Beautiful Lies (34 page)

The
City Chronicle
had no such scruples. For weeks Webster’s newspaper had steadfastly supported the Socialists’ endeavour, publishing a series of articles and printing letters from influential radicals, Edward and William Morris among them. The Home Secretary’s order, however, provoked a quite unprecedented response. Dismissing peaceful protest as no more than a fly-swat in the face of a bloodthirsty lion, Webster had called upon the people of London to converge upon Trafalgar Square with all the arms they could muster. Peaceful protest was impossible. It was time for a mighty and violent crusade against repression and injustice.

Appalled, the Socialists could only watch as immediately, and in a fever of furious horror, London’s conservative newspapers seized upon the story. Front pages across the capital declared Webster’s diatribe criminally irresponsible, an incitement to riot. They claimed, of course, that this was what the Socialists had wanted all along, that Webster was the puppet of the SDF and the Socialist League, that, far from the peaceful demonstration that they claimed to want, the Socialists longed for a bloodbath. Calls were made for a doubling, a tripling of the police presence in Trafalgar Square. Londoners were warned to barricade themselves in. Not since the Sink of Iniquity had the
City Chronicle
been so much on everyone’s lips.

‘It seems he will have publicity whatever the cost,’ Lady Worsley said quietly. ‘Poor John. That his newspaper, his chosen successor – it is very difficult for him.’

‘Lord Worsley is here?’

‘No. He is – indisposed. My nephew accompanied me.’

‘Ah.’

‘And Mr Campbell Lowe?’

‘He is down there,’ she said. ‘Somewhere.’

Edward had thought Webster on their side. Ragingly egocentric, certainly, sensationalist too, perhaps even a little mad, but ideologically a radical. One of them. It had never occurred to Edward that Webster would requisition the forces of Socialism for the greater glory of himself and his newspaper.

The party was drifting over to the windows. Out of the corner of her eye Maribel saw Mrs Rasmussen chivvying her guests towards the circles of chairs. On the other side of the room Mr Webster said something to a group of gentlemen, who laughed and settled themselves in the window furthest from her. If she was lucky, she thought with a flicker of relief, they might contrive to avoid speaking to one another altogether. She glanced at the mantelpiece but the framed copy of the
Chronicle
was no longer there. No doubt, like everyone else, Mrs Rasmussen had considered the gesture in execrable taste. The seats around her were filling up. She nodded at those with whom she was acquainted but she did not sit down. She remained at the window, one hand against the glass, all of her attention once more upon the square. Thousands of people now choked the perimeter, pressing in on the wall of policemen that defended its interior. The mood, it seemed, was souring. In several places the black line broke and re-formed as skirmishes broke out. Bricks were thrown and punches, batons raised. Mounted policemen urged their horses through the crowd, churning the dense mass, their truncheons thrust like bayonets. Men raised their arms, holding their elbows over their heads. Maribel scoured the crowd anxiously for Edward.

‘Where are the marchers?’ she said. ‘Should they not be here by now?’

A small and dapper gentleman in an impeccable tweed suit leaned forward, one elbow upon his knee.

‘I fear there is not the slightest chance of the marchers making it this far,’ he said. His accent was American.

Maribel frowned.

‘Why on earth not?’

The American smiled and introduced himself as Mr Ackermann. A newspaperman from Boston, he had been in London three months.

‘Warren learned his warcraft in darkest Africa,’ Mr Ackermann explained. ‘He will have no intention of allowing tribes of savages to fight together and on their chosen turf. Don’t you agree, Bellingfield?’

Bellingfield, a long, thin man with a face like an emaciated racehorse, nodded.

‘Quite right,’ he agreed.

‘But there are to be three hundred thousand of them,’ Maribel said. ‘How can he hope to stop them?’

‘The Commissioner has twenty thousand constables and the Home Secretary breathing down his neck. After last year do you think he wishes to fight another pitched battle here in the square? Of course not. He will have mobilised his forces to intercept the protesters on their way. Tactically he has the advantage. Confront the marchers by blocking their route, then use the side streets to allow an attack on the flanks as well as to the front. Despite Mr Webster’s war whoops in the
Chronicle
most will not be armed. Act decisively and you disarm the columns before they come together, thus preventing a combined show of force.’

‘Only the most determined and well-organised militia would have a chance of breaching those defences,’ the horse-faced man said.

‘Does that sound like the Socialists to you?’ Mr Ackermann asked, and they both laughed. Maribel did not laugh.

‘Surely it cannot be necessary to have quite so many policemen?’ she said quietly to Lady Worsley.

‘They seem to have taken no chances,’ Lady Worsley admitted.

Mr Ackermann shrugged.

‘After last February’s debacle what choice do they have?’ he said. ‘London requires them to keep order and keep order they will. They know that for every man intent upon peaceful protest there are ten roughs who wish for nothing more than broken windows and stolen property. The unemployed may insist upon their right to gather, to demonstrate, but it is rascaldom that has made this square its headquarters these past weeks and it is the honest working man who pays the price.’

‘The unemployed in London have rightful grievances,’ Maribel said stiffly.

‘That is true but it is not they who gather today. The men down there are unemployed only in the sense that they would refuse every honest employment that might be offered them.’

Maribel’s mouth tightened.

‘If there are ruffians among the crowd Mr Webster is entirely to blame for it,’ she said. ‘The Socialists want only to defend their right to peaceful protest.’

Mr Ackermann raised an eyebrow, glancing over his shoulder at Mr Webster, who stood at the other end of the room, looking out of the window with his hands in his pockets.

‘Mr Webster has added his five cents, of that there is no doubt. But the Socialists are disingenuous. Your English working class has a profound regard for law and order. Were it not for the lumpen seeking the immediate redistribution of wealth from the shops of the West End, the crowd down there would number no more than a few hundred.’

The fact that she knew the American to be right did not endear him to Maribel. She took a cigarette from her case and set it between her lips. She did not offer him one.

‘You do not share this gentleman’s cynicism, do you, Lady Worsley?’ she asked, striking a match, but Rose Worsley only sighed and shook her head.

‘I do not hold out much hope for the protesters,’ she said. ‘Ruffian or Socialist, it hardly matters, does it? This government thinks one as criminal as the other and deals with them accordingly. Marches such as this one simply harden their resolve.’

‘The poor are starving in the streets and the Home Secretary would seal their mouths shut,’ Maribel protested, Edward’s words rising easily to her lips. ‘What can we do but march? How else can we force the Tories to attend to the miseries of the poor?’

The roar rose up from the square so suddenly it seemed that it might knock the glass from the windows. In the parlour of Green’s hotel the guests gasped. Mr Ackermann rose to his feet. Across the square, coming from the direction of the Strand, a mass of protesters, banners aloft, stormed the lines of the police. In an answering surge the crowd below the balcony pressed forward. There were women among the crowd, and children too, their heads half submerged as the rushing flood carried them on. Immediately, with the oiled authority of a machine, the first rank of mounted police moved forward, the horses driving into the crowd, while from all sides policemen on foot armed with truncheons and batons weighed into the fray. Men lashed out with fists, hurled stones. They brandished sticks and cudgels, striking wildly above their heads. Arms linked, they charged the unyielding ranks of the foot policemen, throwing themselves bodily against the wall of serge. The air was thick with shouting, the sickening sounds of blows.

Maribel saw two men seize the bridle of a police horse, dragging the creature’s head down so that the animal stumbled. The policeman on its back raised his arm, his mouth a black hole in his face, and struck one of the men across the head with his stick, over and over, the blows like the striking of a clock, until the blood ran down the protester’s face and he fell, disappearing from view. Beside him a policeman’s face contorted as he kicked out with his heavy boots. Maribel pressed so close to the window that her breath clouded the glass, but he did not get up. If the policeman did not kill him, she thought with a sick lurch of her stomach, his fellows would trample him to death.

Somewhere in the madness was Edward. The crowd twisted and writhed as the first rank of mounted police, the solidity of their line unbroken, moved forward with the oiled authority of a great black machine. The protesters fought, fists and sticks flailing frenziedly, but they could not breach the line. A scarlet banner declaring ‘THE SOLIDARITY OF LABOUR’ in large black capitals sailed forward, hoisted on twin masts, only to slump, its bearers felled by a hail of blows. The words crumpled into a pool of scarlet and were gone.

The people outnumbered the police perhaps fifty to one and yet there seemed all of a sudden to have sprung up a new multitude of black uniforms, policemen proliferating like ants pouring from the ground. Batons carved arcs in the air. Boots stamped. Horses swerved and reared, their hooves slicing through the press of bodies. Faces ran with blood. The crowd eddied frantically, the force of those who shoved forward resisted by those who, in terror, tried to push their way back towards safety. Someone wielded a post, a rag of torn scarlet streaming like a pennant from its top. Already the dazed and bloodied bodies of protesters were being dragged by police through the crowds to the waiting Black Marias, their arms lashed behind their backs. The chaos was unimaginable.

‘Lady Worsley, Mrs Campbell Lowe, well, isn’t this something to behold?’

There was no avoiding him. He stood so close she could smell the oil in his hair, the faint reek of onions on his breath. As Rose Worsley turned to greet him Maribel forced herself to nod. She could not bring herself to look at his face. He wore a scarlet silk neckerchief and an ill-cut suit of hairy tweed and, against his thighs, his fingers tapped out a restless rhythm. Beside him stood a thickset man with mutton-chop whiskers and a dark coat.

‘Ladies, you know Sir Douglas Maddox, of course?’ Webster said.

‘Yes indeed,’ Lady Worsley said. ‘How do you do?’

‘Sir Douglas,’ Maribel said.

‘Your reprobate of a husband not here?’ Sir Douglas asked, shaking Maribel’s hand. ‘I haven’t seen the old troublemaker in weeks.’

Maribel attempted a smile.

‘I know just how you feel.’

‘Making a bloody nuisance of himself in the House, I hear. Offending everyone left, right and centre.’

‘Just because he’s one of the few Members with principles,’ Webster said.

‘Thank you, Webster. I shall endeavour to take that the right way. I just hope it doesn’t interfere with his cricket career.’ Maddox smiled at Maribel. ‘Thirty-something runs he scored for us at the Commons match last summer. Highest score of the afternoon. I’m counting on him to do it all again next year.’

‘I’m sure he’d be delighted.’

‘Just goes to show it’s worth doing a friend a favour from time to time. It was your cousin, wasn’t it, the Yorkshireman from Coulson Brown he sent me?’

Webster looked at her curiously. ‘You have family in Yorkshire, Mrs Campbell Lowe?’

Maribel felt her colour rising. ‘No, of course not. How could I?’ she said with a Gallic shrug. Over the years the Spanish-French inflections in her voice had mellowed but now the ‘h’s fell away and the ‘th’s hardened into ‘z’s. ‘The man was a cousin of Edward’s, I think. Or a cousin of a cousin. I hardly recall. I certainly never met him.’

‘The boy was a decent sort, as I remember,’ Maddox said. ‘A sound head on his shoulders.’

That’s the way of the Yorkshireman,’ Webster said. ‘Says what he means and means what he says. No time for fine words and flimflammery. I hail from that part of the world myself, of course.’

Beyond the window a shout went up. Maribel turned and looked out, glad of the distraction. Her cheeks were hot.

‘A proud, proud day,’ Webster said with satisfaction.

‘It doesn’t look as though the protesters are making much headway,’ said Maddox.

Webster shrugged. ‘They will be defeated, of course. Warren will take care of that. But that is not the point. Win or lose, the oppressed will prove that they cannot be disregarded.’

It had begun to rain. Flecks of water spattered the window-panes. Around the police cordon, which had yet to be breached, the skirmishes had grown more ferocious. On the steps of a building close by the window a man in a torn coat slumped bareheaded. Blood clotted in his hair and ran in dark streaks down his white face. Somewhere in the melee someone screamed, a long agonised cry like an animal caught in a trap. Webster contemplated the confusion, patting his chest. Maribel thought of Edward, down there somewhere, and the fury rose in her like bile.

‘Why are you not down there with them?’ she said, snapping open her cigarette case. ‘I thought it customary for a general to lead his troops into battle.’

‘I am a newspaperman, madam, not a soldier,’ Webster said. ‘I do what I can. The refusal of this government to assuage or even acknowledge the wretchedness of the poor is unconscionable. The cry of starving children, the filth of the slums, the despair of those worn down by miserable labour, these are stains upon us all and an affront to God. If I were a politician like your husband I would argue in the House as he does. If I were a soldier, yes, perhaps I would fight. As a newspaper editor, what I can do is rally God’s people, to urge those who seek a better world to rise up and let their voices sing out until the glass shakes in the windows of the great halls of Westminster. Because of the
Chronicle
, the poor of London will finally be heard.’