The Proprietor's Daughter

by Lewis Orde

  “When are you going?”

  “Tomorrow. We’d better talk about a replacement editor.”

  “A substitute editor, Gerry, not a replacement. You’ll be back at the Eagle.”

  Waller gave a slight nod of the head, too much the gentleman to disagree. “Do me a favor, Sally. Apologize to Katherine for the way I behaved the other night. She thinks I bit her head off because I was angry at her for stealing Eagle staff. I was just angry at myself for never paying attention to those warnings Her Majesty’s Government puts on packets of cigarettes, and I was taking it out on everyone else.”

  *

  In Waller’s absence, Lawrie Stimkin was promoted from news editor to interim editor. On his first day in the new position, the entire Eagle staff waited, not on some major story, but for news from the hospital. When that news came, it was not good. Surgeons had opened Waller’s chest, and closed it again. There was nothing they could do.

  When he was discharged, it was with the knowledge that he had, according to the most optimistic prognosis, six months to live. Much of that time, should he want relief from pain, would be passed in a drug-induced stupor. Waller chose to spend his remaining time in the same manner he had spent most of his life: by working on a newspaper. He returned to the Eagle in the middle of February. Out of respect, Stimkin relinquished the editor’s chair. Waller, with hangman’s humor, assured the Scot that the move would be temporary.

  It was obvious to everyone that Waller was in constant pain. He eased it with medication only at night. During the day, when he occupied his old office, he needed to be alert. He wanted to remain editor in function as well as in name until he could no longer physically carry out the duties.

  Roland made a point of stopping by the Eagle building once a day to see Waller. Katherine was another regular visitor. She swore she could see the weight falling away from him. His once well-fitting suits now hung loosely, at least a size too large.

  Waller protested the frequency of the visits. “I know you and your father have my best interests at heart,” he told Katherine one afternoon, “but all these constant interruptions are stopping me from properly performing my job as editor of a daily newspaper.” Then he softened the protest by adding, “Know what I really want? To be at the helm for one more big story. After that, I’ll go with no complaints.”

  Katherine, blinking back a tear, patted the editor gently on the shoulder. Through the padding of the jacket, she could feel bone. “We’ll hire someone to create a big story for you, Gerry.”

  *

  In the middle of March, a month after Waller’s return to the Eagle, the British Patriotic League thrust its way back into the headlines. Not with a riot, or with a rally, but in a manner designed to win it support and sympathy from the white population of Britain.

  In the Midlands city of Nottingham, nine white male employees of a hosiery factory had gone on strike rather than work alongside three newly hired Pakistani employees. Instead of yielding to the strikers’ demand that the Pakistanis be fired, thereby leaving itself open for prosecution under the Race Relations Act, the company had threatened the nine strikers with dismissal. The union, itself a supporter of antidiscrimination legislation, had urged the strikers to return to work. When they had refused to do so, the company had fired them.

  The Nottingham Nine, as the men quickly became known in the national press, soon found a champion in the British Patriotic League. The League hired lawyers to sue the hosiery company for unfair dismissal of the Nottingham Nine. As the full story unfolded, the League’s lawyers emphasized that the Nottingham Nine had not refused to work with, and had not sought the dismissal of, the new employees because they were Pakistani, or because their skins were dark.

  “The real reason,” the League-appointed counsel told the court, “was because their sanitary habits were, to put it quite frankly, absolutely disgusting.”

  To a nation which had always been willing to believe the worst about its Asian citizens — from families dining on catfood because they liked the taste, to young girls being beaten and starved for refusing to marry a man chosen by their parents — the revelations of what constituted “absolutely disgusting” could not come quickly enough.

  There were allegations of poor personal hygiene, of body odor strong enough to make close working contact virtually impossible. There were claims of factory toilets left in a condition that no British person would tolerate. And there was a graphic, stomach-turning description of the difference between Asian and British workers suffering from a cold. “Instead of blowing his nose into a handkerchief, as a civilized person would do,” the counsel said, “the Asian employee would stand over a sink, press one nostril closed, and blow through the other. The process would then be reversed, after which the discharge would be washed down the sink. Tell me . . . would you want to wash your hands and face, or your teacup, in that particular sink?”

  The response by the hosiery company’s lawyer — “Since when is it so civilized and hygienic to wrap that same discharge in a square of cotton and thrust it back into your pocket?” — was lost in the collective shudder of disgust at the vision of a man blowing his nose into a sink.

  The League lawyer won his case. The Nottingham Nine were reinstated. The three Pakistani workers who had caused their dismissal walked out in a protest against what they called “overt racism,” but no one seemed to care. The victory against the immigrant influx was complete. In the eyes of many, the British Patriotic League was the hero of the British workingman.

  The League wasted no time in cashing in on its newfound popularity. Trevor Burns, its propaganda director, organized press conferences. Chairman Alan Venables and financial director Neville Sharpe became familiar faces on television. They answered questions freely. When an interviewer asked how much it had cost the League to represent the Nottingham Nine, Sharpe replied, “In excess of fifty thousand pounds.”

  “What justifies that kind of outlay?”

  Venables answered. “Justice. Which is exactly what we got. Justice for nine hardworking British men. And an awakening.”

  “An awakening?”

  “That’s right. A revival of the British spirit. Starting the first Sunday in May, the British Patriotic League will hold a monthly rally. Our first one will be in London, at Hyde Park. Subsequent rallies will be staged in the provinces, a different city each time. ‘Youth for Britain’ will be the theme of the rallies. We’re going to demonstrate how Britain’s youth and the British Patriotic League can work together for this country’s security and prosperity.”

  Chapter Twenty

  IN APRIL, halfway through the maximum of six months that doctors had given him, Gerald Waller appeared to take on a new lease of life. Gauntness was still evident in his face — sharp planes of bone structure where flesh had once filled out skin — but the loss of weight was no longer so noticeable on his body. His clothes fit better; there was no loose drape of fabric to draw attention to his thinness.

  “Whatever you’re doing, Gerry,” Sally Roberts said to him at the beginning of an afternoon editorial meeting, “keep on with it. You’re looking better than I’ve seen you look in ages.”

  “No big secret. I just went out and bought a completely new wardrobe for my new economy size. Half a dozen suits, shirts, raincoat, the works. I’ve spent my entire life taking a pride in my appearance, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let the lights be turned out on me while I’m looking like some beggar who has to wear Salvation Army hand-me-downs!”

  Roland Eagles, who had traveled from the Adler’s store on Regent Street to attend this meeting, clapped his hands, and cried, “Bravo!”

  The purpose of the meeting was to decide the contents of the following morning’s Eagle. One by one, department heads listed stories. Lawrie Stimkin told of an armed bank robbery that had just taken place in the West End of London. A police constable had been shot and seriously wounded. Unless an event of earthshaking proportions happened between now and press time, the bank ra
id would be the lead story; police officers being shot was still front-page news in England. A much smaller story, slated for somewhere deep inside the paper, concerned permission being given by local authorities for the British Patriotic League to hold its initial “Youth for Britain” rally at Hyde Park on the first Sunday in May.

  The last department head to be heard was Martin Allcock. A short, pudgy man with wire-rimmed glasses and a rumpled suit, Allcock headed the section responsible for the Eagle’s opinion page. “Whether or not the lead story remains the shooting of the constable, it might be timely to call for the reintroduction of capital punishment for the murder of a police officer, or for murder committed in the course of criminal activity.”

  Roland raised a hand. “We have supported a limited reintroduction of capital punishment in the past. To do so again, even in the light of this latest incident, would be redundant. I feel that our space and effort would be better served by publishing a denunciation of this Hyde Park rally in four weeks’ time.”

  Sally objected instantly. “That’s as redundant as any leader on capital punishment could be. Over the past couple of years, the Eagle has attacked the League a dozen times or more. It still exists, and after that business with the Nottingham Nine, it’s enjoying unprecedented popularity.”

  “Then why can’t we put out something that will appeal to Britain’s youth — to the young people the League wants to attract with this rally?”

  “To appeal to the youth, Roland, you first have to reach them,” Sally said. “You won’t do that on the Eagle’s opinion page. Britain’s youth doesn’t read beyond the sports and television pages, and that’s if they can read at all!”

  “Why not try reaching them through music?” Waller asked.

  “Music?”

  “That’s right. Rock ’n’ roll. If you want to get through to these young people, stage a free rock ’n’ roll concert. See if you can get permission to hold it in Hyde Park. For every young person the League rally attracts, your concert will pull in a thousand. When you’ve got them there, you can brainwash them with any message you want. And you keep on doing it, all through the summer. Wherever the League gets a permit to hold one of its ‘Youth for Britain’ obscenities, you arrange a rock concert. Give the concerts a catchy title, something like ‘Rock for Racial Harmony,’ and you’ll drive those bigots right out of business.”

  “Gerry . . .” Roland gazed at the Eagle editor in open admiration. “You are a bloody genius.” The euphoria lasted for mere seconds, though, until Roland started to envision the problems such an undertaking would present. “It’s a wonderful idea, but what can we do in just four weeks?”

  Stimkin supplied Roland with the answer. “Why don’t you get in touch with Sidney Glassman? If Sidney can’t put a concert together in four weeks, no one can.”

  *

  Sidney Emmanuel Glassman was one of that rare band of men: a self-made millionaire and a diehard Socialist.

  For sixteen years, Glassman had been a Labour Member of Parliament. The constituency he represented included Stepney, a poor, rundown area of London’s East End, where, sixty-five years earlier, Glassman had been born, the ninth and final child of an immigrant cabinetmaker. This geographical accident of birth would have a profound effect on Glassman’s life; much of his later philanthropy would be based on his experience of growing up in a part of London where the end of the wages always came at least a day before the end of the week.

  Politics was only one of Glassman’s many careers. The main one, where he had made his fortune, was show business. Starting out as a song-and-dance man before the war, right after a short and inauspicious career as a middleweight boxer with the ring name of Manny Glass, he had gone into managing other performers. By 1955, he had more than a hundred artists on his books, including top-line singers, dancers, and comedians. From there, it had been a simple step into theater ownership, buying two of the better-known houses in the West End. After going public in 1959, Glassman Entertainment expanded even further, taking over a nationwide chain of movie houses.

  At forty-nine, Glassman retired from show business. That was in 1964, when the Labour Party persuaded him to stand as their candidate in the East End. Not that he required much persuasion. Although he had moved from the area before the war, along with most of his contemporaries, a strong tie remained. He could think of no nobler way to honor his birthplace — the neighborhood that had given his immigrant parents a fresh opportunity — than by representing it in Westminster.

  That was not Glassman’s first foray into politics. After the war, while building his business, he had been civic-minded enough to run for local councillor. He had won, and had served in the position for five years, until pressure of work had forced him to retire. In 1964, however, he had faced a far stiffer challenge. As a rule, the seat was a Labour stronghold. But the incumbent had retired, and the Conservatives, in a desperate bid to cause an upset, had put up a politically minded popular television personality to contest the seat. Labour, by using Glassman, hoped to fight fire with fire. The ploy worked, and Glassman won handily. He had retained the seat in all of the elections since. During those sixteen years, he had rejected a knighthood, because he thought of himself as a man of the people, and men of the people did not go around being called “Sir.” Rumor had it that eventually he would be offered a seat in the House of Lords, and everyone who knew him expected him to respectfully reject that, too.

  The day after Gerald Waller’s suggestion of free rock concerts to coincide with the “Youth for Britain” rallies, Roland Eagles and Sidney Glassman met for lunch. The two men were total opposites. Roland, tall and still slim, was immaculately tailored. Glassman, overweight and bald, and wearing a badly pressed suit, looked as though he would be more comfortable at a dog track than in the House of Commons. Yet they were good friends, having cooperated frequently in the past on charitable work.

  “So I asked myself after you telephoned,” Glassman said as they sat down, “what could a Tory newspaper owner who endorsed Margaret Thatcher possibly want with me?”

  “How about the pleasure of your company for lunch? It’s been months since we’ve seen each other, Sidney.”

  Glassman gave a rich bass laugh. “I’ll accept that for the time being. How’s the family keeping? Katherine, the children?”

  “All well.” Roland was always amused by Glassman’s accent. It was undiluted East End, as cockney as any costermonger selling his wares from a stall in Petticoat Lane. Unlike many who had moved to better neighborhoods, Glassman had made no attempt to alter his speech. He claimed that people understood every word he said, so what was the point of taking elocution lessons? “Your own family, Sidney, how are they?”

  “My wife stays thin by hopping from one charity committee to another. As for the boys” — Roland concealed a smile; Glassman’s two sons had both turned forty — “Lionel’s busy with Glassman Entertainment, and Melvin . . . well, Melvin’s got himself involved with the Grosvenor Sporting Club.”

  “Really?” Roland’s curiosity was kindled at the mention of the gambling establishment off Grosvenor Square. “What’s he doing there?”

  Glassman shrugged. “I don’t know. And to be quite honest with you, Roland, I don’t wish to know.”

  Roland understood that he should have known better than to ask Glassman about his younger son. Ask all the questions you wanted to about Lionel, the older son. Lionel Glassman was the apple of his father’s eye. Now chairman and managing director of Glassman Entertainment, he had turned out exactly as Glassman wanted him to — married, a couple of children, an honest, upright man who had brought nothing but pleasure to his father. Melvin was somewhere at the other end of the scale. He was as intelligent as his brother, but like some ancient Greek hero he carried the seeds of his own destruction. The shortcut had always appealed to Melvin more than the straight and narrow. On two occasions of which Roland knew, his father had been forced to bail him out of trouble, when a scheme on the borderline of i
llegality had come unraveled.

  Prudently, Roland changed subjects. “What do you think about the British Patriotic League getting permission for a rally in Hyde Park?”

  “Bastards,” Glassman muttered. “If it was up to me, those Nazis would get a permit for the cemetery. You know, yours is the only newspaper that keeps on at those mad swine. Even the Labour papers don’t bother.”

  “It’s a personal thing with me.”

  “With me, too.”

  “I think I’ve found a way to beat them, Sidney. Listen to this.” Roland gave details of Gerald Waller’s plan. Glassman listened, totally absorbed. “Could you help to arrange such a concert? Could you line up the necessary talent in four weeks?”

  “No problem. My son Lionel, he can put this together in a few hours. All the groups you want. Stage fittings. Electrical equipment, whatever you need.”

  “How much would this all cost?”

  Glassman flapped a fat hand. “The groups will do it as a favor. My Lionel, he’ll tell them they’re getting a million pounds’ worth of publicity out of this thing. Rock for Racial Harmony. You tell that editor of yours, Roland, that if he ever needs another job, I can help him. He’s got too much imagination to be stuck in some dead-end job in Fleet Street.”

  Roland just smiled. There was no point in telling Glassman that if the doctors were right, Waller would not be around when the last “Rock for Racial Harmony” concert was staged.

  *

  Hyde Park had never seen anything quite like what it witnessed on that first Sunday in May. At ten o’clock in the morning, young people began to converge on the park: punks, mods, rockers, even some rock fans who looked distinctly normal, and, therefore, quite out of place. For three weeks, the word had been spread, in news stories, through advertisements in music magazines, and by posters in record shops. “Rock for Racial Harmony,” a free concert featuring the best and brightest in popular music. Now they wanted to see what all the fuss was about.