Abdication: A Novel (39 page)

A thunderous commotion was coming from the direction of Aldgate and as they approached the junction of Commercial Street and Whitechapel High Street, they found their way blocked by an overturned truck, weighted down with bricks. Whole chunks of concrete had been dug up from the pavement, the square patches of bare earth turning the pavements into giant, uneven chessboards. By now they could hear the cries and shouts of a huge crowd ahead. Dismounting from their bikes and squeezing through a gap beside the truck, May and Julian turned the corner, where the full force of the protest hit them.

Hundreds of police, many on horseback, were struggling with a threateningly volatile crowd as bricks and stones and lemonade bottles flew through the air. Although there was no sign of Mosley himself, all of humanity seemed to be there as Jews and fascists and communists and police jostled with the angry, the curious, the young and the old, the fearless and the fearful. The hefty slabs of pavement had been smashed up to provide weapons that were now in the hands of the protestors who pushed and shoved their way through the crowds. All along the pavement, people were sitting with their heads in their hands, blood streaming from wounds to their faces as doctors and ambulance workers did their best to attend to the dozens of injuries. Red flags were flying from the lampposts. A couple of parked tramcars had been emptied and were lying on their sides outside Aldgate underground station. Placards held up high announced marchers variously affiliated with the Stepney Jewish People’s Council against Fascism and Anti-Semitism, the Labour Party and the Communist Party. The words “Bar the Road to Fascism” had been written in huge chalk letters on several walls. Some people were shouting the popular solgan of the Spanish Civil War “
No Pasarán
”—“They Shall Not Pass.”

A familiar tune reached May above the incredible noise, although new words were given to the old American socialist-solidarity song, “Solidarity Forever,” a song popular with the plantation workers back home.

“We’ll hang Oswald Mosley on a sour apple tree, when the red revolution comes,” the marchers sang in the streets of London’s East End, before an ominous chant drowned out their words.

“The Yids, the Yids. We must get rid of the Yids.”

Fear flushed through May’s face as she and Julian paused to catch their breath. Julian put an arm round May’s shoulders. A lad of perhaps
eight years old was standing on the pavement in front of them. Reaching into his pocket he scattered a fistful of glass balls across the street. A mounted policeman opposite cursed at the boy.

“What do you think you’re doing?
Bloody
marbles. Should be
bloody
banned.”

But the policeman was unable to prevent his horse’s feet from beginning to slide uncontrollably as if the street had turned suddenly to ice and as the horse began to slip and slither across the road its reins became tangled, rendering its rider powerless. Somehow the animal managed to remain upright, stumbling to a halt within inches of where May and Julian stood.

“Go back to Palestine,” came a cry from Gardiner’s Corner, followed by two words, chilling in the brevity of their message. “Perish Judah.”

“They must be in there,” May said to Julian, pointing to the shattered doors of the main entrance of Gardiner’s.

Tying their bikes with Julian’s scarf to a lamppost, Julian put his arm tightly round May’s waist as together they made for the shop. The display windows at the front had been smashed in and a couple of women were climbing out through the jagged edges of the plate glass, bolts of Harris tweed and flowered poplin tucked beneath their arms. Sarah was crouching on the floor next to an almost empty display of ties, her back humped over her knees. She was moaning softly in the way that May had heard the women in the plantation moan when the time for their confinement had arrived. Rachel was bending over her, for once unable to speak. Relief at the sight of May filled the older woman’s eyes.

“Don’t worry, Rachel. We are here to bring you both home,” May said to her as she ran back out to the street with Julian.

An ambulance was making its way slowly down Cable Street heading away from Gardiner’s, its bell clanging. Looking around in desperation
May spotted the mounted policeman from earlier, once again in control of his horse.

“We need help,” she yelled at him. “My friend. She’s having a baby!
Now
!”

“Right away, Miss,” he said. “I’ll find you a driver right away.”

Simon had been looking for the doctor for more than an hour. Judging by the reports of violence that was breaking out up at Cable Street, he had an intuition that Rachel’s nerves might get the better of her. He was also terrified that the drama of the demonstrations might bring on his daughter’s labour pains and was uneasy at the thought that he and Nat might have to deliver a baby themselves. No one had seen the doctor all day and although Simon had hammered several times on the door of his house in nearby Cyprus Street, there had been no response. On Simon’s final attempt the door was opened by the doctor’s wife. She was wearing a dressing gown.

“For goodness’s sake, Mr. Greenfeld, what a lot of noise,” she had snapped, furious at the disturbance. “He’s not here. He’s gone up to help at Aldgate.”

As she closed the door in Simon’s face, a window opened above her and the red face of Mr. Schein, the barber, appeared.

“Not in Eastbourne now, I see,” Simon could not resist saying before hearing the window slam shut and going to wait at the corner of Cyprus Street until the doctor eventually returned from treating the injured.

When the taxi appeared on Oak Street, Nat and Simon were waiting on the doorstep of number 52. May and Julian got out of the cab first, followed by an unusually silent Rachel. The pins securing her ever-elegant bun had fallen out and her hair was hanging unconstrained round her shoulders. Simon took his shocked wife’s hand and
led her inside while Nat reached across to the seat and lifted Sarah out of the taxi. He carried her across the threshold of number 52 as if they were newlyweds, kissing her forehead and stroking her hair as he took her upstairs to their bedroom where the doctor was waiting.

Inside the house, May fetched all the towels she could find and a large enamel bowl filled with hot water. For the time being, the doctor and Sarah were to be left alone. Meanwhile Simon insisted that Rachel should lie down on her own bed until the baby arrived. The wait would not be long, the doctor had assured them, and for once Rachel deferred to her husband’s instructions.

May went to put on the kettle. Julian and Nat were in the parlour. Now that the danger of the streets was behind them she felt elated to have Julian here on Oak Street for the first time. She could tell that he and Nat were going to like one another. Already Julian was trying to divert Nat’s anxiety from what was happening in the bedroom above by describing the earlier scenes around Aldgate and discussing how and when it might be safe to go and retrieve the bicycles and Julian’s scarf.

Outside in the street May heard the sound of a group of children arguing with one another. Julian and Nat were too deep in conversation to notice her opening the front door. She was just in time to see a dozen boys and girls huddled conspiratorially by the war memorial, holding paintbrushes and pots of paint. Their attention was centred on a girl with long, reddish, flyaway plaits who stood in the middle of the group giving instructions. May’s heart lurched. She was about to shout out at them but, catching sight of her, the children began to run. May ran after them, turning right at the war memorial, but once she was round the corner the entire group had vanished.

Reluctantly May walked home. As she approached the door of number 52, she could see at once that the two clearly delineated, painted letters were still wet. She put her hand up to touch them, as if to be sure
they were not a work of her imagination. She pulled back her fingertips as if she had touched a burning coal. The threat to Jews that Julian had seen in Berlin had reached the streets of the East End.

Inside the house a long steady cry more like an announcement was coming from upstairs and she could hear Nat’s voice carrying the news across the backyard walls and along the terrace.

“It’s a boy. Sarah and I have a boy. A son!”

“Those letters could stand instead for ‘Peace for Joshua,’” May whispered to herself, before going inside to ask Julian for his help. She wanted the paint removed before it had time to dry and strengthen its vile message.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-O
NE

J
ulian had got himself into a muddle. He had been sitting on a bench in Hyde Park for a good half hour wondering how to make some order of his life. It was late on a Friday morning and he was grateful that there were so few people about. Nearby a small number of bowler-hatted men were reading newspapers and preparing to eat their lunch, their grease-proofed sandwiches lying unwrapped in little packages on their laps, as the pages of the
Financial Times
flapped in the wind. A few yards away on another bench a large woman in a fur coat sat with her back to him deep in conversation with a distinguished-looking man. Every now and then the woman would stop talking and reprimand the restless terrier at her feet with a fierce little jerk of the lead.

Julian turned away from the pair in an effort to concentrate on his own thoughts as he vacillated between deciding on one course of action and then another. His tendency towards consistent inconsistency both infuriated and exhausted him.

Julian had only seen Lottie once since her return from Berlin and Rupert not at all. Julian was sharing a flat near the law courts with a gregarious fellow graduate and had diffidently resumed something of his old social round of dances and dinners and weekend parties. After long bibulous evenings in the Mirabelle and the Café Royal when he had come home disgusted with himself for his continued association
with the vacuous Bullingdon crowd. He had intended to be definitive about ending his relationship with Lottie but although he had intimated to May that it was over, the truth was he hadn’t actually got round to telling Lottie. At a recent Mayfair ball finding himself, as usual, bored by the same old people, the same old music and same old chat, he had even kissed her. He had been drunk, he told himself, by way of excuse, and discovered that any lingering feelings of physical desire had entirely evaporated. In fact, after giving way to Lottie’s strange vinegary-smelling skin and her scarlet-painted lips he felt as if he had swallowed a mouthful of stale beer. He was glad she had decided to go and stay with her grandmother for a few days in Cornwall. He could do with a bit of time to think.

He had not planned to fall in love with May. She was the most unsuitable person for a girlfriend. And up until the moment they had plunged together into the river at Cuckmere Haven and had floated out to sea he had been determined to live a less anarchic, more exacting, and impressively responsible existence. But in the presence of the slender body in the water beside him, and the dark hair swept back from that lovely face with her wide grey eyes looking at him from the swell of the waves, he was confronted with the clarity he had so long sought. As he had walked up the beach with her towards the hut all his apprehension about what was about to happen had magically disappeared. If there was a skill involved in the act of love, he had been eager that they discover it for the first time together. And during that first afternoon, by the sea, in the small hut at Cuckmere, Julian had barely been aware of time or place, certain only of one thing: that life was, in that moment, perfect.

And yet, away from the hut, and from May’s embrace, the reality of day-to-day life nudged its way into his conscience. Reverberating memories of the violence at Cable Street reinforced his conviction that he was living in a country at odds with itself, riddled with selfishness, hypocrisy, prejudice, double standards and secrets. Last week he had
received another card from Peter Grimshaw, the professor he and May had met in Wigan, urging Julian to join him and his friend Eric in fighting the cause in Spain. Julian was tempted to go. And yet. And there he went again! Dithering, procrastinating. For one thing his law term began in a matter of weeks, he argued with himself, and for another he found himself increasingly loathe to travel to a country, fanciful as it sounded, in which he would not be breathing the same air as May.

The strengthening wind was beginning to deter Hyde Park’s lunchtime visitors from delaying any longer, and newspapers were folded with the finality that preceded a return to the office. Julian adjusted his striped scarf, pulling it up high around his neck and tucking the ends tightly beneath the collar of his coat. The large woman and her gentleman companion continued to sit absorbed in animated conversation on the bench a little way along the path. The small dog was lying obediently at their feet. Julian’s thoughts turned to his mother. She was unwell. The doctors had initially told him it might be tuberculosis but until they could be certain they had advised Julian not to say anything to worry her. He had spent a difficult evening in her flat a week earlier when Mrs. Richardson had taken advantage of his presence to observe what a selfish young man he had become.