.

Percy had become fascinated with the complex area of insurance law. Moving to the City, cultivating contacts in the Inns of Court, enabled him to carve out a niche of his own. He operated as a middle-man between solicitors and suitable barristers for the trickiest insurance disputes.

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I’d go to visit Percy in his rooms at close of business, just before the porter locked the iron gates to the alley. He’d fish out a bottle of whisky or red wine from behind a stack of books, light up his pipe, and we’d make ourselves as comfortable as we could.

Later we’d slip out the back door, into the fog of a winter’s evening, and go out on the town. He knew all the best bars and clubs.

I remember one particular place we used to go, off Chancery Lane. It was a drinking club, down in a back basement. It was very unassuming from the outside; you’d have to know it was there. Down the steps you’d go, through one door and another, following the faint sound of music.

Through a final door and you’d find yourself in a different world: black American musicians playing jazz and blues, bartenders shaking cocktails, and the air blue with tobacco. With the smoke and the dimmed lights, you could hardly see the other side of the room, though it wasn’t a big establishment.

The first time Percy took me there, I’d come straight to his rooms from Hampstead. I hadn’t had any dinner and I was famished. There were plates of sandwiches on the tables, and while Percy organised the drinks, I thought, ‘Oh, I just fancy one of these.’

Well, I took one bite, and I had to spit it out into a napkin. It was the most disgusting thing! Dry bread like cardboard, rancid ham and hard cheese.

Everyone at the table burst out laughing.

Then they explained. The sandwiches weren’t for eating, they were just for show! By providing free ‘food’, you see, the place was allowed to serve alcohol outside normal licensing hours. But the sandwiches were made once a week.

I felt a proper fool, but I had to see the funny side. Percy was apologetic.

‘Sorry, old girl! Forgot to warn you off the sandwiches.’

They were such happy times, Pauly. Your grandfather and I were in love – and although neither of us was quite young any more, we felt like young lovers starting out in life, with everything to look forward to.

We knew it couldn’t last, of course. Something had to give.

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Coming up:

This Friday in Tales from the Wood: Pauly intervenes in a case of bullying, and appreciates a friend’s support with his own troubles. (Paid subscriptions.)

Next Tuesday in Lizzy May: Percy and Lizzy May find their lives in upheaval.