by Guy Walters
This morning found Steinberg & Son making their weekly deliveries in Victoria and Pimlico. Ben’s job was to unload the boxes and take them to the tradesmen’s entrances of the grand houses, while his father waited with the van, sorting out the next delivery. It had not been the best of mornings, as Ben had already returned to the van on two occasions to tell him that Mrs So-and-So had no further need of them, and that they should regard that as the last delivery.
Their next stop was a house just off Vauxhall Bridge Road, on Vincent Square. Just as Saul was about to turn left into the square, he found his way blocked by three men wearing uniforms that sent a chill through him. Blackshirts, and from their expressions – expressions he had seen many a time on the streets of Whitechapel – they were looking for trouble.
‘Dad?’
‘Don’t worry, son,’ said Saul. ‘Just keep calm. Stay in the van, yes?’
He could hear Ben gulping. He wanted to gulp too, but he stopped himself. He wasn’t going to let Ben – or them, for that matter – see that he was afraid.
‘Hello, Yids.’
Saul looked over their heads, refusing to make eye contact. Experience had taught him that that was the best thing to do.
One of the Blackshirts made a great play of looking at his watch.
‘We’re a little late this morning, aren’t we, Mr Steinberg?’
They had been waiting for him, Saul thought; somebody must have told them they were coming this way. Who could it have been? It had to be one of the staff at the house in Vincent Square. Slowly, Saul moved his hand towards the gear stick.
‘Not so fast, Jewboy!’ one of them shouted.
Saul ignored him – there was no way he was going to stay here. Gunning the engine hard, he slammed the gear stick into reverse and started to shoot backwards, not thinking what might be behind him.
The van’s progress was abruptly halted – not by an obstacle to its rear, but by a large stone that had been hurled through the windscreen, hitting Saul in the face. The shock caused his foot to slip off the accelerator, bringing the van to a shuddering stall.
‘Dad!’
Blood was streaming from Saul’s nose. He could dimly hear his son’s voice and the laughter of the Blackshirts. The pain was excruciating, but rather than paralysing him, it enraged him, causing him to open his door and get out of the van.
‘Oooh,’ mocked one of the Blackshirts. ‘Coming to get us, are we?’
Saul could barely speak. Instead, he charged towards the nearest Blackshirt, fists raised. But he had never been much of a fighter, and his swing went wide, so wide that his assailants burst out laughing.
‘Dad! Stop it! Leave them!’
Saul swung again, and for his efforts was rewarded with a well-aimed fist in the solar plexus, causing him to double over. He was fighting with men who had spent the best part of seven years in such brawls – there was no chance he was going to get the better of it. Nevertheless, instinct told him to protect his son, his flesh and blood, no matter how great the risk to himself.
The Blackshirt who had punched him nodded to his companions, jerking his head in the direction of the van. The gesture did not go unnoticed by Ben, who quickly resolved to run and get help. He knew there was nothing he could do on his own to help his father – he needed to find a passer-by, or even wave down a car.
He sprinted back on to Vauxhall Bridge Road, panic seizing him. Tears began to fill his eyes as the image of his father’s bloodied face played repeatedly in his head. He ran hard, not daring to look round, knowing from the times he had run away from his classmates that turning round slowed you down.
‘Help!’ he shouted as he ran, waving his arms in the air. ‘Help!’
The street was empty, with no sign of a passer-by. He prayed for a policeman, even though Mum and Dad had told him that the police were on the side of the Blackshirts. He ran out into the middle of the road, trying to stop a tradesman in his van, but the response was an angry sounding of the horn. He continued sprinting, receiving rebukes from two more cars. He allowed himself to look round, and saw that two of the Blackshirts were no more than ten yards behind him.
‘Come here, you fucking Jew!’
He redoubled his pace, willing his legs to go faster than they had done before, faster than he had thought possible. Someone had to stop, please God; there had to be someone who could save him and Dad.
The last sort of car he expected to slow down was a dark blue Daimler. Normally people in cars like that took no interest, but the Daimler was definitely coming to a halt.
Ben ran up to the car, looking desperately into the driver’s eyes. He had a strong face, a kind face, Ben thought; he looked as if he was going to stop.
‘Please help!’
But the driver needed no encouragement. He had already opened the door, and to Ben’s surprise as much as that of the two Blackshirts, he was holding a gun in his right hand.
There had been no indecision. As soon as Armstrong had seen the dark-haired young lad running from the two Black-shirts, he knew he had to stop. He couldn’t drive past and leave the boy to whatever fate the thugs had in mind. The look in the boy’s eyes was one of utmost terror, and he would never have forgiven himself if he had continued.
The revolver forced both the boy and the Blackshirts to a panting standstill.
‘I bet you weren’t expecting this, were you?’ Armstrong shouted.
The Blackshirts didn’t reply, their chests heaving from the exertion of the run. They slowly raised their hands to chest height, palms outwards, evidently accepting that the tables had been turned. Armstrong suddenly felt naked and exposed. Here he was, a senior politician, threatening a couple of thugs with a gun in the middle of a major London street. Such an occurrence would have been unthinkable six months ago. He needed to defuse the situation quickly. He waved the men away with the revolver. They needed no second prompting, and ran back down the street.
The boy looked up at him.
‘You’ll be all right now,’ said Armstrong. ‘They won’t touch you again.’
‘My dad!’ the boy said. ‘They’ve got my dad!’
‘Where?’
‘Back there with . . . with one of them. My dad . . . he’s being . . .’
The boy’s voice drifted off. Armstrong could guess what was happening.
‘Come on! In the car!’
They overtook the two Blackshirts who were running along the pavement, and pulled up behind the van less than a minute later. The boy had got out before the car had stopped, and Armstrong followed him, once more taking his revolver with him.
What he saw sickened him. A bloodied shape on the ground was being savagely kicked by a Blackshirt, his mouth formed into a smirk that indicated grim satisfaction at a task being well done.
‘Stop it!’ the boy screamed.
The Blackshirt looked up and opened his mouth to speak, but the words were arrested when he saw Armstrong approach.
Armstrong walked up to the stunned Blackshirt and smashed the side of the revolver hard into the man’s left cheekbone. The thug crumpled with a groan. Armstrong was tempted to do to him what the Blackshirt had done to the boy’s father, but he resisted the urge and instead put the revolver into his jacket pocket and bent down to examine the victim.
He was joined by the boy, who was crying and shaking his father’s unconscious form.
‘Dad! Wake up! Dad?’
The man’s breathing was shallow, but Armstrong was relieved to find that he was breathing at all. He was in a bad way, his face smashed into a featureless ball of puffy and bleeding skin. There was no doubt that the Blackshirt had broken a few of his ribs, and the kicking would probably have damaged the man’s internal organs as well. Armstrong shot a glance at the assailant, who thankfully remained on the ground.
‘Run and get help,’ said Armstrong to the boy. ‘Go to one of those houses. Tell them to ring for an ambulance.’
The boy seemed reluctant.
‘He’ll be
safe here with me,’ Armstrong said, gripping the boy’s shoulder firmly. ‘Go on – that house over there.’
The boy nodded through his tears and ran off, constantly looking back as he did so. Armstrong smiled back at him.
For the next few minutes he attended to the man, wiping his face with his handkerchief, talking to him, reassuring him. How many men had he seen like this? Hundreds. But that was twenty years ago, during the war. And now he was doing it again, but this time in the middle of London, a place that he and his men had regarded as the centre of civilisation, the centre of the Empire they were fighting for. But they had not fought for this.
Neither the sound of a car pulling up behind him nor the hurried footsteps of those who got out of it disturbed his thoughts. He turned round only when he heard his name being called.
‘Captain Armstrong?’
He saw three men, all dressed in ill-fitting suits and all wearing snap-brim hats. Briefly he shut his eyes. He knew exactly who they were.
* * *
What interested them greatly was the presence of the revolver in his pocket. They cared neither for the delivery man and his son, nor for the Blackshirts. All they wanted to know was why a senior politician like Captain Armstrong was driving around the streets of London early in the morning armed with a Smith & Wesson. Did he not know that carrying a gun was a serious offence? What was he planning to do with it? Was he not aware that the streets were safe now, far safer than at the beginning of the year with the mayhem of the riots? It was a bit rich, wasn’t it, that a politician from the old regime should be carrying a gun when it was his lot that had got them into the mess in the first place? There was no need to carry a gun these days, they told him, not now the Leader was in power.
The interrogation took place in a small basement room in a large nondescript office block at the bottom of Kensington High Street. Armstrong knew it to be the headquarters of the HMSSP, although there was nothing to indicate it as such. A few clues lay in the hand-painted signs that were peppered along the corridors, showing the way to places such as the Department for the Investigation of Unpatriotic Activities, the Army Political Liaison Office, and the Centre for Coordinating Cultural Activities. These were indicators of a dictatorship, Armstrong thought as he was bundled down the dimly lit corridors, these were the secretariats that would ensure that people stayed in line, that they didn’t break the rules. We’re good at this, he thought; by the looks of things far too good. He had never suspected that there was anything in the British character that would embrace fascism in this way, but here it was, in the face of every individual he passed, all of whom were wearing Party armbands or lapel badges. These were the silent ones, the ones who had never dared express a dislike for democracy, and were now living out their dreams of a Britain in which the concept of liberty was being thrown out in the name of order and action. And who was to stop them? Armstrong thanked God that he had burned the list.
He had two interrogators, both of whom smoked the Party’s own brand of cigarette, Black Cap. The tobacco smelt suitably cheap and acrid, Armstrong thought. His interrogators were short men, and both wore neatly trimmed moustaches that were clearly modelled on that of their idol, Mosley. They looked like twins, but were more like clones, who had been mass-produced by a huge metallic machine in one of those new science fiction pictures.
‘We’ve been keeping an eye on you for a while now,’ said clone number one.
So his suspicions had been right. Armstrong said nothing, but merely folded his arms. He was feeling bullish, his mood one of defiant impregnability. It was a good way to dispel fear, a method he had used until his breakdown all those years ago. He had used it then because he was trying to stop the horrors of the trenches catching up with him. He was using it now because to think himself into a funk would be counterproductive. His position might be hopeless, but there was no point in behaving as if it was. He shrugged, making it clear that he was uninterested in what the clones had to say.
‘You’ve been keeping yourself very busy,’ clone number one continued, ‘especially as Parliament isn’t sitting any more. Most MPs have been putting their feet up—’
‘Plus ça change,’ clone number two butted in, laughing at his own observation. Number one allowed himself a laugh before resuming.
‘But you, Captain Armstrong, you on the other hand have been an eager little beaver, haven’t you?’
‘It’s a free country,’ said Armstrong provocatively.
Clone number one raised his eyebrows and coughed. He looked a little awkward. Clone number two, who was leaning against a wall in the gloom at the back of the room, shifted on his feet.
‘Well, it is, isn’t it?’ Armstrong asked, attempting to press home for a small victory.
‘No, Captain Armstrong, it most certainly is not a free country,’ said number two.
‘So you admit it then?’
‘Most certainly – look where freedom got us.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You saw it for yourself,’ said number two. ‘The country was out of control – it was anarchy. Surely you must remember that, Captain Armstrong? Or have you democratic types conveniently forgotten all about it? Remember Birmingham? Have we had anything like that since?’
Armstrong did remember Birmingham. Nearly seventy men had been killed in a four-way clash between striking factory workers, the police, Blackshirts and Communists. It had been a bloodbath, one that had marked the beginning of the end of Churchill’s ill-starred King’s Party, the collapse of which was to lead to Mosley taking power.
‘Birmingham happened,’ said Armstrong slowly, ‘because you wanted it to. Birmingham happened because nasty little men like you were there to agitate, to make sure that there was violence. It was you who wanted the deaths—’
‘That’s enough!’ shouted clone number one.
Armstrong grinned.
‘What? Something I said?’
‘It was not us who wanted the deaths,’ said number two, his voice calm. ‘It was the Jews and the Communists. Come, come, Captain Armstrong, the evidence is quite clear. Or are you like all those other ostriches that we see in here, digging their heads into the sand?’
Number two’s voice sounded tired. He evidently regarded what he said as so obviously the truth that it seemed facile to have to repeat it.
‘I would love to see your evidence,’ said Armstrong.
He could make out number two’s yellow smile in the gloom, smoke dribbling out from between his bared teeth.
‘You shall, Captain Armstrong,’ he said. ‘You shall have no end of evidence to look at. And you shall have plenty of time as well. It is our intention to make sure you stop running around and sit still and listen.’
Armstrong was sick of this patronising lecture coming from a man just over half his age. He wanted to turn the table over, lay into the men the way that Blackshirt had done with Steinberg. Instead he took a deep breath through his nose and reflected on what he had just been told.
‘So what are you going to do with me?’ he asked. ‘Charge me for having an illegal firearm? Go ahead, so long as you do something about the thugs who beat up the delivery man.’
His interrogators stayed silent. Number one started flicking through a thick file.
‘We were talking about what you’ve been up to, Armstrong,’ he said. ‘About the fact that you’ve been keeping very busy lately.’
Armstrong leaned back, said nothing.
‘You’ve been away for a while,’ number one continued. ‘Last time we saw you was when you jumped out of that tea room in Bristol. Bill too expensive for you, was it?’
Again Armstrong said nothing. The only answers he could think of were flippant ones.
‘In fact, it might almost be thought that you were organising something, some sort of . . . I don’t know . . . movement, perhaps? A resistance movement, even? In short, Captain Armstrong, we’d like to know where you’ve been, who you’ve been seeing.’
&nb
sp; Number one was evidently trying to adopt the same tired tone as the more dominant number two.
‘It’s none of your business,’ said Armstrong boldly. ‘I’m entitled to go where I want and see who I damn well please.’
‘Yes, Captain Armstrong, I can see that that is so. What we find a little curious is why you chose to run away from our men in Bristol. They were only following you for your own safety.’
‘That’s very kind of them,’ said Armstrong. ‘But you see I don’t particularly like being followed around.’
Number two tutted slowly.
‘There are other ways of getting through to you, Captain Armstrong,’ he said, ‘ways that are unfortunately somewhat more time-consuming and difficult. I’m sure none of us want to go down those paths.’
‘If you mean to torture me,’ said Armstrong, ‘then why not just say it?’
‘All right then, I will. Yes, I do mean to torture you.’
Number two ground his cigarette out on the stone floor, muttered briefly to his colleague, and then walked to the door. When he reached it, he turned round.
‘I’ll see you after dinner, Captain Armstrong,’ he said, and went out into the corridor.
It was only when he reached his cell that the first pangs of dread started to appear. They were brought on by the appearance of his cellmate, whose face was badly cut and bruised.
‘Hello,’ said Armstrong gently, reaching out his hand. ‘My name is Armstrong, James Armstrong.’
The man briefly lifted his head from his mattress and then let it fall back down. Armstrong paused, and then lay down on the other mattress. It reeked of sweat and urine, but his mind was elsewhere. Until he had seen this man, he had supposed that the threat of torture was merely a bluff. But the damage to this poor bugger’s face had not been caused by falling down the stairs.
Armstrong lay in silence for a few minutes, debating whether he should talk to his cellmate. His thoughts were interrupted by the man’s coughing, a death rattle of a fit that wouldn’t stop. Armstrong looked around for some water, but there was none. He sat up on his mattress.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ he asked.