A Summer in the Twenties

by Peter Dickinson

  This was of course sound Marxist theory, but Tom had arrived at the conclusion not through his recent reading but by what he felt as an intuitive relationship with the crowd beneath him. He was beginning to try and harness reason to his intuition, to work out what actual events might help the counter-movement he had imagined, when suddenly the long-threatened climax of the evening seemed to rush closer.

  For twenty minutes there had seemed to be no real change. The hoses danced their slow rhythm, but the smoke grew neither more nor less. Then, without any warning, one whole roof which had seemed from where Tom stood to be clear of the fires collapsed with a tearing crash. Large objects, half aflame, cartwheeled skywards. All the jets wavered, some failed and when they renewed themselves they seemed fewer. The fire itself gasped, rumbled and continued with a louder roaring. The crowd’s response was a cheer, long and mocking, which died only slowly away and then hushed completely as a bell clanged beyond the wall and an ambulance nosed out of the gates and accelerated away. At least they did not cheer or jeer that.

  Tom had turned back to watch the fire when Mr. Barnes tapped at his shoulder and pointed along the road. He looked and saw nothing more interesting that a fresh reinforcement of police, including half a dozen on horseback. That was reassuring. He was about to make some kind of neutral comment to Mr. Barnes when he realised that there was an unfamiliar expression on the pleasant old face, one of unmistakable hatred. Tom had never heard Mr. Barnes swear, but his present mutterings were clearly at least substitutes for foul language, broken off only to shout the name of one of the men below. A head turned. Mr. Barnes pointed. The man craned, raised a thumb in acknowledgment and nudged his neighbour. Awareness spread from that centre, a visible change in the nap of the crowd as heads turned and pressures shifted. It was possible to see the same change beginning and spreading from other points further off, until the whole crowd was looking not at the fire but at the approaching horsemen. Even the sound made by the strikers changed from inchoate mass noises to individual shouts and jeers arising from a general watchful silence.

  ‘Now there’ll be trouble,’ said Mr. Barnes. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

  There was no hint of any irony, no apparent acknowledgment that what they had already seen would in most people’s eyes count as trouble enough.

  The leading horseman bent from his saddle to consult two senior policemen who had been directing operations from the middle of the road. One pointed almost at Tom as he answered. The horseman straightened and gestured to two of the others, who walked their horses forward until they reached the wedge of men who had pushed through along the warehouse wall.

  ‘Move back there,’ they called. ‘Move back.’

  Evidently their intention was to straighten and thus shorten the line across the street, but what they were asking was impossible. The men who composed the wedge were jammed between the warehouse wall and the line of police and held there by the crowd behind them, who were well out of range of any pressure the horsemen could exert. For all that the two men continued for a while riding their horses up and down the line and shouting their single monotonous command, like clockwork toys which having been wound up mindlessly perform one series of actions until their springs run down. The crowd, realising their impotence, began to jeer. The mounted men signalled to the restraining police to stand aside and breasted their horses into the crowd near the apex of the wedge, pushing the line back a few feet but effectively lengthening the wedge along the wall. The crowd yelled and hooted. One horseman drew and raised his riot stick, but at this point the leader of the mounted police rode over, studied the position for a moment and called the other two back. The men jeered and cat-called as the line resumed its shape.

  Now the six horsemen formed up side by side, again at the base of the wedge but facing more towards the warehouse. They drew their sticks and laid them across their saddle-bows. Reined hard back but urged forward by their riders’ heels the horses came in like tanks, slow and massive, with jerky tittupping steps. The policemen holding the line moved aside. Clearly the idea was to sever the wedge from its base, contain it while the men behind were forced to give ground, and then push the men who composed it back into the space thus gained. Two riders had their sticks half-raised, though the strikers before them were now doing their best to move out of their way. A howl of protest rose as the first stick beat down, though as far as Tom could see it had been the equivalent of a shot aimed into the air, a blow intended to do no worse than glance off a shoulder. The men directly in front of the horses were now struggling frantically to get clear, but at first were unable to do so as the horsemen had failed to make their intentions clear to the police at the apex of the wedge, who strained ever more fiercely to give not one inch to the increasing pressure. Tom glimpsed one of the senior officers hurrying across to take charge, but then, almost at his own feet, a man went down before the horses and wallowed, screaming with fright, among the hooves.

  Tom yelled at him to lie still but his voice was lost in the clamour. The man continued to thresh. Tom was flexing to slither down and try and drag him out when the crowd to his left suddenly gave way, those at the back even starting to run off along the street. Two of the horsemen moved into the gap while the others backed their horses clear. The man on the ground got to his feet and stood shaking his head and swearing. Without any pressure from the police the thirty or forty men who had composed the wedge retreated along the pavement.

  The skirmish was over. Indeed this episode on the flank seemed to be recognised by both sides as a turning point. Right across the road the line began to give. The policemen unlinked their arms, turned and started to make the kind of signal with which they would have controlled some peaceable gathering. Group by group the men at the back of the crowd broke off and walked away, frustration and despair speaking from every back.

  Mysteriously Tom found he now shared some of their mood. Not that he had wanted the confrontation to become more violent, but still there was a sense that an expected climactic event was missing. The drums had rolled but the performance had not taken place. It ought to have been a relief, but it wasn’t. He had no doubt that the retreating men felt the same, though much more personally and deeply.

  He was gazing after them when a hard object rapped against his shin and he turned to see that one of the mounted policemen had ridden alongside the window and nudged him with his stick.

  ‘Off there,’ said the man. ‘Move along now.’

  For a moment Tom stared, astonished. He had felt so unable to join the men’s participation in the events of the last half hour that it took him a blink of time to accept that others might not recognise the distinction. The policeman gave the slight frown of awareness of something not quite in order, but automatically hefted his stick for a firmer nudge.

  ‘Hold it,’ said Tom. ‘I’m going. Give us a bit of room.’

  This time he was aware of the man’s reaction to the unexpected accent, but had no wish to try and pull social rank and be allowed to stay. He let the horse sidle clear and jumped to the pavement, then turned to help Mr. Barnes down. They moved off together, almost the last driblet of the retreating tide.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr. Barnes. ‘What do you think of that, Mr. Hankey? What do you think of that?’

  ‘It could have become very nasty.’

  ‘Could have! Could have! Riding the lads down! Hitting at us with their sticks!’

  ‘I got the impression they weren’t hitting to hurt. That chap who fell got up all right, as far as I could see.’

  ‘They’d no call to bring in the horses. No call at all.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t agree with you. I mean the foot police might have held the line, but the people in charge couldn’t be sure. On the whole I thought they managed things pretty well.’

  Mr. Barnes merely grunted in disgust.

  ‘Why,’ said Tom. ‘Can’t you just imagine what it would have been like if the men had got through the gates? They damn nearly did at one
moment. Suppose your friends had been milling around inside there when that shed collapsed . . .’

  Again Mr. Barnes merely grunted disagreement. Somehow the sound, refusing as it did the rationalities of human discourse, expressed a deeper and blinder intransigence than any words could have done. Exasperated beyond bearing Tom stopped, took Mr. Barnes by the shoulder and literally shook him.

  ‘I can’t understand you!’ he cried. ‘You’re an intelligent man, but when it comes to seeing anyone else’s point of view you simply close your mind. You make all the allowances in the world for your own side and you expect everyone else to do the same, even when it comes to throwing stones at firemen who are only doing their job. Can’t you see, the policemen back there were in the right this time! In the right, I tell you! It was nothing like what happened at Marfleet Strand!’

  Mr. Barnes looked up into his face with a calm and stony gaze, then turned his head with slow emphasis to stare at Tom’s hand on his shoulder. Tom let go. Mr. Barnes brushed the place several times with his other hand, turned and walked on in silence up the street. Obstinately Tom fell in beside him, determined not to make the breach unmendable, but at the same time no longer to compromise with his true feelings.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have shouted at you like that. It’s just . . . I wish you could see how it looks from the outside, Mr. Barnes.’

  ‘Aye, that’s it, Mr. Hankey. From the outside. You intend well, I’ve never a doubt. You go off to York races with your friends. Best forget about us.’

  ‘No question of that.’

  Mr. Barnes did not reply. The brief halt had dropped them still further behind the retreat, finally separating them from the feeling of belonging to the crowd as a definable entity. Indeed there were now a few small groups of men going in the other direction, presumably returning to watch the fire as sightseers for want of anything more amusing. Others, ahead, broke from the line of march and filtered away down the alleys that linked High Street with the road used by the fire engines. Even at a distance the attitude, pace and gestures of every man expressed frustration and defeat. Tom returned to his thoughts about Ricardo. His recent reading of Bolshevik tracts and pamphlets told him that this was exactly the state of affairs for which the revolutionaries aimed. The longer the equilibrium of the strike could be maintained, the worse the sepsis would become. In a sense the weird mass will which had gathered the men to the fire had been wise. It had known that they needed an event, a happening, not necessarily connected with their grievances, but somehow symbolic of them, sudden and dramatic, that would change the way they saw themselves and the world around them. What in fact had occurred was the worst possible result, or from Ricardo’s point of view the best—an event promised and then withdrawn. Tom had no idea what that event might have been, or what could now take its place, but again the thought came to him that it might be possible to replace it with an alternative which would provide the strikers with what they wanted but at the same time symbolise something quite other than Ricardo and his kind would wish.

  His thoughts were broken as they passed the first of the side-alleys by a hesitation in Mr. Barnes’s stride, which drew his attention to a mysterious racket from the further end of the alley. It was mostly human voices, with occasional bangs and thuds. Add a few barks and horn-calls and it might have been the sound of a hunt at the kill. Mr. Barnes looked at him for the first time since the argument.

  ‘Better take a look, Mr. Hankey,’ he said, speaking with great formality. ‘We don’t want any arrests if we can help it.’

  The alley itself was narrow, dark and featureless, but the scene at the end of it was sharp in the fading light. One man stood in a melodramatic pose of exhortation, arm raised, head and neck straining into a yell, as if contorted by a cartoonist to embody the anarchy of violence. Half screened by the wall other men heaved at some object out of sight. A silver missile flashed through the air, burst on the pavement with a splintering of glass and rolled out of view. Men whooped. A woman screamed. Tom broke into a run.

  He had at the rational level no idea what he would find as he hurled round the corner, yet it was as if his body knew and was ready. The Lagonda stood slewed across the road, surrounded by a dozen men. One door lay on the cobbles. The near headlamp was gone. Two of the men were wrenching at the other lamp. Tom let his rush slam him into the flank of the nearer man, knocking him and his companion sprawling. The driver’s door hung open and a man was leaning through it, egged on by another. Tom charged down the flank of the car, stiff-armed the second man away as he turned, gripped the first by his collar and hoicked him violently out, not troubling to look and see how he fell. But even in the impetus of fury and fright he had realised that the man had merely been trying to wrench the gear-lever out. Judy was not in the car after all.

  He turned, gasping, his back to the Lagonda, and saw her at once, cowering into the doorway of a shop, her knuckles to her mouth. His move towards her was blocked by the men who gathered to confront him.

  ‘Why, ’tis the Honourable Hankeigh-Pankeigh,’ said one.

  ‘Bugger off, mate,’ said another. ‘We’re not doing you any harm.’

  ‘No,’ said Tom.

  The men growled and began to edge forward. Tom braced himself. If they closed in, he would try to break through to the right and go and look after Judy as best he could, leaving the car as a sacrifice; but he refused simply to slink away without any attempt to resist.

  ‘Bugger off while you’ve the chance, mate,’ said the man again.

  Tom brought his hands up and balanced forward onto the balls of his feet. The men hesitated.

  ‘Let me through, Mr. Hankey,’ said Mr. Barnes from inside the car.

  Tom edged to one side. Mr. Barnes climbed placidly out and stood on the running board.

  ‘Let’s have no fighting, lads,’ he said. ‘Let’s have no arrests. We don’t want them putting things in the papers against us. I’m surprised at you, smashing up motors. Our fight’s with the owners, not the public.’

  ‘’Tis a Brantingham car, Ned.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘That Miss Julyan driving it. Ran down Frankie here. Show him thy leg, Frankie.’

  A fattish young man, cringeing with shyness, was pushed forward to display a torn trouser and scraped calf, obviously sore but not serious. Mr. Barnes hesitated.

  ‘No one along of her?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  Tom looked over the men’s heads. Judy had vanished. The crisis too was clearly over. The men, even if left to do so, would no longer have any relish in the destruction of the Lagonda. He felt an almost academic interest in Mr. Barnes’s difficulty—if a fire engine is fair game, why should not a Brantingham car be? Moreover it had run down one of the strikers.

  ‘I expect they came charging out of the alley and she couldn’t stop,’ he muttered.

  Mr. Barnes nodded and faced the men.

  ‘Still and all . . .’ he began.

  ‘Now then,’ interrupted a voice of unmistakable type. ‘What’s up here, then?’

  The men drew back. Several turned away, trying to compose themselves into convincing groups of bystanders who had had no connection with the destruction of the Lagonda. Three policemen moved stolidly up, but before they halted Judy darted from behind them, ran to Tom’s side and buried her face in his jacket, gasping against sobs. Tom put his arm round her shoulders and turned to the policemen.

  ‘There’s been a bit of an accident,’ he said. ‘I think Miss Tarrant here must have been driving down the road when these men came rushing out of that alley. She hadn’t time to stop and she knocked one of them down, but I don’t think he’s badly hurt. Are you, Frankie?’

  Frankie’s companions spoke for him in grunts and murmurs, confirming that his wound was negligible. The policemen studied the car, unamazed.

  ‘She must have hit something when she skidded,’ said Tom. ‘That would account for the rest of the damage.’

  ‘
It’s not what the lady told us, sir.’

  ‘I don’t think Miss Tarrant will want to press charges. Will you, Judy?’

  She raised her head, amazed. He frowned warning. She pulled herself together and stood clear of him.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said brightly. ‘Of course not. I was probably a bit hysterical after the accident. I expect I meant I was afraid they were so angry they might smash my car up, don’t you see?’

  The policemen looked at one another, looked again at the Lagonda and sighed a corporate official sigh.

  ‘All right, then,’ said one of them. ‘Move along there now. Anyone hangs about we’ll pull in for obstructing the highway.’

  The strikers, mostly looking a little dazed after waking from the trance of violence, nodded and began to move away. One or two made tentative gestures at touching their caps to Judy, but despite that the old sullenness of frustration invested them all once more. The policemen stood back and watched as Judy climbed into the car, started the engine and backed along the far pavement. The catch of her door would not hold and the door swung to and fro as she manoeuvred. Tom picked up the loose door. Judy came across the road with a friendly smile.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it’s as bad as it looks. It should get us home, provided no one stops me for driving with only one light.’

  ‘Very good, miss,’ said one of the policemen.

  The three of them strolled off, also in Tom’s eyes imbued with an air of expectation denied. Above them the smoke-cloud brooded, beginning to lose its distinction against the general darkening of the sky. Judy switched her smile to Mr. Barnes.