Blow the House Down

by John Blackburn

  ‘Not just yet, Allan.’ He had reached out for the glass, but the Major drew it back, and shook his head.

  ‘You will have to earn your next drink by telling me more.’ Dealer had justified his action by proving Trevor a murderer and that a group of ‘God’s True Sailormen’ did exist in Randel­wyck. But there was so much more to be learned. The small fry like Baylis and Trevor were comparatively unimportant; woolly-­minded maniacs who obeyed orders. The men at the top might also be mad, but there would be nothing inefficient about them.

  ‘What did the “Sailorman” say on the second phone call? Did he tell you that Baylis had failed and there would be another sabotage attempt on the building?’

  ‘He told me that James had lost faith and disobeyed orders; that it was best that he had died.’ Dealer had to struggle to retain his paternal smile when he heard the answer. Behind the windows, the storm was increasing in violence and a dustbin lid clattered about the yard.

  ‘You mean Baylis was not told to plant his bomb?’

  ‘Of course not, Stephen. Surely you know that. James was a comrade, my only close friend and I loved him like a brother. But he lacked faith and you cannot live without that, can you? He did not believe in our leader’s vision; the dream which showed us how those towers would be brought down.

  ‘But that sound – that great symphony, is that a dream too, Stephen?’ Another noise had joined the wind and the rain: a strange, eerie sound like breakers on a rocky coast, or a thousand distant voices chanting in unison.

  ‘Are they our voices, Stephen? Please give me water now, let me have the strength to hear them. The voices of God shouting our defiance, proving his power, telling us how those towers will be destroyed.’ Dealer held out the cup and Trevor smiled after he had drunk the water. A small, sad man who had discovered happiness when he had found scapegoats to hate.

  ‘How will God destroy His accursed, Allan?’ The telephone was ringing, someone was hammering on the door, but Dealer ignored them. At any moment Trevor would pass out and he had to get the whole story. ‘What instrument will God use, Allan? Tell me quickly.’

  ‘No, don’t talk any more, Stephen. Just listen and have faith.’ Trevor’s eyes were riveted on the window. The second sound was much louder and Dealer, who had heard mobs on the rampage before, recognized what it was.

  ‘Vengeance – mine – saith the – Lord. The angels of God calling me – sleep.’ Trevor closed his eyes and slumped forward. ‘Soon – so soon . . .’

  ‘Wake up, Allan. You must keep awake a little longer. You must talk to me.’ Dealer slapped his face and then shrugged. They would learn no more from Allan Trevor that night: he was quite unconscious.

  ‘Open the door, Jones.’ The phone had stopped ringing but the knocking continued. Dealer stationed himself before the slumped figure in the chair as Jones obeyed him.

  ‘What is it this time?’ The same young constable stood in the doorway. ‘Have you nothing better to do than to keep interrupting me?’

  ‘The Inspector sent me, sir.’ The man looked anxious and his voice was high-­pitched. ‘We’re in dead trouble, you see. There was a regular battle in the square and the demonstrators broke through our cordons. They’re attacking the town hall and the post office, and the bus depot has been wrecked. Thousands of ’em are marching on Mallory Heights, too, and the Inspector says he wants everybody to muster in the hall right away.’

  ‘Tell him we’ll be along directly.’ Dealer leaned back against the desk feeling almost as weary as Trevor had done, feeling horribly worried, too, because a possibility had just occurred to him.

  He had imagined that Trevor was referring to the wind when he had raved about God’s voices. He and Baylis had believed that a divine hand would destroy the building, and then Baylis had had doubts and decided to act independently. But if he was wrong, if Trevor had referred to the sound of the mob, the cliché of hell let loose was soon to take place. The truth could be so economical and practical, so typical of a sick but efficient brain.

  The demonstrators’ attack on Mallory Heights must have been prepared long ago and somehow ‘God’s True Sailormen’ had heard of it. If that was correct, those marchers would take a Trojan horse with them when they occupied the building.

  ‘You’re a Noncomformist, Sergeant, so you probably read your Old Testament.’ He motioned Jones to turn off the tape recorder. ‘If you do, you’ll remember that after Jericho fell, every man, woman and child except Rahab, the harlot, was put to death. Those loonies want a massacre as well as the destruction of a building, and a mob of demonstrators who are half black and half white will suit them nicely.’ He frowned down at Trevor, imagining the crowd pouring into the towers with somebody very much like Allan Trevor amongst them. Somebody as unobtrusive as Trevor who would slink away to safety when he had done what was necessary. If he failed to escape, so what? Causes require martyrs and fanatics rarely fear death as much as normal men.

  ‘Baylis not only lacked faith in the “Sailorman’s” plans, Sergeant Jones, he was extravagant too. Tarradyte was quite unnecessary, because the Heights has its own gas reservoirs. If they have been refilled . . . Oh, if only I’d rumbled this bastard sooner.’ In sudden frustration Dealer left the desk, clenched his right fist and slammed it into Trevor’s face. Blood spurted from the nose and mouth, but Allan Trevor was far away in a dream world and his drugged mind did not even register the blow.

  ‘Let’s break the news, then.’ Dealer led the way out of the room. ‘All that’s needed are a few open gas taps. Those kids will be too busy wrecking the place to notice the smell, but before long one of them is going to feel like a reefer.’ Dealer’s sense of dignity was too great for him to run, but he marched at top speed down the corridor. ‘When he or she strikes a match, it is quite possible that the walls of Mallory’s Jericho will “come tumbling down”.’

  18

  The Chief Constable had over-­estimated the soothing effects of cold water, and ‘The Rape of Randel­wyck’, as John Forest later named the event, was too well organized to be affected by the storm. As Oliver Trench intended, it was a policeman who triggered off the first real violence.

  His name was Norman Ross, Mounted Police Constable Number 14, and he formed part of a cordon separating Mr Judson’s supporters from a group of local students. The students were perfectly inoffensive, but to their right were stationed Trench’s ‘Maoists’, and every one of them was ready and waiting for his leader’s orders.

  Ross was a young man of twenty-­two, only recently out of training college, and both his father and grandfather had served in the cavalry. At his subsequent trial his defence council was to claim that this had some bearing on his actions.

  At eight fifteen, a few minutes before the storm broke and during a rendering of ‘We Shall Overcome’, one of Judson’s ‘Britishers’ hurled a firework which exploded amongst the ‘Maoists’. This was exactly the kind of thing Trench had been hoping for and at his signal rucksacks were opened, missiles produced and the barrage commenced. But not only against the obvious enemy. The police were the joint targets, and when Ross realized what had hit him, he lost control, spurred his horse and charged as his grandfather had done with Allenby against the Turks. Three of the Randel­wyck students, one of them a girl, were seriously injured, but though Ross was dismissed the Force, the jury accepted his plea of extreme provocation and he was acquitted of causing ‘grevious bodily harm’. It is not pleasant to have a paper bag filled with human excrement explode in your face.

  Oliver Trench’s plan had worked because the rational majority of the demonstrators had no idea what those obscene missiles contained. All they knew was that Judson’s supporters had started the hostilities, a mounted policeman had charged and a number of their fellow marchers had been ridden down. Emotion drove out reason and the whole gathering went berserk.

  The battle began in earnest. With the thunder bellowing overhead and the roar of the crowd urging them on, the ‘Maoists’ and the Black and
White power groups stormed forward, broke the police cordons and hurled themselves on the ‘British for Britishers’. Spiked sticks and broken bottles, bicycle chains, iron pipes and knuckledusters were a few of the weapons used, and at least one knife claimed a victim. The ‘Britishers’ gave a good account of themselves, but by sheer weight of numbers they were driven back, split into small groups and forced to flee. By eight forty a police attempt to regain control had been repulsed and the square was firmly in the hands of the demonstrators.

  That should have been the end of it. The rain was falling in sheets, pubs and off-­licences and chemists’ shops are attractive places for the criminally minded to loot, and already the more intelligent were starting to regret what they had done. Without leadership the mob would have broken up into uncoordinated groups.

  But the leaders were ready. N’genza and Trench hoisted the girl, injured by Ross, on to the roof of a captured police car and Silvia Jessop addressed the crowd on its loudspeaker.

  ‘Will you tolerate this? Will you stand aside and let brutality and injustice go unavenged?’ she had screamed, and pointed to the blood pouring down the girl’s face. ‘The Randel­wyck police have demonstrated their powers to trample down the weak . . . their determination to crush a peaceful expression of opinion . . . their eagerness to ally themselves with fascist reaction. Now we shall show them our power.’ Like some satanic Joan of Arc she had stirred the hearts of her audience and told them what the reprisals would be. The city of Randel­wyck must be humiliated, its centres of authority occupied, its transport disrupted, its symbol of civic pride mocked.

  Mahomet N’genza had taken over the microphone then. With the rain pouring round him and the wind tugging at his duffle coat, he had bellowed and stamped on the car roof while he outlined the targets: the town hall, the police station, the bus depot, and Mallory Heights. Shouting and chanting slogans, some drunk, some doped, some following like sheep bleating out their wrongs, the armies marched off to the attack. Three of the citadels held out, though the bus depot and the town hall were badly damaged, and within an hour the police regained control of the city centre. But the last and major bastion was captured.

  Jack and Hilda Baxter did not witness the early part of the riot. After leaving Fawkes’s bookshop, full of renewed anxieties about the Skulda, Hilda had collected Jack and persuaded him to take her to the cinema. Though neither of them was a keen picture-­goer, anything was better than moping about in their separate hostels. But the film was boring in the extreme and they decided to leave before the end and go and have a drink.

  The street was strangely deserted, the rain falling heavily, and they prepared to run for the bus shelter when Hilda gripped Jack’s arm.

  ‘No, lad, let’s stay here till we see one coming. I’ve had enough of that company to last me a lifetime.

  ‘I see what you mean, luv.’ The Virgils and their two children were stationed under the shelter and he nodded morosely. ‘Just can’t get away from the black bastards, can you? Like you say we’ll wait till a Number 17 comes along and then make a dash for it.’

  They waited a long time. All the traffic appeared to be moving away from the city centre and moving much faster than was usual. Then, after a while, there was no traffic at all, and apart from one or two fellow picture-­goers hurrying away through the rain, no pedestrians either. Just themselves under the cinema portico and the Virgils at the bus stop.

  ‘I don’t like it, Jack. Why’s the street so empty?’ The thunder had rumbled away across the moors, but the wind was becoming even more violent. Hilda clutched her hat. ‘No traffic, no folks about; it’s eerie somehow. And what’s that noise? Sounds like a crowd at a football match.’

  ‘That’s no football crowd, Hilda. It’s them bleeding demonstrators. That march should have been stopped from the word go.’ The noise was getting louder and louder and he squeezed her arm. ‘Don’t you worry about ’em, luv: just a mob of teenage hooligans and niggers bent on hell-­raising. The coppers will soon have them under control, and I wasn’t in the Commandos for nowt. I’ll see the scum don’t bother us.’ He flexed his muscles and glanced at a metal stand bearing the notice ‘Upper Circle 7/6d’, which would make an excellent weapon if one were needed.

  ‘Oh, it’s that bunch.’ A contingent of Mr Judson’s supporters rounded the corner and Jack relaxed. Though battered and dishevelled after the fight in Market Square, the ‘Britishers’ had reformed their ranks and were retreating in good order with Martin Judson himself at their head. Behind him marched standard-­bearers displaying the cross-­and-­bayonet banners of the movement. ‘Those chaps are all right, Hilda. They’re on our side.’

  ‘I still don’t like the look of them, Jack.’ The contingent was divided into three sections, and as the first group passed, their flags straining in the wind, Hilda drew back, as if about to take shelter inside the cinema.

  ‘Some of ’em look ready for anything. That chap, for instance; makes me think of the Nazis.’ She frowned at the leader of the second section who strutted rather than marched and appeared every inch a potential Gauleiter.

  ‘And what’s happening there, Jack? For God’s sake what are they going to do?’ The rearguard had halted by the bus stop and above the howl of the wind they heard shouts and Molly Virgil scream.

  ‘Niggers – four Nigs standing and asking for it.’ There was anger and hatred and glee in the voices. ‘Let’s teach ’em a lesson, boys. Remind ’em what they don’t wear back home. Aye, strip the clothes off the bleeders.

  ‘Out of the way, Nigger, we’re going to take a look at your wife’s black hide.’ Hands tore at Molly’s coat, Luke’s fist shot out and two men staggered back into the gutter.

  ‘You’ve got to hand it to that spade.’ Jack watched with grudging admiration. Luke Virgil was dancing and at every step he took a man fell or reeled away before his blows. ‘Aye, he knows how to use his hands all right, I’ll grant the fellow that. But there are too many of ’em; far too many.’ A youth had got a hold on Luke’s right arm at last, a middle-­aged man had gripped his neck from behind, and a second youth had landed a kick in his groin.

  ‘Christ, the mean sods.’ By brute force Luke had been beaten to the ground, more boots were crashing into his body, Molly’s coat and jacket had been ripped away, and one of the children thrown into the road. Almost without knowing what he did, Jack Baxter grasped the cinema stand.

  ‘Stay where you are, Hilda, luv. They may be niggers, but I’m not allowing this.’ Jack lifted the metal rod from its base and hurled himself into the fray.

  ‘All right, you bastards, you rotten bloody bastards.’ The stand flailed into the mob, a face disintegrated into red mash, two boys fled screaming before his fury and a man somersaulted backwards and crashed against the shelter.

  ‘You asked for it, you bloody bastards.’ Again and again, Jack struck out, but as with Luke, there were too many for him. A kick suddenly paralysed his left ankle, arms encircled his throat, a knee hammered into the small of his back and he toppled down beside Luke Virgil, still clutching the stand. In the distance he heard the wail of a siren, but he knew that help would come far too late. His arms and legs were pinioned and all he could do was to take his punishment. He lay staring at the snake-­like thing that dangled before his eyes, watched it swing up in preparation for the blow which could maim and blind him, saw it start to come down. The bicycle chain was within inches of his face when Luke Virgil’s big black hand shot up and tore it aside.

  The attackers had fled taking their wounded with them, and the police car had gone in pursuit. Luke Virgil and Jack Baxter sat on the edge of the pavement. They were both shaking their heads very slowly and their expressions showed utter bewilderment. They looked as if they had just seen each other for the first time.

  19

  ‘This could blow up into a fine gale, Mary, but it’s not the Skulda. It’s not coming directly from the north-­west by north.’ George Strand sat leaning far forward towards the fire wit
h his chin cupped on his fist. The big signet ring on his third finger that glinted in the flickering flames looked heavy enough to be used as a knuckleduster. Probably it had been. Strand was notorious for a violent temper when he was young and Paul had heard that a dishonest contractor and more than one workman had borne the marks of his fists.

  ‘Aye, like I said, just a trick of Roger Rawlinson’s to try and disperse those bloody demonstrators. I know old Roger well, my dear.’ He gave Janet a tired smile. ‘Known him since he was a lad. Like myself he always enjoyed a good practical joke.’

  ‘But what if it is the Skulda, Sir George?’ Strand had asked his wife to pull back the curtains, and through the window Paul could see trees and garden shrubs bowing in the wind.

  ‘What does it matter? Your system of controlling the turbulence ensures that Mallory Heights can ride out any gale.’ Paul was puzzled by Strand’s concern. They had been about to leave after the weather report, but Strand had suddenly appeared to crave for company and pressed them to stay and have another drink.

  ‘It matters because I don’t like being wrong, young man.’ Strand smoothed back unruly white hair with his left hand that looked even more tightly clenched. ‘The Skulda is not supposed to occur at this time of year, but only during late winter and early spring. I’ve been fascinated by that wind since I was a kid, Gordon, and apart from studying the terrain that produces it, I thought I knew every existing record of the phenomenon.

  ‘Now, who the hell’s that?’ He grumbled as the phone rang and his wife went to answer it. ‘More ignorant devils hoping to persuade an old man he made a mistake?’

  ‘It is a question of speak of the devil, George.’ Mary Strand smiled faintly, but Janet sensed that though they were man and wife, she still had difficulty in using his first name. The awestruck secretary remained in the fore and ‘Sir’ or ‘Sir George’ would have come much more easily to her. ‘Commander Rawlinson.’