Make More Noise!

by Emma Carroll

  “Going to a funeral?” I said.

  He looked embarrassed and pointed up the road to the gang of men disappearing up towards the pond. He plucked at his jumper.

  “I’m sorry. That was my dad.”

  “Lovely man.”

  “I’m sorry!” He put out a hand to help and smiled. “I’m Trevor.”

  I almost took it, but then I saw the brightly coloured enamel badges on his jumper. One was a lightning flash in a red circle; the other had two letters – PJ. The penny dropped.

  “I’m all right. Thanks,” I said, pointing at his placard. “Britain First? And the badge? Perish Judah? What’s that about?” He looked interested and went to speak. I put my hand up. “Actually no, I really don’t care.”

  He looked hurt.

  “It’s free speech. Everyone’s got a right to their point of view!” He sounded annoyed. Good, I thought.

  “So it’s all right to say whatever you like,” I said, my voice angry. “Even if it hurts people? Even if people died?”

  “Hang on a mo!” Trevor swept his hair out of his eyes. “If you’re talking about those camps, that’s all lies! It’s not been proven.”

  I think my mouth must have fallen right open.

  “The newsreels!?” I said

  “They was faked. My dad says that Hitler—”

  I cut him off. “We fought a war for years!” I was spitting feathers. “My dad died!”

  He sighed – a kind of bored sigh, which just made me madder.

  “Of course I’m sorry about your dad,” he said. “But the war shouldn’t have happened. The Germans never wanted—”

  “You’re sorry!?” I was ready to explode. My eyes were prickly hot. I set off up the street. At the corner I turned and yelled at him. “Your lot lost! Remember?”

  Then I ran away as fast as I could. I wiped my face as I went.

  I wasn’t crying. Not really.

  I found Paula and Godfrey sitting under “our” tree, where the heath slopes down and you can see the whole of London sitting in a bowl underneath you, from Highgate and Islington, all the way to the hills on the other side.

  I was out of breath from running, so the words came out between gasps.

  “They’re here, they’re going up to the pond to make speeches, I reckon.”

  Paula rolled over on to her front and looked across at the city, shading the sun from her eyes with her hand. “I was just saying – wasn’t I, Godfrey? – can you remember what it used to be like? Before the bombs? I mean, we were six…”

  “I was five,” Godfrey said. He looked at me, not quite managing to hide the flicker of shock. “Claud! What happened to your hair?”

  Paula turned round and inspected me. “I quite like it. No, honest!” I looked hard at her to see if she meant it. “Well, the front of it anyway. But my mum said I’m not to let you cut my hair.” She held her thick plait protectively in her hands. “If you do she says she’ll kill you.”

  I frowned; I really didn’t want to talk about that now. “Forget the hair. You weren’t listening!” I looked at them both, from one to the other. “Didn’t you hear me? They’re coming up the hill right now!”

  “Who is? Have you got the lemonade?” Godfrey said. “I’m parched.”

  “I had an accident.” I threw the bag down. They could see it was soaked through.

  Paula opened it anyway, frowning when she looked inside. “Who’s coming?”

  “The fascists!” I said. “You know, blackshirts! All lightning-bolt badges and we-hate-everybody scowls.”

  “You think he’ll be speaking? Their leader?” Godfrey took out his camera. “That could be a story and a half.”

  Paula gave him a look. “You’re a messenger boy, not a reporter.”

  “One day,” Godfrey said, grinning. “Godfrey Munro, The Times of London…”

  “I don’t care!” I was getting angrier. “Why are they even allowed?”

  Godfrey looked at me through his camera. “They don’t believe it happened, Claudie. There’s this chap at work, one of the sub-editors, so he should know better, reckons as it’s all made up.”

  “Well, that’s idiotic,” Paula said, getting up too, brushing the grass off her dress.

  “Why spend six years fighting Nazis if you’re going to let them march around saying whatever they like? People died!” I looked at Paula. She knew I meant my dad, her brother, even though I never said it aloud. “It’s not right! We’ve got to do something.” I stomped away. I felt fierce, but that might have been because I was thirsty.

  “So long as we can go on the swing boats after,” Paula called, catching up.

  When we reached the pond, there was already a crowd. I didn’t recognise any of the men I’d seen on the way from the station. Outside the pub, families were sitting in the sun, drinking. But mostly it was a gaggle of kids in the queue for donkey rides, or sailing boats on the water while their mums sat by the pond, knitting or eating ices.

  Godfrey, because he likes to remind us he’s earning his living, bought us all lemon ices, and I tipped the broken glass in my bag into a rubbish bin. Paula stroked the donkeys.

  “What did your mum say?” Paula asked.

  “She says I have to get another part-time job by the end of the summer or leave school and work in the caff. The paper round’s not enough.”

  “Any luck?”

  “I want to be a hairdresser, not a waitress! And none of the hairdressers would have me.”

  Paula made a face.

  “I thought the hair would show I meant it. They said to come back when it grew back.”

  “That’s something. Isn’t it?”

  I lowered my voice. “We need the money, Paula.” I threw my lolly stick in the bin. “I don’t suppose there’s anything going at your newspaper, God?”

  “Can you do shorthand?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “She’s not really going to make you leave school, is she? Your mum?” Paula looked worried. “I could maybe get mine to talk to her, tell her how important getting a school certificate is.”

  I made a face. I couldn’t think of anything more embarrassing. “I don’t think—”

  Suddenly two black cabs pulled over on the heath side of the road, and ten people got out before the taxis sped away. They were mostly men, youngish, wearing summer sports clothes, aertex shirts and bomber jackets, but there were a few women too. One had the short curls I’d been aiming for, only she was blonde, wearing an old ATS jacket.

  I nudged Paula. “That’s the look I wanted!”

  We all looked then. There was something about them – not their clothes; it was the way they walked, like they could do anything they wanted, and no one would stop them. They looked like…

  “He looks like a film star!” Paula nodded towards the youngest man.

  “Some of them look like proper bruisers.” Godfrey was dismissive. “And there’s a bloke still in his demob suit. Probably only just off the boat from Burma by the look of him.”

  “OK, not Picture Post exactly…” Paula said, but I knew what she meant.

  They might not have been smashers, like in the flicks, but you wanted to be them – be their friend, go wherever they were going. There was an easiness about them all.

  I crossed my fingers in my pocket and wished that time had done some kind of jump and I was eighteen or twenty – the woman with the curls’ age anyway – and had got out of one of those taxis with them. In a moment I had imagined my own future, and it didn’t include school. The blonde had a mechanics badge on her army jacket. She took off the jacket and sat on it while she ate her ice.

  I turned to Paula. “I’m going to have my own car one day.”

  “You’re going to have to cut a lot of hair!” Godfrey said.

  “Maybe I could be a taxi driver?”

  “You’re an idiot, Claudie! Women don’t drive cabs!”

  “They did in the war!” I said.

  “The war’s over!”


  I nudged Godfrey hard. “Not for them it isn’t!” I said.

  From the yard of the pub, I saw the men I’d passed on the hill. All of them had black shirts or black jumpers; some of them had the same lightning-flash badge.

  I swear the sun went behind a cloud just at that minute.

  Godfrey got out his camera. We watched as they set up a trestle table and laid out books and leaflets. A few of them turned over a milk crate and made a kind of platform, planting their flags and banners – one read “The British League” – behind it.

  “Come on.” Godfrey began to walk over.

  Paula made a face. “I’m staying here.”

  We reached the table. I could feel the anger in the stares that Godfrey was getting. I wanted to squeeze his hand or something, but he didn’t seem that worried. He even smiled a dopey smile at the boy setting out leaflets with titles like “Britain Awake!” and “Jews! Enemy Aliens in our midst!”

  Godfrey picked one up and read it aloud. “The Natural Superiority of the European Male.”

  I realised that the boy selling them was Trevor, the tall boy I’d met earlier. He snatched his leaflet out of Godfrey’s hand.

  “Careful,” Godfrey said to him. “You might catch something and wake up in the morning the same colour as me!”

  I stifled a laugh, but Trevor was seething. He leaned forward. “Get out of it, monkey boy!”

  Godfrey wasn’t fazed at all. “I go where I like,” he said steadily. “This is my country too.”

  Trevor turned on me. “Girls like you. You’ll ruin yourself with friends like him! Does your dad know you’re mates with a—”

  I shut him down. “My dad died fighting fascists like you!”

  Suddenly I realised the blonde girl from the taxi in the ATS jacket was there. She didn’t see me and Godfrey at all – just picked up a booklet and turned it over. I could see the title – “Jews – Enemies of the Working Man!”

  She smiled at Trevor and my heart sank like a stone. “Sooner we can get rid of them the better,” she said. “PJ, kiddo!” And she winked at him.

  Trevor practically swooned. “PJ!” he stuttered back.

  I knew what that meant. Perish Judah. Death to all Jews.

  I felt sick inside for ever admiring her. I glared hard.

  A man walked across to the stall and told Godfrey to go back to wherever he came from.

  “Come on, Claud.” God took my arm but I shook him off.

  “We have to do something! They can’t win!”

  One of the men laughed at us and made monkey noises. I saw Godfrey’s hands in fists. He spoke low so they couldn’t hear. “There’s more of them, Claud. And I quite like my camera. And my teeth.”

  They were all looking at us as he took my hand. I felt so angry and so powerless. It was like a knot in my chest. Why couldn’t I do something!

  I turned back and shouted at them all. “I’m Jewish!” I yelled. “And you shouldn’t be allowed!”

  The blackshirts laughed and jeered. Some of them spat at us. Walking back across the road, to the safety of the heath, I felt about two inches tall.

  Paula caught us up. “Idiots, the pair of you!”

  A man in a black shirt with greased-back hair started talking from the platform – horrible, hate-filled stuff. The blonde woman and the group from the taxi were all listening in the crowd. I wished I was a man – at least, a man who could punch.

  “I wouldn’t care if they knocked all my teeth out!” I said.

  Godfrey wound on his camera. “I think I’ve got a couple of shots,” he said. “Let’s go,” I said. Although, to be honest, I didn’t feel like going to a funfair now.

  Before I’d turned round there was a shout. The platform was rushed – it was those young men we’d seen getting out of the taxis. They forced their way through a line of blackshirts and knocked the platform over. Then I saw the blackshirt speaker hit with a punch and go down, holding his jaw. I couldn’t help but cheer. Godfrey climbed up a lamppost to get a better look. There was kicking and fighting, and Trevor’s stall went down in a flurry of pamphlets. The flags were knocked over.

  I dashed back across the road, and saw the blonde woman throwing the leaflets and newssheets into the pond. Trevor desperately tried to save his stock.

  “You can’t do that!” he said as she aimed another handful into the water. I picked up a pile of leaflets, titled “British Fascism”, and threw them too. The blonde smiled.

  “You’re not one of them?” I asked.

  She winked at me then. “Course not, kiddo! Jewish as you.”

  Then a blackshirt grabbed her arm and swore at her. I tried to kick him hard in the shins, but I had sandals on.

  He didn’t – wouldn’t – let go. I grabbed his arm and pulled and pulled, and then at last I aimed my kick higher, right between the legs. The blackshirt let go and bent double, swearing words I’d never heard in my whole life.

  The blonde nodded me thanks.

  And then I saw an amazing thing. As the blackshirt came towards us again, the blonde woman drew back her free hand and punched him. Right on the nose. I heard the sound of it! Like nothing else in my whole life. My eyes must have been like saucers.

  “Come on, kiddo!” she said, and took my hand. “This is no place…”

  She started leading me out of the crowd, but there was fighting all round us.

  “Rita Simon,” she shouted as we wriggled through the fighting.

  “Claudette Nathenson,” I said back, smiling so wide I must have looked like an idiot.

  “I like your hair.” She pulled me through the crowd.

  “I cut it myself!” I shouted back over the noise, and she turned round and looked at me again.

  “Really?” she said. “That’s not bad at all.”

  And even though everything around us was louder and madder than a Crazy Gang film – I swear I even heard bones breaking – I felt utterly and completely brilliant.

  We’d got to the far side of the crowd and heard the cheers as the speaker was hustled away, when there was a whistle. The police! A van had drawn up and the doors were opening. Police in uniform, with truncheons raised, waded into the crowd. I saw two of them grab the man in the demob suit and beat him hard with truncheons.

  “You’ve got the wrong man!” I yelled, but Rita grabbed my arm and shook her head.

  “They’ll have us in their van and back to the station before you can say Jack Robinson! My mates can look out for themselves.”

  “But the blackshirts?”

  Rita pulled me along. “Not now! Come on.”

  We both ran across the road and on to the sandy heath towards the trees. As fast as we could we zigzagged and scrambled down the slope between the tree roots until we came to the road that led west.

  “The police reckon it’s our fault for shutting them down. So we’re the ones who get nicked, not the fascists.”

  “That’s so unfair!”

  “Tell me something I don’t know!”

  We kept running until we’d come out of the trees and reached the edge of the funfair. There was the sound of the carousel and the crowds of people walking around, like nothing out of the usual was happening just a few hundred yards away.

  Rita still looked wary, scanning the crowd. She took off her jacket and bundled it under her arm. “If you see a copper, split up and run.”

  “Who are you?” I said. “You and your friends?”

  “The 43 Group. If the police won’t stop those people then we have to. Honestly, all these people sitting round saying something should be done, and doing nothing! We’re different. We discuss, decide and then do something!”

  “Were you all in the army?”

  She shrugged. “Most of us. There’s a few that were too young – printers, hairdressers…”

  “Hairdressers?” I said. “You know a real hairdresser?”

  She smiled and ran her hand over her blonde hair. “You don’t get fashion like this on the rat
ion! There’s a bloke in the group, he’s not much older than you.”

  My mind was galloping along at top speed. She put her arm through mine.

  “I expect Vidal could finish your ’do off, especially when I tell him how good you are at kicking Nazis…”

  I didn’t find Paula and Godfrey until teatime. When I saw them on the swing boats, Paula stood up waving. “We were so worried!” she said as she climbed down. I still felt like I was walking on air. I knew I was smiling a mile wide, because my face hurt with it.

  Paula gave me a hug. “We thought the police had carted you off to a cell, or the blackshirts had knocked you for six.”

  “Why are you smiling like that?” Godfrey asked.

  “Cos I’m not going to be leaving school. I’ve got a job – weekends and Thursday night after school. At a swanky salon in Mayfair with Rita’s friend.”

  Paula hugged me so hard my feet left the ground.

  “It’s just sweeping up!” I said once she’d put me down. “But I can learn. And Vidal said I showed promise, and he said he’ll neaten it up round the back for me before I start.”

  “Vidal? Funny name!” Godfrey said, making a face.

  “Not like God at all then…” Paula said, throwing a clump of grass at him.

  “Rita says he’s really good. He did her hair,” I said.

  Paula nodded. “She looked dreamy.”

  “Can’t wait till I tell Mum,” I said, putting my arm through Paula’s. “No more washing up. No more Bubela telling me not to wear slacks.”

  “You’ve still got to go back to school,” Godfrey said, and he ran a little ahead and got out his camera.

  “You know what?” I said. “I’m even looking forward to another year of school.”

  Godfrey held up his camera. “Say cheese!”

  Me and Paula made the silliest faces.

  Then I had an idea. I jumped up on a fallen tree trunk. “Take this one, God!” I said, and swung my leg high like a Windmill girl. “I am Claudette Nathenson and this is how you kick out fascists!”

  The 43 Group were a real organisation, begun by young Jewish ex-servicemen who returned from fighting overseas to find that inciting hatred was quite legal on the streets of Britain. They decided not to stand by, but to actively break up meetings of fascist organisations who were free to speak on street corners and at meetings all over London. The organisation grew to include young people who’d been too young to join up, and one of these was Vidal Sassoon, one of the most famous hair stylists of the twentieth century. Rita Simon isn’t real, but the group had female and gentile members too.