Out of the Blackout (12 page)

His interest in the
West London Recorder
now focused itself on the news pages rather than on page five. It was clear that the Mosleyites were active and relatively successful in the Paddington area in the mid-'thirties. It was not, in fact, the only Fascist organization that was flourishing there, though it was certainly the largest. Simon got the impression that, as the librarian had said, Paddington had been a very mixed area, full of life and interest and contrasts, but providing the basis for the sort of antagonisms on which a movement like Mosley's British Union could flourish. There were mentions of public meetings, party meetings, outdoor demonstrations, and marches. If the health of a political movement could be measured by its success in keeping in the public eye, then the Mosleyites were thriving.

The news items, though, were mostly fairly small: the
owner of the
West London Recorder
was obviously no Rothermere, finding the new movement attractive enough to flirt with and flatter. Still, however much the owner or editor might have disliked them, they were news, and they capitalized on their newsworthiness. They were helped by world events which impinged on the heterogeneous community of Paddington. The Italians in Abyssinia, Hitler occupying the Rhineland, the rumours of show trials in Russia—all these could be commented on by a political group which took its tone from the masterly self-publicist who led them. At last, in July 1936, Simon came upon the name he wanted. B
RITISH
U
NION
W
ELCOMES
A
RMY
C
OUP IN
S
PAIN
said the headline. Underneath was a statement from Leonard Simmeter, Deputy Chairman of the Paddington Branch, in which he expressed the view that Red Chaos was at an end in Spain, and that law, order and a respect for authority would now be restored. Simon could almost picture the young Len rubbing his hands as he expressed this slightly premature view.

As 1936 took its course, the tempo of Mosleyite activity hotted up. There came through their demonstrations and statements a feeling of sailing with the wind, a gloating anticipation of future triumphs: they had seen the future, and it was theirs. The Abdication Crisis threw them slightly, and they resorted as so often, to talk of ‘conspiracy.' But for the rest there was a tang of confidence, of black-and-white certainties: brutality of words mirrored a brutality of action; bully-boy tactics were resorted to without apology. In December there was another picture: a large meeting with Mosley as speaker. If Simon had not seen the earlier picture he would not have noticed Len, but there he was, seated at his Leader's left hand, gazing up at him with awe. The week after there was a report of a hundred-strong contingent from the area joining the rest of London's Unionists for a march through the East End. And the week after that there was comment in the leader column, expressing the view that the breaking of windows in Jewish-owned shops and factories, the daubing of anti-Semitic slogans, was un-English and intolerable in a civilized community. It voiced the hope that such excesses of a movement ‘which includes many men of goodwill' would not spread to the Paddington area. It seemed a vain hope.

When Simon looked at his watch it was close on six. He had
not found out the date of his birth, but what he had found was much more valuable: he had unearthed the clue to Len Simmeter, had caught the flavour of the atmosphere in which Len lived at the time of his own birth and childhood. Simon pushed the heavy volumes aside and walked out of the library, into the present-day world of Beatlemania, of David Frost and Millicent Martin, of racial tensions, the aftermath of sex scandals, and people still having great hopes of Harold Wilson.

• • •

That Friday was one of the turning-points in Simon's search. No sooner had one important piece in the puzzle been given its place than a new avenue for investigation opened itself up for him. When he arrived back at Miswell Terrace, having snatched a quick meal at an ABC, a fair-haired woman was turning into the gate of No. 25 a few yards ahead of him. By a stroke of luck she stood on the steps fumbling for her keys.

So far all Simon had seen of Connie Simmeter had been the fading fair hair of the top of her head. Though she was regular in her time of leaving in the mornings—so regular that Simon had considered chiming in with her, even though that would have meant arriving at work much too early—her time of arrival home was much more erratic. On one or two occasions it had been after the other two had gone to bed. Now, without premeditation, they had coincided.

‘Let me help you,' said Simon.

‘Oh, how kind. I know I
have
the key, but you know women and their handbags! You must be the young gentleman from the top floor. I've heard so much about you.'

Close up, Connie presented something of a contrast to the other two Simmeters Simon had met. There was a superficial smartness about her that was certainly quite foreign to them. She was fifty or so, running to plumpness, but the flesh was apparently well-corseted, and the whalebone-enclosed package was clad in a simple, rather anonymous navy suit. Nylon-stockinged, high-heeled, well-manicured, she was a 'fifties rather than a 'sixties figure. She had a conscious air of having a position to maintain: face recently repowdered, hair in place. For some years yet she would be able to sustain the reputation of an attractive woman. What could be her profession? Manager of a small shop, top-grade secretary with a not-too-reliable firm?
There was a compliance, an anxiety to please about her: the sort of woman who might, for a consideration, show her suspender-belt to a gentleman whom suspender-belts excited.

‘You're Simon Cutheridge, I know. I'm Constance. The family call me Connie, but I don't let anyone else use that.'

‘Constance has a certain—air to it, though,' suggested Simon.

‘It does, doesn't it? Whereas Connie has no style at all. I can't get them out of it, though. That's the trouble of living with your family: they never let you grow up, never realize you've become someone else.'

She smiled a brilliant, practised smile. Her eyes had been artificially rendered more liquid and sparkling, and they obligingly sparkled. A woman used to attracting, now anxious to attract.

‘Luckily I've always been Simon, even to my family. Nobody uses Sim these days, do they? What about your brother, though? I expect you call him Len, but perhaps somewhere there's a Leonard struggling to get out.'

She giggled, and switched on the brilliant smile again.

‘I'm sure there is. Though whether as Leonard he'd be any more . . . Well, you don't want to hear our family problems, do you? I hear you're from the West Country.'

‘Down in that direction.'

‘Such a lovely part of England. I love touring round, don't you? Just seeing new places. Now Len, he's hardly moved out of London in years. And Mother—well, as you've seen, Mother's hardly movable these days, but even before that she never went in much for travelling. I'm afraid I'm not like that. I did the West Country with a friend.' She released another liquid, rehearsed smile, to leave him in no doubt of the sex of the friend. ‘We had lovely weather, and I tell you it was idyllic. That's the only word for it. And then there's Scotland. Skye, now—isn't Skye lovely? And North Wales! I love Betws-y-Coed. Oh yes—' she let out a brassy laugh—‘I've been around!'

They were in the hallway now, and Simon tried desperately to prolong the conversation. It was less of a problem with Connie than with the others, since she was in no way loath to chat. She had perched herself on the little hall table as if she expected to be there for some time.

‘Do you work in this area?' asked Simon.

‘This dump? You must be joking. I work in the Strand. Peter Lewis's, you know. I manage the glove and handbag department. It's a very good job. Nice type of clientele—lots of them regulars: people from the country like yourself, clergymen's wives, that sort of thing. It's not quite what I planned, but I mustn't grumble.'

‘What did you plan, then?'

‘Oh, you know: something with a bit more style. Perhaps something rather more intellectual. But then there were—things: it wasn't so easy getting an education in those days; my husband died very young; and then there was the war . . . I don't know, I suppose I let myself get into a bit of a rut. So here I am—' she tried out a brave-little-woman face, but it suited her less well than the man-charmer—‘still stuck at home with all the old familiar faces!'

‘You never wanted to take a flat on your own?'

‘Oh, I've tried that. Can't say I liked it. Too much like hard work. You can say what you like about independence, but it can't compete with a hot meal ready for you when you get home. I like things done for me—always have. If I have a gentleman friend, I like
him
to invite
me
out. That's how it should be, I think. If he knows he can always come round to yours, he starts regarding you as a bit on the side. No—living at home really works out very well.' She laughed again, rather bitterly. ‘Even if the company
at
home is nothing to
write
home about.'

‘I've no brothers or sisters,' said Simon, ‘so I can't guess what it'd be like. I'd have thought it would be difficult if you'd been married, as you have—and of course as Len has too.'

A veil seemed to fall across Connie's liquid eyes. She seemed to decide not to let her chattiness take her too far, and got up from her perch. From this point on she seemed to take care what she was saying.

‘Oh yes, we've both been married, though I don't use my married name any longer. Len was as unlucky as I was, in a different way. He lost his wife in the raids, you know. And then his little boy. You might say he has a right to be bitter, though I never remember him much different. It's no good moping, is it? That's not how I've lived my life. Got to keep your chin up, that's what I say.' She squared her shoulders and produced a brave smile. ‘I'd better go in, or that precious pair will start
wondering. You must come and have a meal with us some time—if I can persuade Mother to cook anything worth eating. Well—'bye for now!'

She took her keys from her handbag, and let herself into the ground-floor lair. It occurred to Simon to wonder whether she had sensed him coming up behind her in the street, and had only pretended to have lost her keys. There were few enough young lodgers in the Terrace, and she had no doubt been given a description of him.

He did not like her, he decided. There was about her a torpor—physical, certainly, but moral as well. She would lie, he felt sure, casually, for no purpose but to make a better impression. When he came later in the evening to enter up a résumé of the conversation with Connie, something struck him that had not done so at the time. There seemed to be a discrepancy between Connie's account and Len's of the tragedy of Len's married life. He went back over the conversation in his mind, and then tried to set down that portion as exactly as he could. Yes, there was a discrepancy, at least by implication. Because Len had implied—though not stated—that his wife and his little boy had both been killed in the same air raid. Whereas Connie had implied—again,
not
stated—that these were two separate blows. About the little boy, at least, he was sure that both were telling lies; but over the years their stories seemed to have diverged. Perhaps in the course of time those lies, that divergence, might be a stepping-stone to the truth.

S
o after all it had to be Paddington again, Simon concluded. It was Paddington that held those clues to his past that would not easily be screwed out of the inhabitants of Miswell Terrace. But was there anything to be done there beyond a further trudge through newspapers? What Simon wanted to hear about was not Len the Mosleyite spokesman, but Len the family fascist. And yet, the more he acclimatized himself to the Paddington of the 'sixties, the more he wondered whether it had any real links with the Paddington of the 'thirties. Many of the respectable
lower middle-class houses had become one-night cheap hotels (or establishments catering for even shorter stays). It was an area of mean bedsitters, desperate shifts to ward off destitution, of petty crime, prostitution and racial tensions. But surely somewhere still there were people with memories, somewhere some sense of continuity back to the Depression?

His first expedition was in the nature of a reconnaissance. After work one day he roamed the streets like a cat, first those around the Station, then further afield. The atmosphere of the area he was already prepared for. It lurked behind the greying net curtains, it rose like a steam from the shabby macs: an atmosphere of meanness and failure. And above all of loneliness, and the festering bitterness of loneliness. It was an area of fragments—each bedsitter held one, and the fragments nursed their solitudes and never came together.

Seedy was too kind to describe the neighbourhood: it was decayed. On the walls slogans were scrawled in white paint: KILL THE TORIES or FUCK WILSON. The racial slogans were similarly basic: WOGS OUT or CASTRATE ALL NIGS. Simon could imagine the slogan painters—sidling out, alone, after dark, viewing their work with secret satisfaction the next day. He went into a pub and started chatting to people—dispirited people, all of whom had moved there last year, or last week, who hoped to move out next year, next week, definitely before long. Paddington, for them, was not a community: it was streets, houses—or, more essentially,
rooms.
Some were even less permanent: Simon bought a pint for one old cadger who turned out to be a semi-derelict, on his way from Sidcup, and on his way back there, he said. Paddington's present seemed a guttering, feeble flame; its past dead beyond recall.

Out in the streets again the area began to split itself up a little for him, to acquire individual characteristics. This one was mostly small hotels, this one bedsitters, this other one still precariously middle-class and residential. Here were Italian voices, rich Italian smells, while elsewhere were Indians, Indian smells, turbans. In one area, five or six streets away from Farrow Street, Simon noticed that the racial sloganizing was especially thick—violent, semi-literate, obsessive. Yet as he dawdled round it he could not see that it was a section with a high concentration of immigrants. Odd. Then he noticed that political activity of a
kind seemed to flourish here. Small notices, crudely duplicated, were pasted on to the edge of hoardings, on empty houses, displayed in the windows of small shops. The League of Empire Loyalists summoned the citizens of Paddington from their bedsitters for AN EXPRESSION OF PUBLIC CONCERN at the Morton Hall—that was three days ago. The National Front announced a demonstration STOP IMMIGRATION NOW, starting at the Town Hall. They were preparing the ground with a rash of small stickers: IS IT WRONG TO WANT TO STAY WHITE? and DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN BRITAIN WAS BRITISH?