‘If they’re not with you, why are you talking to them?’
‘One of you maniacs almost trampled one of them under his horse. I pushed her out of the way.’
‘Proper Sir Galahad, aren’t you, son?’ the officer questioned caustically. ‘Saving a damsel in distress from a maniac on horseback. You see any maniacs riding horses around here, Sam?’
‘No maniacs,’ his colleague replied. ‘Only officers trying to do their duty while dodging missiles thrown by young idiots who think it’s fun to assault police officers.’
‘I think it’s time we had some of the fun, don’t you, Sam?’
The two officers hauled the American behind a line of buses marked POLICE. They pushed him face forward against the side of a vehicle. One of the officers pulled his truncheon from his belt and slammed it across the American’s shoulders. He continued to beat him even when the boy had dropped to his knees.
Appalled, Penny shouted, ‘You can’t do that! This is Britain! He wasn’t hurting anyone …’
‘Know that, do you, miss?’ The policeman holding her propelled her rapidly towards the bus. The officer who’d beaten the American hooked his truncheon back on to his belt. He hauled out her hands and snapped handcuffs on her wrists before shoving her towards his colleagues who were loading protesters on to one of the buses.
‘Obstruction?’ an officer holding a clipboard and pen asked.
‘Affray, assaulting an officer and obstruction,’ the officer who’d handcuffed her shouted over his shoulder as he walked away.
Rough hands bundled her inside the bus. The American was slumped, dazed and disorientated in a double seat behind the driver. She stood in the central aisle, ducked down and looked out of the window, searching for Kate. She couldn’t see her but she could hear her.
‘Where are you taking my friend?’
The driver started the engine and drowned out a reply – if there was one.
The bus moved and she fell sideways against the back of a seat. An officer grabbed her painfully by the neck and pushed her down beside the American.
Terrified, she looked up at him. ‘Where are you taking us?’
‘Not on a tour of London, miss. That’s for sure,’ an officer with a bloody nose who was standing with his back to the windscreen answered.
‘I have to go—’
‘The only place you’re going is Bow Street police station. You broke the law, miss.’
She summoned what was left of her courage. ‘I didn’t—’
‘Down from Wales for the day, by your accent?’ an officer sitting in the seat across the aisle from her asked. His left eye was swollen, closed by bruising.
‘Yes,’ she answered, trying to look braver than she felt.
His voice hardened. ‘And decided to make trouble for the authorities while you were here?’
She tried telling him about needing visas and work permits, but he was too engrossed in cleaning the cuts on his hands to listen. She looked around and realised all the officers on the bus were injured.
‘You were protesting, miss,’ the policeman with the bloody nose said. ‘And when you come up before the magistrates in Marlborough Street tomorrow—’
‘Tomorrow! I have to be back in Swansea tonight! If I’m not in my hostel by eleven o’clock—’
The officers laughed. ‘You won’t be back in Wales tonight.’
‘You don’t understand. I’ll be thrown out of my room …’
‘You should have thought of that before you went to Grosvenor Square.’
The American struggled to sit upright. ‘They’re taking us to the police station so they can formally arrest us,’ he mumbled, his voice thick with pain.
‘But I haven’t done anything,’ she insisted.
‘None of us have!’ a girl shrieked, shrill and angry from the back of the bus. ‘But this is a fascist state run by fascist pigs. Innocent or guilty, it makes no difference to them or the bloody magistrates who’ll send us down.’
Penny felt as though the bus was spinning around her. ‘Magistrates …? Court …? Sent down …?’
‘Take a tip from me, love,’ an officer advised. ‘Plead guilty. If you’ve a clean record … you do have a clean record?’ he questioned pointedly.
‘Of course,’ she answered eagerly.
‘Plead guilty. Throw yourself on the mercy of the court and if, as you say, it’s your first offence, you’ll get off with a caution.’
‘Don’t believe him,’ the girl contradicted. ‘My brother pleaded guilty and he got two months for affray.’
‘Shut your mouth, bitch.’
The sound of a slap resounded from the back of the bus. Penny turned her head.
‘Don’t,’ the American boy warned.
‘But—’
‘This the first time you’ve been arrested?’
‘Yes.’ She felt as though she was trapped in an Alice in Wonderland world where no one understood her. Either that or they didn’t believe a word she said.
‘Stick close to me. If they allow us our free phone call, I’ll try to get us out of this mess.’
‘How?’
‘I know people.’
‘Is that supposed to impress me?’
‘It’s an offer to help by way of an apology.’
‘First you mix me up in your protest and get me arrested; then you offer to help. Thank you very much.’ Even as she snapped, Penny knew she wasn’t being fair. He had saved her from being trampled. And she would have joined the protesters if Kate hadn’t stopped her. But sitting on a police bus listening to talk of guilty pleas, magistrates and courts had unnerved her.
‘I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused you. I’m Bobby by the way. Forgive me?’ Despite his obvious pain, he managed a crooked smile.
‘Penny.’ She took the hand he offered.
He didn’t shake it. Just squeezed it lightly and hung on to it. ‘Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove.’
‘That chat-up line was old when Marlowe wrote it.’
‘Wonderful. You’re a lover of literature too. But I don’t think we should tell people we met at an anti-war protest that turned into a riot. Or exchanged names on a police bus after we’d been arrested.’
‘That’s an even worse chat-up line.’
‘It made you smile.’
‘If my lips moved it was a grimace.’ She pulled her hand away. ‘You’re mad.’
‘Possibly.’ He frowned. ‘If you weren’t protesting at the embassy what were you doing there?’
‘Getting visas and work permits. We – that’s me and Kate, the girl who tried to give me a handkerchief – are going to America for the summer. If they’ll let me in after this.’
‘What are you going to do there?’
‘Work, see something of the country. Our students’ union has chartered a plane.’
‘That’s great! I’ll show you around.’
‘You’re here.’
‘I won’t be for the summer. Which union?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Which students’ union has chartered the plane?’
‘Swansea.’
‘How long you going for?’
‘Four months.’
‘You got a job yet?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll help you get one …’
‘Bow Street, lover boy.’ The officer with the bloody nose grabbed Bobby’s arm and yanked him past her and out of the seat. ‘Move, everyone!’
CHAPTER SEVEN
London, May 1968
She wasn’t able to stick close to Bobby. Officers lined the route from the bus to the station door. They studied the faces of the students as they passed. More than half, Bobby among them, were picked out and led away.
A group of girls, including her, were shepherded down a corridor by female police officers who confiscated their bags, coats, shoelaces, belts, cigarettes, matches, lighters, money and the entire contents of their pockets.
When all the girls’ possessions had been collected, bagged and tagged, they were led into a room by the officers, who closed the door and stood in a line facing them.
‘Strip!’
She stared at the female officers in disbelief.
One officer stepped forward. ‘Are you deaf or stupid? Strip!’
She recognised the shrill voice of the girl on the bus. ‘And if we refuse, fascist sow?’
‘We’ll send for the men.’
One look at the female officers’ faces convinced her they weren’t joking. The girl standing alongside her started to unbutton her blouse.
‘Hurry up! We haven’t all day.’
Slowly, reluctantly, Penny pulled her sweater over her head and looked around for somewhere to leave it.
‘On the floor,’ the officer barked.
She took her time over folding it, hoping for a respite. She simply couldn’t believe what was happening. The first girl to remove all her clothes was pulled forward. One of the officers snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and subjected her to a rough, intimate and public body search. The entire time the officer’s fingers prodded and poked, the girl kept her eyes tightly closed.
She’d never felt more embarrassed or humiliated in her life. She was the sixth in line to get the treatment. Although she’d avoided watching the other girls being searched she thought she knew what to expect. But her imagination hadn’t prepared her for the sense of violation she felt when the most intimate and private areas of her body were invaded by brutal and insensitive fingers. As soon as the officer had finished, she wiped the tears of humiliation from her eyes, stumbled back to her clothes and pulled them on as quickly as she could.
‘Satisfied, now you’ve mauled us about? Were you expecting to find anything up there, or did you want a lesbian thrill?’ The girl with the shrill voice had her face slapped for the gibe.
After they’d all been searched, the officers marched the girls into a corridor studded with metal doors. They were pushed in through the open doors, four to a cell intended for one.
She found herself in the company of two painfully thin blondes who sank to the floor, wrapped their arms around one another and started sobbing as soon as the door slammed. She steeled herself for the sound of the key turning in the lock, but the reality made her blood run cold.
‘Not like watching a film, is it?’
Swallowing her tears Penny looked at her fourth cellmate with gratitude simply because she appeared calm. ‘Penny John.’
‘Rose Meyer. You been arrested before?’
‘No. You?’ If Rose had, the fact she’d survived gave her hope.
‘No. I only went to the stupid demonstration to be with my boyfriend. He’s into politics. I’m not, and I won’t be anymore after this. You were with Bobby.’
‘I’d only just met him.’
‘On the bus?’
‘In the square. He pushed me out of the path of a police horse.’
‘That’s our Bobby. Save the world and anyone in trouble.’
‘Your Bobby?’ She felt unaccountably disappointed, not that she’d believed the fast-talking American had been sincere.
‘He’s a friend of my boyfriend’s. They’re draft dodgers, prepared to risk England with all its dangers of bad plumbing and warm beer as an alternative to fighting in Vietnam. We’re at Oxford. Mike – that’s my boyfriend – is reading Classics, I’m French. Bobby’s graduating this year but he’s returning to do a masters in medieval history in the autumn.’ She looked around the cell. ‘It’s bloody freezing in here.’
‘Icy.’ A single naked bulb illuminated yellow painted brickwork. The clothes she’d thought warm that morning did little to keep out the cold without the top layer of her combat jacket.
‘I suppose this is where we wait for someone to open the door while hoping those two eventually stop howling.’ Rose curled up on one end of the bare metal bunk and closed her eyes.
She took the other end, wrapped her arms around her knees and curled into a ball to conserve what little warmth remained in her shivering body. She’d never felt so abandoned or afraid. And it didn’t help that the two blondes were still sobbing.
‘Penelope John?’
She opened her eyes with a start, what could have been one or ten hours later. She glanced instinctively at her wrist, but her watch had been taken along with the rest of her personal possessions. Not that it would have made any difference. It was impossible to determine if it was day or night in a windowless cell with a naked burning light bulb. She’d lost track of time and wondered if she’d dreamt someone calling her name. The silence was so absolute it seemed to buzz.
Her muscles were stiff, frozen. The right side of her body where she’d leant against the cell wall was numb from the cold and lack of circulation. When she touched the fingers of her right hand with her left they felt odd, as though they belonged to someone else.
Disorientated, she looked around. Any hopes she’d nurtured of her arrest being a nightmare shattered in the face of the painted brick walls. And, as if the cell wasn’t proof enough, her hands and knees were throbbing with pain from her fall.
The blonde girls were still hunched on the floor, their eyes closed. It was impossible to tell whether or not they were sleeping. She didn’t disturb them. She was grateful they were silent.
Then she heard footsteps outside the cell accompanied by the jangle of keys.
‘Penelope John! Penelope John!’
It was the same harsh female voice that had woken her.
Rose opened her eyes. ‘That you?’
She nodded, shivering from more than cold. She called out, ‘Here.’
Rose whispered. ‘The protesters who’d been arrested before warned Mike not to sign anything or admit he was guilty of any charge, no matter what the police did or said to him. Apparently, everyone who takes the officers’ advice to plead guilty ends up in court and prison.’
‘Thanks for the warning.’ After seeing officers beat Bobby, she knew she was too cowardly to stand the threat of police ‘questioning’ for any length of time.
A key turned in the metal door. It swung open. A woman officer stood framed in the doorway.
‘Penelope John?’
She clambered awkwardly to her feet.
‘Why didn’t you answer when I first called?’
‘I’m sorry. I was asleep.’
‘Follow me.’
‘Good luck,’ Rose shouted after her.
‘Straight ahead to the end of the corridor.’ The policewoman walked behind her.
She clamped her hand on the waistband of her jeans. They’d stretched since she’d last washed them and without a belt were in danger of falling down.
‘Into reception,’ the officer barked.
She walked through the door. Kate was standing pale-faced in front of the desk. Next to her was a handsome, middle-aged, tall, slim, blond man wearing a camel-haired coat. He exuded authority and a confidence born of good looks, expensive clothes and wealth. Penny froze, too weakened by relief to take another step. The man turned and held out his arms. She fell into them.
‘Is this your niece, Mr Powell?’ the officer behind the desk asked.
Haydn Powell lifted his head above hers and rested his chin on the crown of her head. ‘Can’t you see the family resemblance, Superintendent?’
Given that her Uncle Haydn had blonde hair and blue eyes and she’d inherited her father’s auburn hair and tawny-gold eyes, her uncle was stretching a point, but she was too happy to see a familiar face to contradict anything he said.
‘We have to give her a formal caution, Mr Powell.’
‘Do you think you’ll survive that indignity?’ Haydn held her away from him and winked at her.
‘We’ll also need to complete our paperwork and return her personal possessions.’
Haydn gave the superintendent and the room in general the full benefit of the professional smile that had charmed international audiences for over thirty years, and
five women into marrying him. ‘I would be grateful if you could do it quickly, Superintendent. I have to fly to the States tonight and I would like to spend some time with my niece before I leave.’
‘Time you’ll spend lecturing her on acceptable behaviour, I hope, Mr Powell.’
‘Naturally.’
‘Ten minutes, Mr Powell.’
‘Thank you so much.’ Haydn looked into her eyes. ‘You all right, Penny Piece?’
It had been his nickname for her ever since she could remember and it helped her to finally find her voice. ‘Now I am.’
He turned her hands over and examined her grazes. ‘You’re hurt?’
‘It’s nothing. I fell in the square before they brought me here.’
‘They treated you well?’
She was too keen to leave the police station to make a complaint that could delay her one second longer than necessary. ‘Yes.’
‘Thank you for taking care of my niece, Superintendent.’ If Haydn intended the comment caustically, she didn’t pick up on it. ‘My office will be in touch in the morning about those tickets.’
The next ten minutes passed in a blur. She was still threading her belt through the loops in her jeans when Haydn escorted her and Kate to his car. Haydn’s chauffeur opened the back door and she and Kate piled in, dragging their bags behind them. Haydn sat alongside her on the bench seat. Kate took the pull-down seat opposite.
‘How did you find me?’ she asked Kate as soon as the chauffeur closed the door.
‘One of the officers in the square said they were taking you to Bow Street police station. I looked for a phone box and rang your mother,’ Kate confessed.
‘You what!’
‘It had to be your mother. Mine’s not on the telephone; besides, I knew she’d be at work. They hate her getting personal calls at the factory and there was nothing she could do to help.’
‘You told my mother I’d been arrested?’ She was panic-stricken at the thought of her parents finding out she’d been locked up in a police station. And that was without bringing up hitch-hiking.
‘I told her you’d been taken in a mass arrest of protesters outside the American embassy when we went there to get visas. I emphasised that the police had made a mistake because neither of us had been protesting. Then she put me on to your father.’
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