The Leader

by Guy Walters

  He only partially succeeded. The rear left wing clipped the front of the shop and smashed its window in a spectacular shower of glass shards.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here!’ Armstrong shouted.

  ‘I know!’ Alec yelled back above the din.

  A massive jolt from behind knocked them forward.

  ‘Fuck!’ Alec shouted.

  The police car had rammed them, trying to force them to crash. Alec pressed hard on the accelerator, causing the car to lurch and weave over the wet cobbles. He turned left, out of the market and back on to Curzon Street, then swung right and sped up South Audley Street. Away from the cramped Shepherd Market, they managed to pull clear of the police car. They brushed past a delivery boy on his bicycle, sending him and his produce to the ground. Someone else he needed to apologise to one day, Armstrong thought, looking back to check that the lad was all right.

  If Alec had braked any harder Armstrong would have been sent through the windscreen. Instead, his forehead connected with the glass with an almighty blow, almost knocking him out. Alec then swung the car out to the right, sending Armstrong’s left shoulder smashing into the door. A lorry had pulled out of Mount Street, right in front of them, and Alec only just managed to overtake it before avoiding a head-on collision with a taxi.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Armstrong exclaimed.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Alec. ‘No choice.’

  Armstrong was still rubbing his head as they hurtled into Grosvenor Square. Alec changed gear and slung the car round to the right, the tyres squealing in protest.

  ‘Any sign of them?’

  Alec looked in the mirror.

  ‘’Fraid so, but I’m going to lead them a merry dance round here. Hold on!’

  They screamed round Grosvenor Square a total of four times. At one point, Armstrong watched the needle on the speedometer hit sixty-five miles on hour, but the risk seemed to be paying off, as the police car was now behind by almost the length of the square.

  ‘If we carry on at this rate we’ll be chasing them!’ Alec announced.

  ‘Or we’ll be joined by some of their colleagues,’ said Armstrong. ‘Come on – let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Park Lane?’

  ‘More likely to be roadblocks. We’ve a better chance if we head east. Try losing them in Soho or somewhere.’

  Alec shot off down Brook Street, only slowing slightly to cross New Bond Street, then went the wrong way round the south of Hanover Square, all the time weaving through a succession of cars, delivery vans, taxis, buses, even horses and carts.

  ‘I can’t see them in my mirror,’ he said.

  Armstrong turned round. He saw a trail of stopped cars and brandished fists, but no police car.

  ‘I can’t see them either,’ he said, ‘but let’s not bank on it.’

  Alec shot across Regent Street and raced along Great Marlborough Street. He had eased off a little, deeming it pointless to take any more risks for the time being.

  ‘Any sign?’ he asked.

  Armstrong’s heart plummeted when he looked back. There it was, its blue light flashing, its headlights coming straight towards them.

  ‘It’s—’

  ‘I see it,’ said Alec. ‘Hold on tight.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Play chicken.’

  ‘Chicken?’

  There was no time for Armstrong to discuss his friend’s choice, because Alec was speeding up, the needle hitting forty miles an hour. Armstrong looked ahead. They were approaching a junction and it seemed as though Alec had no intention of slowing down.

  Within two seconds, before Armstrong could take in what had happened, they were facing the other way, Alec having performed a deft handbrake turn, and accelerating towards their pursuers, engine screaming. All Armstrong could do was wait and see if the driver of the police car was willing to kill them all.

  With a mere three or four yards to go, the policeman decided that he wanted to live. The police car swerved to the left, but its speed meant that the driver could do nothing to stop it from mounting the high pavement, causing it to flip on to its right side and career along the road. Alec slammed on his brakes, and the police car came to a grinding, scratching halt next to them.

  For a moment, silence. Passers-by looked on incredulously. Armstrong and Alec sat in a daze, taking in the simple fact that they were alive. It was Armstrong who snapped out of it first.

  ‘Go! Just go!’ he shouted.

  Alec didn’t move.

  ‘GO!’

  Alec put the car into gear and pulled away.

  ‘Idiots,’ he muttered again.

  They left the car in a street just north of Oxford Street. They removed the number-plates, in order to protect Martin’s friend, then set off towards the East End in companionable silence. They had a good hour-and-a-half’s walk ahead of them, which meant that they should reach the safe-house before the curfew. However, Armstrong anticipated that there would be many more roadblocks that would need avoiding. The temptation to take a taxi was overwhelming, especially as the weather was now vile, but Armstrong knew that most taxi drivers were sympathetic to the regime. He had once read that there were more taxi drivers in the BUF than any other trade or profession. Hailing a taxi would be as sensible as flagging down a police car.

  ‘By the way, Alec, what did you mean by calling the police “idiots”?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘You called the police “idiots”. Seemed an odd choice of word.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yes – you said it twice, I think.’

  ‘Well they are, aren’t they? I’ve always thought policemen were pretty thick. After all, aren’t there more policemen in the BUF than any other profession? I thought I read that somewhere a while ago.’

  Armstrong laughed.

  ‘I read that too – it was actually cabbies. I was just thinking about that.’

  ‘Well, policemen probably come second,’ said Alec. ‘They’re idiots. There – I’ve said it again.’

  * * *

  The next morning Armstrong dispatched Lucy to the nearest post office, from where she picked up a coded telegram from Major-General Clifford that confirmed Armstrong’s most optimistic hopes – the network was still in place, and Galwey and other army officers were ready to seize key fascist installations and figures around the country as soon as they received word of Mosley’s death.

  Alec’s task was to go to Pooter’s, from where he successfully retrieved a small parcel from the porter. As good as his word, Wilson had provided them with two passes and a seating plan of the Abbey, over which Armstrong, Alec, Lucy and Nick were now poring in excited silence. According to the plan, Westminster Abbey’s interior was being transformed to cope with the eight thousand guests that had been invited. A theatre had been erected in the lantern area between the north and south transepts. At its centre was a dais, upon which the thrones for King Edward and Queen Wallis would be placed. Tier upon tier of seating was positioned around the dais, although the plan showed that Mosley and other senior members of the regime would sit in the choir stalls, along with dignitaries from the Empire and abroad. Mosley and his wife would be in the front row, and alongside them were the names ‘Hitler, Adolf’ and ‘Mussolini, Benito’. The members of the Emergency Cabinet, accompanied by their wives, would sit immediately behind the Leader.

  ‘I can’t believe,’ said Alec, ‘that in a few days from now, we can not only take control of the country but also wipe out every fascist bigwig in Europe. It beggars belief.’

  ‘It’s called a coup, Alec,’ said Armstrong.

  ‘And you and Miss Craven here are simply going to walk in the night before, place a bomb under the choir stalls, and then wait for it to go off halfway through the Coronation?’

  ‘We’re not just going to walk in the night before,’ said Armstrong, ‘but we are going to walk in every day from now on. I want Lucy and myself to be part of the furniture, as it were.’
<
br />   ‘But you’ll be recognised,’ said Nick. ‘It won’t take long for someone to twig.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Armstrong, ‘because I’ll be in disguise. My hair and beard are going to be dyed grey, and I’m going to be dressed as a restorer. I don’t doubt that I’d be spotted immediately if I sauntered in wearing a suit and having had a shave. But with a legitimate pass, accompanied by Lucy, and carrying a bag of tools, I don’t think I should have too many problems.’

  Alec breathed in pensively through his nose.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Although it’s bloody risky.’

  ‘That,’ said Armstrong, ‘is an occupational hazard when you’re planning a coup.’

  * * *

  At eight o’clock the next morning, Armstrong and Lucy found themselves walking towards the north door of Westminster Abbey carrying beaten canvas bags. Armstrong hoped that they presented a convincing picture of a pair of restorers going about their business. It was a cold, bright day, and to their left the grimy whiteness of St Margaret’s church reminded Armstrong of a life that felt so distant it could have belonged to someone else. It was in St Margaret’s that he and Mary had been married, and Philip baptised, two occasions on which he had felt truly anchored, secure from the effects of war and the unpredictability of politics.

  ‘You all right there?’ asked Lucy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Armstrong. ‘Yes. Sorry, I was miles away.’

  ‘You certainly looked it.’

  Standing in the door were two policemen, both of whom were wearing lightning flash armbands. They were stamping their feet and occasionally blowing on their hands. As he and Lucy approached, Armstrong noticed that their helmets also bore lightning flash badges, another new addition to their uniforms. He wondered why the regime didn’t go the whole hog and simply make the police wear Blackshirt uniforms.

  Armstrong and Lucy waited in silence behind a few workmen who were presenting their passes. The policemen were giving little more than cursory glances at the documents, and appeared to be more preoccupied with talking to each other. Armstrong was tempted to allow himself to relax, to tell himself that all of his and Alec’s misgivings were overblown, but he didn’t. One of these men could have sharper eyes than he had bargained for.

  ‘Morning, officer,’ said Armstrong as casually as possible, producing his deliberately crumpled pass from a tattered donkey jacket.

  The policeman looked him and Lucy up and down.

  ‘You two look new,’ he said, without any trace of warmth.

  Armstrong just shrugged. That was a good sign – it meant that the policemen must have regular shifts.

  ‘What are you here for, Mr Howard?’

  ‘The finials in the choir,’ he replied.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘The finials – the carvings – in the choir stalls. The Dean says they are looking a little tatty. We’re here to do a touch of regilding, smarten them up.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand a word of what you’re saying,’ the policeman replied. ‘Fingles indeed. All right, in you go.’

  Armstrong nodded, and along with Lucy started to walk past them, maintaining an expression that did not represent how nervous he felt.

  ‘Hang on a minute!’

  Armstrong froze. It was the other policeman.

  ‘Your bags, what’s in them?’

  Both Armstrong and Lucy turned to face him.

  ‘Tools mostly,’ Armstrong replied.

  ‘Open them!’

  Armstrong could feel Lucy glancing at him, but he refused to acknowledge it, knowing that to do so would look suspicious.

  ‘Certainly,’ he said, unfastening the top of his bag.

  He opened it up and let the policemen peer inside. They were rewarded with a medley of chisels, brushes, glues, paints and pads of gold leaf. One of the policemen reached inside and took out a small white tin.

  ‘What’s in here?’ he asked Armstrong.

  ‘Rabbit-skin glue.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Rabbit-skin glue – we use it in water gilding.’

  The policeman unscrewed the top of the tin, peered at the sand-coloured powder and took a sniff, which caused an immediate reaction.

  ‘Blimey! That smells worse than my wife’s canary cage! Here, take a whiff of that.’

  The other policeman stuck his nose into the tin.

  ‘Actually, I don’t mind it,’ he said. ‘Smells like a nice piece of offal.’

  The policeman put the tin back into the bag and returned it to Armstrong.

  ‘Little did I know, Mr Howard, what it is that goes into making things look so grand.’

  As he spoke, he gestured towards the door with his thumb.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Armstrong, refastening the bag.

  They stepped into the vastness of the north transept, their eyes taking a second or two to become accustomed to its relative dimness. They walked slowly past the statues of many of Armstrong’s political heroes – Palmerston, Gladstone, Pitt and Peel. Although Armstrong was briefly lost in reverence, Lucy was shaking her head.

  ‘What?’ asked Armstrong.

  ‘Capitalists,’ she said. ‘They’re all capitalists. They should have Marx here.’

  Armstrong smiled.

  ‘Well, if you Communists win any future general election, then you’re more than entitled to put him up wherever you want.’

  ‘We’ll win all right,’ said Lucy, ‘and only then will the workers truly be free.’

  This was no time to start a political discussion, thought Armstrong. But before he had a chance to speak, he was checked by the sight of a large black cloth covering a statue.

  ‘Who’s under there?’ asked Lucy, noticing the object of Armstrong’s sudden distraction.

  Armstrong didn’t need to lift the bottom of the cloth to find out.

  ‘Disraeli,’ he said. ‘And I don’t need to tell you why.’

  Lucy paused, her expression suddenly taking on the same fierceness that had been exhibited by her father when in full flow on the floor of the Commons. Without warning, she darted towards the statue.

  ‘Lucy!’ Armstrong hissed.

  She spun round.

  ‘Not now!’ he said. ‘In ten days, just ten short days, then you can take it off.’

  Armstrong could see that every muscle in Lucy’s body was forcing her towards the statue, goading her to give the cloth a sharp, symbolic tug. However, her desire was no match for the firmness and directness of Armstrong’s gaze, a look that had caused even hardened politicians to crumble in Armstrong’s chief whip’s office.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘all right. But . . .’

  ‘I know,’ said Armstrong, who was just as angry, ‘I know.’

  They walked slowly towards the lantern area, where they could see the partially constructed dais upon which would be placed the thrones. There were at least a dozen carpenters and joiners working on it, and several more working on the scaffolding that surrounded the tiers of seats being specially constructed for the ceremony. Armstrong and Lucy attracted no more than a couple of glances, and Armstrong was glad that he had insisted Lucy wear a cap that covered up her shoulder-length hair.

  They walked purposefully round to the right of the dais and looked down the choir aisle. On either side of the black and white marble flagstones were three rows of oak choir stalls, behind which were resplendent rows of gilded finials. Along the stalls were perched small lamps with red shades, under each of which was an assortment of hymn books and psalters.

  Armstrong took a deep breath and looked down to the row immediately in front of him and to his right. This was it, he thought, this was where Mosley was going to be sitting. Here, in ten days’ time, Mosley would meet his end, along with – if their luck was in – Hitler and Mussolini. To kill all three would be too much to hope for, but Armstrong retained a degree of optimism. He certainly did not feel unstoppable, but he definitely felt confident, a mood brought about by his success in out
witting his pursuers and getting this far. He looked up at the vaulted ceiling a hundred feet above him and said a silent prayer. He found it surprising that he did so – the prayer had come into his head almost involuntarily.

  ‘Let’s look busy,’ he said to Lucy.

  For the next hour, ‘Elizabeth Ball’ and ‘Philip Howard’ made a good – but subtle – show of restoration. Armstrong’s first task was to deliberately scrape away with a sharp chisel a few inches of gold from a number of the finials. It felt instinctively wrong, vandalising a cathedral, but it was surely for a cause that the entity to whom the building was dedicated was bound to approve. Armstrong then extracted a jade-tipped polishing tool, which he gently ran over the gilding on the other finials. Lucy was doing little more than applying beeswax to the choir stalls, but to an observer they looked as though they were professional restorers.

  While they worked, Armstrong studied the stalls. Clearly, the best place for any explosive would be underneath them, but that would involve sawing a hole in the wood, inserting the explosives and a timer, and then covering it up. The stems of the lamps engaged his attention for a while, but they were too small and would not be able to hold sufficient explosive. Armstrong quickly dismissed taping the bomb underneath the seat, as even the briefest of security checks would reveal it. He was left with two options – a device could be inserted either inside the seat cushion, or, better still, inside the kneeler. Mosley would notice a device inside the cushion, but might not do so in the kneeler if the bomb was set to go off before the congregation was required to kneel.

  Armstrong looked at his watch. It had just gone nine o’clock.

  ‘Let’s stay for another hour,’ he said to Lucy.

  Lucy nodded.

  ‘By the look of things you’ve had an idea,’ she replied.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later. Just carry on with what you’re doing.’

  ‘I’m getting a sore arm,’ she said, albeit with a trace of humour.

  ‘Little did you know, Miss Ball,’ Armstrong said quietly, ‘what it is that goes into making things look so grand.’