On the Brink of Tears

by Peter Rimmer

  “You getting married?”

  “How did you know? We haven’t announced anything.”

  “Only women have the guts to ask for a raise. If you get this story right, as I know you will, the raise is yours. Now bugger off.”

  “Genevieve’s grandfather died of cancer last night.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope the press didn’t hound him to his grave.”

  “He didn’t read any of the papers. She wants me to ghostwrite a book of her life. The true story of her family and how we the press treated them.”

  “That’ll make the publishers start a bidding war.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “You write a novel in your spare time, why should I care? Nothing like a fellow journalist shitting on his peers. I know all the publishers if you want help. Did I tell you how many novels they rejected of mine? Stick to the facts. Story telling is for romantic idiots who themselves live miserable lives. And I should know after nine books. The Mirror crapping on the snooty press. I love it.”

  “Have you stopped writing then?”

  “Of course not.”

  “If the Genevieve story is a great success we might have some leverage with a publisher.”

  “Kannberg, are you exhorting a raise?”

  “Of course not, sir. When I walked in here today I thought you were going to fire me. The idea came from my gladdened heart at still having a job. Now her father is the Eighteenth Baron St Clair of Purbeck. At least he’s getting out of London and away from the press. Purbeck Manor is in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Why does he want to bury himself in the country?”

  “According to his daughter when I interviewed her at the start, the Lord of the Manor always lives in the Manor House. It’s part of the job. Part of her family history.”

  In Warsaw, while Bruno was marshalling his troops for the arrival of Sir Oswald Mosley in London, William Smythe was watching an air display by the Polish air force through a pair of Zeiss binoculars, the irony of using German lenses not lost on him. What he saw was superb airmanship in aircraft of a type that had gone out of squadron service in the RAF just after the Great War. The Poles, in the face of Stalin on one border and Hitler on the other, were flying obsolete aircraft, no match for the Germans or the Russians, both of whom according to Fritz Wendel had designs on the great farmlands of ancient Poland, the most productive agricultural areas in Europe.

  “Now you see what I’m saying. Unless the British re-arm the Poles with modern aircraft those poor fellows up there will be shot out of the sky in a day, the most skilful pilot unable to fight superior machinery. Write it up, William. The bravery and skill of young pilots about to commit suicide. To add to it, the Polish cavalry still go to war on horses. It’s a land of land and more land, not of factories to make modern aircraft and guns. They need help. If Poland falls, the Germans will only have one flank to fight on and all that Polish food to feed the masses of industrialised Germany living in their cities. Come on. They’re landing. I want to introduce you to a young Polish Count of impeccable lineage; Count Janusz Kowalski. His father is a judge, young Janusz is a lawyer in training at the university. The pilot bit is part-time as a reserve officer. Both of them hate communists and fascists, communists most. The family have an estate that goes for miles and miles I’m told. He’ll confirm the antiquity of the Polish aircraft. Don’t you have a friend that flew in the last war? A British ace. Take down every detail of what the Polish air force is flying and ask your friend what chance they will have if the Germans or Russians attack.”

  Five minutes later the pilots were walking away from their aircraft wearing heavy clothing and boots; open cockpits were freezing cold up in the air.

  “There he is… Janusz, may I present the famous journalist Mr William Smythe from England?”

  “How do you do, sir,” said the young man in perfect English; to William’s amusement the pilot looked more like a boy than a man.

  “How old are you, flying those things?”

  “Nineteen, sir. Nineteen last Wednesday.”

  “You don’t have to call me sir. Do I really look that old?”

  “About the same age as my father, sir, who I also address as sir with the same respect. Mr Wendel told me he was bringing you to our air show. Your reputation as a courageous journalist goes before you.”

  “Could those aircraft shoot down a Sopwith Camel?”

  “Probably not. They are good for aerobatics and not much else. Mr Wendel tells me you know Colonel Brigandshaw, the British fighter ace. He’s one of my boyhood heroes. I’ve read everything they wrote about the war in the air over France. Colonel Brigandshaw flew Sopwith Camels, the best in his day. Why don’t we go to the officers’ mess and have a drink together? I can tell you the statistics of our sadly ill-equipped air force. You can tell me all you know about Harry Brigandshaw, sir.”

  “No wonder Genevieve thinks I’m too old.”

  “I don’t understand, sir.”

  “I do. Lead on, Macduff.”

  “Again, I don’t understand.”

  “I need a drink, for more reasons than the antiquity of your aeroplanes.”

  Feeling ten years older than his thirty-three years, William increased the pace of his walking to keep up with the young man headed for a wooden building among trees at the edge of the airfield, Fritz Wendel his old friend and informant from his days in Berlin puffing away alongside him in the warmth of the afternoon sun.

  The next morning Bruno Kannberg was out on the streets of London as the first light of day showed him the barricades. He was smiling, not so much at the thought of the imminent arrival of Mosley’s marchers, but at Gillian West, who the night before had totally changed her tune; it was no longer the kibosh.

  “He’s promised me another two quid a week but that’s not the best of it. Ghostwriting the true story of Genevieve is going to make me a small fortune. Macmillan and Longman are both after the rights already. They want the book in a hurry while the story of the Lord’s bastard granddaughter is still on everyone’s mind. I’m going to be burning the midnight oil to put down two hundred pages in time to coincide with the premiere of the film. Five hours sleep a night is more than enough when the adrenaline is pumping. Three thousand words a day for a month should do the trick. She’s going to sit with me while I listen to her story and type at the same time. The listening part will give my fingers a chance to rest from the typewriter while you bring us black coffee. A book’s in the timing and time is short. If Mosley gets his comeuppance from the East Enders tomorrow, I’ll have my piece in the Mirror down and out of the way to let me concentrate on the book.”

  “And if Mosley starts a revolution like General Franco in Spain you won’t be thinking of movie stars as they call them now. You’ll be worrying about your own skin. Fascists like Franco and Hitler eliminate newspaper reporters who disagree with them, according to an article I read in the Manchester Guardian. But two quid a week extra is just wonderful, darling. Give me a big hug.”

  Give a girl security and she purrs like a pussycat, he told himself. But such contentment seemed far from the minds of the residents now coming out of their council houses to stand behind their dustbins, carts and bits of rusty corrugated iron. The mob was due from the north by some reports, from the east by others. Whichever way, it would have to climb over the barricade to pass down the Waterloo Road. According to a police release, similar barricades were blocking the routes into the borough of Lambeth down Blackfriars, Westminster Bridge and Lambeth Roads, most of them flimsy constructions easily pushed out of the way.

  By eight o’clock nothing had happened, the people in the street with Bruno getting bored. By eleven o’clock Bruno saw the same senior policeman he had met at the Hyde Park Corner riot. The uniformed man with the peaked hat was sauntering towards him beating a thin, leather-bound swagger stick against his right leg, keeping time with the leisurely pace of his walk; even from a distance Bruno sensed the man was not going
to stand any nonsense. Waiting, Bruno remembered a day at school watching the approach of his headmaster who thought Bruno was the boy who had broken the window in the Physics laboratory.

  “You again! They said you were here, Kannberg. Daily Mirror. Not a good omen, Kannberg. Last time we spoke I had a riot on my hands within minutes.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “Nothing much. Mosely’s mob has met resistance he didn’t expect. He thought London would welcome him in the working class boroughs. The Germans and Italians sent Franco help to maintain his civil war. Can’t get across the English Channel that easy.”

  “Can I have your name?”

  “Why?”

  “To give credence to my article.”

  “Bugger off, Kannberg. I know you but you don’t know me and that’s how it stays. In half an hour we’re clearing the streets for traffic. Mosley got the message he’s not welcome. Big mouths are usually cowards. People like him hide behind mobs to do their dirty work. Seen the type throughout my life. They stir up shit but when the work has to be done they are nowhere to be found.”

  “So there isn’t going to be a revolution?”

  “Probably not this week, my china. We’re British, remember. Last time we had a go at each other was Oliver Cromwell and that fizzled out when he died. Sir Oswald is history. This was his go for power. It didn’t work… Lads, you can all go home.”

  Bruno waited for the barricades to come down before walking all the way back to Fleet Street to write the story that some had thought would be plunging England into civil war. He had the headline in his head: Bugger off Mosley. Whether swearing on the front page of the Daily Mirror was allowed was up to Arthur Bumley.

  With his mind concentrating on writing a book in a hurry, Bruno went home at six o’clock to tell Gillian his good news, that Arthur Bumley had confirmed his raise in writing. What the previous day had looked like the biggest story of his life had largely come to nothing. Once again he had still not found out the name of the senior policeman and doubted he ever would. In most countries in Europe the man would have been carrying a gun, not a swagger stick, something Bruno found comforting.

  Later in the day, the number that had come into the streets of the East End of London to protect what was theirs was estimated by the police to exceed one hundred thousand, too much for Mosley’s much smaller mob who, by all reports, had faded away in the face of the Londoners. The ways of war were always interesting to Bruno, the ways of men rarely predictable.

  With a bottle of beer on the table next to his typewriter, Bruno began his opening chapter, his mind concentrated on the page in front of him. Most of her story was in his head. The rest she would tell him in the days to come. When the book was finally written, Bruno had made up his mind to propose to Gillian West. He was going to have a family and live to a ripe old age in the best country in the world without fear of war or revolution.

  For his story, Horatio Wakefield had watched the protestors marching down the road, banners waving, determined men shoulder to shoulder, chins up, believing in their cause. Marshals on the side of the mob kept the lines in order but no one on the streets was cheering. Some of the locals were pouring dirty water from their windows onto the marchers.

  By the time the mob passed Horatio with his photographer waiting by his side at their third vantage point, the marshals on the sides of the mob were raising fists at the upper windows of the houses. One of the bucketloads, by the smell, was full of human excrement. The front banners calling for jobs and the rights of the working class passed away down the road, followed by what was now a disintegrating rabble.

  “Must be more lines of marchers on other streets,” Horatio said to Gordon Stark by his side. “No sign of Mosley here.”

  “Or he’s done a bunk. He must have been told about the barricades up ahead where he expected a wild welcome from the workers in the East End.”

  “I don’t think the French revolutionaries knew where they were going until the mob stormed the Bastille. That was shit someone dumped.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The blokes coming past now don’t look as cocky as the blokes up front. There’s not a policeman in sight except the one man with the swagger stick. By the amount of scrambled egg on the peak of his cap he must be the bloody commissioner of police.”

  “Not likely. The side-kick likely. The top brass never stick their necks out. He’s just watching with a cynical smirk on his face. That one knows Mosley’s failed. Why don’t we try and get his name and a photograph?”

  “I heard that, sonny. You try to take my picture and that thing in your hand will end up in pieces in a terrible accident with bits of it stuck up your arse.”

  “What’s your name?” asked Horatio.

  “Bugger off.”

  They both watched the man in uniform walk away, peering into the crowd as if he was looking for someone.

  “The ringleaders,” said Horatio. “He’s picking out the ringleaders to remember their faces. I’ll bet that bastard has a better memory than your camera. Come on. It’s coming to nothing, they’re breaking up on their own. That bucket of shit stinks. The pubs are open,” he added, looking at his watch.

  “Now you’re talking.”

  “Nothing for me to write about here.”

  Alfie Hanshaw was in the Crown and Anchor when the two men walked in, one of them carrying a large camera of the type used by the press. The buckets of shit had told Alfie all he needed to know about their chances. As he stood hesitating, not sure whether to drink what was left of his money, the man wearing the glasses wrinkled his nose.

  “You caught some shit too?”

  “What’s it to you? You looking for trouble?”

  “Were you part of the march?”

  “What do you know about it? You got a job. I been on the bloody road for days. Now I got to walk home halfway up Britain sleeping in hedgerows and catching the odd rabbit.”

  “I’ll buy you drinks if you tell me your story. I work for the Daily Mail. This is Gordon Stark from just over the border, north of Newcastle. By the sound of it, that’s where you come from. Do you have money for the train home or a place to stay?”

  “I come all the way down from Jarrow specially. Been out of work since ’33. Riveter I was, on the ships. After the war the navy stopped building ships. With the depression, half the merchant fleet sits in port. We’re all out of work up at Jarrow. I heard talk up there they was organising some kind of procession, to deliver a petition to Downing Street. But I come down early because I thought this Mosley toff had the right idea. Proper action, not just words and peaceful protest.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Alfie Hanshaw… You got any kids? Ever see them hungry? Mosley said Hitler put the workers back to work. Promised us work. Now look at us.”

  “If I buy you your train ticket home, will you tell us your story with a photograph for Gordon? Papers like photographs. Makes the story more human so the reader can relate it to himself.”

  “I’ll kiss your arse if you get me back to Nel and the kids. On the way down I was sleeping in hedgerows and nicking farmers’ vegetables. Now I got nothing except the price of a pint. What’s going to happen to us?”

  “Go home. Soon the Royal Navy will be laying down hulls and riveters will be at a premium.”

  “I done my apprenticeship. I’m good at my work. Mosley’s lot said he’d see us right. What’s going on?”

  “Mosley wants to be Chancellor of England. Someone’s giving him money to further his ambition. You’re just a pawn in the bigger game. Revolutions need angry mobs that can’t be controlled.”

  “All I wanted was a job.”

  “Why don’t you go into the washroom and clean that shit off your jacket? When you come back we’ll talk. Tonight you stay with me and my wife.”

  “You’re a Good Samaritan. When I lost my job the parish church were all what helped me and Nel.”

  “No I am not. I’m using you. Like
Mosley. Only all I want is a story.”

  “The rich stay rich. Always do. What happens to the sheep?”

  “That’s what we’re going to ask them in the article I am going to write in my paper. When you come back not smelling so much of someone else’s shit.”

  “You’ll piss off once I go.”

  “No I won’t. I need you for a story.”

  “You’ll buy me a train ticket?”

  “Right to your door.”

  “Do I really smell that bad? Who would throw shit out of their bloody window?”

  “You’re lucky it was only shit. In Berlin they take you away to be shot if you don’t do what they tell you. Were it not for a man called Klaus Lieberman I would not be here talking to you.”

  “How old are your kids?”

  “Harry’s a few weeks old.”

  “The older ones?”

  “Harry’s the only child.”

  “Aren’t you a bit old to start a family?”

  “You can ask Janet tonight. I didn’t have enough money to get married. He’s evil, Alfie, is Mosley. If we go to war with Germany, they’ll lock him up for the duration of the war.”

  “He sounded like he knew we were suffering and was going to do something.”

  “So did Hitler. Now be a good chap and go and have a wash or my wife will throw a fit when I take you home stinking of shit.”

  5

  A week later, after the British newspapers claimed Sir Oswald Mosley and his fascists were history, William Smythe walked into the office of Harry Brigandshaw at the Air Ministry to tell him the plight of the Polish air force, the plea of Janusz Kowalski still ringing in his ears.

  “Are you all right, sir?” The man behind the desk looked terrible.

  “Tired mentally and physically, William. How nice to see you again. If you move those books from the chair you can sit down. I’ve been reading history. If we had built up Germany after the war, instead of rubbing their noses in the dirt so they didn’t have an economy, we wouldn’t be facing them now as an enemy. My wife has another house party this weekend. Quite the socialite. Why don’t you come down and help keep my sanity? Genevieve will be there with her ghostwriter. She’s writing a book, or rather Bruno Kannberg, your old nemesis, is writing a book. He was the chap from the Daily Mirror who ran me down at the Bloomsbury hospital. I don’t understand why Tina always wants people at Hastings Court. During the week I stay at the club, going home on the train each Friday. This job is nerve-wracking. Everyone agrees with Churchill we have to build the air force but nobody does anything. They all have their own pet projects for spending what’s left of the money. No one gets their priorities right. Without radar we need twice as many aircraft to keep patrols up in the air even while the Germans are sitting on the ground having their breakfast.