Black August (16 page)

Ann's new-found friend was swept away from them in a sudden eddy of the crowd. A red, angry, drink-sodden face was thrust over the side of the car, its owner glared at Kenyon.

‘Bleedin' torf,' yelled a voice from the rear. ‘Look at 'im wiv 'is ruddy chorus girls.'

‘Chorus girls? Tarts, yer mean!' screamed a shrill-voiced
woman; ‘an' honest people withart food in their stomachs—I'd learn 'em if I was a man!'

Kenyon glanced round desperately. How was he to get Ann and Veronica out of this? The crush was ten deep on every side. Above their heads he caught a glimpse of the Greyshirts; the black-haired boy had been hauled back into their car, but blood was streaming from his face, his eyes were flashing, and his mouth drawn down into a cruel vindictive snarl. With sudden venom he jerked a gun from his hip-pocket, and blazed off with it into the crowd.

For a second there was absolute silence, then a howl of fury went up from the maddened mob. An irresistible wave like the surging of a stormy sea almost submerged the Greyshirts' car. Kenyon caught a glimpse of Ann's face, white now and terrified. Veronica sat, sneering almost, her eyes angry and flashing, but her hand trembled upon his knee—and he knew then that in the next few moments he must fight—fight for his life unless they were to be torn limb from limb and trampled under foot in the blind, vicious fury of a starvation-maddened mob.

‘Quick!' cried Kenyon to the girls, ‘out you get—no good staying here!'

Veronica slipped on to the pavement and Ann after her. It was only a matter of seconds, but before Kenyon could join them a little rat of a man had snatched at Veronica's necklace. It snapped, she grabbed at it, and the thread parted again, leaving a string of twenty knotted pearls between her fingers; someone jogged her elbow and they were jerked from her hand into the gutter. A wild scramble to secure the spoil ensued, and Kenyon seized the opportunity to hustle the girls nearer to the Greyshirts. They, too, had abandoned their car and were fighting—a small compact group—on the pavement ten yards away.

Howling obscenities, a lean hag seized Ann by the hair and tried to pull her down. Kenyon abandoned all ideas of chivalry and hit the woman a smashing blow in the face. Her grip relaxed and she sank from sight with a little moan. The crowd surged over her, trampling her down into the gutter.

Veronica was struggling desperately with a sinewy lascar. He had her round the body, but years of outdoor exercise had given her slim form far more strength than might have been supposed. She beat her small, clenched fists furiously against his face, and after a moment he staggered back, half-blinded by her blows.

Kenyon had turned to help her, but before he had a chance another woman had kicked him on the shin. Her boot was man's size and the pain excruciating. A fellow wearing a red sweater rushed in and began to hammer him with his fists, but Kenyon had been a boxing blue. A left to the jaw and the red sweater disappeared from view.

A few yards away the lights of a cheap eating-house caught Kenyon's eye. It was of the type usually run by Italians; polonies and tarts covered with coarse coco-nut decked the window beside a water-bottle with a lemon stuck in the top. If they could reach
its shelter they would be safe for the moment. The Greyshirts evidently had the same idea; they were fighting their way towards it in wedge formation, the gigantic Mr. Silas Gonderport Harker at their head. Kenyon pushed Veronica in their direction and dragged Ann after him.

The lascar rushed in again, but Kenyon put out his foot and the man crashed to the ground; another dashed in—ducked as Kenyon lashed out—and grabbed him round the middle. They swayed together, locked in each other's arms up and down the pavement. Kenyon gave his assailant a quick jab behind the ear, the man grunted and staggered back, but as Kenyon thrust his way towards the lighted window of the little restaurant, he suddenly missed Ann—she had disappeared.

A second later he saw her, still on her feet but out in the roadway, separated from him by half a dozen people. Her dress had been ripped away at the neck, showing the bare flesh of her shoulders, but she had snatched a short, thick umbrella from a woman in the crowd, and was beating wildly with it at the faces of the people who surrounded her. Kenyon dashed back into the road striking out right and left, irrespective as to whether his opponents were men or women, and the mob shrank away from the menace of his powerful blows. Ann had slipped to her knees by the time he reached her, but he used his long arms like flails and, clearing a space, lugged her to her feet again; yet it seemed that it could only be a matter of seconds before they were both dragged down, for his back was unprotected now and the mob closing in again, snarling and angry.

Suddenly there was a resounding crash. A group of people had fastened on Kenyon's car with senseless fury, and tilting it, had thrown it over on its side. In the brief silence that followed Ann glanced wildly round. A mad animal blood-lust glared from the mean faces that ringed them in. Hundreds of cruel merciless eyes seemed to devour her in anticipation, and a multitude of clawlike hands reached out to rip her shrinking body, but momentarily they had drawn back, and Kenyon seized her by the waist, half carrying, half dragging her towards the lighted doorway.

They were nearly there. The Greyshirts were already clustered in the entrance, and the big American was thrusting Veronica behind him when a well aimed brick caught Kenyon on the head. He staggered and fell.

The mob rushed in again, but Ann stood over him. She remembered having heard somewhere that to lunge at people's faces with the point of an umbrella was far more effective than to beat them about the head. As in some ghastly nightmare she prodded fiercely at the head of an aged crone who was bearing down on them. The point caught the beldame on the mouth, and her stream of hideous blasphemies ceased in a sudden whine. A chimney-sweep, his face still begrimed with soot, his red-rimmed eyes gruesome in the flickering light, dived at her from the other side; she jabbed at him and he clutched his eye with a scream of pain.

‘Well done, Ann—well done!' It was Kenyon who had stumbled to his feet, blood streaming down his face, but grasping in his hand a short length of wood which he had found on the pavement. It was a Communist weapon and had two ugly nails driven through the heavy end.

He gripped Ann round the shoulders with his left arm and began to savage the people nearest to them with the bludgeon. A moment later they were hauled into the cook-shop by the Greyshirts.

Ann sank fainting and exhausted to the floor, but Kenyon picked her up and barged his way towards Veronica, who stood half-way up a narrow flight of stairs at the back of the restaurant. The whole place was a struggling
mêlée
of people. The Greyshirts were endeavouring to throw the customers and occupants out into the street.

Veronica pulled Ann beside her and Kenyon jumped back into the rough and tumble. It was short and sharp, only one big man who looked like a professional bruiser was giving serious trouble, but a china mug caught him on the side of the head, the Greyshirts closed in on him, and he was flung out in a heap on to the pavement.

A bottle filled with stones hurled through the window, shivering the glass in all directions, and a slab of stone came whizzing through the open door. It caught the foreign-looking youth who had started all the trouble on the foot, and flushing with pain and rage he whipped out his automatic again.

There was a sudden crash of shots as he poured its contents deliberately into the nearest of the crowd. The carnage at such short range was terrible, some of the bullets penetrating two or more people apiece in the close-packed mass. Kenyon saw
them fall right and left, gripping their wounds, vomiting blood, and howling with agony while the unwounded turned on their companions, fighting desperately to get out of range of the murderous weapon.

A temporary lull ensued while the Greyshirts stood, gasping and panting, dabbing at their wounds and trying to staunch the flow of blood.

‘Don't waste time!' bawled Harker. ‘Get that door shut and make a barricade.' He knew that they had only secured a most doubtful sanctuary. The mob still swayed—angry, threatening, dangerous—outside.

The door was slammed and a couple of marble-topped tables piled against it.

‘Let's use the counter, that looks solid,' suggested Kenyon.

‘Can't,' said the youth with the gun. ‘It's nailed down.'

‘Oh, pull the damned thing up!' Kenyon seized one end of it in his strong arms. The American grabbed the other end. ‘Come on now!—all together—heave!'

The counter came away with a loud splintering of wood. The coffee urn fell to the floor with a ringing thud. Plates, glasses and cakestand crashed and jangled. Pushing and panting they slewed the mighty piece of wood across the window and the door, pulled out the tables and piled them on the top, then the chairs and stools. In an incredibly short space of time they had formed a solid barricade which it would not be easy for the mob to force.

‘Wonder if there's a back way out,' gasped Kenyon to the American.

‘Good for you! I wish you'd look,' was the terse reply.

Kenyon ran to the rear of the shop, through a door and into a small kitchen. One narrow window looked out on to a dark well, enclosed on three sides by sheer blank walls. No hope in that direction!

He dashed back and up the stairs to the first floor. In the front room overlooking the street he found Veronica quietly making up her face in the central mirror of an ornate overmantel, and Ann dialling away at a telephone.

‘What's the idea?' he asked.

‘Trying to get help, of course.'

‘No good, my dear. The Inspector told us that only official calls were allowed.'

‘Well,' she protested, ‘the police are official aren't they?'

‘Yes, but I shouldn't think there's a policeman within a hundred miles of here.'

‘Why not?' asked Veronica, carefully darkening her eyelashes.

‘Because they have to concentrate in the West End; what good could they do scattered in twos and threes all over London at a time like this?'

‘How too shattering!' Veronica inspected her handiwork with care.

‘Hadn't you better cut that out?' Kenyon suggested. ‘It only angers the crowd to see you painted up like Jezebel!'

‘Darling, I'm sorry, but if we're going to meet God face to face in the next hour I must look decent. Besides it gives me moral support, like boiled shirts to Englishmen in the tropics. Tell me! If there is no chance of help what do we do now?'

‘Get out—if we possibly can. I'm trying to find a way now; if we can't—God knows! Anyhow, keep away from that window both of you or they'll start throwing things in here.' Kenyon slammed the door behind him.

The back room he found was a frowsty bedroom, and the window only showed the blank-walled well again. Above there were two more bedrooms, stale-smelling and horrible, the beds unmade, and the tumbled sheets filthy with stains and grease. He had hoped to find a trap-door in the ceiling of the top landing, but he was disappointed. After a hasty search he gave it up and hurried below to report to the American.

‘That's bad,' nodded Harker. ‘We've just beaten off an attack, but how long we'll be able to keep them out, Lord knows!'

‘Give me a couple of your men and the next time they rush you we'll chuck things on them from the upstairs windows,' suggested Kenyon.

‘That's an idea.' The American tapped two of his Greyshirts on the shouder. ‘Bob—Harry—get upstairs and lend a hand to Mr. Whatshisname.'

Although all the men round him were sweating and dishevelled, the gigantic Mr. Harker remained as cool and unruffled as if he were seated in his favourite bar playing a game of poker dice.

Kenyon and his assistants collected all the plates and other useful missiles that they could carry and staggered up to the
front room. Veronica and Ann were peering cautiously out of the window.

‘Oh, look!' cried Ann as he came in. ‘They've got a battering ram!' Then he saw that a dozen burly fellows had shouldered the shaft out of a large wagon, and were making ready to stave in the door of the shop.

He threw up the window and seizing a hideous china vase from the mantelpiece, hurled it at the men below.

Bob and Harry took the other window while Veronica and Ann kept all three supplied with plates, and a rain of clattering china descended on the heads of the besiegers forcing them to drop their ram, but the mob on the far pavement were quick to retaliate. Bricks, stones, bottles and potatoes came from all directions, smashing through the windows and thudding into the room. Harry's face was so badly cut that he had to retire, and Veronica stopped half a brick with her elbow, which temporarily put her out of action.

The mob howled and shouted, urged on by a blue-chinned man who had climbed on to the Greyshirts' derelict car. He waved a Red flag in one hand and pointed at the windows with the other. Kenyon picked up an aspidistra plant from a nearby table and hurled it at him, but it fell short, the pot obliterating the scared face of an old woman who saw it coming but had no time to get out of the way.

The agitator yelled derisively at the men with the battering ram. They picked it up and came on again. There was a rending crash as the door gave way, Bob staggered to the open windows with an old shiny, black, horsehair-covered arm-chair. With Ann's help he tipped it out; yells and curses from the street told that it had found at least one mark, but for every casualty the mob sustained there were a hundred infuriated, fight-maddened people pressing forward to fill the gap.

‘One, two, three.' The battering ram was flung with the weight of twenty men behind it against the barricade. The flimsy shop-front had been completely demolished, and they were hammering against the counter now. In the little parlour above, the ammunition was almost exhausted; every ornament had gone, the oleographs and photos from the walls, and most of the furniture. Kenyon turned to fetch more missiles from the bedroom and found Harker behind him.