Ring in the New

by Phyllis Bentley

  Alice Smith took the window seat without comment when they returned to the coach—whether for the view, the fulfilment of the fair-share belief, or the desire to appear independent of Mellor, Jonathan did not know; he was glad, but wished she had been gracious enough to mention the change he had proffered.

  As they drew near London the students became excited and chattered vivaciously; then Mellor, imposing silence, described in detail the movements and meeting-places which had been arranged.

  ‘It seems all very well organised,’ said Jonathan again to Alice.

  ‘Of course,’ she snapped.

  The coach drew up with a jolt.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ cried Mellor.

  ‘Police,’ said the driver laconically.

  He rose and pushed back the sliding door.

  A policeman—a Sergeant, Jonathan thought, or perhaps an Inspector; he was not very well versed in police insignia—appeared at once in the doorway.

  ‘All you young ladies and gentlemen going to the demonstration?’ he said cheerfully.

  The coach roared an emphatic Yes.

  ‘Then I must ask you to come out all together and allow my men here to search you,’ said the Inspector.

  A horrified silence fell on the coach.

  ‘Search us?’ gasped Mellor. ‘What for? We’re proceeding peacefully to a legal demonstration.’

  ‘Quite so, sir,’ said the Inspector.

  ‘As citizens we’re legally entitled to attend.’

  ‘Indeed, yes,’ said the Inspector. ‘But you are not entitled to carry offensive weapons. Our instructions are to see that you keep the law in this respect.’

  ‘This is intolerable,’ shouted Mellor.

  ‘No, no, sir. Just a legal precaution. If you should happen to be arrested later, it would be much better for you not to be in possession of a weapon.’

  ‘He’s right there,’ said someone from behind.

  ‘We aren’t carrying any weapons,’ wailed Mellor. His voice shook, his face contorted, he almost wept. ‘I give you my word.’ Jonathan felt with him.

  ‘I might have a p-p-penknife,’ volunteered the stammerer.

  This was received with hilarity by everyone except the Inspector, who stretched out his hand.

  ‘Better turn it over voluntarily, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a receipt, of course.’

  Subdued, the stammerer drew from an inner pocket a red-backed penknife. It was not tiny, but small enough to cause renewed laughter. The Inspector, enquiring name and address, wrote a receipt and handed it over.

  ‘Any more knives?’ said the Inspector. ‘Any pins? Any marbles?’ he continued.

  His voice seemed to grow colder, and his eye more searching, with every sentence he uttered.

  As the students were, in fact, completely innocent of any weapons, they all shook their heads emphatically. The Inspector appeared pleased.

  ‘Then if you’ll just step out, please. All together. As quick as you can. We don’t want to delay you more than is necessary.’

  As Mellor seemed stunned, almost incapable of movement, Jonathan took his arm and without appearing to do so pulled him to his feet.

  ‘We may as well lead the way,’ he announced cheerfully.

  ‘I don’t think I can bear this,’ murmured Mellor as they stumbled down the coach steps together.

  ‘We’re paying for the sins of those who have carried weapons,’ said Jonathan sternly.

  But in fact he felt as keen a resentment, as furious a consciousness of unjust indignity, as Mellor. The policemen were perfectly polite, their handling was not rough, they kept their faces stiff in a wooden respect, but to have the contents of his pockets inspected, still more to have a policeman’s hands running up and down his limbs, was almost more than the reserved and fastidious Jonathan could bear.

  This is odious,’ he said coldly to the Inspector.

  ‘We’re only obeying our instructions, sir,’ replied the Inspector with equal coldness.

  Jonathan noticed that while the coach was empty other policemen searched it thoroughly, nor was even the driver exempt from this search. When at last the process was over and they returned to the coach, Jonathan felt at once alarmed and outraged, and he observed on the students’ faces, as crimson with outraged anger as his own, the same mingled expression of fright and fury.

  Indeed for the next few minutes they maintained a sullen silence; it was only when the coach turned sharply into a street which clearly led to an agreed parking place, for it was full of young students, recognisable by their college scarves, that they began to stir and chatter. Jonathan rose to his feet and turned towards the body of the coach.

  ‘What a prig I shall sound, and yet it must be said’ he thought, as he cried aloud in his voice of authority: ‘Just a moment, please.’

  Reluctantly, from habit, they fell silent and listened.

  ‘In spite of this indignity to which we have been subjected, which naturally roused our anger, I know we are still all agreed that we must employ no violence. I must repeat this plain statement: if we use violence, we are exactly like those we are attacking for the use of violence. We are committing their sin.’

  He turned sharply away and busied himself with taking down his mackintosh from the rack above the seats. His heart was beating strongly from the effort of self-assertion, but he was pleased to find that without consciously intending to do so, he had said we and not you. He had thus identified himself with the students.

  ‘Well, be it so,’ he admitted to himself, and all of a sudden felt cheerful.

  The Lorimer students seemed to undergo the same cheering change of mood when, leaping from the bus, they found themselves in the midst of a milling excited crowd, laughing, shouting, waving arms and raising banners. Directed by students employing megaphones, they formed up and moved off in an orderly fashion, Mellor and the stammerer carrying the largest banner (U.S.A. OUT OUT) ahead, and the rest followed, walking in rows with linked arms. Alice held one of Jonathan’s arms and an unknown fair young man the other. As they approached Trafalgar Square the crowd increased, additions to its numbers pouring tumultuously in from side streets.

  To his surprise, Jonathan heard French, German and some Eastern languages unknown to him spoken around him, and the faces he saw confirmed his view of the speakers’ origins. Jonathan was a good internationalist and he found himself hoping that the more fiery emotions of other races would not overcome the natural Anglo-Saxon phlegm, but suppressed the thought as unworthy. Police were now lining each side of the street, and the students began to shout: ‘Ho! Ho!’ It was a very shoutable and harmless slogan, and though Jonathan regretted that it had no specific meaning he found he enjoyed shouting it. As they entered the square a certain amount of surging to right and left took place. Alice was swept off balance, stumbled and fell to her knees. Jonathan and the young man on her other arm hauled her up swiftly and without ceremony, for to fall in a swaying crowd was dangerous.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ she replied coolly.

  Jonathan, however, observed that the black net stockings she favoured were both rent, and her knees were grazed and bleeding.

  ‘There are some ambulances somewhere,’ said the fair young man on Jonathan’s left.

  ‘There’s one over there,’ said the student on Alice’s right, nodding to indicate the direction—he could not release his arm from the crowd’s pressure to point a hand.

  ‘I’m afraid we should have difficulty in making our way there,’ said Jonathan.

  ‘Do you suppose I need medical attention for a graze on a knee?’ said Alice scornfully.

  ‘You should have an anti-tetanus injection as soon as possible.’

  ‘Oh, nonsense!’

  The pressure now eased as students with megaphones again shouted instructions—’they have this all well arranged,’ thought Jonathan again—and a few short speeches now began. Jonathan listened with keen interest. It was not always easy to
hear what was said, for though the crowd was silent, occasional buses and cars passed round the edge of the square and the inevitable shuffling of feet sometimes drowned the human voice, but he caught some of the phrases he had heard Mellor use—revolutionary socialism, arbitrary authority, hierarchical structure. They were evidently current slogans. He felt that he was hearing, from some at least, not merely a protest against a specific war front but the expression of a genuine moral perturbation, a profound dissatisfaction with the current mode of life as materialistic, inhibiting and authoritarian.

  ‘I agree, but what are we to put in its place?’ he thought. ‘Is this just the same old argument caused by every technological advance, which always hands more power to fewer persons? A Luddite question of machines, in this case electronic devices which produce an increasingly materialist society, against the participation of men? Is this revolt a step forward on the road to the liberation of the human spirit? Or a regression, a revolt against the disciplines which provide civilisation? A hatred of authority is natural. But submission to it, from herds of bisons and prides of lions up the biological scale to human groups, is natural too, to all animals who live in communities. We all want to do what we like; How to secure the maximum of this with the minimum disturbance of the rights of others? There must surely be some agreed laws—but they must be agreed.’

  A violent thrust sideways at this point almost threw him off his feet. Returning his attention to the outer world, he perceived that a considerable movement was taking place in the crowd, some sections, of which the Lorimer students formed one, swinging off vigorously to the right, whereas the main body curved down to the left. Reasonably but not intimately familiar with the centre of London, he decided that the Lorimer movement was certainly not towards Downing Street, where they were supposed to present a petition. He wondered why.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he enquired of Alice.

  It was some moments before he could make her hear, for the crowd, though still not disorderly, were running and shouting and presently broke into singing. The fields of Vietnam rolled sonorously through the air, and the police who suddenly appeared to be lining these streets began to look rather grim. He shouted his query again.

  ‘The American Embassy,’ shouted Alice in reply.

  She laughed, her eyes gleamed with mischief.

  ‘This is dangerous,’ thought Jonathan.

  It was quite impossible to withdraw, however, even had he wished to do so, for the crowd surged forward at a half-running pace. He ran with it, pressed in on all sides, and devoted himself to keeping his feet and seeing that Alice kept hers. Alice was no doubt fully capable of doing so—she ran well and sturdily and seemed unafraid—except that from time to time she glanced back over her shoulder, and once even tried to turn round. This foolhardy manoeuvre, annoying those who ran behind, was so unlike Alice’s usual cool sense that Jonathan, as they turned a corner, tried to glimpse what had interested her. He saw the Lorimer group of banners, including Mellor’s, scattered amongst the throng; having been in the lead, when the crowd turned they were naturally in the rear. Mellor could not move hand or arm to wave to Alice, nor change his pace to come to her, but Jonathan perceived that he saw her and shouted some encouragement.

  The students pouring into Grosvenor Square, and shouting as they caught their first sight of the Stars and Stripes floating above the grey building, now stopped suddenly. Jonathan, a tall young man, by standing on tiptoe saw the reason for this sudden halt. Rows of policemen—six or eight rows—firmly linked, arm to arm, faced the crowd, protecting the Embassy. Behind them were drawn up a row of mounted police, their horses and themselves sternly motionless. The serried ranks—serried is the operative word, thought Jonathan grimly—of police now took a slight step forward, their aim obviously to drive the students from the Square. The students perceiving this gave a roar of frustration, and there was a strong surge forward. The police staggered back a step or two but their line held. The students’ charge was repeated, with varying strength and in varying parts of the Square, but with increasing determination. In the swaying back and forth, the jostling and shoving and pushing, Jonathan found himself in the front line of the argument, that is on the line of demarcation between the students and police; he was thrust against the blue uniform and silver buttons. Now a shout of laughter broke out from the crowd; some daring students had climbed a neighbouring building, and one, half-clasped by a rather clumsy constable, snatched himself free and leaped from one balcony to the next Jonathan, instinctively sympathising with the pursued rather than the pursuer, laughed as heartily as any. All the same he wished the students would retreat: they had made their point, had showed their disapproval, and they could not hope, or even wish, to penetrate six lines of police, and orderly dispersal would win more public sympathy than a scrimmage, meaningless and hopeless from the start. With some difficulty he managed to twist himself round with his back to the police, and searched the crowd for Mellor, who might initiate a move away towards Hyde Park, the arranged rendezvous. Long white sticks now came flying through the air towards the police. In some alarm Jonathan recognised them as the poles which had supported the student banners. Slight in themselves, when they descended from a height gravity would make their impact heavy.

  ‘Don’t throw those! It’s dangerous!’ shouted Jonathan.

  At that moment a pole struck him on the side of the head. The blow knocked him sideways; he staggered and strove to regain his balance but could not ‘No! No!’ he cried, struggling—to fall was too absurd. He clutched at the person next to him but fell all the same; it was Alice; to his disgust he found his head jammed against her ankle, his blood seeping through her black network stockings. Scrambling to his knees, he found her gazing down at him in horror.

  ‘I do apologise,’ he said with strong sincerity.

  ‘Now then, what’s this?’ said a police voice.

  He was hauled to his feet and roughly dusted down. Struggling to accept a handkerchief, he accepted the one Alice proffered and applied it to the side of his face, which seemed to be bleeding considerably.

  ‘If this were fiction, I should have a convenient blackout,’ thought Jonathan.

  As it was real, however, he had to undergo in complete consciousness all the indignities of his situation. The police wished to take him off with them, the students were eager to use one of the ambulances they had thoughtfully provided. Mellor coming forward and asserting his acquaintance with the casualty, won the argument; students seized Jonathan’s arms and pushed him through the crowd. Some of the students fell back from him awestruck and gasping, for the blood was very noticeable, others cried out about truncheons and police brutality the need for continual repetition that it was an accident exhausted him. At last he found himself alone in an ambulance, which seemed to wander fitfully about the deserted Sunday streets of London. Alice’s handkerchief was soaked; he discarded it and applied his own. After a few moments’ relief at being quit of the jostling of the crowd, he began to fed enclosed and lonely, and had to exercise stern control so as not to give way to the fear that he had been forgotten and the journey would never end. It was an immense relief when at last the van drew up and the rear doors were opened.

  ‘What hospital is this?’ he enquired eagerly as he was assisted to descend.

  ‘It’s not a hospital, it’s the London School of Economics,’ said the student who had driven him. ‘But you’ll get medical attention here all right. It’s all arranged.’

  Indeed quite a bevy of white-coated young men advanced upon him as he entered the building. Whether they were fully qualified physicians or last-year medical students was not certain, but they were certainly eager to employ their skill. The young man who attended to Jonathan was very capable—it was an immense relief to be mopped up, to feel clean and neatly bandaged; he insisted all the same that Jonathan should be driven at once to the nearest hospital. There was some demur as to the need for this—clearly there had not occurred the number of casu
alties expected, almost, one might think, hoped for, and they were loath to let one go.

  ‘Which would you prefer?’ they said to Jonathan, ‘You can be properly cared for here.’

  ‘A hospital, I think,’ said Jonathan, who was beginning to feel extremely shaky and in need of some relaxing drugs.

  No ambulance was available now, they had probably all gone off to Hyde Park and Grosvenor Square, but a taxi was found for him. After a further short but acute anguish of loneliness—he paid the driver with a trembling hand—a crowded bustling reception hall, a wander from desk to desk in search of registration, a wait of some minutes on an uncomfortable bench, during which he tried to listen with sympathy to an account of the ailments of an old man beside him, he achieved an interview with a doctor, who approved his bandage while removing it. It occurred to Jonathan to plead for a short rest before being returned to the outer world.

  ‘I must catch the return coach to the north tonight,’ he began, ‘but—’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said the doctor sharply.

  Jonathan was peremptorily put to bed in a men’s ward.

  10

  Confrontation

  For the next day or two he was so entirely occupied with his own bodily sensations, which were disagreeable, that he could not take time out for thought. He was wheeled about to be subjected to X-rays, and later taken to what he assumed was an operating theatre, for he was anaesthetised and emerged sick and miserable, with a numbed feeling in his head. Nobody told him what was wrong with him or what was to be done with him, but as he ascertained by trial that his arms, legs and ribs were intact, he did not trouble himself too much but allowed himself to sink into the luxury of rest. He had asked the L.S.E. students to dispatch a telegram to his professor —greatly regret unable to attend University for a few days owing to minor accident—and left adequate funds for this; as he had visited his mother and the twins on the Saturday before the Demo, they would not expect to see or hear from him again till the following weekend. The left side of his face and head, including his left eye, was covered by bandages; fortunately he had no desire, or at any rate no energy, to read. On Tuesday afternoon, he was again carefully and skilfully transferred to a trolley, and this time wheeled off to an agreeable private room; he enquired what this meant from his nurses, one black, one white; they smiled kindly but could not tell him.