‘They’ll listen,’ Harry said, and bellowed for silence.
A patchy hush was enforced with a great deal of effort.
‘Friends and neighbours . . .’
Tom had dreamed of this day, and had made this speech or one very much like it in his head a hundred times. Now the words could be said.
‘Your courage and your steadfastness have opened a new age for the men of the waterfront. Never again will we be put upon and exploited. We have stood up and made our voices heard in high places. We are a power in the land. And we have been an example to other working people in different trades and different parts of the country. Even now, the railwaymen, the miners, the printers and the cotton workers are demanding better wages and conditions. You have been an inspiration to them.’ He stopped, choked with emotion. Hastily he tried to clear his aching throat. He still had something he wanted to say.
‘I have a message for you from our leaders, from Harry Gosling and Ben Tillett. They congratulate you on your success, and they say this: “We now declare the strike at an end, and thank every man, woman and child for your loyal support of our efforts.”’
Happy faces swam before his eyes. People were wringing his hands. Someone’s arm was across his shoulders.
‘Three cheers for Tom Johnson! Hip, hip –’ Harry’s voice belted out over the joyful row.
The heartfelt hurrahs reverberated up and down the street, raising the sparrows from the rooftops. Tom stood, dazed, with tears running unashamedly down his face.
‘Chair, chair!’ somebody shouted.
The idea caught on at once. Before he could protest, Tom found himself lifted up on a precarious platform of shoulders. Laughing and shouting and singing, his human chariot bore him the length of the street and finally deposited him at his own front door. He stood with shaking knees, saying he knew not what to everyone who spoke to him, until Martha managed to work her way through to his side. He threw an arm round her ample body and held her close to him, as if they were a newlywed couple, while their neighbours whistled and cheered anew.
For a while everyone milled about, then a bright spark realized that the very best excuse for a drink was to hand, and a large majority made off for the Puncheon, where Percy broached his very last barrel in the fervent hope that deliveries would soon be back to normal and money available to pay off the amounts run up on the slate.
Tom resisted all invitations to buy him a pint. He stood and watched them disperse, his arm still round his wife.
‘So you done it, then?’ It was Martha who spoke first.
‘We all done it, girl. All of us, the women as well as the men.’
‘It’s a proud day for you.’
‘Yeah.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I still can’t take it in. After all this time, years and years of trying to make people see what they could do if they would only stand together, and in the end it all blew up so quick. Even when it did start, I thought it’d be a long fight, like what we had back in eighty-nine. It looked like it even up to a couple of days ago, yesterday even. All that talk about the Army standing by. And it was, too. People seen ’em, making ready to come and break the strike.’
‘Thank God they didn’t,’ Martha said.
‘Yeah, it would’ve been nasty, that.’
‘You coming in?’ Martha said. ‘Our Ellen give us a twist of tea. Her Gerry got hold of some up the market yesterday.’
Tom looked at the families still busily discussing the news – his friends, his neighbours, the people he had been working for. But right now he did not need the hurly-burly and the acclaim. He had had his moment. Now he just wanted the peace and quiet of his own kitchen. He followed Martha inside.
‘So it’s been worth it, then, in the end?’ Martha said, pouring hot water into the teapot.
‘The end? It’s not the end, it’s the beginning. The start of a new age.’
‘Ah.’
He went and put his arms round her waist as she stood at the sink. ‘I
couldn’t never have done it without you, love. You been a real brick, you have. Best wife a man could have.’
‘Oh, get away with you.’ Martha’s voice was rough with tears.
‘I mean it, love. The way you put up with it all. Never a cross word. And me not taking notice of you and the family like what I ought.’
Martha leaned back against him, resting her head on his shoulder. ‘I know how much it means to you, this union business. And I’m happy for you. This is your big day, ain’t it?’
‘Yeah – yeah, it is. What we all been working for.’
‘Then I’m glad you got what you wanted. You enjoy it, love. We don’t often get what we want, do we?’
Tom kissed her cheek.
‘You’re the best, you are. Best wife a man could hope to have.’
HARRY SAT IN
the Puncheon, nursing a mean half-pint. The strikes might be over but life had not got back to normal straight away.
‘Half a blooming pint,’ Jimmy Croft grumbled. ‘Can’t hardly wet your whistle with this. ’Specially with it still so hot and all.’
‘Some pubs have run out altogether,’ Percy told him. ‘It’s not just a case of the deliveries from the breweries starting up again. The breweries themselves ain’t got no hops or malt left. They’re waiting for you lot to unload ’em from the wharves. Then we might get some beer back on tap again.’
‘Blimey, that’s going to take days. You seen the boats waiting to be unloaded?’ Jimmy said.
‘They say there’s three weeks’ work just clearing the ships in the West India dock, let alone starting on them moored up in the river,’ Harry said.
After the celebrations of the day before, everyone was restless and irritable. Somehow, they had expected Tom Johnson’s new age to dawn at once. Instead, they were still in debt, with no food on the table and Percy down to the dregs of the last barrel.
The groups in the bar were divided sharply into English and Irish. Though the men had not been involved in the fight over Siobhan, there was a lot of bad feeling in the air.
At that moment a skinny boy of about twelve came hurtling into the pub.
‘Quick, quick! It’s Gerry Billingham, he needs help!’ he shrieked, his shrill voice cutting through the noise. ‘They got Gerry Billingham! They’re giving him a right pasting!’
Harry caught the boy by the arm. ‘Who? Who’s got him?’
‘It’s the carmen on the West Ferry Road. Quick! You got to help!’
Harry looked round at the men hunched over their drinks. ‘You heard that? Them mad bleeders have got our Gerry! Are we going to stand for that?’
‘No!’ howled those around him.
The Catholics said nothing, but Harry knew how to get them behind
him. Not for nothing had he led the street gang for two whole years.
‘Nobody touches someone from Trinidad Street and lives! Death or Glory!’
‘Death or Glory!’ came the battle cry.
Harry turned to the boy.
‘Where are they? Show us.’
The lad sped off down the street, with Harry at his heels. Behind him, Harry could hear the pounding boots of his lifetime friends, and glancing back over his shoulder he was heartened to see that the Catholics were with him. With an army like this, he could face anyone.
They raced into the West Ferry Road. There on the other side of the cobbled highway a knot of assorted vans and drays was held up while a mêlée of men staggered this way and that, fists flying. Harry plunged straight through the nearside traffic, ignoring the curses of a tram driver. Fuelled with anger and anxiety, he waded in, trying to get to the centre of the trouble.
‘Gerry!’ he yelled. ‘Hold on, Gerry! We’re here!’
Around and behind him he could hear and see the Trinidad Street men laying in. Shouts and curses greeted their arrival.
‘Blimey, it’s his mates!’ someone shouted. ‘Scarper!’
But Harry’s army was not going to let them get away just like that. They were spoiling for a fight, and this was just the outlet they were looking for. Passers-by gathered round and shouted encouragement while the Trinidad Street men wreaked revenge on the carmen.
Through the tangle of flailing arms and falling bodies, Harry could see his cousin. He looked for all the world like an abandoned heap of old clothing, pitifully small and vulnerable. Even as he tried to fight his way through to him, he saw men tripping over him, iron-shod boots ramming into soft flesh.
‘Gerry! Move – get out of it!’ he bellowed.
But there was no response.
Harry put his head down and barged a way through. Gerry was lying curled up, foetus-like, with his hands protectively over his head. He was quite still. Harry straddled him, bracing his body against the ebb and flow of the battle. He had to get Gerry to safety, he was in danger of being kicked to death here. He bent down and gripped his cousin under the arms, then backed towards the pavement, dragging the inert body with him. Gerry’s boots bumped and grated against the cobbles. A retreating carman fell backwards over his legs and was pounced on by an O’Ryan. Harry yelled at them to get off, but they were oblivious of him. It was only when the Irishmen hauled up the carman to punch him more easily that Harry could continue his
journey. To his horror, he realized that Gerry was leaving a trail ot blood on the road. He redoubled his efforts, heaved him up into his arms like a baby, and carried him out of the brawl and through the ring of spectators till he finally made the safe haven of a shop doorway.
‘Oi!’ The shopkeeper was incensed. ‘You can’t put him there, he’ll make a mess.’
Harry drew himself up to his full height and glared at the man. ‘Not half as much of a mess as I could make of you, mate. Now go and fetch us some water and a cloth.’
For a moment the man held his eyes. Then he backed down and disappeared into the back of the shop.
Harry knelt down beside his cousin. What he saw sickened him. Gerry’s face was a pulp of cuts and bruises and his hair was matted with blood. Harry laid a hand on his chest. Beneath the protruding ribs, his heart was still beating. His worst fear was allayed. But what really alarmed him was Gerry’s right arm. The left sleeves of his jacket and shirt were hanging loose, cut almost through, revealing a huge jagged wound that was oozing bright red blood. Harry was tight with anger. That had not come from a fair fight. That had been made by a piece of glass or sharp metal.
He tried to stop the bleeding by wrapping the flap of cut sleeve round the arm. But when he pressed down, he found blood welling up through his fingers.
‘I think this is a job for the hospital,’ he said to the shopkeeper’s wife. ‘You got anything I can borrow to wheel him in? A flat cart, a barrow, even?’
She shook her head. ‘Them mad carmen are the ones to ask.’
‘They’re not going to help, are they?’
‘Him next door but one’s got a barrow. He’s all right, is Jim. He’ll lend it you,’ a passer-by chipped in.
Harry thanked him, and while the man went to ask he and the shopkeeper’s wife set to work, cleaning the worst of Gerry’s cuts and bandaging up the open wounds. Within a minute the water in the bowl was scarlet.
The battle with the carmen was coming to an end. A couple of policemen appeared on the scene and all those who could make a break for it had gone. Everyone was explaining to everyone else what had happened. A large navy-blue-clad figure loomed over Harry.
‘Right then. What’s been going on? Is he hurt bad?’
‘What’s it bloody well look like?’
‘Them carmen said as he was blacklegging during the strike. They was out to get him for it,’ explained the man who had asked for the barrow.
‘We got to get him to hospital,’ Harry insisted. ‘He could be bleeding to death lying here.’
The constable rose to the occasion magnificently, calling a police ambulance and assisting with the first aid. The next fifteen minutes felt like the longest Harry had spent in his life. He answered the constable’s questions without thinking, believing that Gerry was slipping away before his very eyes. He was so deeply unconscious, it was only by feeling his chest that Harry could tell that he was still alive.
‘Married, is he?’ the constable asked, flipping a page in his notebook.
With a jolt it hit Harry that if Gerry were to die . . . He tried to brush the thought away, ashamed that he should even have entertained it. But it lingered, tantalizing, refusing to be banished.
The policeman repeated the question.
‘Oh – yeah. He is.’
‘Name of the wife? Living at the same address?’
If Ellen were free . . .
The ambulance arrived. Full of concern and guilt, Harry tried to go along with his cousin.
‘No need for that, sir. Doesn’t exactly want you to hold his hand, now does he?’
Along with all the others, he was rounded up and taken down to the station for further questioning.
Ellen and Alma waited for what seemed like hours in the echoing brown-tiled hall. Around them, accident victims and emergency cases were brought in, porters and nurses and doctors passed to and fro, other relatives sat anxiously waiting for news. The place had a hostile feel to it. In the harsh light, everyone’s faces looked tired and drawn. They were all stiff from sitting on the uncomfortable benches, their nostrils offended by the overpowering smell of disinfectant. At first they talked, putting their gnawing worry into words, repeating their fears over and over to each other, as if they might work like an incantation and stop the worst from happening. But as time went on and it became more and more likely that Gerry was seriously injured, Ellen subsided into silence, no longer able to keep the horrors at bay.
Here in the hospital Gerry was fighting for his life. Back at home little Tom was getting weaker by the hour and she felt as if she was being torn in half. Hardly able to contain herself, she paced up and down in front of the hard wooden bench, chewing at her knuckles.
‘Sit down, lovey. You’ll wear yourself out,’ Alma begged.
‘I can’t. I can’t sit still,’ Ellen said.
At last the pressure of guilt was too much to bear.
‘It’s all my fault. I should’ve told him not to get that stuff. I should have stopped him.’
‘What stuff? What d’you mean?’ Alma was mystified.
‘When the strike was on. He said he was going to fetch some stuff from over Stepney and he wasn’t going to let no blooming carmen stop him. I told him, I said, “You be careful, Gerry”, but I should’ve done more than that. I should’ve stopped him. If I’d’ve stopped him, he wouldn’t be here now.’