Black August (10 page)

The Prime Minister likewise had a special worry of his own, for, without consulting him, the Prince had paid a visit to the Air Ministry and arranged for the dispatch of about forty
planes to unknown destinations. The Minister of Air refused all explanations and offered his resignation, but as he was one of the few really popular figures among the masses the Prime Minister felt that this was no time to accept it. His Royal Highnesses action was in the highest degree unorthodox, and the Prime Minister resented it accordingly, but faced with the duty of reprimanding him he felt an exceedingly strong desire to postpone the interview.

His Royal Highness was proving difficult in other ways too, apparently. With tireless energy he motored or flew from place to place, and wherever he went they knew him to be in constant consultation with important pople who represented every shade of feeling. The only potentates whom he resolutely refused to interview were the principal members of the Government. He declared that authority had not been delegated to him, and therefore he was not prepared to take the responsibility of lending his countenance to their decisions. On the other hand the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Home Secretary knew that he was in constant touch with the Secretaries of War, Air and the Dominions. The situation rankled.

Another nebulous but potent figure outside the Cabinet hovered on the Prime Minister's horizon. Lord Llewellyn with his great private organisation of Greyshirts, formed it was said without political aims, but for the maintenance of law and order under established Government. The Prime Minister detested the autocratic Llewellyn, and had the gravest suspicions regarding his middle-class volunteers though it was denied that they were in any way associated with the Fascists. However, Llewellyn having offered his legions as additional Special Police the Prime Minister had been compelled to accept them under pressure from his more belligerent colleagues, and official status was to be given to the Greyshirt army that evening.

The last and most disquieting piece of news which Kenyon learnt before he left the meeting was that the mutinous sailors from Portsmouth were now marching on London, not as a mob, but in well-disciplined formation, determined to lay their grievances before the Government.

The information had come through just as the Cabinet were breaking up after a five-hour session, and the Dominions Secretary had made the cynical but practical suggestion that the
Prime Minister and First Lord should go to meet them. ‘'Ave a word with ‘em,' he had urged as he lit a fresh cigar. ‘Talkin's your big line—and the boys are only a bit excited, they don't mean no 'arm!'

The Prime Minister, however, preferred that troops should be ordered out from Aldershot to head the sailors off and there, for the moment, the situation rested.

As Kenyon drove back to Grosvenor Square he was struck by the strange, unusual aspect of the streets. It might have been Sunday or some sort of bank-holiday. Less than half the ordinary number of buses were running, and there was hardly a trade van to be seen. Many shops were closed, and in front of others little knots of assistants stood chatting on the pavement. Some people were hurrying to and fro with unusual energy, others occupied the street corners in small groups—evidently swapping the latest rumours. There also seemed to be an unusually large proportion of a class alien to the West End in normal times. Gaunt, pale-faced workers in threadbare clothes, slouching along in little batches. Blue-coated police and Specials were dotted about in couples every hundred yards or so.

When he entered the residential district he was astonished by the activity which had invaded the quiet streets of Mayfair. Large private cars were being loaded up with trunks and boxes, and from many houses the more valuable possessions were being stowed into furniture vans.

In Grosvenor Square he found two great pantechnicons drawn up outside his home and sweating men staggering down the steps under the burden of a large Van Dyck. The short, fat, rubicund Duke was personally superintending the removal of his treasures.

‘Damnable, but understandable!' was his comment when Kenyon told him of the decision to postpone the election. ‘Heard about the sailors? They seem to be out for trouble.'

‘Yes,' Kenyon nodded. ‘I should think the balloon is due to go up in about two days' time now.'

‘Less, my boy, less. The troops had to use the butts of their rifles on the crowd in the East End this morning. I have ordered the cars for three o'clock to take your mother and the staff down to Banners.'

‘Hell!' thought Kenyon, ‘that puts the lid on the cocktail party,' for even in the stream of startling events his mind had never been far from Ann and he had persuaded himself that
she would accept Veronica's invitation. Now, if Veronica had to go down to Banners with his mother, Ann would find him alone in Grosvenor Square and probably imagine the whole business to be a put-up job. His father's next words reassured him.

‘I suppose you can fly Veronica down tomorrow?'

‘Oh, rather!' Kenyon agreed with relief.

‘She had a fine rumpus with your mother—said she must go down with you tomorrow because she's got some party on this evening that she doesn't want to miss. What it can be at a time like this, heaven only knows—but you know how impossible she is, and I can't force her, much as I should like to have her out of London tonight. They are going to proclaim martial law you know.'

‘I don't think so, sir.' Kenyon reported the latest news from Westminster.

The Duke grunted irritably. ‘I bet you a pony they will, whether the P.M. likes it or not. I saw J. J. B. this morning.'

‘Did you?' exclaimed Kenyon, much interested, for ‘J. J. B.' was the First Sea Lord who had undergone a serious operation only ten days before. ‘I thought he was
hors de combat
in a nursing home.'

‘So he was, or they would never have got away with that fool decision about the big ships. They've been keeping everything from him because he was so ill, but Jaggers broke through the cordon of medicos this morning and told him the whole position. He said J. J. B. ought to know even if it killed him!'

‘I'd love to have heard his language!' Kenyon had a vivid mental picture of the red-faced, autocratic sailor. ‘What did he do?'

‘Had himself carried out in his dressing-gown there and then. He was still in it when I saw him. He said he'd choke the life out of that whimpering rabbit of a schoolmaster they'd had the impudence to foist on him as First Lord—and do it with his own hands if they hanged him for it afterwards!'

‘Good for him! I bet the fur is flying at the Admiralty now.'

The Duke chuckled. ‘Yes, but he's a wily old fox. He went to the Air Ministry first. That's where I saw him—I'd dropped in to offer them the cars as soon as they'd taken your mother to Banners.'

‘What was the idea?'

To get behind the Government, I think. Llewellyn was there and what's-his-name—the War Office chap, and Badgerlake. It looked to me as if they were forming a kind of Junta. Jaggers told me that if the P. M. refused to declare martial law by midnight they meant to do it themselves, and Badgerlake will bring it out in all his papers tomorrow.'

Arm in arm father and son walked in to lunch. Veronica and the high-nosed Duchess were already there. A strained silence hung over the first part of the meal, punctuated by a wearisome little monologue of complaint from Juliana Augusta regarding Veronica's obstinacy—folly—and lack of feeling in refusing to accompany her to Banners that afternoon.

‘Well, father's going with you,' Kenyon attempted to pacify her.

‘You are wrong, dear boy, it seems that I am to be packed off alone with the servants; your father is going to Windsor.'

‘Windsor! Whatever for?'

‘Well,' the small red-faced Duke spoke with unusual decision. ‘We are faced with a national crisis of the first magnitude, and these Parliamentary people are all very well in their way, but they are a mushroom growth entirely. The whole basis of the throne is a loyal and responsible aristocracy. It is older, better, and more fitted to govern by centuries of practice than these—er—lawyer people. I do not suppose for one moment that I shall be called upon, but I feel that it is my duty to place myself at the disposal of whoever is acting for the monarch.'

Veronica was mildly amused. She thought it incredibly comic to see her fat and livery parent mouthing the phrases of a knight at arms, but for Kenyon the little man was invested with new dignity in claiming this ancient privilege of his order.

Directly the meal was over Veronica stood up. ‘Well, darlings,' she declared. ‘I'm going to have a L. D. on the B. without my B. and C.'

‘What
is
the girl talking about?' muttered the Duke.

‘A lie down on the bed without my bust bodice and corset,' she laughed, kissing the bald spot on the back of his head. ‘Don't be rash and get yourself strung up to a lamp-post or anything while we're away.'

As the two women left the room the Duke pushed the decanter over to Kenyon. ‘Have some more port.'

‘Thanks.' Kenyon filled his glass.

‘Wish to God you'd got a son,' was His Grace's next rather unexpected remark.

‘
Son,
father? I don't quite understand.'

‘Don't you? You're a fool then. To carry on, of course. Three generations stand more chance than two. Surely you realise that you and I will probably be as dead as doornails before the month is out.'

‘Do you really believe that?'

‘I do. The whole system is cracking up. Tomorrow is Friday, isn't it? Do you realise what that means to the millions? It is the day on which nine out of ten people draw their weekly wage—and the banks are shut. This Government rationing scheme can only be a stop-gap because, now that the pound has gone to blazes, they won't be able to pay for the food cargoes which are coming in from the only stable countries that are left. London will be starving in a week!'

‘Yes, I'm afraid you're right.'

‘As a natural consequence the people will turn and rend their leaders. You can't blame 'em after all. How can you expect them to understand the terrible scenes of shocks our finance has sustained. The man in the street judges by results after all, and if he can't get food for himself and his family, he'll go out to burn and rob and wipe out the upper classes that he thinks have been responsible for landing him in such a mess.'

‘That won't do him any good!'

‘Of course it won't, that's the tragedy of it. But he will do it all the same, and you can take it from me that people like us are going to be hunted like hares before we're much older.'

The Duke pushed back his chair. ‘Well, I may as well go and see about the rest of the pictures. Directly they are packed and your mother has gone I shall leave for Windsor.'

‘Then—er—I may not be seeing you again for some little time?' Hesitantly Kenyon held out his hand.

‘Bloody fools, aren't we?' His Grace of Burminster gave a stiff, unnatural grin. ‘Keep out of it as much as you can, Kenyon—don't shirk anything, I wouldn't ask that—but your elder brother went in the War and you are the last of the hatching, so I'd like you to see it through if you possibly can. They may consider us effete, but England wouldn't be England without a Burminster in the background.' He squeezed his son's hand and let it drop.

By half-past three the great house was empty and deserted, dim from drawn blinds and comfortless now with covers over all the furniture. The removal vans had gone with their freight of pictures and old silver. The Duke was on his way to Windsor, and Juliana Augusta had departed with the staff for Banners.

Having seen them off Kenyon began to make preparations for his own departure. He rang up Selfridge's roof garage where he kept his helicopter to give instructions that it should be overhauled and made absolutely ready for an early start the following morning, but he received an unpleasant shock. All private aircraft had been commandeered, and his helicopter with the rest.

That meant motoring down, so he went through to the garage in the mews at the back of the house, and spent half an hour tinkering with his car. E. C. G. was the next thing, every ounce that he could carry, so he ran her round to the nearest filling station. A long line of cars stretched ahead of him, all bound on the same errand. Many of them were stacked high with the weirdest assortment of luggage. The great exodus from London had begun, and everybody who had any place to go to in the country was making for it.

In the queue strangers were talking together with unaccustomed freedom and exchanging the wildest rumours. The news of the sailors' advance on London was now common property. A story was current that the Scottish Commander had been assassinated, another that one of the principal power-stations on the Underground had been wrecked that morning. Certainly trains were only running on two of the lines, and those had curtailed their services. When at last Kenyon reached the cylinders he asked for 5,000 atmospheres, but the man shook his head. One thousand was the limit for any car, irrespective of its size, and the price of gas ten shillings a thousand.

‘But the price is controlled,' Kenyon protested.

‘Can't help it,' said the man, ‘if the rush continues it'll be a couple of quid termorrer—do I renew your cylinders or not?'

Kenyon promptly parted with his money and drove away, but the episode made him more thoughtful than ever. Events seemed to be moving now with such terrifying speed. What would London be like in another twenty-four hours with all these people abandoning the sinking ship, and the services breaking down? He began to feel guilty about detaining Veronica for another night, but it had never occurred to him that the trouble
would accelerate so rapidly, and the more he thought of Ann the more determined he became not to leave London until he had satisfied himself about her future safety.