Just Around the Corner

by Gilda O'Neill

  Molly gulped. ‘Thanks. I’ll be all right.’

  The man raised his eyebrows, questioning Simon’s wisdom at letting a girl hang around such a dangerous place. ‘I suppose yer safer here than Gardiner’s Corner.’

  Simon nodded and the man was gone.

  As the clocks ticked nearer to the appointed hour, and people looked at their watches every few minutes, the mood of fear and excitement that had weighed so heavily in the air was quickly being replaced by a lot of slightly bored offering around of cigarettes, and increasingly frequent suggestions that they might as well forget hanging around Cable Street and make their way along Leman Street over to Gardiner’s Corner. After all, why be there at all if they were going to miss all the action?

  There was some light relief, for a few of the men at least, when someone pointed out that there was a girl amongst them and made some crude suggestions as to what he thought she might do to scare off the Blackshirts, but Molly stubbornly ignored him and flashed a challenging stare at Simon to do the same. She had come this far and wasn’t going to let a few stupid remarks upset her.

  Completely unexpectedly, the mood suddenly changed as the word was passed urgently around that the march was not going to take the advertised route after all. The police were going to force a path from Royal Mint Street into Cable Street and let the marchers and Mosley’s motorcade through that way instead.

  The response was immediate. First the cry went up, ‘They shall not pass!’ Then the barricades of old mattresses and crates that had been thrown across the narrow road were hastily reinforced with whatever the now fully alert protesters could lay their hands on.

  Despite Simon’s renewed attempts to get her to go further back behind the lines, Molly insisted on standing by his side and helping him and the others. In their need to build up the roadblock, the men who had only moments ago been jeering at her, seemed to have forgotten that she was a girl. She stood in place, working alongside them as they passed lengths of timber that had been seized from a nearby furniture factory, and then dragged heaps of old furniture, slung from upstairs windows, into the middle of the road to help bolster the now shoulder-height barrier.

  Molly only once stepped back, when a group of men broke into a nearby haulier’s yard, stole a truck and shoved it across the road a few yards back from the main barricade. They began rocking it back and forth, trying to turn it on to its side. As the vehicle finally toppled over and smashed down on to the cobbles, the men cheered at the tops of their voices, but Molly could only think what the owner – a man like Joe Palmer with a little business and a wife to support maybe – would have to say about sacrificing his truck. But she didn’t suppose that the hundreds of demonstrators, working to reinforce the barricades, were in any mood to listen to the reservations of a nineteen-year-old girl.

  Their numbers were rapidly swelling into thousands now, as the men who had been defending Gardiner’s Corner streamed along the side streets in a single-minded, massed effort to seal the narrow bottleneck at the top of Cable Street. They were ready, no matter what the cost, to stand their ground.

  With no apparent signal that Molly could make out, policemen poured forward and began clambering over the barrier with their truncheons flailing. Then the missiles began to fly. Stones, bricks, milk bottles, roof slates and foul-mouthed abuse were hurled with complete abandon, the violence of the confrontation between police and protesters making the earlier encounters seem like children’s playground scuffles, as men on both sides fell to the ground with bloody heads and screams of agony.

  ‘Please, Molly,’ Simon gasped, raising his arms to shield her from a half-brick that had been launched from their own side. ‘Get back.’

  But before Molly had the chance to object, the next onslaught was on its way from the police side of the barricade.

  She watched, wide-eyed and dry-mouthed as four mounted officers, truncheons raised high above their heads, cantered their horses directly into the wooden roadblock, sending it splintering into the air like so much kindling. As one, the frontline protesters turned their backs on Royal Mint Street and surged back along Cable Street, sucking Molly and Simon into their tide as they staggered and stumbled away from the animals’ hooves and the officers’ truncheons.

  Molly’s ears rang with a cacophony of screams and yells, the blowing of police whistles, hooves clattering across the cobbles, and the ever-closer buzzing of approaching motorbikes and the rumble of car engines.

  As she was buffeted from one dark-jacketed mass of men to another, Molly knew, even without looking, that Simon was no longer with her.

  A voice shouted from somewhere high above her head, ‘Gawd almighty, there’s only a girl down there in that lot.’

  Molly’s arms were pinned to her side, but she could still, just about, move her head to look upwards.

  She saw two men sitting on an upstairs window ledge of the Sailors’ Home, their legs dangling down in front of them and their hands grasping the window frame as they strained forward for a better view of the madness below them.

  ‘Yer right!’ the other one shouted. ‘For Christ’s sake get yerself over here in the doorway, love. Yer gonna get trampled in that lot.’

  His friend beckoned urgently. ‘Yeah, come on, girl, yer’ve gotta try. Over here.’

  Molly did try, with every bit of effort she could muster, to do as the men were urging her.

  ‘Come on, darling,’ the first man hollered again. ‘Yer’ve gotta move. There’s sodding thousands o’ rozzers running towards yer. And they’re leading that bastard’s motors right down here. Come on,’ he pleaded with her. ‘Get over here. Quick!’

  But before she had moved a single step towards them, another great dark expanse of rough serge jacket scraped across her face and blocked her view of her would-be saviours. As she felt herself being swept along again, she knew it was useless to try to reach the doorway. She had no choice. She was a piece of broken twig in a whirlpool; the crowd spinning her round and round until she hadn’t even a clue in which direction she was facing.

  Quite suddenly the shoving stopped and she went stumbling forward through a gap in the heaving mass of bodies. At last she felt she could breathe again. But her relief was momentary.

  She blinked, hardly able to believe her eyes. Not only had she been catapulted right to the edge of the police lines, but there, right in front of her, was Bob Jarvis. But it couldn’t be. Even he wouldn’t be so arrogant as to think he could be here with all these coppers around. Yet Molly was sure it was him. Even the pose was the same – his head held high, and his chin thrust defiantly forward, as he stood on the running board of one of the shiny black open-top cars that were poised behind the lines of police, waiting to make their way along Cable Street once the way had been cleared.

  In her bewilderment, Molly made no attempt to conceal herself; she just stood there, staring. She soon realised that that was a mistake.

  The man turned his head and, for a brief disturbing moment, he held her gaze with his. It might have been two years since she had last seen him, but she would never forget that face. It was Bob Jarvis all right.

  She had to do something quick, and she knew exactly what it was. Hurriedly she skirted around the piles of shredded timbers that had once been the barricade and called to one of the mounted policemen.

  The officer gently encouraged his sweating, trembling horse to move forward to where Molly was now standing in the shadow of a wall on the corner of Dock Street: a temporary no-man’s-land between police and protesters.

  ‘Please,’ she said, ‘help me. That man over there,’ she pointed towards the car where Bob Jarvis was standing, watching her, ‘yer’ve gotta arrest him. He killed an old man. Two years ago, it was. Just over in Back Church Lane.’

  The policeman looked down from his saddle at Molly as though she was something nasty he had stepped in, and that had spoilt the shine on his freshly polished boot. ‘A murder, eh? Two years ago, yer reckon?’ He bent forward from his waist, h
is face almost touching hers. ‘You wouldn’t be trying to cause trouble ’cos he’s one of the marchers, now would yer?’

  He straightened up again. ‘I saw where yer come from. From down there.’ He lifted his chin in the direction of Cable Street. ‘I dunno what things are coming to. Young girls getting mixed up with scum like that. I tell yer what, yer lucky you ain’t no daughter of mine, ’cos if you was, I’d tan yer arse for yer. Now go on, get off home.’

  Molly felt herself being yanked sideways and slung back against the wall. ‘Mind back!’ her attacker yelled. ‘I’ll show him what we think of coppers.’

  Molly watched, dazed and confused as the man simultaneously screamed and slapped the horse’s flanks, making the already skittish creature rear up in terror, then threw a handful of marbles on to the ground just as its hooves made contact with the cobbles again. The horse’s eyes showed white with terror as it plunged to the ground, crushing the policeman beneath it.

  ‘You bastard!’ Molly yelled at the man, who was running back along towards Cable Street. ‘You’re no better than the sodding Blackshirts!’

  Molly fell to her knees, trying desperately to reach the policeman and pull him away from the horse; but the animal was panicking in its efforts to stand up, and its hooves were flailing dangerously close to her face.

  Urgently she looked around for help, but the fighting had started again and no one seemed to care about what was happening there in Dock Street. She took a deep breath and made a grab for the horse’s reins – anything to stop it kicking the policeman.

  ‘Leave it,’ she heard a man hiss into her ear.

  She turned round and screamed. It was Bob Jarvis.

  He clapped his hand over her mouth.

  Molly flashed her eyes at the policeman who was now almost on his feet, almost upright. But he was staggering, barely sensible and blood was pouring from one of his ears.

  As she felt herself being dragged backwards along Dock Street, Molly sank her teeth into Jarvis’s hand and shrieked at the top of her voice.

  ‘You’ll pay for that,’ Jarvis spat. He clasped her even tighter to him and whispered slowly into her ear, ‘’Cos I’m gonna show you exactly what I know you always wanted me to do to yer. But I don’t think yer gonna like it very much. Not when I’ve finished with yer.’

  A young foot policeman who would rather have been having a Sunday afternoon kip in his mum’s front parlour than having bricks lobbed at him, turned to see where the unexpected sound of a female screaming had come from.

  Bob acknowledged him with a confident nod and then jerked his head in the direction of the injured officer who had sunk to his knees again by his terrified horse. ‘She saw him take a nasty fall,’ Bob explained. ‘Sent her hysterical. Yer’d better go and help him.’

  The young man looked warily at the wild-eyed animal. Glad of no further complication with the girl, but with definitely no intention of messing around with half a ton of crazed horse meat, the young officer tipped the rim of his helmet with his gloved hand. ‘I’ll send someone over.’

  With that he disappeared, leaving Molly petrified – and at the mercy of Bob Jarvis.

  But she hadn’t been forsaken entirely. The two men from their perch high up in the Sailors’ Home had seen Simon frantically tearing his way through the crowd calling Molly’s name.

  ‘You looking for the girl?’ one of them shouted down to him.

  ‘The one with red hair?’ the other one added.

  ‘Where is she?’ a man’s voice yelled at them. But it wasn’t Simon, it was Danny. He had been frantically looking for his sister for what felt like hours, ever since he had spotted her in the crowd.

  ‘She’s over there. Some Blackshirt bastard got hold of her and dragged her off down Dock Street.’

  The two men began to explain how they couldn’t get down to help her, but Danny and Simon weren’t listening, they were too busy fighting their way towards Molly, back through the maelstrom of heaving, struggling bodies.

  Simon cursed himself over and over again. ‘I told her not to come. I told her.’

  ‘No one,’ gasped Danny, barging forward, ‘has ever been able to stop my sister doing exactly what she wanted.’

  With a supreme effort of will and a disregard for injuries – their own and other people’s – they reached the front of the crowd, only to be met with another obstacle between them and Molly: a would-be cordon of two very disgruntled police officers, hands clasped behind their backs, were guarding the entrance to Dock Street. They had been told to stand there and await further orders while their colleagues got on with what they considered was the real business of the day.

  Simon motioned for Danny to keep quiet. ‘Excuse me, officer,’ he said in his nicest, speaking-to-his-Uncle-David tones. ‘One of those Communists back there – I saw him grab a young girl and drag her down into Dock Street.’

  ‘Aw yeah? And what would a girl be doing round here then?’ He turned to the constable at his side and grinned. ‘Looking for a bit of business down the dock gates, maybe?’ He flashed his eyebrows. ‘I wouldn’t interfere if I was you, mate.’

  Simon said no more, just turned to Danny and nodded. Danny understood the signal perfectly. As one, they drew back their fists and landed punches squarely on the unsuspecting officers’ noses, sending the now open-mouthed and bloody-nosed colleagues stumbling into one another.

  Danny and Simon wasted no time; they raced along Dock Street towards East Smithfield before the policemen were even back on their feet.

  ‘Over there!’ hollered Danny, pointing towards the corner of Nightingale Lane, where Jarvis was struggling to keep hold of his frenziedly squirming, kicking, biting prisoner as he dragged her along the street that led between the docks and down towards the river. ‘The bastard’s still got her.’

  They launched themselves across the road and into the lane, taking Jarvis unawares. Simon grabbed at Molly, wrenching her out of the way as Danny hurled himself at the unsuspecting Jarvis, knocking him clean off his feet.

  While Simon wrapped Molly, shivering with fear and shock, tightly in his arms, Danny got on with finishing off Jarvis.

  As Danny stood over him, punching at him, landing blow after hate-filled blow on the body of the man he had once thought so impressive and whom he now totally despised, Jarvis curled himself into a ball, pleading and whimpering for mercy.

  Danny lifted his foot and was about to kick him in the kidneys, when Jarvis lifted his head and started crying like a baby, a trickle of snot dangling from his nose.

  The sight of him grovelling and snivelling sickened Danny – he couldn’t even bear to touch him, not even with his boot. Instead, he ripped the black shirt from Jarvis’s back and threw it, disgusted, into the gutter. ‘Some hero you turned out to be,’ he sneered. ‘Not so brave when it ain’t a girl or an old man yer fighting, are yer, you bastard?’

  ‘Danny!’ Simon was next to him, pulling him away from Jarvis. ‘The law!’

  Danny looked over his shoulder. The two furious-looking bloody-nosed policemen were hammering up and down East Smithfield, obviously looking for him and Simon.

  ‘Over here,’ Molly called.

  The three of them stood, flattened against the high dock wall, invisible in the shadows, hardly daring to breathe. As they watched Jarvis slowly haul himself to his feet and then lurch forward towards the main road where the two officers were looking for them, the shrill piercing note of a single police whistle suddenly sounded, followed by a whole chorus of others.

  Danny really thought they’d had it, that reinforcements were coming to help beat them to a pulp, but, as if by magic, and with a stream of loud, crude expletives, the two young officers stopped in their tracks, turned round and started trotting back in the direction they’d come from – just as Bob Jarvis floundered his way to the corner of Nightingale Lane.

  ‘What d’yer make of that?’ Danny asked.

  The answer wasn’t long in coming. They heard wild cheers followed by jubil
ant shouts of ‘They did not pass’ come echoing through the streets.

  ‘We’ve won,’ Molly breathed, collapsing back against the wall. ‘We’ve stopped the fascists.’

  ‘We’ve won today, but it’s going to take more than—’ Simon stopped. He frowned and looked around him. ‘Jarvis, he’s disappeared. Come on, we can’t let him get away.’

  Molly grabbed Simon’s arm. ‘Please, no more. I just wanna go home.’

  Simon nodded. ‘If that’s what you want.’

  Danny inspected his grazed and bloody knuckles. ‘I’m gonna have to get meself cleaned up before I can go home.’

  Simon took out his handkerchief and gave it to Danny to wrap round his hand. ‘We’ll go to a café. They’ll be proud to let you use their tap after what you’ve done today.’

  As they made their way wearily towards Aldgate, there were very few police still on the streets, but there were still crowds of protesters everywhere. Most were vocally triumphant, but some, like Simon, were feeling more circumspect about just how successful they had been, and were getting on with the job of helping the injured, clearing away the debris and turning the battleground back into an ordinary East End neighbourhood.

  It took Molly, Danny and Simon a while to find a steam-filled coffee shop that had room for them, as every café they passed seemed to be packed and buzzing with men, noisily swapping stories of their courageous deeds, and laughing at the Police Commissioner who had decided to stop the march because they, the heroes of the hour, had won the Battle of Cable Street.

  As they sipped at their mugs of scalding tea, Danny leant across the table and said, so that only Simon and Molly could hear, ‘You said they’d be proud to let me use their tap.’