Death in Hyde Park scs-10

by Robin Paige

  Of course, Yuri did not work just for the Cause, although that was uppermost in his loyalties. He also worked for love, for the love of a female comrade named Charlotte Conway, who was the editor of the Clarion and, in everyone’s estimation, the most dedicated member of the group. As he strode purposefully through the Park, he thought with pleasure of the look on Lottie’s face when she learned that it had been he, Yuri, who had carried out this momentous work, who had rid the world of But Yuri Messenko did not finish his thought, or his task, either. He had barely reached Hyde Park Corner when it seemed that someone called his name. He turned, tripped over a stone, and pitched forward upon his satchel. Instantly, it exploded, the blast ripping Yuri into little pieces and scattering them across the ground, under the triumphant sword and victorious gaze of the bronze Achilles.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I felt a strong desire to free myself from all the ideas, customs, and prejudices which usually influence my class, to throw myself into the life and the work of the masses. Thus it was that I worked hard to learn how to compose and print, that I might be of use to the Cause of Anarchism in the most practical manner of all-the actual production of its literature.

  Isabel Meredith, A Girl Among the Anarchists, 1903

  Charlotte Conway pulled the sheet of paper out of her typewriter, put it on the desk in front of her, and reached for her pencil to make revisions. It was nearly 10 A.M. on Wednesday morning, and she needed to finish the article-the story of Yuri Messenko’s funeral the day before-in time for Ivan to set up and print it. The Anarchist Clarion was scheduled to come out on Friday, although things were always in such chaos in the newspaper’s office that to get it out at all seemed a miracle.

  Charlotte reached for a loose hairpin and pinned it through the mop of dark hair piled carelessly on top of her head. She had been astonished when she heard what had happened in Hyde Park on the previous Saturday. She had not known Yuri especially well-no better, that is, than she knew Ivan and Pierre, who also worked for the Clarion, or any of the other comrades in their Hampstead Road cell. Since the upheavals in Spain and France, attendance at meetings had been irregular and people kept to themselves, fearing that they might be turned in by one of the police spies that swarmed everywhere. But the Yuri who had run errands and helped Ivan with the press had seemed far more idealistic than militant, and while he might not have been very bright, he had always seemed much more interested in changing people’s lives for the better than in blowing things up. But one never knew what lay hidden in another’s heart. Obviously, there had been a streak of dark violence somewhere within Yuri’s depths that she had never glimpsed.

  Charlotte took out a cigarette, lit it, and leaned back in the rickety wooden chair, turning to glance out the grimy dormer window of the loft she used for her office, overlooking Hampstead Road. If those who had encouraged the boy-and she felt sure that trusting, dim-witted Yuri had not conceived or carried out the plot on his own-had imagined that an explosion on Coronation Day would encourage the workers to rise up against the rich and powerful, they had been very wrong. Two days after Yuri’s death, The Times had written, “Everywhere, the Anarchists are hated. To step out on the street is to encounter a storm of abuse heaped on Anarchist heads. Terrorism is not the way to a brave new world, and those who practice it only damage themselves and their cause.”

  Charlotte rose and went to the window, gazing down at the stream of horse-drawn vehicles and motorcars passing along rainy Hampstead Road, nearly three stories below. She had joined the Anarchist movement some ten years before, when she was still in her teens and full of fury against the suffering and injustice she saw around her. Now, halfway through her twenties and with a decade’s experience behind her, she still believed in the movement’s purposes and was committed to doing all that she could to achieve them, but she knew in her heart that The Times was right. Terrorism was not the way to a brave new world. Attempting to blow up the King and Queen had been a terrible idea, and was bound to turn all London-all England, for that matter-against them.

  Yet despite her cautions, Ivan and Pierre had insisted on trying to transform poor Yuri into a martyr. What few bits of his body the police had found and scooped up had been placed in a coffin, which was sealed shut and balanced across two chairs draped with red and black in the parlor of the meeting house a few blocks down Hampstead. But when Adam, Ivan, and the others carried the coffin out to the hearse, they had been met by an unruly crowd, booing and throwing rotten vegetables, scarcely restrained by a few policemen, who obviously had orders to let the crowd do all the damage it would. Another hostile crowd waited at St. John’s Wood, where Yuri was to be buried. Stepping forward to make a speech, Ivan had got no further than “Fellow Anarchists, we are here today to bury a brave man,” when he was rushed. A cordon of police pushed the crowd back, and the small group of mourners saw Yuri’s remains lowered into the grave without even the comfort of a revolutionary song. Charlotte, her eyes swimming with tears for the poor lad who had died in such a terrible way, had whispered a few words of farewell, and then made her way through the jeering crowd. She had long ago learned to keep on the lookout for police, but she was too upset to notice the stocky, bowler-hatted man with his hands in his pockets, his glance sharply predatory, his thin lips pressed tight together.

  “Well, there you are,” Adam said, poking his blond head through the opening in the floor, where a wooden ladder led up from the second-floor print shop below. “How soon will the article be ready? Ivan has almost finished setting up the forms.” His pale blue eyes were serious. “You know how nervous Ivan can be-and today he’s worse than usual. He says somebody’s been watching him. Pierre says he’s being watched, too-but of course, Pierre always seems to feel a certain paranoia.” He paused, frowning. “What about you, Lottie? Have you been followed?”

  Charlotte gave a small nod, not wanting to worry Adam, who had a tendency to be protective. Being dogged by the police wasn’t new to her-and it wasn’t just the British police, either. French and Russian agents swarmed all over London, and because the Clarion attracted the most radical of the Anarchists, it often attracted their attention, too. Since Ivan and Pierre were also being followed, perhaps someone thought that the three of them had something to do with Yuri’s bomb-that they were all involved in a plot. It was a sobering thought.

  But Charlotte didn’t have time to worry about that now. “Tell Ivan I’ll be finished in fifteen minutes,” she said, going back to her desk.

  “And then we’ll go out and get some lunch,” Adam said. “I have to be back at the union office at one.” He lifted his hand, gave her an affectionate smile, and went back down the ladder.

  Charlotte sat down and pulled on her cigarette, thinking that if it were not for Adam, her world would be rather bleak. He wasn’t an Anarchist-in fact, his work for the railway union made him what Pierre sneeringly called a “reformist”-and he lacked Ivan’s disciplined hatred of the ruling class. But he believed that the way forward was to put as much power as possible into the hands of the laboring man, and he saw no contradiction between his work for the railway union and her work for the Clarion. He supported her, and worried about her, and was always there to lend a hand when the newspaper was going to press. If she had believed in marriage, Adam would have made a wonderful husband, but she felt that marriage was part of the bourgeois plot to confine women to their homes and keep them under control, and But that wouldn’t get the article corrected. Charlotte stubbed out her cigarette, picked up her pencil, and within ten minutes had finished the piece. She had been only a few days past her twentieth birthday when she became editor of the Clarion, and in the intervening five years, she had grown quite competent as a working journalist, able to crank out stories quickly. Of course, her work involved more than just writing. She’d had to learn how to set type, manage the small handpress, and deal with the many odd people-mostly men, many of them foreigners, and all of them revolutionaries of one stripe or another-who found their way to
the Clarion’s office at the rear of Mrs. Battle’s green-grocer’s shop. She had also learned to make sense of the impassioned but irrational rhetoric that poured in a constant flood across her desk, submitted by any revolutionary who thought he could persuade the masses to overthrow the world’s governments. It was her skillful pen that refashioned these often indecipherable diatribes into something that might actually be accessible to the ordinary reader.

  It was hard work, damned hard work, if she were honest with herself, and required her to do a great many things that a bourgeois woman, safe-harbored by husband and household, could never think of doing. She traveled frequently alone by rail and bus and bicycle, often at late hours, to attend meetings of political organizations, some of whose members, like Pierre, were more than a little mad. She had no time to pay attention to her hair or dress, and she slept many nights-when she slept at all-on a pallet on the floor of her loft-office, Ivan and the others working, drinking, and singing in the print shop below. And in addition to printing and distributing two thousand copies of the Clarion each month, she wrote and printed leaflets and booklets, helped to organize meetings, and occasionally found food and lodging for visiting foreigners. In this way, she felt, she was doing practical work for the Anarchist cause, work that might otherwise not be done, or done well.

  Charlotte picked up the article and was heading for the ladder when she was startled by the sudden rattling thud of a door and the sound of glass breaking. “Where is your warrant?” she heard Adam demand angrily. “What gives you the right to-” And then there was a deafening metallic crash.

  Charlotte caught her breath. She knew that sound, for this wasn’t the first time she’d heard it. The Clarion was being raided by the police, and someone had sent the heavy type form crashing to the floor, the loose lead type spilling everywhere. In a matter of seconds, a detective’s head and shoulders would pop through the opening in the floor, and Charlotte would be placed under arrest. It wouldn’t be the first time for that, either, and she had the awful suspicion that, given the violent anti-Anarchist mood sweeping the city, she wouldn’t get off with a fine and a stern lecture from the Police Court magistrate, as she had on other occasions. This time, she would go to jail, and her keepers would probably throw away the key.

  There was another, muffled shout from Adam and a string of violent French curses from Pierre, and Charlotte knew instinctively what she had to do. Without hesitation, she stepped to the dormer window and pushed up the sash. Ignoring the rain that stung her face, she swung her left leg over the sill. On either side of the window, the slate roof sloped sharply downward for several feet, until it ended at a copper gutter. She gathered her bulky woolen skirt with a muttered curse (this would have been so much easier in trousers), swung her right leg nimbly over the sill, and eased herself onto the gutter, facing the roof. She could feel it give slightly, but it seemed firm enough to bear her weight-at least, that’s what she had thought when she’d watched the workmen putting it up the year before and decided that it might provide an escape if there was ever a fire in the building.

  Now, balanced precariously, she moved carefully to the left, leaning forward at the waist, her left hand flat against the roof. With her right hand, she managed to yank the window sash down far enough so that it would not be apparent that she had escaped through it-although she seriously doubted that a man with as little imagination as a Scotland Yard detective would dream that a mere woman would clamber onto a roof three floors above the street.

  Three floors. Giddily, Charlotte pushed the thought out of her mind. If she gave in to womanish fears, she’d be lost. Her mind carefully blank, her lower lip pinched tightly between her teeth and her palms flat against the wet and sooty slate, she inched awkwardly along the gutter. She had gone only a few feet when she heard a brusque shout from within, the sash was flung up, and a head popped out. Fearing discovery, Charlotte held her breath and pressed herself tight against the roof, her heart pounding like a trip-hammer.

  “Well, she didn’t jump,” a disgusted male voice said. “Leastwise, I don’t see ’er down there. She must’ve sneaked out.”

  “Don’t see ’ow,” a second man said, puzzled. “We’ve ’ad the entrances watched all morning. Inspector Ashcraft was most partic’lar about that. She came in at seven and ’asn’t come out since.”

  “Well, she ain’t ’ere,” the first man said roughly, “unless she’s learnt ’ow to make ’erself invis’ble. Or maybe she’s learnt to fly. Ashcraft’ll be in a ravin’ paddy-wack about losin’ ’er.” Furiously, he slammed the window.

  Pulling in her breath and willing herself not to look down to the street so dizzyingly far below, Charlotte began to move toward the corner of the building, sliding one foot at a time along the gutter, first her left, then her right, then her right again. It was hard going, made even more difficult by the rain that slicked the slate and the wet hair that fell across her eyes and Her foot struck an obstruction. There was a fierce squawk and a wild flurry, and suddenly something with beak and claws flew into her face, beating at her with hard wings. Terrified by the unexpected attack, she raised her arm to ward it off, almost losing her balance and pitching over backward. But as she swallowed a scream, she realized what had happened. A pigeon had built its nest in the gutter and she had dislodged it with her foot, sending nest and eggs hurtling down to smash in the street-as she would have smashed, if she had fallen, too.

  For another moment she clung to the roof, breathless and giddy, the sour taste of fear in her mouth. But since she couldn’t go back, she had to go on. One foot, another foot, another-and in a few minutes she had reached the corner of the building. She looked to her left and saw, with a vast relief, that she had remembered correctly. This building and its four-story neighbor were only a few feet apart, and she was almost within arm’s reach of the iron fire-ladder that was bolted to the other building’s brick wall. Almost. All she had to do was lean out across that horrid, empty space, reach for the ladder, and…

  Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut, her breath coming hard, the blood pulsing in her throat. The ladder was a full yard away, at least a foot out of reach. Only a foot, she thought, paralyzed with fright, but it might as well be a mile. She couldn’t reach the ladder unless she let go of the roof. And no matter how hard she willed herself to relinguish her grip, her fingers clung to From the street below, she heard the shrill of a police whistle and more loud shouting, and saw two uniformed policemen wrestling Adam out of the building and into a police van. Now! she thought. It’s now, or not at all! Closing her mind to her fear, she turned toward the ladder and launched herself across the void, her right hand grasping the rusty iron, her right foot reaching, slipping, leaving her swinging like a circus wire-artist above the emptiness.

  And then her right foot found a rung, and then her left, and she was clinging to the ladder, then stepping smartly down, praying that her foot would not catch in the hem of her blasted skirt. A few moments later, she was safely on the sidewalk, to the delight of a strongly-built, dark-haired young man in a coal stoker’s singlet, worn trousers, and a green cloth cap, who had apparently been watching her descend. As she dropped lightly to the ground from the last rung of the ladder, the man gave her a look that seemed full of recognition, and she saw that he had very blue eyes, deeply fringed with black lashes. Then, his eyes still fastened on hers, he grinned engagingly and tipped his cap. His hair was dark, too, tousled and rakish.

  Charlotte felt the immediate attraction between them as if it were an electrical charge. But this was no time for such things. She threw him a dazzling smile, put a warning finger to her lips, and disappeared into the crowd.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Getting into print: advice to young writers”

  Don’t quit your job in order to write unless there is no one dependent on you. Fiction pays best of all, and when it is of fair quality is more easily sold… Avoid the unhappy ending, the harsh, the brutal, the tragic, the horrible-if you care to see in print
the things you write… And keep a notebook. Travel with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than grey matter, and lead pencil marking endures longer than memory.

  Jack London, The Editor Magazine, 1903

  Jack London stripped off his coal-smudged stoker’s jacket and splashed water from the basin over his face. Then he put on a clean white shirt and exchanged the clumsy leather brogans for his own soft leather shoes. With a sigh of relief, he pulled out a flask of gin, took a swig, and dropped down on one of the two narrow beds, surveying his surroundings.

  The small upstairs room was rudely furnished and uncomfortable, but adequate for his purposes. It had been found for him by members of the Social Democratic Federation in the home of an East End police detective, an irony that was not lost on Jack, who during his vagabond days had developed an intense dislike of all policemen. But he was in something of a dilemma, for his research-he was conducting what he thought of as a sociological study-required him to go about the East End dressed in ragged, dirty clothes, while other business would take him out in his ordinary clothing. A decent landlady would be apt to be suspicious of a gentleman leading a double life, while lodgings in a house where nobody gave a damn might not be entirely safe. And Jack needed a safe house, a refuge where he could sleep comfortably, work on his book, and go and come as he pleased.

  So when the S.D.F. had found him a lodging in the home of Detective John Palmer, known to East Enders as Johnny Upright, Jack had jumped at it. The room-which contained two beds, a table, and two chairs-was at the back of the house and had its own private stair. It was, of course, a far cry from his country home in the Piedmont Hills of California, a large redwood bungalow with a panoramic view of San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Pacific Ocean. There, he entertained his artistic friends and lived the lavishly hedonistic life that was entirely suited to a successful writer. If this luxury seemed at odds with his rough, rugged stories of life-and-death adventure in the wilds of the Yukon Territory or his well-known stance as a Socialist who advocated the abolition of the class system-well, so be it. Jack had left school to work in a cannery at fourteen, and had known a decade of poverty since. Now that his writing had begun to bring in money, he deserved (he felt) to revel in his prosperity, although he somehow managed to spend more than he earned and was continually in debt.