The Phoenix Generation (42 page)

Meanwhile other heads were turning round, towards the massed booing. Stewards began to move slowly down the aisles. At length the noise died down, and Birkin shifted slightly to begin his speech. “Fellow Britons——” he cried, when someone yelled from the middle of the hall, “Smash his head, make a proper job of it this time, the enemy of the proletariat!” and the booing began once more.

Pointing an arm towards the din, and standing erect, Birkin said, “The people come here to listen to me, and not to you. You can ask any questions you like after the speech, but you will keep quiet while I am speaking, or you will go out.”

The outcry started up again, a voice roaring, “We've as much right to free speech as you have, you bleeder!”

Raising his arm again, Birkin said quietly, “Put them out.”

The stewards, most of them small men, ran down the hall, one muttering as he passed, “You're telling us, guv'nor.” Then began a new noise, which was at first puzzling. It was a continuous clattering, as though hundreds of muffled fire-crackers were exploding. Still never having moved from his position on the platform, Birkin said in an easy voice, “All right, keep your seats. This happens every time, though it is very rnild tonight. You have an opportunity of seeing how badly we behave, according to the papers.”

There was a wave of relieving laughter. The clattering in the middle of the hall continued. Then two stewards passed up the gangway, dragging another steward by his armpits, his head down and covered with blood. The toes of his shoes were scraping on the floor. He had been knocked unconscious by a chair.

The clattering noises were made by chairs used as weapons against the stewards. Gradually the noise grew less. Phillip heard the sound of large double doors being unbarred and unbolted. There was a noise of scuffling, then oaths and shouts, with banging and kicking on the door from outside. People began to clap and cheer. The statuesque figure had looked straight to the back of the hall while the injured steward had been dragged to the room behind the platform. Phillip saw the white-banded caps of St. John Ambulance men.

The speaker began by saying quietly that the Government elected by the people must have the power to rule. That was denied them at present, because Parliament did not rule. The Money Power behind Parliament ruled. What did the Imperial Socialist Party intend to do when it came to power by the will
of the people? The first thing it would do would be to pass an emergency measure to prohibit capital going abroad. Then all foreign holdings, gradually would be realized, and the money brought back in sterling, to Britain. This would be done gradually in accord with the rise of new productivity at home. Gradually Britain would withdraw from World Trade—which meant International Finance—and have a ring fence of sterling around Britain and Empire. Every raw material needed for modern industrial civilisation was lying in the Empire. These raw materials would be brought to Britain, to be returned as manufactured goods. Thus Britain would have no price-cutting competition to drag down the living standards of the people. The genius of the people, the work capacity of the people would create the new wealth by which to acquire the raw materials to be returned as
manufactured
goods to the peoples of the Empire.

But what was stopping them doing it? International finance, which exploited where it saw the biggest profit. Britons were enslaved. For a thousand years unconquered by any foe without, they had been subdued by the foe within.

For an hour and a half most of that audience of between two and three thousand people believed that it was possible to create a modern Britain which would have fine new roads and rebuilt villages, with water, light, and drainage; towns with a population partly educated in the countryside when young and believing that the work they did afterwards was truly and directly for their country. Everyone would work, great reward would come only to great talent, and privilege would end. They saw fine housing estates and no more building speculation, they saw their children glowing with health and vitality, their young people natural in sexual impulses, without furtiveness or the corruption of shame and repression. They saw ships going to the colonies with motor-cars, tractors, machinery, and other fine English things, passing ships bringing grain and fruits and raw materials from the finest Empire on earth. Those ships passed other ships, flying other flags, and saluted them in friendship; for the financial interests that directed them were not international, but nationally controlled and
therefore
did not clash, but existed side by side in harmony. No more consumption crises, factories idle and men out of work because there was too much for people to buy, and therefore no more work, and therefore no money to buy the too-much. No more trade-wars between rival industrial groups called nations!

The only rivalry would be that of the works of peace, for art
would truly serve the peoples of the earth, each with its authentic national inspiration, and therefore of a natural truth and beauty. All this was possible, if only people believed it possible, and set themselves in the resurgent modern spirit to make it real.

Birkin ended in a frenzy of appeal, calling on them to believe that what their fathers had died for in Europe a generation before was not only possible, but indeed inevitable if only they would themselves move out of the twilight of an obsolescent economic system into the sun and the truth of national resurgence. For while  they hesitated, divided among themselves, the more they would continue to be subdued by forces which, in the end, would bring about their ruin, and the loss of that Empire for which their
forefathers
had striven in the glory and faith of Britain everlasting.

The passionate power of the speaker brought many to their feet, singing the National Anthem with fervour. When it was over Birkin went to inquire after the injured steward, who was a
shop-assistant
at thirty shillings a week.

As they went out of the hall, Phillip heard someone say to Captain Runnymeade, “Same old speech!” while Runnymeade replied, in his thick and slightly mocking voice, “I've heard some balderdash uttered in my time, but never such demagogic rot in all my life. I came to look at him because I knew his father, but——” and then people came between him and the back of Runnymeade's check coat.

In starlit darkness hundreds waited to boo and jeer. In small packs to enclose around one or another of the known party men, pressing around him, to assail him with obscenity, and if he seemed to quail, to strike with fist, or knee in the groin, then to stamp on his face. The women were the more dangerous, Phillip could see, for against them there was no defence. They knew where to give a man the sharpest pain.

He lost Brother Laurence, Lucy and Penelope. Moving about, Phillip realized he was the object of a shout, “He's one!”
Immediately
pale and distraught faces began to press around him. They aroused no fear; for he did not feel any evil in them, only weakness. He waited as though nonchalantly, hands in pockets, and they moved away. How sad, he thought, that the man who had given much of his great inheritance to the poor, was taken by them to be their enemy. The women looked to be overwrought, like the men, their very words and expressions and faces and bodies corrupted by poverty and the very things from which he would save them, and millions like them.

But not all of them were of the local poor. He saw an alert bunch of men, most of them dark, with horn-rimmed spectacles, and foreign-looking faces, jumping down from a lorry. Spread out like a rugger forward line before action, they made for Birkin's waiting motorcar, police helmets around it.

He pushed his way to the car, to get a sight of Birkin moving with bent head through the human gangway of his followers standing two deep with arms linked against the pressure of the crowd, led by the lorry-load of dark men now in full insult. There were cries of
Turn
the
car
over
and
Fire
it,
but the police were pushing and thrusting; and amidst cheers and boos and shouts the small M.G. car drove away.

He saw Brother Laurence standing by Penelope's motor. Lucy said, “Lady Breckland asked us to a small party to meet Birkin, and I've accepted. I do hope you will come, Penelope—it won't be very late.”

“Well, I shall have to leave early, I have some letters to write.”

“What did you think of the speech?”

“I found it most interesting, Phillip, but I can't bear people who shout. Brother Laurence is coming with us, he knows the way, and I'm much slower than you.”

Phillip let the oil warm up before he drove away from the Square through narrow streets leading to the long straight road up to the ridge from where, in daylight, the sandy heaths and forests of pines stretched away for mile upon mile to the south and east. There he stopped, for a cylinder was missing.

When he got out to change the plug he saw that the sky to the north was glowing with colours of red and green and yellow, shifting and changing, as he stared, into zones of light shot through by spokes and rays arising from the rim of the sea. A wonderful sight; a portent; a glory of the heavens to match the resurgence that seemed to be waiting upon the world!

He found a detached lead, fastened it to its plug, and getting back into the car, raised his arm in salute to the flushes of light among the zones of copper-green—“Hail, Dawn of the Winter God!”—and putting the sports-car into gear, screamed away down the road in full-throttle acceleration, until he saw the
cream-coloured
car half a mile in front of his head-lights.

*

The hall was of dark oak, and lofty, with exposed beams, purlins, kingposts and rafters. In the light of candles in sconces and branched silver upon the tables gleamed suits of armour,
pikes and halberds, lances and swords, among them a tin-hat and gas-mask of the Great War.

In the hall stood a number of people all seeming to know one another, by the animation and amiability of each face. Through the mêlée of talk, as sandwiches were munched and cups of tea and coffee sipped and held expertly, moved Lady Breckland, with Sir Hereward Birkin in tow, making introductions at the rate of two or three every couple of minutes. To each in turn Birkin gave his sudden smile, flash of eyes opening wide, hand clasp, and ready appropriate words about each, from what Lady Breckland said. “Lady Penelope is most interested in watching our wild birds——”

“We must see, with Maddison's help, that they remain a national heritage, no more glass cases. How the old-style sportsman liked to shoot and stuff everything, Lady Penelope.”

“Mrs. Maddison, with such a fine family of sons, Sir
Hereward
——”

How like Daddy, thought Penelope, before an audience turning on the charm.

“All keen to follow their father, about whose work of
reclamation
I read with the keenest interest. How are you, Maddison?”

A firm handclasp, a feeling as of rare poured wine, words that were not heard by anyone else, “You can write, I can speak. Let us go forward together into the Age of Renaissance.”

Phillip felt he must not monopolise Birkin. He saw Melissa, and went to her.

“How are you? Did you like the speech?”

“I think he's up against too much. He's like Sisyphus. The stone is eternal. How are you, Phil?”

“Oh, getting along—rolling my little stone up and down the Bad Lands.”

Lord Abeline came to them. “Hullo, Lucy, you look prettier than ever! So do you, Lady Penelope. Lucy, why didn't you see that Phillip invited us to shoot your high birds? What about this high bird, Birkin, are they going to shoot him down? You look out for yourself, my boy, or they'll get you, too. Come on, Melissa, we must be getting back. Do come over, Lucy. And bring Lady Penelope. Au revoir.”

Lady Breckland was saying, “I do hope it will have some results. You know, I don't think any good can come from our class, they are so static, they are—impenetrable. It
was
so good of you all to have come.”

Phillip wondered if anyone had told Birkin how good his speech was. Heavens, he had taken it for granted. He went to him. “I didn't want to bore you with praise, Sir Hereward, but your speech was tremendous. If only you could get back into Parliament, and have a platform there.”

“All the old parties are tied to Money, Maddison. And I don't think I would stand a chance of being elected. No, we prepare ourselves for the smash. It is bound to come. The Tories will scuttle as soon as they see the depression deepening, and get out, leaving Labour to face the music. Labour will not be able to do anything, for all the old parties are tied to the financial system. Labour will lose control, three million unemployed will go out on the streets, and one small incident will start off a condition of mob rule. The Communists will try to take over; then we shall step in, smash them, and seize control. That is what we are organised for.”

Phillip saw Brother Laurence standing near. The friar was going with Penelope and Lucy in their car, Phillip to follow.

“I mean, it looked serious last September, until Munich, didn't it?”

“It is still serious. Hitler has kicked out Money, and Money wants its revenge. The economic war is on now, the bombing war may follow. The Germans are trying to barter; finance is trying to frustrate every export move they make. Ah, Brother Laurence, must you go? How good of you to come.” Birkin had seen that the ladies were waiting for the friar. When they had gone Phillip said, “We used to have on our farm a young man who worked in one of the richest private banks in the world. Hurst was in the London branch, which had a staff of about a dozen clerks, all Gentiles. They knew only about the current accounts of
customers
. The real business was done by the two Schwarzenkoph cousins. They kept their ledgers, with details entered in their own handwriting, in a safe within the vault. The young man, who chucked his job and came to me because of some book I wrote, had to code and decode cipher telegrams, and he said that literally millions of pounds sterling were moved down one line, transferred from this country or that country by another line, by means of short-term loans or their non-renewal. It made me feel quite ill, to think that such masses of money could depress an industry, causing the ruin perhaps of an entire community, by the calculated thought of two men of inherited desert genius, working in the religious belief of their service to their jealous God.”