The Dreaming Suburb (41 page)

“So,” puffed Sokolski, “shorten your stride, my frien', I haf der pig veight to carry—and how many did they kill that day?”

“They didn't kill anyone,” said Jim, “it came on to rain, so they all went home!”

It was raining now, a thin, depressing drizzle, but there was some evidence of the demonstration at Hyde Park Corner, where caped police stood about in knots of three and four. The crowd, sensing tension, were loitering about the speakers' pitch, where orators were already at work, and their home-made placards had been planted. The lettering was already beginning to run in the rain. One placard said:
“Jarrow! What is to become of Us?”
Another:
“Ashton-Under-Lyne. We Claim The Right to Work, even for Next to Nothing!”

Sokolski spelled out the placards slowly, shaking his ponderous head as he did so, and hissing through his teeth.

“Dis is a strange vay of making the revolutions,” he said. “Vould it not be better to pull da policeman from his horse, and kick his face ten times?”

“It isn't a revolution,
Mr. Sokolski,” insisted Jim, “simply mass protest, and that's quite different! God knows, bloodshed won't help any; it's the one thing we all want to avoid!”

The crowd was increasing every moment, and scraps of stump oratory, flung into the wind, reached them from the speakers' rostrums: “... the Socialist government were blocked by a capitalist conspiracy...” “... the cartels need a permanent pool of unemployed labour ...” “MacDonald and Snowden were bought by the bosses....”

The number of walking police began to multiply along the pavements of Park Lane, and immediately behind Jim and his employer, where they stood on the fringe of the trees, a group of mounted policemen began to edge their horses on to the grass, gently shepherding the crowds away from the more open ground.

“I'm supposed to report to my reception committee at mid-day,” said Jim, turning up his collar against the drizzle. “Suppose we have a coffee to warm us? There's a little place I know off Cumberland Place, if we can get there.”

They were unable to get to the café, for crowds were now lining Oxford Street ten deep, and a phalanx of police held the kerbsiders in a solid wedge along the edge of both pavements. Slowly the two of them worked their way to the kerb and stood there, blocked by the broad back of a Metropolitan policeman.

“Vot's diss?” Sokolski wanted to know. “Vy we stuck here by bloddy polis?”

Jim glanced at him curiously, noting the change in the Jew's demeanour. He had set out almost in protest, but later on, after they had stood in the Park for a few moments, he began to catch a little of the general excitement, and had looked around on all sides with considerable interest. Now there was a hard look in his eye, and a very determined set to his jaw. Jim noticed, with some apprehension, that the old man was beginning to look almost belligerent. He said cautiously:

“We'd better stay here for a bit, Mr. Sokolski. I've just heard that the Merthyr Tydvil contingent is coming in from Earl's Court This is their finishing point, and that'll be them, now.”

From over on their left, in the general direction of Bayswater, came a confused murmur from the crowd, and above it the faint sound of men's voices, singing in harmony. Jim edged back a few inches, and hoisted himself up on the base of a lamp-standard. As he was over six feet his additional height enabled him to see two or three hundred yards down the Bayswater Road, to a point where a procession was moving slowly in their direction. He could just pick out the cluster of banners, advancing through the murk.

Here and there, good-natured chaff was being exchanged between police and sightseers.

“Move your great blue behind, copper, and let's see something worth seeing!” piped one Cockney.

“What are all the Flatfeet here for? Do they think we're going to blow up bloody Parliament?” asked another, within hearing of a knot of policemen.

Two or three mounted policemen clattered by, riding briskly towards the procession. Their batons were drawn, and Jim was struck by the tenseness of their expressions.

Shortly afterwards, marching to the slow rhythm of
Cwm Rhondda
, the procession moved into general view, its leading ranks swinging slowly round to the right as its standard-bearer made for the area fronting the speakers' platforms. Jim and Sokolski now had a good view of the pinched, exultant faces in the front ranks, small men, most of them, inadequately clothed against the wind and the driving rain.

Then, as though by pre-arranged signal, two flanking bodies of police moved forward, one from each side of Park Lane, and the procession halted in some confusion. The song ceased as the men behind lost the rhythm. A mounted police-inspector, not ten yards from the spot where Jim arid his employer were standing, trotted over to the now halted leading files, leaned forward over his crupper, and said something, pointing with his baton towards Oxford Street.

“Not this way,” he shouted; “down there—keep moving down there!”

“They're heading them off,” exclaimed Jim incredulously. “The bloody fools, they'll have a riot on their hands if they head them off!”

The solid wedges of spectators immediately behind suddenly surged forward, presumably in the hope of getting a better view of what was going on, and Jim had barely time to grab Sokolski's coat sleeve before the pair of them were projected into the road. Simultaneously the police cordon broke.

At the same moment, the halted ranks behind the Welsh banners broke formation, and pushed forward in a solid wedge, shouting and cat-calling. Police from the shattered cordon began to rally to the mounted group, fumbling for their batons as they ran.

As the first of them reached him, the mounted inspector stretched out and grabbed at the banner of the man he had first addressed, but the standard-bearer, a short, stocky, white-faced man, refused to surrender it, and clung to the pole with both hands as the horse swung round, jerking him off his feet. For a second or two he hung there, while another policeman pounced on him from behind, and a third doubled round the hind-quarters of the horse and began belabouring the standard-bearer's shoulders with his baton.

It was difficult to discover how Sokolski became involved. One moment he was beside Jim, a few yards from the scuffle, and the next he was clear of Jim and lashing out at the third constable with his umbrella.

Jim, horrified, darted forward with the intention of catching and somehow extricating the old man from the mêlée, but by this time the main body of miners had surged to the rescue, and the scuffle had become general, men going down on all sides, with fists and batons flailing.

A burly miner beside Jim darted forward and seized the leg of the struggling inspector, tearing him from his saddle. The banner-pole snapped off short, and the little man who was holding it began using it as a club. Police helmets began to tumble off, and Jim caught a last glimpse of Sokolski, about three yards away, wielding his umbrella by its end, and screaming something at the group of police who had converged on the prostrate inspector. Then a salvo of silver-starred rockets exploded in Jim's face, and he fell beside the riderless horse.

3

When he opened his eyes the first thing he noticed was an enclosed electric bulb, wired into the ceiling. He blinked at it, conscious only of the brightness of the bulb, and of an agonising throbbing at the right side of his head. He put up his hand to rub it, and touched congealed blood. His hair was matted with blood, and he felt violently sick.

He lay still for a moment until the nausea passed. Then he noticed that he was lying on a hard floor, and that round about him was a great deal of confused noise, and several
pairs of legs. Gradually the noise resolved itself into the rise and fall of men's voices, using an unfamiliar accent, and it was the accent that gave him the clue, and caused him to remember the scuffle, the flailing batons, and the blinding flash that had brought the curtain down on the fight.

He sat up unsteadily, and discovered that he was sharing a plain, white-washed room with about a dozen other men. They were all so crowded together that they found difficulty in moving without treading on him. He looked slowly round, recognising no one. Then his jaw dropped, for sitting on the closet lid, not a yard away from him, was Jacob Sokolski, hatless, his overcoat lapel ripped and hanging, his shirt torn open, and a large patch of dried mud adhering to his seamed cheek.

Jim struggled to his knees and called to Jacob.

“What happened, Mr. Sokolski? What are we doing here? How did
you
get here?”

The old man's face lit up. He climbed slowly off the closet seat, and shouldered his way to Jim. He appeared to be in excellent spirits.

“Ha, ha, my zocialist frien', you see vat you do for me? Dere
iss
no revolution, you say! Yet, here ve are, locked in a dungeon for fighting the bloddy polis!”

One of the miners, the big man whom Jim now recalled as the one who had unhorsed the Inspector, slapped the Jew on the back.

“And it's a bloody marvel you were, Granpa, with that brolly of yours!” He turned to the others, with a wide grin, that reminded Jim of Boxer. “Man, but it was worth the tramp, it wass! All the way from the Valley we come now, to see a gentleman take our part, and lambast the bloody bobbies, isn't it?”

Jim momentarily forgot his throbbing temple.

“What the hell happened down there?” he asked, and then by way of introducing himself: “I'm from the Croydon Unemployed Workers' Union. I was supposed to welcome you chaps at the Park!”

“Aye, you wass that, Bach,” said the miner, “but they tried to turn the procession into the West End. They wouldn't let
us stop, you see? Christ, you come all this way, and they won't even let you say your piece when you get here!”

“You'll get your chance to say your piece, Dai, from the ruddy dock!” grinned another man. “My word, but this'll be something for the Press, won't it? How many of us would you say were in here?”

“They scooped up about twenty of us before the reinforcements broke it up,” somebody told him; “there were hundreds of the bleeders, bashing right and left and centre!”

“There'll be questions, there will, in Parliament,” said another, but Sokolski broke in, violently, suddenly catching the attention of everyone in the cell.

“Parliament!” he snorted. “Ach, you Pritisch do so much talking, and so little spitting! Vy you not pull bloddy Parliament down, and throw it in de bloddy river, brick by brick.”

“Not a bad idea, Granpa,” grinned the big man, but Jim noticed vague suspicion in the eyes of some of the other men.

“Who the hell is he?” whispered a miner to Jim, “and how did he come to get mixed up in it?”

“He's a furrier, from Bond Street,” Jim told him, “and he's my boss. It's my fault, I reckon, I shouldn't have brought him here. He's a decent old stick, and those blasted bobbies might have killed him.”

Indignantly, he turned back to Sokolski.

“I'm sorry I got you mixed up in this, Mr. Sokolski, but you were as much to blame as me, going for them with that umbrella the way you did! When we get up in Court don't say anything, you leave all the talking to me, understand?”

But Sokolski had now resumed his seat upon the closet, and was folding his hands over his stomach with the air of a man relaxing after a trying day.

“You make no excuses for me, my Zocialist frien',” he said quietly. “Me? I learn someding good today. And vat is it I learn? I learn your bloddy polis remind me of my Cossacks, and that's good! For why? I tell you.”

He addressed the cell at large, and they listened with interest.

“Today I hit three Cossacks, bom, bom, bom! And I learn someding else that time.” He winked at the admiring giant
among the miners. “I learn I not forget how to dodge, for how many times dey hit me back? Not vonce!”

“Christ!” said one of the Welshmen, “so the old chap's a Bolshie, is he?”

Jim slowly massaged his head. “No, he isn't,” he said irritably, “he left Russia years before Bolshies were heard of, but I reckon he must have forgotten where he was, and that's what I'd better tell them when he's hauled up. Is there any water in this stinking place? My head's giving me hell!”

There was no water, and getting no response to their shouts the men began to sing
Cwm Rhondda
again. Jim stood it for three verses. Then he was sick, and Jacob held him over the toilet.

4

They were brought before the magistrate that same afternoon, nineteen of them in all, charged with assaulting the police and resisting arrest.

Jim, who considered that he had a clean conscience in the matter, was highly indignant, but the Welshmen were exhilarated by the prospect of further newspaper publicity. Jacob Sokolski remained strangely silent, both throughout the initial hearing, and after their release on bail, pending appearances in Court the following Monday.

There had been several clashes that day, and Jim made headlines again. It was noticeable that Authority showed some reluctance to press home the prosecutions, and Jim's guess that the charges would soon be reduced to those of obstruction proved correct. They discussed the matter with Jacob's solicitor, a bullet-headed little Pole, called Kossovitch, to whom they repaired after the hearing.

Kossovitch, to whom Jacob had brought a good deal of business in the past, held out prospects of the case against Jim being dismissed. He had been able to locate two of the Reception Committee who were not involved in the fight, and these men were willing to swear that they had seen Jim Carver pushed into the road, and struck from behind, after Sokolski had broken away from him.

It was difficult, however, to enter a similar plea on behalf
of the furrier, for a press photographer had recorded his attack on the policeman with his umbrella, and the photograph appeared in a left-wing periodical that week-end. Contemplating the picture, captioned:
“Indignant bystander is moved to support provoked miners!”
Jacob at last broke the brooding silence that he had maintained ever since their release.