The Man in the Street

by Martin Howe

  “Cheers, David.”

  Brian raised his glass, took a sip and then carried on their conversation as if there had been no interruption.

  “I wasn’t at it long you know. I was a member of the Party for a couple of years at the most. I remind myself, which isn’t often these days, to tell the truth, that I packed it in when they started blaming the Jews for everything.”

  David puffed out his cheeks and exhaled slowly.

  “You’re right to be sceptical. I know I would be. But David, to be frank, and I only came to this decision while you were in getting the drinks, I don’t care what you think.”

  David was taken aback and he sat up and paid attention. When he realized what he had done he was amused, his discomfort tempered by a desire to get as much information as he could out of a man he was rapidly coming to see as an “old fart.” Brian went on.

  “This is for my benefit as much as anything, you’re just along for the ride if you’re interested. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to sit here and not be believed by someone who seems to know nothing. So either you buy it, take it home and digest it or sick it up at your leisure, but hear me out without any more of the pouting and silly asides. To be honest, justifying it all to myself is enough without having to do it all a second time for your benefit.”

  David thought “You old fuck-head,” but said nothing “bugger me up, shaft everything I hold sacred, won’t you. But you’ll get no fucking absolution from me.”

  He was happy for a moment.

  “So, anti-semitism was my reason for leaving the party. That’s official. Dad argued with both of us, it made him ill. Dad was Labour through and through, he couldn’t believe you needed anything else but Socialism to explain what was going on in the world. We betrayed him, simple as that. That mattered to me. I could see what it was doing to him. The Great War damaged our father physically, we were wounding him emotionally and it took its toll. Tony wouldn’t compromise, I would. He called me weak, I said much worse. I left home and we hardly spoke again. The family ganged up against Tony, but Dad never recovered. He was heartbroken, ashamed. He stopped going to Labour party meetings, couldn’t face his old comrades. His eldest son a “Blackshirt”, it was too much. He died in March 1938. Tony did visit him just before the end, but Dad refused to see him and passed away in bitterness, railing to the last. I could never forgive Tony for that.”

  Tears welled in his eyes and he wiped them quickly away.

  “Mother survived him by eight years and three months, but she had more or less given up. She watched your Grandmother struggle with her children and couldn’t reconcile it in her own mind. Tony, her eldest son and probably her favourite, if the truth be told, behaving like that. It was all too much. Parricide and matricide are heavy burdens for anyone to bear don’t you think? Especially for a man of God. That’s when I went to Canada.”

  His laugh crackled like newspaper trampled underfoot.

  “The truth? You want the truth I suppose? I did have my doubts about blaming all society’s problems on the Jews. Nothing too intellectual of course just a gut feeling. It didn’t seem right somehow, but the main reason at the time was I was getting bored. I’d done the trips to London, the rallies, the marching up and down, it was all getting to be old hat. I was also becoming heavily involved with girls, which was far more interesting. Blackpool was a great place in those days for a fling, heaving with mill girls out for a good time and only there for the week to boot. Also, if I’m honest I was getting a little scared. Things were turning serious. Tony was rising up the Party ladder. He wanted me along but I was useless, introverted and tongue-tied. I hated getting up in front of people. Then there was the violence. It got worse as the Communists became better organized. More and more meetings and marches ended in trouble. Tony was in the thick of it and he loved it. A bloody nose was as good as a tonic for him and he had a good few of them in his time. I told you he was a hard man, I wasn’t. I didn’t really believe, I suppose, was the truth of the matter. But he did, he really did.”

  Chapter 8

  FASCIST MAN

  12th May 1941

  The deck moved unsteadily beneath Tony’s feet; he clutched the wooden guard-rail and breathed deeply. The fresh sea air was tainted with smoke billowing from the ship’s funnel and he could barely move as men crowded around him. The view was sublime, but he felt nauseous, for nearly a year he had seen nothing so beautiful, but he knew he was going to be ill. The sky was a blaze of incandescent reds, pinks, yellows and purples, the looming coastline blackly silhouetted along the horizon. Tony, his head spinning, fever ridden, his body weakened by hunger was sure he had seen such vibrant colours before. They shimmered in the blood spilling from Basil’s bruised body, rippling in waves across stained floorboards and soaking into straw-hued sacks. He remembered it now, his knuckles whitening on the rail, he vividly recalled the sick black joke his death had been. A razor, everybody wanted to own one. Official regulations stated that there should be one blade available for every twelve men, Tony smiled, Basil had got hold of his own cutthroat.

  The ferry lurched in the erratic swell. A space opened up beneath him and he felt a spasm of pain, a concavity in the stomach, his sweat chilling in the squally gusts, head aching, then the sea rising rapidly upwards, submerging the starboard side of the vessel before breaking over the rail, flushing the deck, his feet awash, foaming before his eyes, then the shiver of salt-spray lashing his face shocking him into welcome remission.

  A simple razor – purloined then secreted away – had meant the world to Basil and his pleasure at having one in his personal possession far outweighed all the other tribulations of his corralled existence. The dignity of a regular shave was important to him. It had been his way of coping with the grinding humiliation, the daily fear and ever-present uncertainty. He attached great importance to being smartly turned out and had been clean-shaven and wearing a jacket and tie when Tony found him propped up against a pile of powdered cement bags. He was in an empty room on the top floor of an unfinished house on the building estate in Huyton, outside Liverpool, that had been used as an internment camp since the early days of the war. The pair of them had only been detained there for three days before Basil took his life, the banality of the damp ramshackle buildings, mere shells lacking basic facilities, exerting their malign influence with horrific certainty. Blood formed a vast pool, tranquil in its turbid viscosity, lapping his statuesquely rigid corpse, bloodshot eyes wide open, startlingly blue orbs staring out from the ashen exsanguinated face, wrists protruding from pink stained cuffs scarred with jagged clotted crusts. He was a man emptied out, a corpse, and the first Tony had ever seen close up, the raw pungency of the killing floor enshrouding the grim scene.

  Tony was ailing with a persistent chest infection. Nearly all the inmates were sick in some way, but not Basil. Once his injured leg had healed he had been physically strong, immune from illness, seemingly unaffected by the deprivations of prison life. Tony had come to depend on him as they were moved around the country, from prison to prison, camp to camp. As the likelihood of release faded, Basil had seemed resilient. He was always telling jokes, bouncing back from any setback. But this strength had been an illusion, at the end his vitality seeped away within seconds. They had been friends, together constantly since their arrests and yet Tony hadn’t realized how fragile Basil’s fortitude had been. Weakened by illness, overcome with grief, Tony had collapsed by his companion’s body and had lain there for hours, watching the blood congeal, darken and dull, before they had been found and help called, too late.

  “Was that less than a week ago?” thought Tony, “if only he’d held on a little longer this move might have saved him.”

  The ship lurched violently and a crush of bodies pushed him against the rail, bending him double. He could clearly see the water rushing by thirty feet below. Basil would have seen the funny side of all this, even of his own death, thought Tony,
he would have told a joke about it in that upper class voice of his.

  “There was this wake. All the family of the deceased were present, eating and drinking, talking about the good times. Then up pipes Aunt Mabel, “I must go and pay my last respects, you coming George?” The body was laid out in the front room, the curtains were drawn and a single candle was flickering dimly in the corner. “This won’t do,” said Aunt Mabel, who’d left her glasses in the back room, “I can’t see a thing.” So she throws back the heavy curtains and lets the sunlight come streaming in. There was great uncle Arnold in his best Sunday suit lying peacefully in the open coffin. Aunt Mabel walks over and stares hard at him. “My God, George,” she says, “he’s looking well, his trip to Blackpool must have done him good.”

  Tony could hear Basil’s shrill laughter reverberating around him as he vomited into the green churning waters of the Irish Sea.

  It was dusk as the “Lady of Mann” steamed into Douglas harbour. The tall white tower of the lighthouse on Douglas Head had been visible to the prisoners for hours and now the beacons on the harbour wall and inner quays burst into life, defying the blackout, to guide the vessel into dock. Close to the sea wall several fishing boats, bobbing violently in the heavy swell, waited for the ferry to pass, before following in its wake and mooring in the inner harbour to unload their catch. The sky, deep purple fading to magenta and red, framed the dark mass of the hills looming above the port. Here and there in the gloom of the town pinpricks of light glinted, mirroring in their steely brightness the stars revealing in the darkening haze overhead. The promenade was a blaze of yellowing light, blurring into a misty distance and the air was heavy with coal smoke and the fishy tang of the sea. With two deafening blasts on its horn, the steamer juddered to a halt in mid-harbour, its engines thrown into reverse, its propellers thrashing the water. On shore a crowd had gathered at the gates of the quay, held back by police. Other uniformed figures, many armed, were dotted along King Edward Quay watching.

  “You wouldn’t know there was a war on would you, with all the lights and that lot milling around? You’d think they’d have better things to do.”

  Tony whirled round at the sound of a familiar voice.

  “Eric, what a surprise. God, it’s good to see you.”

  “Tony.”

  Without hesitation the two friends embraced, holding each other close before letting go.

  “I thought it was you as soon as I saw you clutching the side, that had to be Tony Cox.”

  “You don’t change, do you Eric?”

  “Oh, but I have. This is all starting to wear me down. I half expected to bump into you sooner than this, I thought they must have picked you up. What about Emily?”

  “No, they didn’t intern her. Left her to look after the boys, thank God. Only seen her once in the last year, the bastards. Have been moved about so much before this – Walton, Ascot, York and then back to bloody Liverpool.”

  “Boys?”

  “Yes, we’ve got two now. Stephen is the oldest, he’s a right handful by all accounts. Driving his mother spare. It’s different with the youngest Freddy, he’s just four, birthday last month. He’s a little angel in comparison. Trouble is he won’t even recognize me when I get out. It’s a bugger. What about you?”

  The two men leaned on the wooden rail and looked across at the rough-hewn quay as their vessel edged closer.

  “Oh, nothing like that for me. No domestic ties if you know what I mean. No time. I was in the first lot to be rounded up. Went straight to Brixton with Mosley and the others. Been there ever since, apart from a stint out at Latchmere House, on Ham Common.”

  Eric shivered and shook his head.

  “God that nearly did for me, I can tell you.”

  Tony placed a hand on his shoulder, Eric turned and smiled.

  “It is good to see you Tony, It’s been a long time.”

  “It must be five years or more, but what happened to you?”

  “It was military intelligence, interrogations. No holds barred. Bloody torture to tell you the truth. They woke you up at any time of the night, took you to a darkened room with a bright light, questions for hours, no food, no water. They were bastards.”

  “I thought we’d had it bad. But there was nothing like that. Why you? What did they think you’d been up to?”

  Eric shrugged, the ship whistle blew and the ferry nudged gently against the sodden, splintered pine trunks that lined the dockside. A white rope snaked through the air and landed on the cobbles, stopped and then began to slide with ever-increasing speed back towards the quay’s edge. A young boy ran out and grabbed it before it dropped into the harbour. A cheer went up from the boat and the boy looked around sheepishly before pulling on the rope. Two men joined him and they hauled the dripping cable on to the quay and slipped it over a huge iron bollard.

  “Tony, they thought we were a bunch of traitors. Still do. Thought we’d been dealing with the Germans and Italians. Were planning to take over and put Adolf or Benito into Number 10. They kept telling me that Mosley and the others were all naming me as the go-between. Saying I ought to be protecting myself by telling the truth. Fuck, I almost bought it, Tony. After two weeks of that treatment I was ready to tell them anything. They knew a lot about what I’d been up to. My role in party security, intelligence gathering, strategy and all that stuff. Remarkably well informed. There must have been a spy at the Black House, is all I can say. God, I almost told them what they wanted. One minute it was, they’d go easy on me, even let me go and give me “substantial remuneration,” that was the phrase the upper-class bastard used, “substantial remuneration,” the next it was, I was going to be shot and my body buried in quicklime. I believed them in the end Tony, I believed them.”

  Eric wiped his face and turned away.

  “I wonder if we’ll get off this bloody boat tonight,” he murmured, “we should have been here a lot earlier. It was only those bastard porters in Fleetwood refusing to handle our bags that slowed us down. They had me carting stuff back and forth for hours, you know.”

  Tony laughed.

  “It’s good for you.”

  “What is?”

  “Exercise, lifting weights, that type of thing.”

  “You’re right you know, keeping healthy, keeps you sane, keeps you going, that and Lady Luck.”

  “What?”

  “They let me go Tony. Just as I was about to spill everything, they let me go. Came in one morning and said, you’re leaving. We all ended up back in Brixton just as before. They obviously got nothing, but it was never the same again. You know, the suspicions, who said what, who told them about me. Glad to be here I can tell you, back with the lads.”

  “Well, I’m glad you are as well. It’s good to see you.”

  “You too.”

  “Is Mosley here?”

  “Don’t think so. They’ll keep him safely locked up in London away from his troops, I reckon. Keep him in comfort mind you, in the manner to which he’s accustomed; his wife being a relative of Churchill and all. He certainly didn’t come with me.”

  The crowd at the entrance to the quay had grown, two men perched precariously on the top rail of the iron gates were trying to climb down to the dock. A policeman attempted to catch hold of their feet to push them back, but they kicked out causing him to duck. The catcalls and booing grew louder and people pointed at the steamer. Tony leaned out over the guard-rail and looked up. Along the rusting green side of the upper deck was chalked the words, “Mosley for Peace’, in large crude letters. Smiling he nudged Eric.

  “Have you seen what’s up there? Who would do something like that?”

  Eric grinned back at him.

  “I was wondering how long it would take them to notice.”

  “You?”

  “I can claim some credit. It wasn’t me who climbed up there though.”

&n
bsp; “But you said you’d had enough?”

  “Of prison, yes, not the Party. Our time will come, you mark my words. Churchill’s going to lose this war and that will be our opportunity.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I do and you’ve got to let them know we know it, otherwise we’re finished. There’s no halfway house any more. This is a fight to the death.”

  He stared hard at Tony, who looked into his eyes for a second, then turned away abashed.

  “Tony, I’m serious. It’s not going to be the death of me I can tell you. I can see you need to polish up your commitment.”

  Eric reached across and grabbed Tony by the upper arms, forcing him to look directly at him again. His face was pale and his gaze piercing. Tony wanted to get away, uncertain of his own feelings. It had been a long time since he had given the Party and its policies any serious thought, he no longer knew what he believed. Such intense scrutiny was unwelcome and left him uncomfortable. In an instant it was over as Eric smiled and patted him on the back.

  “Only joking, my old china. My crystal ball gazing has been markedly off in the past, so who knows? But I like to think the fires’ still burning. Hey, look at that.”

  One of the protestors, a young man with striking red hair, had scaled the gate and was running along the quay waving and shouting. Two policemen were in hot pursuit, backed by choruses of cheers and jeers from the crowds on the ship and on the other side of the fence. He easily outpaced the older men. They gave up, hands on knees breathing heavily, he doubled back and ran alongside the ship waving his fist and yelling, “Fascists go home – you’re not wanted here,” at the top of his voice. A crush of prisoners gathered along the rail, jostling and pushing, shouting obscenities at the man, waving and whistling. The demonstrator grinned at them and running backwards, waved both arms wildly before veering off and sprinting for the fence. The policemen stood and watched him climb back over and disappear into the cheering crowd.