Winter of the World

They looked impressively military, in their wide black leather belts and black shirts, as they formed neat columns across the grass. Their officers wore a smart uniform: a black military-cut jacket, grey riding breeches, jackboots, a black cap with a shiny peak, and a red-and-white armband. Several motorcyclists in uniform roared around ostentatiously, delivering messages with Fascist salutes. More marchers were arriving, some of them in armoured vans with wire mesh at the windows.

This was not a political party. It was an army.

The purpose of the display, Lloyd figured, was to give them false authority. They wanted to look as if they had the right to close meetings and empty buildings, to burst into homes and offices and arrest people, to drag them to jails and camps and beat them up, interrogate and torture them, as the Brownshirts did in Germany under the Nazi regime so admired by Mosley and the Daily Mail’s proprietor, Lord Rothermere.

They would terrify the people of the East End, people whose parents and grandparents had fled from repression and pogroms in Ireland and Poland and Russia.

Would East Enders come out on the streets and fight them? If not – if today’s march went ahead as planned – what might the Fascists dare tomorrow?

He walked around the edge of the park, pretending to be one of the hundred or so casual onlookers. Side streets radiated from the hub-like spokes. In one of them he noticed a familiar-looking black-and-cream Rolls-Royce drawing up. The chauffeur opened the rear door and, to Lloyd’s shock and dismay, Daisy Peshkov got out.

There was no doubt why she was here. She was wearing a beautifully tailored female version of the uniform, with a long grey skirt instead of the breeches, her fair curls escaping from under the black cap. Much as he hated the outfit, Lloyd could not help finding her irresistibly alluring.

He stopped and stared. He should not have been surprised: Daisy had told him she liked Boy Fitzherbert, and Boy’s politics clearly made no difference to that. But to see her obviously supporting the Fascists in their attack on Jewish Londoners rammed home to him how utterly alien she was from everything that mattered in his life.

He should simply have turned away, but he could not. As she hurried along the pavement, he blocked her way. ‘What the devil are you doing here?’ he said brusquely.

She was cool. ‘I might ask you the same question, Mr Williams,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you’re intending to march with us.’

‘Don’t you understand what these people are like? They break up peaceful political meetings, they bully journalists, they imprison their political rivals. You’re an American – how can you be against democracy?’

‘Democracy is not necessarily the most appropriate political system for every country in all times.’ She was quoting Mosley’s propaganda, Lloyd guessed.

He said: ‘But these people torture and kill everyone who disagrees with them!’ He thought of Jörg. ‘I’ve seen it for myself, in Berlin. I was in one of their camps, briefly. I was forced to watch while a naked man was savaged to death by starving dogs. That’s the kind of thing your Fascist friends do.’

She was unintimidated. ‘And who, exactly, has been killed by Fascists here in England recently?’

‘The British Fascists haven’t got the power yet – but your Mosley admires Hitler. If they ever get the chance, they’ll do exactly the same as the Nazis.’

‘You mean they will eliminate unemployment and give the people pride and hope.’

Lloyd was drawn to her so powerfully that it broke his heart to hear her spouting this rubbish. ‘You know what the Nazis have done to the family of your friend Eva.’

‘Eva got married, did you know?’ Daisy said, in the determinedly cheerful tone of one who tries to switch a dinner-table conversation to a more agreeable topic. ‘To nice Jimmy Murray. She’s an English wife, now.’

‘And her parents?’

Daisy looked away. ‘I don’t know them.’

‘But you know what the Nazis have done to them.’ Eva had told Lloyd all about it at the Trinity Ball. ‘Her father is no longer allowed to practise medicine – he’s working as an assistant in a pharmacy. He can’t enter a park or a public library. His father’s name has been scraped off the war memorial in his home village!’ Lloyd realized he had raised his voice. More quietly he said: ‘How can you possibly stand side by side with people who do such things?’

She looked troubled, but she did not answer his question. Instead she said: ‘I’m late already. Please excuse me.’

‘What you’re doing can’t be excused.’

The chauffeur said: ‘All right, sonny, that’s enough.’

He was a heavy middle-aged man who evidently took little exercise, and Lloyd was not in the least intimidated, but he did not want to start a fight. ‘I’m leaving,’ he said in a mild tone. ‘But don’t call me sonny.’

The chauffeur took his arm.

Lloyd said: ‘You’d better take your hand off me, or I’ll knock you down before I go.’ He looked into the chauffeur’s face.