The Proprietor's Daughter

by Lewis Orde

  “The one in the middle is Alan Venables,” Katherine told Sid Hall as they stood at the front of a large crowd of spectators. “The heavy man with the Union Jack, he’s Trevor Burns. And the bald chap with the other flag, that’s Neville Sharpe.”

  “Really fancy flag,” Hall said. “What is it?”

  A police sergeant, one of the very large police contingent on duty at the rally, identified the pennant. “That’s the British Patriotic League’s flag. Gaudy piece of work, isn’t it?”

  “Thanks.” Hall raised his Nikon, looked through the telephoto lens, and captured the image of the League’s leaders.

  “Do you expect trouble?” Katherine asked the sergeant. She nodded toward a double police line, behind which opponents of the League had gathered.

  “We always expect trouble, miss, but the rain’s keeping tempers cool at the moment. Wish we’d get some thunder and lightning as well, then they might all pack up and go home.”

  Katherine turned back to the League rally. She had no doubt that these were the same young men she had seen at soccer stadiums, and on the special trains around the country. The League had recruited, and today the recruits had loyally answered the summons.

  On the platform, flanked by the flags of his country and his extremist movement, Alan Venables began to speak. His voice was loud and clear, the delivery crisp. “All through history, great nations have been racially pure. Great white nations, great yellow nations, and” — the conjunction was weighted, pulling the listeners into the next phrase — “even great black nations. But there has never been, and there will never be, a great mongrel nation! That is what we, in Britain, are in danger of becoming! A third-rate, amoral, mongrel nation!”

  On cue, the two thousand League members began to applaud. Chants of “Britain . . . white!” pierced the rain. Clenched-fist salutes speared the air.

  “Our glory, our history, and our heritage have all been based on the white race,” Venables continued. “Our downfall, our slump toward the garbage heap of the world, has only come about since we began diluting our purity with colored immigration! They do not belong here, and if we are to survive, they must not remain here!” Venables folded his arms across his chest and listened to the growing adulation.

  At the first signs of it fading, he held up a hand. The applause stopped immediately. When he spoke again, his voice was soft, yet each word was loaded with meaning for the faithful. “The Great in Great Britain was never supposed to be the meaningless noun it has become. It was always intended to be a proud and true adjective. An adjective to describe Britain’s place in the world. We have the opportunity now to rectify the damage committed by generations of traitorous politicians.”

  Venables’s voice began to rise, a carefully contrived ascent toward hysteria. “We have the opportunity now to be the generation that makes Great an adjective once again!” The League chairman’s right hand snapped into a clenched-fist salute. “We are British! We are Patriots! We are” — two thousand soaking wet young men joined in a rousing chorus — “the British Patriotic League!”

  Before the roar could fade, it was eclipsed by a thunderous outpouring of rage. The double line of police broke. Hundreds of counterdemonstrators poured through the gap. The League’s formation scattered. Flags became spears. Chains and brass knuckles appeared. A bottle flew through the air, trailing smoke behind it. Katherine saw the bottle smash against the side of a police car and explode in a burst of orange flame.

  “Sid!” Above the tumult, she heard her own panic-stricken voice. “Let’s get back to the car and get out of here!” She grabbed his arm and tried to pull him toward the white Triumph Stag parked only fifty yards away.

  The photographer shrugged aside her plea with a curt “Wait a damned minute!” He had his camera up, aiming right into the middle of the battleground which the street had become. Police with dogs jumped from waiting vans, but there was nothing they could do to control a situation that had gotten out of hand with terrifying swiftness.

  “For God’s sake, Sid!” Katherine screamed. “How many more photographs do you need?” Two more Molotov cocktails arced through the air. One exploded harmlessly against a brick wall. The other, thrown by some herculean arm, soared over the heads of the crowd to land in the middle of a line of parked cars.

  Again, Katherine tried. She knocked the camera away from Hall’s face. “Come on! Let’s get out of here!”

  Hall swung around. The movement, possibly, saved his life. A half brick that would surely have smashed into the center of his face caught him a glancing blow on the cheek. He fell to the ground, dazed. Katherine screamed his name. She knelt beside him, trying to staunch the flow of blood with the silk scarf she had worn beneath her leather coat. Her anguished cries for help went unheeded; the police had their hands full.

  A series of explosions came from the line of cars where the firebomb had landed, gas tanks erupting to fuel the inferno even more. Katherine heard sirens. Police, fire, ambulance, she had no idea. Then came another noise — the revving of a car engine, the frenzied, nonstop honking of a horn. An American-accented voice yelled, “Get in, damn it! And hurry!”

  Katherine looked up to see a white BMW. “I can’t move him by myself!”

  The driver’s door of the BMW flew open. Raymond Barnhill jumped out, ran to where Hall lay, and grabbed the semiconscious photographer under the arms to half-drag, half-carry him to the car. Katherine piled into the rear seat with Hall, pressing the blood-soaked scarf to his cheek. Barnhill slid back into the driver’s seat, threw the BMW into gear, and roared away.

  “What happened to your friend?” Barnhill asked.

  “A brick hit him. He was lucky not to be killed.” The BMW swerved to avoid a line of burning cars. Katherine’s mouth dropped in shock and horror. “My car! That’s my blasted car!”

  “Which one?”

  “The one on fire!”

  “They’re all on fire!”

  “The Stag!” She swung around in the seat as the BMW sped past. The Stag’s soft top had burned away; the interior was a mass of flame.

  “Claim it on your expenses,” Barnhill said, followed by a more meaningful “Just be grateful you weren’t sitting in it.”

  Full consciousness returned to Sid Hall. He groaned loudly and clutched a hand to his face. “What happened?”

  “You stayed around for one photograph too many,” Katherine told him rather unsympathetically. She looked from Hall to Barnhill. “What were you doing in Brixton?”

  “Covering the rally for my agency. I thought I’d seen you. When the trouble started, I legged it back to my car. Something made me come looking for you.”

  “Thank you. I’m glad you did.”

  Barnhill grinned at her in the mirror. “Quite some group back there, eh?”

  Katherine said nothing. Barnhill knew about Britain’s violent soccer supporters. If he read newspapers, he must also know about the series she’d been writing. She waited to see if he had come up with the same connection she had made.

  “Reminded me of Klan rallies I’ve covered in the States,” the wire-service reporter said.

  “Maybe they’ll dress up in bedsheets and hoods, and wave burning crosses the next time,” Katherine told him. “Just so you won’t feel too homesick.” As the BMW approached the River Thames at Vauxhall Bridge, she asked, “Where are we going?”

  “Victoria. Stop off at my apartment first. You and your photographer can get yourselves together before I drive you to the Eagle building.”

  Barnhill lived on a spacious fourth floor apartment in Dolphin Square, overlooking the Thames. The living room was furnished in a stark modern style. There were two bedrooms. The door of the master bedroom was closed. The second bedroom was open. Through the doorway, Katherine could see a chair, a desk, and a typewriter.

  Hall went into the bathroom to clean the blood from his face. He returned five minutes later, a patch of adhesive tape stuck untidily across the wound. “I’ll see a doctor after
I develop my film,” he said to Katherine. “Shall we thank this gentleman for his help and get back to Fleet Street?”

  “Wait ten minutes and I’ll take you,” Barnhill said. “I just put coffee on.”

  “I’d rather have a double Scotch.”

  “Can’t help you there, I’m afraid.”

  While Barnhill saw to the coffee, Hall sat down in the living room, eyes watering as pain asserted itself. Katherine stood in the doorway of the second bedroom, looking inside. The typewriter was a portable electric Smith-Corona, plugged into a transformer. Obviously, Katherine thought, Barnhill had brought it with him from the States. Just as obviously, he was as fussy a writer as Katherine was herself. The tall wastebasket was surrounded by crushed balls of white bond — memorials to writing that wasn’t quite perfect, and aim that was even worse.

  “Coffee’s ready,” Barnhill said.

  Katherine turned around. “Doesn’t the International Press Agency give you adequate office space?”

  “When I’m at the IPA’s Fleet Street office, on IPA time, I write copy for the IPA. Here, in Dolphin Square, where I pay the bills, I try to write the great American novel. It’s a safer way of spending leisure time,” he added with a quick grin, “than going to an English soccer game.”

  “While you’re living in Britain, you’re supposed to be writing the great British novel.”

  “Not when it’s about Vietnam.”

  Hall and Katherine drank the coffee quickly. Afterward, Barnhill drove them back to the Eagle building, before going on to the International Press Agency office.

  Katherine found the Eagle’s news department on full alert. The Brixton riot was headline news on every radio station, and the newspapers were playing catch-up. Before she had time to sit down, Gerald Waller sent for her. Lawrie Stimkin was also present when Katherine entered the editor’s office. A shortwave radio, tuned to the police band, rattled out latest developments of the riot.

  “You were there,” Waller said. “How bad was it?”

  “The worst thing I’ve ever seen. Sid was hit in the head with a brick. Thank God he’s all right.”

  “He wasn’t the only casualty. More than a hundred people have been taken to the hospital so far.”

  “Two dozen policemen have been injured,” Stimkin added. “And there’s considerable property damage.”

  “Not to mention my car,” Katherine threw in for good measure, “which happened to be the landing zone for someone’s Molotov cocktail. Look, the evening papers are going to have the latest figures in their lead paragraphs. By tomorrow, it will all be old news. Let the other mornings fill their front pages with a riot story, which they’re trying frantically to freshen up with some angle or other. We can do much better than that. The Eagle will run the story of the recruiting campaign conducted by the British Patriotic League.”

  Waller looked pained. “If you could show me one positive piece of proof —”

  “Once Sid Hall has today’s film printed, he’s going to crosscheck the Brixton photographs with photographs he took of the young fans at football games. If we find any matches . . .?”

  “If you find one match,” Waller said, “we’ll do it your way. If you don’t, it becomes a straight news story, updated before press time. You can be sure there’ll be government comments.”

  Katherine returned to her desk to put her notes in order. After thirty minutes, Sid Hall brought a pile of black-and-white photographs still wet from the fixer. In clear focus were the League’s three leaders — Alan Venables rousing the masses, Trevor Burns and Neville Sharpe holding the Union Jack and the League pennant. Equally sharp were the pictures of the massed ranks of League supporters, and the street battle that had ensued.

  Katherine began to speak. “I thought you were going to check for —”

  Hall cut her off by tapping one wet picture with his index finger. “Recognize this lump of lard?”

  Katherine stared along the length of Hall’s finger to a picture of an overweight young man with long hair. He wore a zippered jacket, and jeans tucked into army boots.

  “Pretend it’s a color photograph. Give him red hair.”

  “Ginger!” Katherine almost shouted. “Ginger on the skinhead special at Euston. The first one we ever traveled on.”

  “That’s him, the chivalrous young lad who invited you to sit on his lap.”

  Katherine closed her eyes for an instant and recalled the scene with vivid accuracy. Two friends had shared the table with him, their laughter turning to fear when challenged by Brian Waters and his little gang. When she opened her eyes again, she saw those friends — in Hall’s photograph, standing beside Ginger at the League rally.

  “Well?” Hall asked.

  Katherine’s exuberance dimmed. “Gerry Waller’s not going to take my word that I saw these three louts at a football game. He’ll want to see pictures of them at the game.”

  “And so he shall!” With a conjurer’s theatrical flourish, Hall produced more photographs. “I shot this when they got up to offer you their seats, after Brian Waters suggested they should do so. And here’s another one, of the same three characters at the stadium later that day. You can even see the playing field behind them, with the game going on.”

  “Sid Hall, you are a national treasure!” Katherine threw her arms around his neck and hugged and kissed him. Only when he howled in pain did she realize that, in her gratitude, she had almost ripped the tape clean off his injured cheek.

  *

  Katherine was up, showered, and dressed in cords, sweater, and boots, all before the sun had risen the following morning. She tiptoed through the silent house, opened the front door, and stepped outside. For a moment, she wondered why her car was not parked in its usual space. Then she remembered. The graceful Triumph Stag was now a burned-out hulk in Brixton.

  Using the Jaguar, she drove to the nearest newspaper shop. Ten minutes later, she was back home, sitting in the breakfast room, comparing the front page of every morning newspaper with the front page of the Daily Eagle. Her front page!

  The other mornings led with the riot story, updated with the latest details of arrests and injuries, comments from government and opposition spokesmen, and calls for a commission of inquiry. Their reporters had written exactly what Katherine had told Gerald Waller they would write: old news with new angles.

  The Eagle’s headline, centered over a shallow page-wide picture of League supporters in their military formation, declared, “British Stormtroopers.” Some of the faces were ringed and shown again — not at the rally, but at soccer games. Katherine saw the fat young man named Ginger and his two friends, along with half a dozen other matches Sid Hall had found. Even Gerry Waller, Katherine thought excitedly, could not argue with that kind of proof.

  The copy was not normal news style, but folksy, chatty . . . the personal touch a teacher might use to drive a lesson home. Savoring the words, Katherine began to read aloud.

  “What do football hooligans do when there are no games to watch or disrupt? Why, they attend British Patriotic League rallies to demand that all blacks and Indians and Pakistanis be sent back to where they came from. And just what is the British Patriotic League . . .?”

  “Yes . . . what is it?”

  Shocked by the interruption, Katherine spun around. Franz was in his wheelchair, a dressing gown over his pajamas. Behind him was Jimmy Phillips. “I heard you go out and come in again,” Franz said. “I rang for Jimmy. I wanted to know what all the excitement was about. Please continue.”

  Katherine resumed reading. “And just what is the British Patriotic League, this shadowy organization of the far right? It’s the latest in a long line of hate groups, only it is more dangerous than some of its less-than-illustrious forerunners. Dangerous, because it has so far managed to perform its work out of the public eye. Dangerous, also, because it has chosen a new method of finding support. Not with street-corner speeches. Not with door-to-door canvassing.”

  She paused as her a
udience increased by one more person, Edna Griffiths. Then came the sound of feet hammering on the stairs. When Henry and Joanne pushed their way to the front, the entire household was hanging on Katherine’s every word.

  “The British Patriotic League has not sought support among traditional areas of unrest, people who fear losing their jobs to immigrants, or having blacks or Asians as neighbors. No, the League has looked among the hopeless, the devil’s lost minions. Youths with no future. Young men who have nothing to lose except the chips on their shoulders. The League” — Katherine took a deep breath as she approached the climax of the story — “has sent its recruiting officers onto football-stadium terraces on Saturday afternoons, and they have found the pickings to be lush.”

  Five-year-old Joanne, a fingertip pressed against her chin, sought help from her seven-year-old brother. “Henry, what is Mummy saying?”

  “I don’t know.” Equally puzzled, Henry gazed at the adults.

  Franz provided the answer. “What your mother is saying, what she has written in today’s newspaper, is the most important story she has ever done.”

  Katherine bent down to kiss him. Whoever would have thought that an organization as despicable as the British Patriotic League could have such a silver lining?

  *

  Jimmy Phillips drove Katherine to the closest underground station. Every passenger on the train into town was reading the front page of the Daily Eagle, and when Katherine entered the Eagle building she found herself the center of attention. Lawrie Stimkin wanted to see her; so did Gerald Waller, who had come in early. Additionally, there were messages asking her to return telephone calls from John Saxon, with whom she was having dinner that evening, and Sally Roberts. She was surprised to find no word from her father. After all, getting into the minds of the violent young supporters had been Roland Eagles’s idea, and this was where it had led.

  Waller came first. “Your article has stirred up a hornet’s nest,” the editor told Katherine. “Everyone who’s got an ax to grind has been on the radio this morning to rebut your claims. This fellow Venables is being quoted everywhere. He’s denying that his group has ever done any recruiting at football grounds, or that the League is actively courting young thugs.”