The Man in the Street

by Martin Howe

  During the day, the “Sunset Lounge” had clear views out over the bay, but the heavy velvet curtains drawn roughly across the windows suffused the space with a wan purple quality, oppressive after the airiness of the camp. There was a pungent smell of cooked cabbage and some of the tables were covered with dirty glasses, cutlery and dinner plates. Osbert Peake MP and Captain Faulkner were standing in the middle of the room, deep in conversation, when the Fascists were shown in. Eric and Bill stepped forward and were, without ceremony, ushered over to a table covered in a large white starched tablecloth. They sat down on the two chairs positioned on one side of the table.

  “Gentlemen,” the member of parliament gestured to Tony and Des, “find a chair and please be seated, we weren’t expecting so many of you.”

  Pale blue eyes blinked myopically, his thick lenses gave the politician an expression of permanent astonishment. His thin angular face glistened under the refracted light from the chandelier directly above his head. He was immaculately dressed in a pin-stripe suit, a waistcoat with a gold watch and chain, paisley tie and wing collar and spoke with the assured clipped accent of the southern gentry. Tony had expected nothing less, but was exasperated at the boring inevitability of it all. As he sat down he could see Eric and Bill were feeling the same way. They were leaning back in their chairs and staring grimly ahead, their hands resting uneasily in their laps. Captain Faulkner, seated on the opposite side of the table, was rolling his swagger stick back and forth across the cloth and glowering at them. A vein pulsed rhythmically on his left temple and his upper lip would occasionally twitch. As Osbert Peake sat down beside him he shifted uneasily in his seat.

  “Introductions, I think, would be appropriate before we get started. You know Captain Faulkner, Mr Prentice here…”

  He motioned towards a tall thin, balding man standing beside him.

  “… will take the minutes of the meeting. I’m Osbert Peake MP, Minister at the Home Office and representative of His Majesty’s government. Now, who is your spokesman?”

  Bill Griffiths glanced at Eric.

  “I am.”

  He spoke with a broad Birmingham accent.

  “Bill Griffiths, BUF National Inspector, this is Eric Baines, BUF District leader for West Ham, Tony Cox, the Party’s District Leader for Blackpool and Des Page, District Leader for Derby.”

  As Bill Griffiths gestured at each man in turn he exposed damp stains under his arms and he wheezed when he spoke. He had lost weight in the camp and his clothes hung loosely on his body. Suffering from a permanent head cold, he felt feverish and light-headed, his confident nature depressed.

  “Tea anybody before we get down to the serious business?”

  Captain Faulkner snorted contemptuously, but said nothing. The others nodded.

  “Fine. Now what exactly is the problem? I am here to listen and do what I can for you. But you must understand my position. There is a war on, so there is a limit to what is possible.”

  “There are three areas of concern. The first and most immediate is the condition and treatment of the three escapees. They’ve been beaten up and not given any food.”

  Captain Faulkner could barely contain himself.

  “Now listen here, my soldiers have mistreated no one. I’ll not have this from you lot. If people escape they have to face the consequences. It’s just not good enough.”

  “Thank you Faulkner. Let’s deal with this one here and now. I do not believe you gentlemen are correct.”

  Eric hit the table with his fist.

  “We saw them with our own eyes. They looked in a bad way. How can you…”

  Osbert Peake raised his hand.

  “But, let me finish. I will interview the prisoners myself first thing tomorrow morning to ensure they are in a good state of health. As to food, Faulkner here will arrange for something to be sent to them now. Do it Captain.”

  Faulkner got rapidly to his feet, his chair almost toppling over and left the room. He could be heard angrily barking orders in the next room.

  “Go on.”

  “Our main concern is the legal basis of our detention. When we were arrested we were promised reviews of our legal position, some sort of appeal procedure. This hasn’t happened for most of us. It’s just not bloody fair.”

  Osbert Peake sat back in his chair, twisting one of his cufflinks and smiled.

  “This Gentlemen is, I sense, the nub of the issue.”

  He was about to go on when a waiter in an immaculately starched white jacket appeared at the door to the kitchen and coughed loudly.

  “Ah tea, bring it here, please.”

  Nobody said a word as the waiter approached the table with his rattling tray of teacups.

  “Put it down over there. Prentice will be mother. I hope there’s plenty of hot water?”

  The waiter nodded and lifted the lid on a large silver jug, releasing a cloud of steam.

  “Thank-you.”

  Prentice got disconsolately to his feet.

  “Milk everyone?”

  The waiter backed away, almost colliding with Captain Faulkner who had returned to the room. Apologizing profusely he turned and scurried through the swing doors into the kitchen. Sipping at his tea, Osbert Peake looked across the table at each member of the BU delegation.

  “Gentlemen, I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the conditions of your internment. We are at war. You have been legally detained under Defence Regulation 18B.”

  Eric moved to object but was silenced by Bill Griffiths, who placed a hand on his arm. This was acknowledged by a nod from the minister, who went on.

  “We have a perfect legal right to hold you here until we see fit to release you. Indeed, I feel I can be frank with you. For some, not necessarily those in this room, although I don’t know your cases well enough, that will mean until the end of hostilities and maybe beyond. Mr Page you look shocked, but face facts, you are all members of an illegal organization deemed a threat to the state.”

  “Hold on here, that’s surely up for debate?”

  “No, Mr Baines, I’m afraid it’s not. What is up for debate is the culpability of individuals, how involved they were. How much of a security risk would they be if released. That is the only area for discussion, not the nature of the British Union, which is a traitorous political party, pure and … ”

  Eric stood up and leaned across the table, desperately searching for the words to articulate his rage, without appearing to lose his temper. Captain Faulkner leapt up and began poking him on the shoulder with his swagger stick.

  “Sit down both of you.”

  The MP’s voice echoed round the room. He stared at Eric until he reluctantly returned to his seat.

  “I can see you would benefit from a few basic facts before we go on.”

  He delicately took another sip of tea and wiped his mouth with his pocket-handkerchief.

  “You have all been interned for over a year. You’ll be somewhat out of touch with life in the rest of the country. I’m not going to make any bones about this. You are traitors and that is not something you can argue away, try as you might. That is how you are seen and I suspect that time will only confirm this impression. If you get letters from your families you will probably have gathered that life is not easy for them.”

  Tony winced and closed his eyes.

  “Mr Cox obviously understands what I’m talking about. Government is of the people, for the people and in wartime morale is everything, even more important than justice, to be brutally frank.”

  As he was speaking he took off his glasses and wiped them with his handkerchief. He hesitated to breathe on the lenses, then looked up blindly and went on.

  “Irrespective of any intelligence reports on the threats posed by the British Union and Mr Mosley, something I won’t be going into here. One of the main reasons you were all locked up w
as to satisfy a public hunger for action. It was a tense period for us, some sort of action was needed. It was believed morale would suffer if nothing was done. And again to be brutal, nothing much has changed. There have been rumblings from the odd politician, invariably on the left, and from a few legal minds on the right but generally there isn’t a great deal of pressure to move rapidly on this one. To sum up, to let you all out en masse would not be politically acceptable to most people at this particular time. And you should be aware that reckless actions like we’ve seen this evening also doesn’t help, you saw how the good people of Peel reacted. They are not alone.”

  “But what are we supposed to do? Your attitude is just typical. I can’t believe what I’ve been hearing.”

  Bill’s face was flushed and blotchy.

  “You’ve said nothing to make us stop.”

  Captain Faulkner laughed out loud, but then spoke in a voice that was low and calm.

  “I’ll stop you. Understand that. There’s been enough pussy-footing around on this one, in my humble opinion.”

  “Bastard,” muttered Eric gazing through half-hooded eyes across the table at the officer.

  “More tea anyone? Prentice do the honours will you, there’s a good chap.”

  Osbert Peake put his hands together and leaned forward in his chair. Bill Griffiths was forced to do the same to catch what he was saying.

  “There’s something I can do. But you have to do something for me. There’s absolutely no excuse for this riot and it must cease or it will be stopped by force. Is that clear? If it’s not, then we can go no further.”

  Bill nodded.

  “Good. You are perfectly right there is an appeals procedure. My good friend Mr Norman Birkett chairs an Advisory Committee, which has been meeting every week for the last year looking into this very issue. I know for a fact that a number of detainees from here have appeared before the Committee.”

  “Yes, but none of them got off.”

  “That, Mr Page, is the nature of an appeals procedure.”

  “It’s a bloody fix. There’s no legal representation or nothing.”

  “That is true, but Mr Birkett and his committee are all distinguished barristers with a vast experience of dealing with such cases. Let me assure you a good many people who have appeared before them have subsequently been released. It is far from being the fix that you claim it is.”

  “But …”

  “The Advisory Committee is all there is. I am not here to negotiate about the legal procedures. What I am prepared to do is this. I will ensure that the cases of all BU members at Peel are brought to the attention of the Committee and I will recommend that all those deemed suitable for review are dealt with as quickly as possible. It also goes without saying that your individual cases will be sympathetically reviewed as soon as I return to London next week. Believe me Gentlemen, I have no desire to see men detained any longer than is absolutely necessary.”

  “Why should we believe you?”

  “Well Gentlemen…I give you my word. Do you need time to discuss this amongst yourselves?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Bill Griffiths looked first at Eric, who nodded, and then at his other two colleagues. Tony thought he looked worn out, defeated, but said nothing.

  “Fine, your little demonstration ends and after an appropriate period privileges will be restored. Captain Faulkner, I recommend that period is not of too long a duration. I, in turn, will interview the escapees within the next few hours and secondly, instigate a review of the cases of BU detainees here at Peel. You said when you arrived there were three issues you wanted to discuss.”

  “No, no that’s all.”

  “Well, Gentlemen, I won’t say it’s been a pleasure, but I’m glad to have resolved this so amicably.”

  He got to his feet and reached across the table, shaking hands rapidly with each of the detainees. His hand felt cool and clammy and Tony sensed that they’d been cheated in some indeterminate way.

  “It’s him isn’t it,” he thought, “we’ve put our trust in that balding bureaucrat. God, I’ve got to keep digging.”

  “Gentlemen, your escort awaits.”

  The minister gestured towards the door, a smile of smug self-satisfaction creasing his face. There was the sound of boots rasping across the tile floor and seconds later the door opened to reveal a squad of soldiers standing to attention at the top of stairs leading to the hotel lobby. Tony dejectedly got to his feet and out of habit pushed his chair under the table.

  “Delegates of the British Union…”

  Surprised he looked up. Eric and Bill Griffiths were standing to attention a foot away from the table, their arms rigid by their sides, facing Osbert Peake and Captain Faulkner, who looked on quizzically.

  “Attention…”

  Tony snapped smartly into line with the others and then watched with immense satisfaction as the expression on the Minister’s face changed to one of open distaste as they raised their arms in the fascist salute. Seconds passed in stunned silence, Tony’s spirits soared, he felt exultant.

  “About turn…”

  Eric’s voice boomed around the dining room.

  “Quick march.”

  Chapter 9

  PIECE OF ETERNITY

  8th September 1995

  It was a beautiful evening. A sheen hung over the city blunting the sharp edges of buildings and obscuring their detail. Shapes were smeared and the atmosphere benign. Pine scented the air, its piquancy tempered by the faint lingering aroma of coal dust. The distant age of steam, its tracks long abandoned, indelibly imprinted on the landscape.

  The raised embankment, clinker-strewn, was now a public footpath. It ran wild and untended for several miles through a maze of north London Victorian terraces and thirties semis before coming to an abrupt end at a boarded up tunnel, its crumbling length and treacherous drainage too hazardous for walkers to explore. Where trains used to run three times an hour each way, people now exercised their dogs and themselves, couples walked hand in hand, occasionally passing from sight down the overgrown banks, joggers would run from the park to the tunnel and back in the early morning and early evening. A constant traffic, but one could nonetheless find solitude, appreciate the urban panorama laid out before you and listen to the birds and the rustling in the undergrowth.

  David had been a regular visitor in recent weeks. He had found a place that suited him, sitting on a cushion of pine needles at the foot of a tall conifer. It was well away from the path, about halfway down the slope on one of the steepest sections of the embankment. Completely hidden by burgeoning hawthorn and elder bushes he would stare through the gently shifting leaves at the back of a tall four-storied terraced house. He had a clear view into all the windows at the rear of the building, except the two on the top floor – one of the kid’s bedrooms most likely. He watched the family eat their evening meal in the kitchen on the ground floor, which opened through a pair of large patio doors onto the well-tended garden. He followed them up the stairs to the living room, where they watched television. Up another flight to the master bedroom where the wife would change out of her work clothes, before returning to the kitchen to load the dishwasher and read the paper, listening to the radio. She appeared to say very little to her husband. The couple went to bed before eleven most weekdays, more often than not at different times. David was sure they made love infrequently. He wasn’t there all the time of course, but he was confident he had their measure. The routine nature of their lives surprised David at first but then became reassuring. He noted every significant activity on a little pad in neat block letters and after a few weeks felt he could predict what they were going to do next, most of the time.

  Tonight was Friday. The two teenage children would be going out very soon. One of them was in the bathroom, the other had been hammering on the door and yelling for her to hurry up –
he could hear everything clearly through the open windows. They would be away from the house until the early hours of the morning. The wife had already left for her evening class, probably aerobics or something like that, judging by the colourful leggings she wore and the sports bag she slung jauntily over her shoulder in the bedroom before leaving. She never returned before 10 o’clock. David thought that most likely she had a drink after the class with friends, but secretly hoped she was having an affair. That left Larry Beckinsale. He would be in all evening, probably open a bottle of wine and carry it up to the living room, where he would sit in a large armchair close to the picture window overlooking the garden and watch television or read until his wife came home.

  There was exactly three weeks to go until David was formally made redundant. All the appeals procedures had been exhausted. One of his colleagues from the department had been relocated elsewhere in the company, the rest were out. Some were receiving redundancy pay, but he was getting nothing. His case had been taken up by the Union, but they hadn’t achieved anything.

  David hated the person he could see sitting relaxed and untroubled less than one hundred and fifty feet away from him. He loathed Larry Beckinsale with a passion he found difficult to articulate. To think about him, which he did most of the time, left him enraged. He was frightened at the prospect of violence, doing damage, but could barely contain his feelings, unable to suppress the urge to do the man harm. Spying on the Beckinsales helped calm his nerves and focus his thoughts. He had tried to threaten them, shake their complacency with anonymous phone calls, but they hadn’t had the desired effect on the smug family, hadn’t impinged on their safe little world. The daughter had told him in no uncertain terms, the second time he had rung at one-thirty in the morning, “to fuck off and die, you pathetic wanker.” David’s wife, Susan, had overheard him phoning, and asked who the hell he was calling at that time of night. She had not believed David when he had said the talking clock and had accused him of seeing someone. It was the first time, but not the last, that she had slept in the spare bedroom. So David had stopped the silent phone calls. Heavy breathing in his own hallway was not, he had discovered, the cure for his particular malaise.