Boxer, Beetle (26 page)

What he found on the King’s Road was a sort of military barracks crossed with a newspaper office. Everyone hurried around in black shirts, and Sinner soon realised that these must be the same Jew-haters, led by the same Mosley, that he’d often heard both Frink and Erskine slagging off (for very different reasons) – but it was an easy wage, and, anyway, didn’t it make more sense, if you had a choice, to take your money from a Jew-hater than from another Jew?

Finally he found someone who would stop to talk to him, a very tall man with a handlebar moustache and motorcycle goggles. He was told that they already had more than enough good recruits to keep order in their meetings, but that they might need reinforcements for the march through the East End on Sunday. Sinner explained in turn that he knew his way around the East End, he used to be a champion boxer, and he didn’t mind getting his knuckles bloody
for a few shillings. The man said he could come back in three days.

He did, and was given a black shirt which he didn’t even have to pay for out of his wage. The other men made jokes about how he looked a bit ‘Oriental’, and as soon as he realised they meant Jewish, not Chinese, he just said he’d eat as many pork chops as they felt like buying him, and they all chuckled and slapped him on the back and moved on to making jokes about his height instead. As the morning passed, some of them did a bit of sparring to pass the time, and it turned out none of them had a clue how to fight. He didn’t like these Blackshirts much. Erskine had been a wanker and a nobody but at least he clearly knew it.

Finally, at noon, the procession set off, but they only got as far as Tower Bridge before they had to stop. At the end of Royal Mint Street was a line of police horses like a dam holding back the roar of the local mob, a roar with an accent that Sinner remembered from Premierland. Mosley hadn’t even arrived yet. After they’d hung around for nearly an hour, Albertson, one of the senior Biff Boys, had said that if they could get round by the back streets they might be able to charge in and take down the barricade from the other side: ‘Those kikes won’t know what hit them.’ Sinner, of course, knew a route, pioneered in early childhood: down an alley, through the back of some shops, over some low rooftops from which he could almost see into his parents’ window, then across the rubbish dump where he’d often played hide and seek with his sister and where, until he discovered the superior charms of Soho and the Caravan and the Hotel de Paris, he’d sometimes taken local boys. So Albertson promised Sinner an extra gold sovereign to scout the way through, and although Sinner didn’t think much of the plan – they’d get torn to pieces before they brought down the barricade, which now included a lorry parked across the middle of the road – it was more easy money. One of the other blokes
slipped him a knife in case of trouble, and within ten minutes he was climbing down into the dump, which was where he caught sight of a frightened Philip Erskine.

Taking the blade from between his teeth, Sinner made his way over.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘Hello. That’s just what your friend Kölmel asked me.’ Erskine wished he could have watched Sinner for just a bit longer before Sinner noticed him. He thought back to their unexpected encounter outside the Caravan Club two years ago; why did so many of their meetings have to take on the quality of nightmare?

‘Kölmel?’

‘He sent me here.’

‘What, you mean he remembered you from after that match?’ said Sinner, as if it were an oddity for anyone at all to remember Erskine. ‘Always does remember,’ he conceded.

Erskine gulped and said, ‘But I was looking for you.’

‘Why?’

‘Why on earth are you wearing that uniform?’

Sinner shrugged.

‘You don’t mean to say you’re on their side?’

‘Fuck off.’

‘No, of course not. You’re not on anyone’s side. Short of money, I suppose? And they just let you join up without anyone noticing that there might be one or two factors to disqualify you? I’m not surprised. You do have an extraordinary talent for that sort of thing. You did very well at Claramore.’

‘Wasn’t hard. Why ain’t you in one of these yourself, then?’

‘Oh, not in a million years. The Blackshirts are beyond the pale. This march is just an exercise in intimidation, because they can’t be bothered with anything more serious. Mosley’s moment is past and he knows it. And, as I said, I was looking for you.’

‘Looking for me. Again. What the fuck for this time?’

Erskine looked at his feet. Sinner’s old sarcasm seemed to be gone, just like the flyweight bounce in his walk. He almost missed it. ‘We haven’t seen one another since the day. … You know, Morton and all that. And I rather wanted to make sure that. …’

‘Yeah?’

‘I suppose perhaps I rather wanted – I felt rather compelled – to make sure you didn’t despise me,’ said Erskine.

‘Why?’

‘And also I thought I’d find out what you’d been up to all this time,’ Erskine hurried to add. ‘I hope you’ve been enjoying yourself. For my part, I’ve been busy with my insects. There have been some really fascinating developments. If only you could see what I’ve done with
Anophthalmus hitleri
.’

‘Answer the bloody question,’ Sinner said, lighting a cigarette. ‘Why do you care what I think of you?’

‘You were my experimental subject for quite a while.’

‘Your “subject”?’

‘I think it’s natural to take an interest in one’s—’

‘Just fucking say it,’ Sinner said.

‘What?’

Sinner came closer. ‘This is boring. You’re always boring. Get it over with. Just fucking say you’re still after my arse, and I’ll let you have it right here if you want.’

Erskine coughed and licked his lips. ‘I’m not going to lower myself to your—’

‘Can’t do it? Here’s another one, might be easier. Say I fucked you and you liked it.’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard you quite so chatty,’ Erskine mumbled.

‘Come on, you cunt! Just say why you came to find me – say why you give a toss if I hate you or not – and my dick and my arse are yours for as long as you want them. Say it. Might be too late to save the maid now but it’s not too late for that.’

Erskine’s fingernails dug into his palms and tears began to well up in his eyes.

Then Sinner smiled. It was the first time that Erskine could ever remember seeing the boy smile, and it was one of the cruellest smiles he’d ever seen. ‘Or if you like, Mr Erskine,’ said Sinner, ‘you can just tell me you love me.’

Erskine let out a sob that sounded more like a death rattle. Warmly, tenderly, Sinner stepped forward and put his hand on Erskine’s shoulder. Erskine stared deep into Sinner’s eyes. Then Sinner brought his knee up into Erskine’s groin. Erskine howled and fell to his knees in the rubble and slime.

‘Knew you couldn’t. Only reason I said you could have me if you did is ’cause I knew you couldn’t. And, yes, of course I fucking hate you, you cunt.’ Sinner flicked away his cigarette so that it bounced off Erskine’s shoulder. ‘Bye, then,’ he added, in the sing-song voice of a housewife concluding some gossip in the street.

‘Seth Roach!’ Sinner looked up in surprise. Two men were standing down at the edge of the dump. One was Barnaby Pock. ‘Haven’t seen you in a bleeding age, you little shit! Heard you’d kicked the bucket!’ He noticed Sinner’s shirt. ‘What in fuck’s name are you wearing that for?’

‘Stole it off a friend of this schmuck. For a laugh.’

The two other men cheered, and started to make their way up the slope.

‘You look like a real tosser, mate,’ said Pock. ‘Got up like that, I mean.’

‘Yeah. Tired of it. Let’s get the shirt off this one. I’ll have that.’

‘How’s he ended up here?’ said Pock’s comrade. ‘I thought they were still all back behind the flatties?’

‘Fucking advance party, I bet,’ said Pock.

All three men loomed over Erskine.

‘No, please!’ Erskine said, struggling to his feet. ‘I’m on your side! I hate Mosley as much as anyone! He’s a … he’s
a frivolous nightclub-going popinjay.’ His father’s phrase didn’t seem particularly forceful in the circumstances. ‘I’m only here because Kölmel sent me to help build the barricade.’

‘Oi, Sinner, hear that? He knows Kölmel,’ said Pock. ‘How the fuck does he know Kölmel?’

‘You sure he’s one of the other lot?’ said Pock’s comrade.

‘Are you taking the piss?’ said Sinner. ‘Listen to him. Listen to the way he talks.’

‘No! I promise! I promise!’ wailed Erskine refinedly.

‘Boy’s right,’ said Pock. He stepped round behind Erskine and installed him effortlessly in a headlock. ‘Get his shirt.’

While Erskine wriggled and begged, his snot soaking into Pock’s dirty sleeve, they ripped his coat, jacket and shirt off him, losing most of the buttons in the process. Sinner took off his own shirt, threw it away, and put on Erskine’s, loosely fastening it with a safety pin from his pocket that he usually used to pop blisters. ‘I want to go and find some more of these cunts,’ he said to Pock.

‘What shall we do with this one?’

Sinner shrugged and turned away. Erskine watched in horror, the October cold making the hair stand up on his bare arms, still not quite able to believe that Sinner would abandon him so easily – then lifted his head and shouted, ‘I still bloody own you! I’ll still have your body after you’re dead! And it won’t be long, you leprous little thug!’

‘Yeah? Well, I fucked your sister,’ said Sinner, without looking back. Pock chuckled at the joke and then thumped Erskine in the kidneys.

A few minutes later, back on Royal Mint Street, Albertson was bending down to wipe a speck of mud off his shoe when the first roof tile flew past his head. He sprang back and looked around. Then a second one smashed into the pavement.

‘We’re under attack!’ shouted one of the Biff Boys. ‘Take cover!’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, we’re not being shelled,’ said Albertson. ‘Stand tall.’ But a third tile caught him in the pit of the stomach and he flopped to the ground like laundry.

‘He’s up there,’ somebody else shouted, pointing.

‘Is anyone armed?’

Somebody was caught in the head and fell backward, blood pouring from his temple. After that, there was a general retreat. Albertson, struggling to his feet, tried to throw back a chunk of brick he found in the gutter, but their attacker was hidden behind some chimneys. Several of his men were huddled against the wall of a nearby furniture warehouse, out of range of the bombardment, so he ran over to join them, two more tiles crashing at his heels.

‘This is a bloody travesty. What the hell are we going to do? Can anyone see a way to get up there?’

Nobody could.

‘Did anyone see his face?’

‘It looked like the little blighter with the sneer. Forget his name.’

‘Don’t be a fool, he’s one of us,’ said Albertson.

‘I told you he looked Jewish.’

‘If we just let this bastard get away with this, and the boss hears about it. …’

‘Hey, hey, hey, listen – I said listen – what’s that?’

From directly above them, there was a faint rasp of heel on grit.

‘He’s right over our heads! Climbing around like a bloody tomcat. What the hell are we going to do?’

‘We need a firearm,’ said Albertson, staring grimly upward. ‘It’s the only way.’ The sun was in his eyes, so he had to squint, but he thought he could see movement of some kind. He was correct. Sinner had unbuttoned his fly and stepped to the very edge of the warehouse roof.

‘Oh, shitting Christ!’ howled Albertson as he was blinded by a stream of piss. As he hopped backward out of its golden
arc he tripped on the kerb, lost his balance, flung out both arms in the vain hope of a steadying shoulder, spun gracefully on his heel and fell face first into the road – knocking himself unconscious, breaking his nose and embossing his forehead with the geometric pattern of a studded iron manhole cover.

Which was how Seth Roach came to be almost the only Jew in London to see off a Blackshirt at the Battle of Cable Street. Hundreds would pretend otherwise – Albert Kölmel, for instance, would write to his brother Judah in New York boasting that he’d personally given Mosley a thump in the mouth – but in fact, apart from a few unlucky late-arriving fascists who took wrong turns on the way to join the procession, it was only the prophylactic ranks of mounted police who had to face the chair legs and fireworks and rotten fruit. At about four o’clock the demonstrators were sent home, without ever having pushed further than Royal Mint Street.

For a while, after descending from the rooftops, Sinner wandered through the crowds with a bottle of gin. (‘Give me a little swig of that,’ he’d said to its owner, a weedy, trusting butcher’s apprentice he remembered from the old days in Spitalfields Market.) He knew he was back where he belonged, but something still troubled him: Erskine. It wasn’t that he felt guilty for leaving him at the mercy of Pock and Pock’s friend. It was the opposite: he hadn’t done enough. So soon he found himself veering northwest, away from the clashes, back towards the centre of London – back towards Erskine’s flat in Clerkenwell.

By the time he got there he’d drunk the entire bottle of gin and bought another from a shop in Moorgate. Mrs Minton recognised him, but when she saw how drunk he was she wouldn’t let him up into Erskine’s flat, so Sinner told her it didn’t matter because he had a key. Actually, he just waited until Mrs Minton had grumbled her way back into her own lodgings and turned on her wireless, then went upstairs and broke down Erskine’s door, bruising his shoulder.

Inside, the flat was exactly as he remembered it. On the table in the front room there was some unopened post that Mrs Minton had presumably brought in that morning. Sinner ripped open each of the three envelopes. A tailor’s bill, a circular from the Royal Entomological Society, and then this:

Dear Doctor Erskine
,

I have received gifts from popes, tycoons, and heads of state, but none have ever been so singular or unexpected as your kind tribute. It is a reminder that the conquests of the scientist are every bit as important to our future as the conquests of the soldier. I hope you will keep me informed of the progress of your work – perhaps one day the Third Reich will have a position for you. How is your German?