by Juliet West
‘Bugger that,’ said Winnie. ‘Life’s too short for cocoa.’
Hazel laughed and put the drum into its case. Mrs Dunn appeared, shaking the tin of sweets.
‘Bravo, Winnie! You might just have cracked it,’ said Mrs Dunn. ‘Why don’t you take two?’
It was busy outside HQ. The Westminster traffic inched along – roadworks on Victoria Street – and the fumes made Hazel cough. She’d eaten the humbugs already and now she wished she’d saved one; a sweet would have helped her throat. Her brogues pinched with every step. The wretched leather refused to soften, however much she wore the shoes or marched in them or rubbed inside the heel with soap.
At first Hazel had been reluctant to join the drum corps but Lucia was very persuasive. ‘It’s only one rehearsal a week,’ Lucia had said. ‘It ought to be jolly exhilarating but I don’t have a rhythmical bone in my body. Take my place, won’t you, Hazel?’
Hazel had never played a drum before, but she supposed she might be able to manage. Perhaps all those years of piano lessons would help. At the very least, she knew how to keep time. And, after all, it was important to show willing. That was only fair in the circumstances.
Mrs Dunn had been delighted with the proposal. ‘It simply hasn’t clicked for you, Lucia, has it?’ she’d said. ‘Hazel sounds ideal.’
Now, almost two months after that first practice, Hazel found she looked forward to Thursday nights. She was good at drumming; the uniform no longer felt so uncomfortable. If only she could wear in these wretched shoes.
At Westminster station, Hazel took the stairs down to the Tube platform, holding tight to the handrail and concentrating on each step. There were a dozen or more people on the westbound platform including, at the far end, a woman from the drum corps, one of the intense types who loved to lecture. She ought to join her – Mrs Forbes, was it? – but instead Hazel headed the other way, sat on the narrow wooden bench and lit a cigarette. After a couple of minutes a train arrived and she got into the first carriage. To her surprise it was empty, save for an unshaven man who was wearing dirty canvas shoes and no socks. She chose a seat well away from him and looked down into her lap. A quick march thumped in her head, and her fingers tingled from the vibrations of the drum.
Beyond Gloucester Road station the train came to an unexpected halt in the tunnel. She tried not to panic, took deep breaths between drags of the cigarette. The lights in the train flickered and then died: the carriage fell dark as a cave. Prickles began to scratch her throat, spiky as ants’ legs scuttling up and down her windpipe. This ridiculous asthma, or whatever it was; it was so unpredictable, and when an attack came she had no idea how to control it. At the beginning of the year, when she was still living in Aldwick, her mother had taken her to the doctor. He had listened to her chest, asked her to blow into a brown-paper bag and said she had a good deal of puff. At the end of the appointment he pronounced her perfectly fit and asthma-free. ‘Drink plenty of water,’ was his advice, but Hazel found that sweets and cigarettes were far more soothing. She took another drag, glad of the momentary light from the glowing tip, and glanced over at the man. He appeared to be dozing, thank goodness, his ludicrous tatty bowler slanted over one ear. He clearly wasn’t worried at all that they were trapped in a tunnel – the darkness had only sent him to sleep. She coughed to clear her throat, but of course that only made things worse. The cough turned to spasms and gasps; her throat was actually closing up, it was disappearing, and in her panic she began to see flashes of light in the blackness behind her eyelids. Impossible to breathe. Perhaps this was it, she thought. She’d keel over here, on the District and Metropolitan line, because it was too dark and there was no air, and she realized that she had no letters or papers in her bag, not a single name or address, which meant they wouldn’t even be able to identify her when she was found at the next stop.
She became aware of a hand on her back.
A voice, musical.
Dare, the voice was saying. Dare.
Irish, was it?
There, there. Take a deep breath now. Calm yerself.
The down-and-out was patting her back and soothing her. She should feel frightened that he had approached her, that he had the impertinence to touch her, but any fear was somehow cancelled out by the relief that she would not die alone. She found a breath, and then another, and miraculously she felt her shoulders loosen, just as the lights came back on and the train accelerated hard, sending the man reeling across the carriage. He staggered into a seat opposite and prised a small metal flask from his trouser pocket.
‘Are you better now, miss?’ he asked.
Hazel was not sure she could speak. She stood as the train slowed into High Street Ken. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, nodding in his direction. He smiled, stretched his arm to offer the flask. She shook her head and he took a long swig.
‘You’ve buried it deep,’ he said, screwing the flask lid back into place. ‘Sure, it’ll find a way out.’
She opened the train door and hurried onto the platform. The gall of the fellow! He meant well, she supposed, but already she was horrified at the thought of their odd encounter, his alcohol-sour breath near her ear. A ghost-hand made her shiver, the sensation of his palm on her back. Thank goodness she would never see him again. London was useful like that.
Anyway, she felt better now the cough was easing. Take the steps carefully, dangerous to rush. All she needed was to get into the open air. A cold drink would help. No doubt it was the heat and the engine fumes at Westminster that had set off the attack. Perhaps the doctor was right. A glass of water was all she needed – yes, she’d have a glass of water as soon as she got back to the flat. Lucia had promised to cook dinner. Doubtless it would be something simple but extravagant. Caviar with toast. Belgian chocolates for dessert.
The day of the great parade had come. It was disappointing not to have been chosen for the march proper, but their position at the Salmon Lane meeting was a vital one, said Mrs Dunn. There would be thousands of sympathizers waiting to hear Sir Oswald as he passed through the East End. Salmon Lane was the first of his four planned stops en route, and the women’s drum corps would form up at the front of the platform where O.M. was to speak. They would drum him in, and when he had finished his address they would strike up again. It was sure to be intoxicating, said Mrs Dunn.
Of course there was going to be trouble – Hazel had learned to expect that. Wherever they went the Reds heckled and yelled obscenities. The journey here had been bad enough. The Tube was packed with communists, red handkerchiefs and scarves tied around their necks. She and Winnie were squashed at the far end of a carriage, trying to ignore the taunts and the jeers. Every so often you’d hear a few lines of the ‘Internationale’, and then the fists would go up in the air. Clenched fists, threatening. Not like the fascist salute – the hand outstretched in a sign of respect and peace. True, Hazel had felt silly when she first tried it out, self-conscious, but it had become almost natural now, and it was hard to deny the buzz of energy that travelled all the way to your fingertips as you chanted, ‘Hail, Mosley!’
Hazel and Winnie had left the Tube at Stepney Green and walked south to Salmon Lane. Quite an eye-opener. Hazel had never been to East London before. Lucia had described it as an alien zone, overrun by Yids. ‘Sub-men’, she called them, and certainly it looked like a kind of underworld, everything squat and blackened, mean tenement blocks that appeared derelict until you looked up and saw babies’ nappies hanging from rusted balconies. Was this how Jewish people lived? It made no sense to Hazel. According to Lucia, these sub-men were secretly filthy rich, siphoning off Britain’s wealth.
Everywhere the pavements and the walls were chalked up and whitewashed with Red slogans: NO PASARAN, THEY SHALL NOT PASS!, DOWN WITH MOSLEY. She spotted one of their own slogans – a HAIL MOSLEY on a cinema wall – but someone had rubbed out HAIL and replaced it with KILL. Typical of the Reds, said Winnie. It always came down to violence in the end.
At Salmon Lane,
they unpacked their drums from the waiting van and formed up as directed, four rows of four, with Mrs Dunn at the front carrying the standard. To the sides of them stood groups of black-shirted guards. They were strong boys from HQ, they wouldn’t stand for any trouble. ‘We don’t start fights, but we know how to finish them,’ Ken had said to her with a wink. He was over there now, leaning against the van door, arms crossed. Hazel thought he’d tried to catch her eye once or twice, but she’d done her best to ignore him.
‘Not exactly a crowd of thousands, is it?’ said Winnie.
Hazel looked out across the wide pavement. There were a hundred or so spectators waiting on one side of the street, chatting away or looking at leaflets and newspapers. Some were sitting on the kerb, eating sandwiches and sausage rolls in the October sunshine. Against a row of iron railings lurked a gang of Reds. Young men, mainly, but women too – even a few children who were making a racket by dragging their sticks along the railings.
‘It’s early yet. The march isn’t due for an hour.’
‘It’s going to be interesting,’ said Winnie.
Hazel coughed and patted her blouse pocket. ‘Do you think there’s time for a ciggie?’
Winnie sucked in her breath. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? Smoking’s not allowed in uniform.’ She thrust out her chin and did her Mrs Dunn. ‘Put out that fag, lass!’ Hazel smiled and Winnie stuck her hand in the leather pouch on her belt. ‘Here, have a fruit gum.’
The advance speaker, a man from Limehouse branch, climbed up on the platform. He was good, thought Hazel, passionate enough to hold the pitch and keep the attention of the waiting crowds. More people began to gather, many listening carefully and hear-hearing, others jeering from the sidelines. The Red gang on the edge of the street swelled. They shuffled closer and a cabbage heart was thrown at the speaker. He dodged to the left and it missed his head, flopping instead against the baker’s-shop window behind him. He shrugged his shoulders and looked towards the police who were pretending not to notice, eyes straight ahead. Cabbages were gentle fare, they knew, along with rotten eggs and flour. It was the rocks and broken milk bottles you had to watch out for.
Mrs Forbes leaned towards Hazel and spoke in a low voice. ‘The Reds have come from all over the country,’ she said. ‘They’ve bussed them down from Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester. It’s not the locals, you know. Locals here love us. Look how the crowd’s grown.’
The street was certainly filling up – hundreds now, perhaps a thousand supporters – and people were starting to clap and cheer the speaker. ‘It’s time to mind Britain’s business,’ he shouted. ‘Britain for the British!’
Another yellowed cabbage flew towards him, and a woman in a smeared apron leaned from the third-floor window above the baker’s. She sloshed a bucket of dirty water towards the platform, managing to drench the speaker’s right arm just as the cabbage hit him on the thigh. There were whoops of delight from the Reds, and the blackshirt boys moved forward. Hazel was relieved to hear a policeman’s whistle. Five or more officers stepped in, batons at the ready, and the two sides were kept apart.
Another Limehouse member got up to speak. The crowd hushed for a moment, the air thin and tense in the weakening sunlight. Beyond Salmon Lane came a constant drone of noise: chants and screams, whistles being blown, police bells ringing. The officers tested their batons in the palms of their hands.
The second speaker began, yelling about high finance and usury, and the pavement became more and more crushed until in the end Mrs Dunn was right – there must have been thousands of people waiting for Sir Oswald to appear and take the platform. Then, at the end of the road, came a shout from a young Red who’d shinned up a lamp post. ‘Barricades are up at Cable Street. Mosley’s turning back!’ There was an ear-splitting chorus of cheers, and then a woman cried out. She had somehow clambered onto the roof of a street urinal. ‘They did not pass!’ she called, stomping one foot on the metal roof. ‘No pasaran. They did not pass!’ The Reds cheered and began to chant, ‘They did not pass! They did not pass!’
A dishevelled blackshirt shouldered his way towards the platform and spoke urgently to the speaker. Sweat and blood dripped from his forehead, pooling around his eye.
Word went round in seconds. The march had been turned back from Royal Mint Street. The blackshirts were marching west instead of east, back to HQ in Westminster. Mosley would not be coming to Salmon Lane after all.
There were countless scuffles now, Reds shouting, ‘Fascist scum!’ The sound of bottles smashing and women’s screams.
‘Stand firm, ladies,’ said Mrs Dunn. She slammed her standard into the ground. ‘Take position.’ Hazel raised her drumsticks. Her hands were trembling but somehow she felt strong and her breath was steady.
‘One, two,’ called Mrs Dunn.
They began to drum but the police blew their whistles and motioned at them to stop. A sergeant produced a loudhailer. ‘Meeting closed,’ he called. ‘Go home peacefully. Meeting closed.’
Winnie grabbed Hazel by the arm. ‘I’m going to my aunt’s in Bow,’ she said. ‘Georgie’s coming too. Why don’t you join us? We’ll be safer together.’
Hazel glanced at her watch. ‘Thanks, but I ought to get back. I don’t want to be stranded out here if it really flares up.’
‘Suit yourself.’ Winnie looked around. ‘You take care. They’ve got their blood up.’
Hazel began to walk away, then felt a hand on her shoulder. Ken’s eyes shone with excitement. ‘I’ll see you home,’ he said. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. ‘Kensington, isn’t it? We’ll need a drink first, though.’ He pointed to a pub on the opposite side of the road. ‘My treat.’
Hazel was tempted to say yes. She was thirsty and she needed the lavatory, but when she looked up at Ken he winked and gave a sideways smile that was almost a leer.
‘It’s kind of you but I’ll be fine. Plenty of police around.’
Ken looked towards the end of the street, still teeming as people streamed away, but there was no sign of any fighting. He shrugged, his face hardening at her refusal. ‘I’d take that off if I were you.’ He nodded down at her armband. It showed the new party emblem – the white lightning flash encircled in red – stark against her black sleeve.
‘Yes. Yes, thank you.’ She rolled the band down her arm and put it in her skirt pocket, then turned away from Ken and set off towards Stepney Green.
The sun was low and there was a chill in the autumn breeze. She shivered and hugged her arms around her chest, wondering where Lucia was now. She’d been in one of the marching columns at Royal Mint Street. If the march had been turned back as everyone said, Lucia would probably be at Westminster by now. She would be fuming.
‘Mosley’s whore.’
It was a woman’s voice. Hazel jerked her head to look behind. There were three people, two men and a woman. Close behind. The woman took a large stride, moving to Hazel’s side so that their shoulders clashed. Hazel looked again. She was a little older than her, twenty perhaps, tall and angular, wearing a thin sweater and a necklace of red paste beads. Hazel quickened her pace but they kept close, the woman next to her, the men behind. Was that a hand on her back, or the blade of a knife? When she reached a junction she stood on the kerb and looked around for a policeman or anyone who might help. ‘Excuse me,’ she blurted to a man wheeling a bicycle, but he looked at her, at her black shirt, and he shook his head and carried along the road.
The woman with the red beads stepped in front of Hazel and pushed her back from the kerb into a narrow shop doorway. ‘Blackshirt bitch,’ she said. ‘You dare to come here?’
‘We’ve a right to march,’ said Hazel. ‘It would have been a peaceful march.’
The woman stood on Hazel’s toes and thrust her face forward so that it was less than an inch away. Hazel angled her head back against the cold glass of the shop door.
‘Peace? You goad us, insult us—’
Hazel closed her eyes. A fleck of the woman’s s
pit had landed on her lips. Her stomach heaved. She was about to be hit or stabbed, or sliced with a razor, and there was nothing she could do to protect herself. The other two had the doorway covered: escape was impossible.
‘Leave her.’
Hazel opened her eyes. A fourth person had arrived. His cap was pulled low so that she couldn’t see his face, but when he spoke again there was something familiar about the voice, the richness of it.
‘Leave her. We’re not thugs like them. Let her alone.’
‘She’s scum,’ said the woman.
‘She might be scum, but let her alone. Did you read the party guidelines? Non-violent protest, remember? We need to be bigger than them.’
‘All right, comrade,’ said the woman, her voice spiked with sarcasm. She rolled her eyes and stepped back. ‘Come on,’ she said to the others. They put their hands in their pockets and sauntered away.
Hazel slumped against the doorway, weak with fear and hope. It was him, wasn’t it? He had found her – found her and saved her.
‘Tom?’
The man pushed up his cap brim, and now she could see his face clearly: small, wide-spaced eyes, grey hollows for cheeks. He was an older man, thirty-five at least. A stranger.
‘You got me mistaken,’ he frowned. ‘And now I’d say it was high time you fucked off home.’
17
He’d been in the thick of it all afternoon. There were splinters and cuts in his hands where he’d helped haul pallets and old doors and rusting prams up to Cable Street, and a rat had bitten him on the ankle when he’d disturbed a nest in the dump behind Back Church Lane – but apart from that he was not injured. Bloody miracle, considering the way the police had charged at them, horses’ hooves rearing and batons thwacking from all directions.
Now Tom walked down the Commercial Road, on his way to Bill Cork’s place in Limehouse where Petra would be waiting for news. Tom had become separated from Bill at some point, hardly surprising in the chaos around the barricades. Perhaps Bill was home already, and by Christ they’d have some stories to share with Petra over lemon tea and slices of seed cake. He imagined Petra’s face, her brown eyes aglow, her little gasps of alarm as they told her what had gone on.
