Sweet Caress

by William Boyd

  And here I saw the absolute proof that the secret march had never been secret. At the junction of Matlock Street a lorry had been turned over on its side and rudimentary barricades flanked it – barrows, packing cases, bits of old furniture. The police horses stopped, more whistles were blown and the march slowed and halted. The groups of young men standing in the alleys and side streets were much larger, now, and I saw there were women with them, also. Stepney wasn’t prepared to let this march happen. They began to chant: ‘You shall not pass! You shall not pass!’

  I took a photograph of a young woman holding a frying pan behind her back – as a potential weapon, I supposed. Then across the street I saw Lockwood hovering around a gaggle of police officers, one of them an inspector holding a megaphone.

  The inspector stepped forward and shouted through the megaphone, apparently addressing the upended lorry itself, as if it were intentionally responsible for the obstruction it posed.

  ‘I order you to remove these barricades!’ his amplified voice boomed out. ‘This is a legal procession. You have no right to stop it!’

  The reply came in the form of a roar of abuse and a hail of stones and vegetables, mainly potatoes. The marchers recoiled instinctively and backed away a few yards down White Horse Street.

  I heard the sound of running feet and turned to see more blackshirts streaming out of an alleyway. There were many more policemen as well – clearly everyone had been expecting trouble – and they began to back the march further away from the Matlock Street barricade and then turned left up Salmon Lane. I looked at my map, torn from my gazetteer. The aim was to outflank the barricade and march everyone down Maroon Street to St Dunstan’s Hall. So Maroon Street was the place to be, I thought, and decided to make my own roundabout way there so I could see the march approach down it. I ran into Belgrave Street to find people – men and women – streaming out of the houses carrying rudimentary clubs – chair legs and pickaxe handles, spindles from banisters – all racing for Maroon Street to stop the marchers before they could progress down it. I snapped a photograph of a young man in a singlet with a slingshot and a bag of marbles – no one spotted me – and ran on to St Dunstan’s.

  Astonishingly, Maroon Street was already blocked by a requisitioned tram and kerbstones were being dug up and hammered to pieces to provide potential missiles. Furniture was being hurled from the upper windows of the terraced houses as impromptu barricades were built. However, it was clear that the anti-fascist Stepneyites were now going to have to fight the police, not the blackshirt stewards. Huge reinforcements had appeared from somewhere – and there were now dozens and dozens of police constables, a thick dark-blue line of them, at the head of the march. The BUF banner had disappeared and I hoped that Faith had made herself scarce.

  The march began to move forward steadily down Maroon Street and the police constables in the front line linked arms. In the row behind them truncheons were ostentatiously raised. Heads were going to be broken. The strange thing was, I realised, as I took my photos of the police line, that all the blackshirt stewards had suddenly disappeared.

  I assumed there was going to be another flanking movement. The blackshirts were going to secure and surround the meeting hall before the march arrived, I reasoned. I ran up Ocean Street to Ben Jonson Road, paused at the junction and peered round the corner.

  About fifty blackshirts carrying leather whips and clubs were being spoken to urgently by a man in a pale grey suit. He was issuing instructions, pointing up streets, gesticulating.

  I eased myself round the corner, raised my camera and took, in quick succession, five photographs. Then one of the blackshirts saw me – shouted and pointed.

  ‘Get her!’ the man in the pale grey suit yelled hoarsely, furious. ‘Get her, now!’

  I didn’t stop to see how many came after me, I turned and fled away round the back of St Dunstan’s and into a little quadrangle of sooty streets called Spring Garden Square.

  That was my mistake. Or rather: that was my bad luck.

  I think I would have escaped but, in Spring Garden Square, about thirty blackshirts were standing around waiting for orders. I ran right into them, camera still in my hand, and stopped. They all turned as one to stare at me. I slipped my camera into my bag.

  ‘She’s Red press!’ somebody shouted from behind.

  ‘No, I’m not!’ I shouted back as the blackshirts quickly surrounded me, hemming me in as the first pursuers from Ben Jonson Road now arrived. My gaze flicked here and there – I saw the man in the pale grey suit for an instant – and I had a horrid moment of recall, thinking back to Berlin, of that night when Hanna and I ran into that group of drunken Brownshirts. Brownshirts and now blackshirts. But I had no Hanna with me today.

  Again I saw the man in the pale grey suit and I shouted over to him.

  ‘Hey! Listen! I work for an American magazine!’

  I realised almost as soon as I’d spoken that, as far as these men were concerned, I might as well have said, ‘I work for a Jewish magazine.’

  ‘Get the fucking camera!’ the man in the pale grey suit ordered.

  One of the young blackshirts grabbed my arm. He had a snub nose and flushed pink cheeks, excited, angry.

  ‘Gimme the camera, Jewish bitch!’

  ‘No!’ I shouted back. ‘Let me go!’

  I flung a glance behind me, looking for the man in the pale grey suit as if he were some potential source of reason amongst all this unreasoning anger, but he seemed to have disappeared. From beyond St Dunstan’s I could hear the baying of voices on Maroon Street as the march advanced.

  Then three of the blackshirts seized me. My bag was snatched, my camera found, opened, the film ripped out and exposed.

  Snub-Nose slapped my face, hard, enough to make my hat fall off, snapping my head round, and I cried out in pain.

  ‘Jewish Red whore!’ he shouted at me and I felt his spittle fleck my cheeks.

  I was thrown to the ground. I saw boots stamping on my camera, crushing it to pieces. I could hear police whistles, now, loud and shrill above the clamorous low baying of the mob in Maroon Street, and, ringed as I was by these young men standing above me, looking down on me, I could sense their uncertainty, their anxiety. Police were drawing near, they didn’t control the streets yet, these blackshirts, unlike the Nazis in Berlin – law and order still prevailed in London in a fragile way. I sensed their urge to turn and run, saw them look this way and that, uneasily.

  ‘Teach her a lesson, lads!’ Snub-Nose shouted as the crowd around me began to thin and drift away, seeking safety. He spat at me. Then one of his friends, almost as an afterthought, kicked me in the arm. That first kick unleashed something in the others and half a dozen or so began to hit at me with their fists as I lay on the ground, thwacking me with their clubs. I rolled into a protective ball, folding my arms around my head – don’t kick me in the head was the chant keening in my brain, don’t kick my head – but I left my back exposed, curved and defenceless and a blow to the kidney made me unfold reflexively, arching in pain and, just at that moment – vulnerable, supine – Snub-Nose kicked me in the stomach, low and very hard, and I felt something crack and give in me. I couldn’t ‘roll with the punch’ as I was worried about the spearing pain in my back and when the toe of his jackboot connected with my lower abdomen I felt it sink in deep and do its damage.

  I was now semi-conscious and blood was beginning to flow across my face from a cut above my eye. I clutched at my belly with both hands – my wounded belly – and screamed an atavistic howl of agony. It made them recoil and back away as if I had the plague.

  ‘You done it now, Lenny,’ I heard someone dimly say as the world went dark and blurry. Then there were police whistles, like shrill violent birdsong, until, all of a sudden, I was aware of Lockwood’s voice in my ear saying, ‘You’re safe, Amory, you’re safe. Don’t worry, we’re going to take you to hospital.’ And that was that.

  *

  THE BARRANDALE JOURNAL 1977


  The Maroon Street Riot – or Skirmish, or Affray, as it was variously referred to – was overshadowed two months later by the famous ‘Battle of Cable Street’ in October when thousands of Eastenders blocked and then repelled a huge march by Mosley’s blackshirts and some thousands of BUF supporters. Six thousand police were in attendance that day and fought the anti-fascist crowd. The blackshirts, thwarted, turned away from the East End of London and were ruefully dismissed by Mosley at Charing Cross Bridge and that rebuff, that defeat, it can be argued, saw the end of any real continental-style fascist movement in Britain. However virulent the message that continued to be delivered by Mosley and his acolytes, the fact was that the British Union of Fascists never won control of the streets in London and perhaps that’s what sapped their morale and saved us.

  It has to be said that I was completely unaware of anything else taking place for the rest of 1936 – such as the course of the Spanish Civil War or the abdication crisis, Roosevelt winning a second term, or the beginning of the Rome–Berlin Axis pact – as I lay in a ward in the London Hospital in Whitechapel. It was felt to be ‘too dangerous’ to move me, the doctors advised, and who was I or anyone else to disagree, given the severity of my condition after the beating I had received?

  However, Global-Photo-Watch had its pictures, all taken by Lockwood, and so, capitalising on this exclusive, they duly ran a special issue of the magazine. The world was alerted to the sinister potential of the British Union of Fascists and something of a stir ensued, I learned later. Lockwood made a name for himself and was swiftly employed as a senior photographer by the Daily Sketch but, as I say, all this passed me by at the time.

  My medical problem was clear enough: I was suffering from near-constant, stop-start bleeding from my vagina as a result of that final kick delivered by Snub-Nose Lenny. I’d lie in bed for two days without any problems, thinking everything had calmed and then wake in the morning with my sheets drenched in vivid red.

  I had three blood transfusions before the year ended but they seemed to make no difference at all. I wore a form of padded nappy-cum-elasticated-rubber-knickers device that managed to contain the bouts of bleeding and save any gross embarrassment but, as the months passed, I became steadily weaker. The doctors who stood deliberating around my bedside had no solutions for me. Diet and rest were all they could prescribe. I ate nothing but bland foods – junket, blancmange, rice and suet puddings, potato cakes and milk dumplings – as if anything tasteless and vaguely pale could stem the ceaseless sanguine flow.

  Images from the Maroon Street Riot, 1936 (photographs by Lockwood Mower).

  Nevertheless, in the spring of 1937 I was estimated to be well enough to be moved to a cottage hospital near Lewes called Persimmon Hall, closer to home. And, once there, I did seem to begin to recover my health slowly, sitting on a bench in the garden on sunny days (wearing my heavily padded rubber nappy) where I could receive visits from friends and family. I was still very underweight, despite my milky, creamy diet, anaemic and continually tired but, I told myself, I was finally on the mend. Lockwood came and recounted the full story of my rescue – and thanked me profusely for the proper job with the Sketch that had ensued after his photographs were published. Faith Postings came and told me of the motorcycle dash to Southampton with Lockwood’s photographs and negatives. My mother and Xan were my most regular visitors and even my father came by from time to time, though I sensed the quiet trembling of unease in him, despite his constant smile, unconsciously unhappy at finding himself in a hospital environment again. Dido sent a vast bouquet of flowers once a week. Greville came and made me laugh. Then Faith Postings popped in one day and told me the GPW office was being closed down.

  And then Cleve Finzi came.

  3. PERSIMMON HALL

  ‘COTTAGE’ HOSPITAL SEEMED THE wrong appellation. ‘Rural hotel’ hospital was more apt. Set in its own capacious grounds off the Lewes–Uckfield road, Persimmon Hall resembled a small country-house hotel with annexes. There was the central building, a medium-sized Georgian mansion in pale sandstone, and connected to it were two long low modern wings overlooking the terraced lawns and gardens. There were a couple of wards but most patients had their own private rooms where they were well catered for by uniformed staff (cleaners, porters, serving girls) as well as nurses.

  Through the French windows of my room in the east wing I could see the front terrace with its York stone pathways, herbaceous borders and well-placed teak benches in front of a low retaining wall. Steps led down to a couple of lawns and a lily pond. Cedars, rhododendrons and monkey-puzzle trees marked the boundary. It was all very bourgeois and calming.

  I found that the process of recovering from a long illness simplified life unimaginably. All you – the patient – had to do was endure the malady and try to become well. All further concerns – bathing, eating, communicating with the outside world – were dealt with by others offstage, as it were. I lay in bed feeling weak and tired, was fed and medicated, taken for strolls, had my padding changed when it was blood-soaked and lost consciousness punctually each night after my sleeping draught.

  And the world turned and history was made – the incendiary destruction of the Hindenburg airship, the Sino-Japanese War, the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – and also the GPW office in Shoe Lane was closed and Faith Postings paid off. My mother and Xan emptied my King’s Road flat and put my bits and pieces, my sticks of furniture, into store and wound up the lease as I lay in my bed, lethargic and uncaring. There is, it should be said, something addictive about being so useless, so dependent. One regresses. An agreeable, creeping sensation of total irresponsibility found me asking myself – sitting on a bench outside my room, on a sunny, warm day, a cup of tea in my hand – why life couldn’t always be like this. It was near ideal. I was succumbing to the potent allure of semi-invalidism.

  Months past. I lost more weight, but more slowly, despite the amount of pale pabulum I ingested. I still felt tired and every few days my body would ritually expunge a half-pint or so of blood.

  It was my mother who alerted me about Cleve. We were sitting on my bench outside my room, wrapped up because it was chilly.

  ‘I meant to say,’ she broke off from whatever anecdote she was recounting. ‘I’ve had a peculiar telephone call from an American. A Mr Finzi. He claims to know you.’

  ‘He was my employer in New York, Mother.’

  ‘Well, he wants to come and see you – here. Can you imagine?’

  I experienced the first sensation of genuine excitement in ages. I felt, for a moment, that I was fully alive again.

  ‘Fine with me,’ I said, trying to keep the smile off my face. ‘Be a distraction.’

  Cleve came to Persimmon Hall. It was a Wednesday morning in June and I was in my tartan dressing gown, sitting on my bench, looking out over the lily pond and the South Downs beyond, when I saw him being led by a nurse along the pathway from the main building.

  I sensed that old heart-lurch, the weakening spine-shudder – and then rallied.

  He was wearing a three-piece navy blue suit with a brilliant red tie – with the usual tiepin securing it to his shirt. His thick hair was oiled flat and he looked very tanned, as if he’d been sailing for weeks on some sunlit ocean. Absurdly handsome, I thought. Too handsome, really – it was something of a joke.

  He kissed my cheek and sat on the bench beside me, staring at me, taking me in.

  ‘May I take your hand?’

  ‘There would be terrible gossip. All right, go on, let’s risk it.’

  He took my hand in both of his.

  ‘You look well, Amory. If a little too thin, I must say.’

  ‘Right. Not true, but compliment duly paid. You, however, look disgustingly well.’

  We talked a little more about my state of health, of the general air of bafflement surrounding my condition. I explained that I had seen a dozen doctors, I had had X-rays taken, that I was now on a regime of concentrated iron pills but something profound had ha
ppened during that attack, that last kick administered by Snub-Nose Lenny, that had deeply injured me, and my body still hadn’t recovered.

  At this he looked pained and unhappy. He stood up, thrust his hands in his trouser pockets and paced about.

  ‘I have to say this, Amory. I feel it’s all my fault, somehow.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘I pressed you to go on that march. I insisted. Look what’s happened in the world since. It wasn’t important. Why was I so obsessed with it?’

  ‘You weren’t to know that,’ I said. ‘It was just rotten bad luck. What if I’d been hit by a bus? Would you blame yourself?’

  ‘It was because you were carrying a camera.’

  ‘If I’d turned up another street it wouldn’t have happened. It was just bad luck.’

  He sat down and took my hand again.

  ‘Bless you for saying that. But I can’t help feeling that my . . .’ He searched for a word. ‘My eagerness. That my urging had—’

  ‘Nothing to do with it.’

  He sagged. Smiled. Kissed my forehead.

  ‘Am I allowed to smoke a cigarette out here?’

  ‘As long as I can have a puff.’

  He smoked a cigarette – I shared it – and he said he wanted to send a specialist down from London, an eminent gynaecologist. Cleve was worried that a diet of white food and iron pills wasn’t good enough, wasn’t modern medicine.

  ‘Well, of course,’ I said. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  When he left, he said, ‘As soon as you’re well, we’ll reopen the office. Get you back to work. Get you taking photographs again.’

  Sir Victor Purslane had overseen the delivery of some dozens of babies to minor members of the royal family and major aristocrats and charged twenty guineas per half-hour for a consultation in his Wigmore Street rooms. He was very tall and thin, with the slight stoop that very tall men affect. He was bald and his grey side-hair was swept back in two oiled wings above his ears. An elegant, expensively suited, faultlessly polite man, if not handsome – he had small watery baggy eyes.