Abdication: A Novel

by Juliet Nicolson

  “I am sorry. What did you just say?” May asked him.

  “Lottie. Charlotte. You know? Well, when I left Berlin she decided to stay on for a bit and Rupert was decent enough to say he would drive her home so at the moment I am fancy-free. And I desperately need someone to come with me to the movies. You wouldn’t consider being that someone would you?” He was smiling as he asked May the question.

  May nodded back at him.

  “Oh good, good, good,” he said. “Because the truth is that not a single day has passed over the last month without me thinking about you.”

  May did not trust herself to reply.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Julian wanted to know whether May would be staying down at Cuckmere during the coming weekend. He was intending to visit Joan. At least, that was the reason he gave. But May was thinking of returning to Oak Street as Sarah’s baby was due so soon. Sir Philip confirmed the decision for her as soon as he sat down at his desk. His frequent absences from Cuckmere during the past few months meant that the old cigar smell was less evident than it had once been. Nearly a year had passed since May had first sat in this room, her hair falling all over her face, anxious to give a good first impression at her interview. But today it was Sir Philip who looked anxious.

  “Lady Joan?” May asked quietly.

  “No, my dear, another matter I am afraid. And it concerns you.” He put the tips of his fingers together, his hands forming an airy cage, and leant forward on both elbows. “Your cousins are Jewish, are they not?”

  May nodded.

  “I think you should know that there is a real possibility that the Blackshirt march planned for next Sunday might make its way to Cable Street and through the streets of Bethnal Green. And against the advice of the police, the government has refused to ban the march. I would far rather you stayed here in the safety of the countryside.”

  Sir Philip could see an objection forming on May’s face before she even began to speak.

  “Thank you so much, sir, but I would feel very worried if I wasn’t at home looking after my family in Oak Street. And my cousin is about to have her baby so I think they need me there.”

  “Of course. I am not at all surprised by your response,” Sir Phillip said, looking at May with affection. “They will value your calming presence, May. But whatever happens I urge you to stay inside throughout the weekend. It is hard to overestimate the lengths to which anti-Semitic feeling will go. I will tell you in confidence that six thousand policemen as well as the entire mounted force are going to be out on the East End streets on Sunday. I think that shows you that people are frightened and that things could get nasty.”

  When May reached Oak Street the atmosphere was more one of determination than fear. The threat to the neighbourhood had diverted Rachel from her interest in May’s romantic hopes as well as her persistent suspicion that May and Sam were trying to keep from her some enthralling piece of information about the king’s love life. Here instead was the prospect of a real-life drama on Rachel’s own doorstep.

  As a precaution, Nat had positioned his truncheon directly inside the front door. Some of the locals had armed themselves with catapults and knuckle-dusters and one of the fatherless children next door had shown Nat an evil-looking homemade instrument fashioned from a torn-off piece of iron grating. The weapon was nothing in viciousness, however, compared with the ingenuity of the Cyprus Street barber who had tied a piece of string to a potato embedded with several of his brand-new razor blades.

  At breakfast that morning Simon had read aloud from The Jewish Chronicle. “Jews are urgently warned to keep away from the route of the Blackshirt march.”

  However, the generally accepted information—gathered from the anti-march organisers, the information in the Daily Worker, Nat’s secondhand copy of The Times and pamphlets that had been pushed through letterboxes—as good as confirmed there would be no trouble anywhere near Oak Street itself. It was rumoured that the demonstrators condemning the actions of the Blackshirts would include a hundred thousand anti-fascists, activists against the Spanish Civil War, and a good number of people who were joining in for “the hell of it.” The plan was to congregate at Aldgate, a couple of miles from the Greenfelds’ home. All over the East End the same notice written in chalk had appeared on pavements and walls.

  “Everybody to Aldgate on 4 October 1:00 p.m.”

  Early on Sunday morning Sarah announced to her mother that she was feeling cooped up. There was little likelihood of the baby appearing for several days yet, and Sarah always went out on a Sunday. This Sunday was no different. She was going for a stroll.

  At first Rachel had been adamant that Sarah was going nowhere. “Over my dead body you are going out in your condition, my girl,” she had said through a mouthful of one of next door’s eggs. But Sarah had inherited her mother’s obstinacy and was hearing none of these objections.

  “If you must know I am going to Gardiner’s to buy Nat a tie for when he becomes a father,” she replied. “You can come with me or stay put, it’s up to you, Mum.”

  Gardiner’s department store was known by everyone in the East End as “the Harrods of the East,” and no other shop would be good enough for Nat’s paternal tie.

  “Whatever will Nat say if anything happens to you Sarah? Tell me that?” Rachel asked, pouring herself a cup of tea from the pot.

  “Nat and Dad do not need to know where I am going. There is a sale on at Gardiner’s and a special Sunday opening for two hours this morning. I can be up there by ten and be back home by after eleven.”

  Rachel sipped her tea. She could not allow her daughter to go out on her own but realised there was no dissuading her from abandoning the expedition. Rachel was a woman generally possessed of profound common sense but had never been able to refuse her daughter anything. She tried to convince herself that on a day when the perils of being Jewish, female and pregnant were at their most heightened, her presence would be protection enough.

  Standing up Rachel reached for her coat. “Right, my girl. We better get going then if we are to be back before any trouble starts.”

  Sarah stood up and hugged her mother.

  As far as Simon and Nat were concerned the two women were going round the corner to Victoria Park. What with the days drawing in and the October winds about to sharpen their bite, mother and daughter planned to take advantage of an unusually balmy autumn day. Even so, Nat did his best to forbid them both from going. “You tell them, Simon, there is madness in the air.” But neither woman paid him any attention.

  “My advice is to give up on them, Nat,” Simon said. “Ill-advised is a man who challenges the will of a determined wife,” he said, returning to the betting pages of the newspaper. But Nat was not yet ready for defeat, warning Rachel and Sarah that he was prepared to restrain them physically from leaving the house.

  “Look here,” Rachel said pulling on her gloves, “I’m telling you straight, Nat, you must not worry about us getting caught up in this march. It’s not going to come within miles of us, and anyway nothing is supposed to start till this afternoon, two o’clock at the earliest. Let the poor girl have a break, for pity’s sake. Your wife is about to spend the rest of her days tethered to a pram. God in heaven, Nat, do you honestly think that I, Rachel, her mother, a future grandmother, no less, am going to let Sarah come to any harm?”

  “Well, make sure you are back by noon, that’s all I am asking,” Nat said with a sigh, smiling at the familiar obstinacy of his mother-in-law as, putting on a convincing show of being affronted, Rachel ushered her swollen daughter out into the street.

  While the women were out Simon sat in the parlour, listening to the news bulletins on the wireless, the sound turned up at deafening volume, The Jewish Chronicle lying open across his large stomach. Nat had finished catching up with yesterday’s Times, collected first thing from his butler friend, even though it had been a Sunday, and made himself and his father-in-law a hefty chicken sandwich, which they ate on their laps
, before falling into a Sunday afternoon doze.

  “Things don’t sound too good up at Aldgate,” Simon said a while later, gesturing towards the wireless. “Shouldn’t Rachel and Sarah be back by now?”

  Both men looked at each other, all of a sudden concerned. But just then there was a double rap at the front door and a young man in glasses with white-blond hair stood there, a summery linen cap in his hand and a striped college scarf round his neck.

  “I am so sorry to call without any warning. My name is Julian Richardson. I am a friend of May Thomas. I do hope I have got the right number?”

  For a moment Nat quite forgot about Rachel and Sarah as he put out his hand to Julian in greeting. “Delighted to meet you,” he said. “Really delighted. Do come in. May is upstairs. I’ll fetch her at once.”

  “I wondered if she might want to come up and join me at the march,” Julian explained.

  Nat hesitated on his way up the stairs. “The march? Are you planning on going up to Aldgate?”

  “Yes I am. And I thought May might want to come with me.”

  On hearing voices, May had already begun to make her way downstairs, her surprise at seeing Julian lighting up her face.

  “I thought it would be Sarah and Rachel back from the park. You are always turning up when I least expect you,” she said, beaming at him. “Nat, this is Julian. Nat’s my cousin. You know.”

  But Nat was looking worried. “My wife and her mother are somewhere out in the streets. I was expecting them home an hour ago.”

  May turned to him. Her earlier smile had vanished.

  “Gardiner’s. They’ve gone to Gardiner’s. Up at Aldgate. You’re right, Nat. They should have been back quite a while ago. We must go and find them at once. We can take the bikes. Julian, will you come with me? Nat, you wait here in case they turn up.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Julian followed May out to the back where she was heaving two bicycles out of the shed.

  “I know the way,” May shouted to Julian over her shoulder as she began to pedal. “Follow me.”

  Gardiner’s was about half an hour’s walk from Oak Street, or ten minutes on a bicycle, perhaps less. May pedalled fast, passing the boarded-up shop fronts at speed and hoping that Julian was close behind.

  A thunderous commotion was coming from the direction of Aldgate and as they approached the junction of Commercial Street and Whitechapel High Street, they found their way blocked by an overturned truck, weighted down with bricks. Whole chunks of concrete had been dug up from the pavement, the square patches of bare earth turning the pavements into giant, uneven chessboards. By now they could hear the cries and shouts of a huge crowd ahead. Dismounting from their bikes and squeezing through a gap beside the truck, May and Julian turned the corner, where the full force of the protest hit them.

  Hundreds of police, many on horseback, were struggling with a threateningly volatile crowd as bricks and stones and lemonade bottles flew through the air. Although there was no sign of Mosley himself, all of humanity seemed to be there as Jews and fascists and communists and police jostled with the angry, the curious, the young and the old, the fearless and the fearful. The hefty slabs of pavement had been smashed up to provide weapons that were now in the hands of the protestors who pushed and shoved their way through the crowds. All along the pavement, people were sitting with their heads in their hands, blood streaming from wounds to their faces as doctors and ambulance workers did their best to attend to the dozens of injuries. Red flags were flying from the lampposts. A couple of parked tramcars had been emptied and were lying on their sides outside Aldgate underground station. Placards held up high announced marchers variously affiliated with the Stepney Jewish People’s Council against Fascism and Anti-Semitism, the Labour Party and the Communist Party. The words “Bar the Road to Fascism” had been written in huge chalk letters on several walls. Some people were shouting the popular solgan of the Spanish Civil War “No Pasarán”—“They Shall Not Pass.”

  A familiar tune reached May above the incredible noise, although new words were given to the old American socialist-solidarity song, “Solidarity Forever,” a song popular with the plantation workers back home.

  “We’ll hang Oswald Mosley on a sour apple tree, when the red revolution comes,” the marchers sang in the streets of London’s East End, before an ominous chant drowned out their words.

  “The Yids, the Yids. We must get rid of the Yids.”

  Fear flushed through May’s face as she and Julian paused to catch their breath. Julian put an arm round May’s shoulders. A lad of perhaps eight years old was standing on the pavement in front of them. Reaching into his pocket he scattered a fistful of glass balls across the street. A mounted policeman opposite cursed at the boy.

  “What do you think you’re doing? Bloody marbles. Should be bloody banned.”

  But the policeman was unable to prevent his horse’s feet from beginning to slide uncontrollably as if the street had turned suddenly to ice and as the horse began to slip and slither across the road its reins became tangled, rendering its rider powerless. Somehow the animal managed to remain upright, stumbling to a halt within inches of where May and Julian stood.

  “Go back to Palestine,” came a cry from Gardiner’s Corner, followed by two words, chilling in the brevity of their message. “Perish Judah.”

  “They must be in there,” May said to Julian, pointing to the shattered doors of the main entrance of Gardiner’s.

  Tying their bikes with Julian’s scarf to a lamppost, Julian put his arm tightly round May’s waist as together they made for the shop. The display windows at the front had been smashed in and a couple of women were climbing out through the jagged edges of the plate glass, bolts of Harris tweed and flowered poplin tucked beneath their arms. Sarah was crouching on the floor next to an almost empty display of ties, her back humped over her knees. She was moaning softly in the way that May had heard the women in the plantation moan when the time for their confinement had arrived. Rachel was bending over her, for once unable to speak. Relief at the sight of May filled the older woman’s eyes.

  “Don’t worry, Rachel. We are here to bring you both home,” May said to her as she ran back out to the street with Julian.

  An ambulance was making its way slowly down Cable Street heading away from Gardiner’s, its bell clanging. Looking around in desperation May spotted the mounted policeman from earlier, once again in control of his horse.

  “We need help,” she yelled at him. “My friend. She’s having a baby! Now!”

  “Right away, Miss,” he said. “I’ll find you a driver right away.”

  Simon had been looking for the doctor for more than an hour. Judging by the reports of violence that was breaking out up at Cable Street, he had an intuition that Rachel’s nerves might get the better of her. He was also terrified that the drama of the demonstrations might bring on his daughter’s labour pains and was uneasy at the thought that he and Nat might have to deliver a baby themselves. No one had seen the doctor all day and although Simon had hammered several times on the door of his house in nearby Cyprus Street, there had been no response. On Simon’s final attempt the door was opened by the doctor’s wife. She was wearing a dressing gown.

  “For goodness’s sake, Mr. Greenfeld, what a lot of noise,” she had snapped, furious at the disturbance. “He’s not here. He’s gone up to help at Aldgate.”

  As she closed the door in Simon’s face, a window opened above her and the red face of Mr. Schein, the barber, appeared.

  “Not in Eastbourne now, I see,” Simon could not resist saying before hearing the window slam shut and going to wait at the corner of Cyprus Street until the doctor eventually returned from treating the injured.

  When the taxi appeared on Oak Street, Nat and Simon were waiting on the doorstep of number 52. May and Julian got out of the cab first, followed by an unusually silent Rachel. The pins securing her ever-elegant bun had fallen out and her hair was hanging unconstrained round her shou
lders. Simon took his shocked wife’s hand and led her inside while Nat reached across to the seat and lifted Sarah out of the taxi. He carried her across the threshold of number 52 as if they were newlyweds, kissing her forehead and stroking her hair as he took her upstairs to their bedroom where the doctor was waiting.

  Inside the house, May fetched all the towels she could find and a large enamel bowl filled with hot water. For the time being, the doctor and Sarah were to be left alone. Meanwhile Simon insisted that Rachel should lie down on her own bed until the baby arrived. The wait would not be long, the doctor had assured them, and for once Rachel deferred to her husband’s instructions.

  May went to put on the kettle. Julian and Nat were in the parlour. Now that the danger of the streets was behind them she felt elated to have Julian here on Oak Street for the first time. She could tell that he and Nat were going to like one another. Already Julian was trying to divert Nat’s anxiety from what was happening in the bedroom above by describing the earlier scenes around Aldgate and discussing how and when it might be safe to go and retrieve the bicycles and Julian’s scarf.

  Outside in the street May heard the sound of a group of children arguing with one another. Julian and Nat were too deep in conversation to notice her opening the front door. She was just in time to see a dozen boys and girls huddled conspiratorially by the war memorial, holding paintbrushes and pots of paint. Their attention was centred on a girl with long, reddish, flyaway plaits who stood in the middle of the group giving instructions. May’s heart lurched. She was about to shout out at them but, catching sight of her, the children began to run. May ran after them, turning right at the war memorial, but once she was round the corner the entire group had vanished.

  Reluctantly May walked home. As she approached the door of number 52, she could see at once that the two clearly delineated, painted letters were still wet. She put her hand up to touch them, as if to be sure they were not a work of her imagination. She pulled back her fingertips as if she had touched a burning coal. The threat to Jews that Julian had seen in Berlin had reached the streets of the East End.