The Churchill Commando, page 20
Thank God, thank the good Lord, that Chrissie had given him no children! What at one time had seemed a curse had turned into a blessing. For there was nothing for the young ones, little hope. The three teenagers sitting at the table had never worked, never been able to find jobs and nowadays they didn’t even bother to look. Two of them had been born here, the other had been brought over as a child in arms, but still there was no place for them. British subjects! They were like aliens, displaced persons. If he’d had sons, perhaps they would have walked the same road, their bitterness and frustration exploding into hatred of authority, and of white authority most of all.
Mr. Bramble picked up the evening paper and glanced through it for the fourth or fifth time. It was filled with stories about a man they called the General, pictures of him on the front page, articles about his career. At a press conference that day he had said that no more immigrants should be allowed in for at least five years, not one single person for whatever reason. Well, that make good sense, thought Mr. Bramble, too many here already.
The bell over the front door gave a warning tinkle and Mr. Bramble turned towards it, his irritation changing to astonishment as he saw a white man standing in the doorway. He could scarcely believe the evidence of his eyes. Occasionally, but more rarely in the past year or so, a white man might come in during the day for cigarettes or a cup of tea, but never in the evening, never so close to the hours of darkness. The police, when they came, were always in pairs, and a car was never far away. But he hadn’t heard a car draw up.
The man certainly didn’t look like a policeman. He was thick-set, he looked as if he could take care of himself, but all the same there was a certain nervousness in his manner. His eyes flickered uncertainly between Mr. Bramble and the young men at the table. They had stopped their game and sat tight in their chairs, tensed like coiled springs.
‘We’re closed,’ said Mr. Bramble, praying inwardly that the man would go away quickly, before there was trouble.
‘Sorry,’ said the man. ‘I’m a stranger round here. Lost my bearings. How do I get to Coldharbour Lane?’
Before Mr. Bramble could reply, Marvin pushed back his chair and stood, sniffing the air in an exaggerated manner.
‘Terrible smell in this place, Billy,’ he said. ‘Like something crawled in and died.’
‘Smell?’ echoed Mr. Bramble, his heart thudding.
‘You mean your nose can’t smell it, man?’ He sniffed again and turned to his companions. ‘Funny. I can smell it. You can smell it. But Mr. Billy Bramble can’t smell nothing.’
Marvin moved forward, snuffling the air like a hound on scent. The others stood up and began to follow his example, making an elaborate play of sniffing each chair and table. The stranger waited in the half-open doorway as though uncertain of what to make of this strange pantomime. The fellow must be stupid, crazy, thought Mr. Bramble. He wanted to scream at him, tell him to run but he was afraid, the words wouldn’t come.
Marvin reached the counter and then turned slowly towards the man in the doorway. He twisted his face into a grin, though there was no laughter in his eyes, and the man smiled back, tentatively, nervously.
‘Got it!’ said Marvin. ‘Got it.’ He touched his nose. ‘This old hooter don’t never let me down. Do you know what that smell is? I’ll tell you, Billy boy. White trash! You got white trash in this place.’
‘Please, please,’ breathed Mr. Bramble.
The others ranged themselves just behind Marvin, and in unison, as if in response to a signal, each of them drew a knife. There were four tiny clicks and four pointed shining blades sprung out towards the stranger. Mr. Bramble closed his eyes in despair. What he heard next made him open them again immediately, and they widened in amazement.
‘Well, what do you know! Knives. Didn’t your mammy ever tell you piccaninnies that you shouldn’t play around with such things?’
A different man seemed to be speaking. The white man’s air of diffidence and uncertainty had gone; his eyes were sharp with contempt, his body poised and tense. The youths were momentarily stunned by this change; as they hesitated, he stepped back through the door and slammed it in their angry faces with such force that the cups hanging behind the counter rattled against each other in protest. The door was stuck and Marvin struggled to open it; eventually it responded and he ran into the night, followed by the others, pocketing the knives as they went.
With a sigh of intense relief, Mr. Bramble closed the door once more, bolted it, and clipped the protective wooden screen into place over the glass panels. The bottle of rum was still standing on the table amid the litter of playing cards, and it was still a quarter full.
He took a clean cup and poured himself a stiff drink, feeling that he had earned it, then – just in case Marvin should remember and come back – he topped the bottle up with water to its former level.
As the rum warmed his throat, he looked around the dingy cafe and shook his head. Oh, Lord, he prayed, take me away from this place. Bring me a big win on the football pools, please. No, not even a big win, just enough to buy two tickets to St. Lucia. Dear Jesus, do this thing for me and I won’t be no more trouble, I won’t ask another favour for the rest of my life.
*
4
The stranger had no more than an eighty-yard start on the four West Indians but he did not seem to be pushing himself unduly; he ran at a gentle, loping pace, as though saving himself. As he turned a corner he even paused as thought to check that they were still in pursuit.
They came up on him fast, shortening the distance between with every stride. A burly coloured man stepped out of the shadows and tried to block his path. The white man paused, feinted, and his fist thudded into the other man’s stomach. He fell back grunting and gasping and the white man ran on, with his pursuers now only a few yards behind.
A truck was parked on the opposite side of the road and he crossed towards it; but when he reached the far pavement he swerved away, and ran into a darkened alley.
Marvin checked the others. ‘No hurry,’ he said breathlessly. ‘We got him. Ain’t no way out, it’s a dead end.’
One of the youths took out a glove, put it on his right hand and wound a length of bicycle chain around it. The others drew out their knives and waited, listening. Through the open windows of a nearby house the voice of Ella Fitzgerald floated into the night, telling the world in song that Manhattan Island should be given back to the Indians. From further away, a woman’s scream hung on the air for a moment and then died away.
They moved forward in line, shoulder to shoulder, so that they covered the width of the alley, their eyes peering in the darkness. The engine of the parked truck started up behind them and Marvin halted the others with a gesture: after a moment, the truck moved away, its headlights briefly illuminating the entrance, and they continued their careful progress.
There was no way the white man could escape. The alley was bordered on either side by a high brick wall, topped with jagged glass, and at its furthest limit it ran head-on into the rear wall of a derelict sausage factory. The alley had once served as a service road to the factory, but now its only function was to provide an uncomfortable refuge for lovers with nowhere else to go.
Helped by a spill of irregular light from the houses beyond the walls, their eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness and they saw the shadowy figure of the stranger ahead of them, backed against the end wall. They moved more confidently now, their feet crunching the loose ashy surface of the ground.
And then, suddenly, a blaze of white light flooded the alley and they heard the roar of the truck at their backs. As they swung round the headlights stabbed at their eyes, momentarily robbing them of vision, and the truck was almost upon them before they recovered their wits sufficiently to spread themselves against the walls.
It stopped a yard or so away, and a man in dark blue overalls, his face masked, jumped down and came towards them. Two other men, dressed in similar fashion, came from the rear of the truck. All three were holding automatic pistols.
‘All right, my bonny lads,’ he said. ‘Drop the blades.’
The three younger men obeyed, but Marvin gave a snarl of anger, and threw himself forward. The stranger, taken by surprise, was too slow to avoid the full force of the rush, and he gave a cry of pain as the knife slashed into his shoulder, its point jarring the bone. He reeled back against the wall, and the West Indian turned to renew the attack.
As he did so, one of the masked men fired. It was a single shot but the blast, magnified by the confined space, echoed and reverberated like a clap of thunder. The knife dropped from Marvin’s hand, his mouth opened in a silent scream, and he fell face downwards, his forehead resting on the stranger’s shoes.
One of the men moved forward and turned Marvin over. He crouched over him for what seemed a long time, and then stood up.
‘He’s had it,’ he said, in a matter-of-fact voice.
‘He asked for it, the black bastard!’ said the stranger savagely.
The white men seemed uncertain now, and as they stood looking down at the dead body, one of the West Indian youths began to edge away from them, squeezing himself between the truck and the wall. He moved inch by inch until he reached the cover of the rear of the vehicle, and then, his heart hammering with relief and fear, he ran for the entrance and the safety of the dark streets beyond.
A clamour of voices began to rise from the houses beyond the walls as, roused by the noise of the shot, people opened windows and called to each other.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said the stranger.
‘We taking them with us?’ said one of the men, jerking a hand towards the two remaining West Indians.
‘Not this time,’ said the stranger. Clutching his shoulder, he moved across to the youths. ‘You’re lucky. You’re getting off light. Pass the word round. Pass it round good. You saw what happened to your mate. From now on, that’s what will happen to scum like you. And if you don’t like it, you know what you can do. Bugger off, get out, go back to banana land, where you came from.’
He raised his uninjured arm as if to strike them and as they cowered away he dropped it with a laugh.
As the truck backed out and drove away, the West Indian youth who had escaped was already pouring out the story to a crowded audience of young blacks in a local Disco. Within minutes, the body of Marvin Clay was discovered; a door was torn from a shed as an improvised stretcher and he was borne in procession through the streets to his home, a dead hero, all his sins forgotten. With each pace, the crowd around the body grew and the murmurs of shock and grief turned to angry shouts for revenge.
Attempts by community leaders to cool the atmosphere were thrust aside. In an hour, an army of West Indians, men and women, most of them young, swarmed into Brixton High Street, blocking off all the traffic. The hastily mobilised police patrols were forced to withdraw, though not before some of their number were injured, one so seriously that he died on the way to hospital.
Thousands strong, smashing lamps and windows, setting fire to stores, overturning parked cars, they marched on the nearest white area.
Word of the death of Marvin Clay had been phoned through to West Indians in other London suburbs and to those provincial areas where there were large coloured communities. Their reaction was almost as violent.
A pendulum swings both ways, every backlash provokes a response. Before long, gangs of white youths gathered, many of them wearing the insignia of the Churchill Movement, and began to take their revenge in turn on any coloured people who came their way. Barricades were thrown up in some streets and were the scene of bloody battles. A passenger in a plane flying over London reported that huge fires were burning in a dozen places – he had seen nothing like it since the war-time blitz. Fire engines found it impossible to get through to the blazing buildings, and the ambulances fared no better. Hundreds lay injured in the streets and in improvised casualty stations, and the tally of those dead had already reached double figures.
By 7 a.m., with the rioting showing little signs of diminishing, and as the rest of the nation roused itself from sleep, the BBC news commentator told his listeners that in some districts the situation seemed to be out of control and that the Commissioner of Police had asked for troops to be sent in to restore order.
Chapter Fourteen
1
‘No troops,’ said the Prime Minister. The sleepless night showed on his face, but his voice was wide awake. ‘I have given orders to the army that they are to remain on the alert, ready to move in, but for the moment that is as far as I’m prepared to go.’
He looked round the long, coffin-shaped table of the Cabinet Room, waiting with tired eyes for a word of dissent from his ministers. There was a long, sombre silence. God, what a bunch, he thought. A half dozen of them sitting with their heads down, making meaningless scrawls on their papers or simply avoiding his look. They had the dispirited appearance of refugees; mentally, they were already packing their bundles.
‘If I may say so, I think you’re wrong, Prime Minister,’ said the Home Secretary. The cold was still troubling him, his voice sounded as if it had been dragged through gravel.
‘You may so,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘You might also like to tell us your reasons.’
‘I believe –’ The Home Secretary paused and blew his nose. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I believe that the country will expect strong and decisive action. To hold the troops back now will be seen as a sign of weakness. The latest reports show that the coloured population have barricaded whole areas of S.E. London, North London, Leeds, Nottingham, Wolverhampton –’
‘We have the reports,’ said the Prime Minister impatiently.
‘They have declared these places No-Go areas, rather along the lines of what the I.R.A. did in Ulster some while back. They have refused access to the police, and other authorities. The police report that in many districts both whites and blacks are preparing themselves for a full-scale resumption of violence tonight. The police can just about hold the line during the day, just about. But this evening – tonight – that will be the crunch point. I don’t think the police will be able to contain the situation without help.’
‘The dockers have called a one-day strike and are marching on Parliament this afternoon,’ said the Secretary of State for Industry. ‘You can bet they’ll be joined by others. They’re demanding –’
‘We know their demands,’ said the Prime Minister.
‘Will we have enough police to control the march – that’s my point.’
‘We must find them!’ said the Prime Minister tersely. ‘Can you imagine how the docks would react if we surrounded the Palace of Westminster with the Brigade of Guards?’
There were nods from some of the others, but there were those who still kept their heads down. The Prime Minister sucked in his breath and released it in a long sigh of irritation.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘that’s my decision. No troops for the time being. I’ll keep the situation under constant review. We can have the army at the key trouble spots within a half-hour if it becomes necessary. That is my decision, right or wrong.’
He leaned forward, his fists on the table, and waited for his words to sink in. The silence came back again, heavier than before; the air itself seemed to be dejected.
‘Thank you for your enthusiastic support,’ said the Prime Minister drily. The heads came up at this, and a sardonic smile gleamed in his eyes. ‘Look,’ he went on, seriously. ‘We’ve got to keep our nerve. If we don’t, the country won’t. There is some evidence – it is scrappy as yet – that last night’s fighting in Brixton was provoked by the Churchill Commando. What happened last night was the culmination of an organised campaign designed with one purpose, and only one purpose in mind. To create such unrest and disorder that this government will become discredited and be forced to resign. The Opposition have already put down a Motion of No Confidence for this afternoon. That’s the first step.’
‘You’re not going to let them get away with that, surely!’ said the Secretary of State for Scotland.
‘I have very little choice, Secretary of State. In any case, I believe that we should meet the challenge, the sooner the better. If only to demonstrate to the country that we are determined to overcome this crisis. Even with our small majority, we should win, I think.’
‘Don’t worry, Prime Minister,’ said the Chief Whip in a booming Lancashire voice. ‘I’ll have the buggers on parade, every man jack of them.’
His cheerfulness seemed to lift some of the depression; shoulders went back and there was an exchange of cautious smiles.
‘Good,’ said the Prime Minister. He subjected a fingernail to a careful scrutiny and when he continued his voice was low and intent. ‘Let us all remember this. If – I say if – if by some miracle or chance they should carry the vote in the lobbies tonight, I shall have no other alternative but to see the Queen and hand in my resignation. Our resignation, in effect. Shall I tell you what I think will happen then?’
‘A General Election, of course,’ said the only woman minister present.
‘No. I don’t think so. I believe that they will argue that this is no time for the country to be without a government. And there’s some force to that, it makes sense. There will be strong pressure to form a Government of National Unity to see us through this crisis. They will propose the bringing in of the best brains from outside. And I tell you, it will a damned difficult thing to argue against.’
‘The bloody Trade Unions won’t stand for that!’ said the Chief Whip. ‘No way!’
‘Maybe they want a confrontation with the unions,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘Have you thought of that?’
‘They tried that back in 1974 with the miners,’ said the Chief Whip. ‘Reckon they learned their lesson then.’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘You see, I don’t think this would be like anything we’ve seen before.’ He did not enlarge on the thought.
