London, 1926
Brendan intended being utterly true to his word. Mother would be upset but Father would respect how he honoured his vow. In recent months he had been careful to make no reference to his decision when talking with the other chaps. Eighteen months ago he was vocal about his plans and was ragged because of them. Now he had not even mentioned that his sixteenth birthday occurred this week. Naturally, his two best schoolchums knew his intentions and envied him, but both had too much to lose to follow his example. Being eldest sons, they needed to think about more than just themselves.
Brendan knew that his family loved him, but if he had not been born, little would be different in their world. The last born was always counted as a blessing, but generally counted as little else.
Still Brendan would not wish to swap places with Art or Thomas. Older teachers at Marlborough still paused in the corridors to ask about Art and shake their heads, almost as if sympathising with a bereavement. They recalled Art with affection, even if he had constantly queried every issue with them but they also spoke as if he had perpetually borne a heavy weight on his back. Brendan was not as clever as Art but he sensed their relief at Brendan’s cheerful spirit. He had actually enjoyed his time at Marlborough, making friends and being generally respected as a good sort. Therefore this morning when he made an excuse before assembly and requested permission to see the nurse in sickbay, he felt no resentment towards any person in the school. They were simply misguided, unaware that they belonged to a world shortly about to be eclipsed.
Packing his small suitcase while the other boys and the staff were in assembly, he calmly walked down the deserted driveway. He did not run because he was not running away: he was simply leaving to start his own life. It felt somewhat dishonourable to fabricate a lie about feeling ill, but Art had once said that a degree of subterfuge was occasionally justified if oppressive forces were ranked against you. If Brendan was spotted he would be dragged back and probably receive the cane. The school would only release him if Father wrote to give his consent, but that would mean the decision being Father’s and not his, and it was unfair to place Father in such a bind.
This was his choice alone, to start a new life at the very moment when Art’s predictions of class warfare were coming true. For the past six days a general strike had gripped Britain, to the consternation of his teachers. Five years ago the coal miners had stood alone and been defeated. But this time the other unions were striking in solidarity with those miners locked out after refusing to accept a savage pay cut and the imposition of another hour onto their working day. Events had escalated at midnight last Friday when printers in the Daily Mail refused to print an editorial entitled For King and Country denouncing the Trades Union Congress’s plans as a revolutionary act of treason. Brendan’s housemaster had gathered the pupils to hear a message on the BBC from the Prime Minister urging the nation to keep steady and remember the maxim that peace on earth came to all men of good will. Brendan had wanted to stand up and shout a truer maxim: the workers united would never be defeated. But his teachers and classmates would not have understood because Marlborough taught only Latin, Greek and complacency.
Brendan paused at the end of the avenue to look back at the imposing buildings which gave the impression that nothing would ever change. But in Ireland he had seen how quickly change could come – with a new flag, a new state and a sense of not quite belonging.
The disadvantage of starting a new life on the cusp of revolution was that Brendan could not be sure how far he would get. The railway workers were striking, but a crew of middle-class scab volunteers was maintaining a skeleton timetable. It would be difficult to evade capture if forced to spend hours waiting on the platform. But, when he reached Marlborough Station, a Special Constable sworn in to protect the strike-breakers said that a London train was due in twenty minutes.
Brendan had decided to still wear his school uniform for now because he looked less suspicious in it. A scab volunteer with the look of a merchant banker staffed the ticket office. He possessed the same eagerness as the other volunteers operating the station – oversized schoolboys being allowed to play with a life-sized train set. This quality was most apparent in the driver and the engineer when the train finally arrived from Bristol and they cheerily greeted the passengers of their own caste boarding the first class carriages. Brendan might have found something comic about these little Englanders clinging onto their rotten class structures if they were not blacklegs. He purchased a first class ticket because he would seem less conspicuous among people who spoke like him. Two businessmen occupied the compartment he entered. One nodded jovially.
‘What’s this, young man? Skipping term?’
‘Called home. A family illness.’
The man nodded with practised sympathy. ‘Bad show. Still at least you will get home. Three days ago the blackguards had closed down the whole rail network. But their grip is weakening. They’ve misjudged the resolve of the British people. I’ll give them another two days at most, then I hope they lock up the ringleaders.’
Brendan did not argue because he was not yet free to do so. The train was taking for ever to leave, with some fat scab making an elaborate show of waving his flag as if seeing off an ocean liner. The boy watched the platform, expecting teachers and prefects to rush after him. But the train was moving now, the wheels seeming to chant, ‘free-dom, free-dom’. The businessmen both read the government propaganda ragsheet and paid him no heed. The print unions were refusing to print any newspaper except The British Worker, produced by the strikers themselves. Yesterday Brendan’s form master had confiscated a copy of The British Worker which Art had managed to get to him, saying that if Brendan wished to know the truth he could read the government-printed British Gazette in the library. Brendan had not argued, because by then he already felt that his school days were over.
His class would be doing French now. He should be past Reading Station by the time they realised he was not in the sickbay. Then it would be on to Maidenhead, Slough and Ealing. As a communist he felt guilty at being on a train driven by a scab, but speed was essential. This was the greatest adventure of his life. He felt like Toad of Toad Hall escaping from prison. The chaos of the strike would aid his chances, the police being too busy to look for a schoolboy.
He would not be dragged back to face the cane. They would wire Father who would release Brendan from the school’s care. The headmaster might be disgruntled but teachers would simply shake their heads and dismiss him as being as mad as his brother.
The businessmen in his carriage glanced uneasily out as the train entered Hungerford, as if expecting strikers to storm the platform. But only a handful of well-dressed passengers waited there with Special Constables visible at the exits. It was impossible to see if rail workers protested outside the station. This was the thing about boarding school, the outside world could end and you might never be told. He knew that the army had been called out in South Wales and Yorkshire and that in Glasgow, mobs had forced public vehicles off the road. Brendan strained his eyes as the train moved away, yearning to glimpse his first striker and feel part of this momentous occurrence. An elderly couple had entered the compartment, the old lady smiling at him. The four adults began to discuss the strike, the mayhem in the country loosening the usual reserve between strangers. The lady’s daughter had volunteered her services to help sort mail in the post office. Her grandson, an Oxford undergraduate who had abandoned his studies to enlist with the hastily established Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies, considered the whole affair to be a grand lark.
Brendan only half listened to their nonsense about the strike crumbling. They were leaving Wiltshire behind. He took down his suitcase from the rack, not opening it until he was alone in the corridor. Choosing another jacket to wear, he held the Marlborough College blazer in his hands for a moment, staring at the crest. Then he lowered the window to lean out. He loved trains, loved their freedom and the exhilaration of the wind against his face as he let his school blazer billow behind him for a moment before releasing it. He laughed, imagining the shock of passengers in the carriages behind when they saw it sail through the air. Glancing back he saw it land in a bush and gave a yell of delight, knowing that nobody would hear above the noise of the engine. Stepping away from the window, he closed it and patted down his hair, then retook his seat. The lady smiled at him again, having obviously been told his white lie about a family illness.
The mood in the compartment grew apprehensive as the train reached Paddington Station. The platform was clear but pickets jostled against a line of police outside the entrance at Eastbourne Terrace, abusing emerging passengers. A crude hand-painted banner proclaimed the coal miners’ demands: ‘Not a Penny off the Pay, Not a Minute on the Day.’ Brendan tried to tell one of the protesters that his own brother was among the strikers and he had come to support them.
‘Is he now? And so what does he do then, this brother?’ the man demanded, and Brendan realised that he didn’t properly know the answer himself. A Special Constable hurriedly moved him along as the protester called him ‘a lying bloody toff’. The crowd carried Brendan out on the London streets, a Dick Whittington wandering towards Regent’s Park, savouring every glimpse of life around him. He didn’t mind getting lost because this seemed the best way to encounter his new home, to learn his bearings from scratch and gradually implant each alley and side street into his brain. He had visited London before but never alone. Brendan was too excited to be scared. Here were the names he had studied on maps in the school library: Primrose Hill to the north, St John’s Wood to his west, to the southeast, Russell Square and beyond it Holborn.
Art’s address was in Camden Town, on a lane so small that no map in school showed it. Brendan would get there in his own time, not needing to take any of the scab buses that occasionally passed because nobody could chase him now. Crossing Regent’s Park he emerged at Gloucester Gate humming Bye Bye Blackbird. Many shops were closed with pickets standing outside them, but he was shocked to see creeping signs of normality elsewhere. The British Gazette had trumpeted about Grenadier Guards in armoured cars forcing through a convoy of a hundred lorries from the docks to the Hyde Park depot, claiming that this had broken the strikers’ will and assured London’s vital supplies. But Art’s scribbled note on the confiscated copy of The British Worker had insisted that the strikers would not let this breach re-occur.
Brendan studied the faces of picketing comrades, wanting to speak to them. Yet he knew that his clothes and accent would be a barrier. How had Art overcome this? Since graduating from university his eldest brother had shown no inclination for any profession, but – according to a relation who sometimes encountered him – spent his nights mixing with earnest young men selling socialist newspapers around public houses. Art’s letters hinted at various manual jobs – the more backbreaking the better – but employers were suspicious of his accent and invariably found a reason to sack him, normally claiming that he was attempting to ferment dissent.
When Brendan reached the end of Parkway he sought directions to Art’s flat. Yet it was Art himself that he found first. A crowd had gathered at the corner of Camden Road where a blackleg bus was being blocked to prevent it moving off. Some people were encouraging the nine strikers who sat on the cobbles. More, however, shouted abuse at them. Here at last was a revolutionary act, thought Brendan, but his attention was taken by a small girl on the pavement who looked frozen in her short skirt even though the afternoon was warm. Hunger lines and shadows under the eyes made her look old as if she had already seen more of life than he ever would. She stared with palpable terror at one of the strikers, probably her father, linking arms on the cobbles as if expecting the bus to drive over him, leaving her alone to starve among strangers. Brendan saw the strain on every face now, including the passengers – some of whom slipped off the bus while others sat tight-lipped and defiant. A whistle heralded the arrival of a police squad. These were no Special Constables but seasoned Bobbies who did not wait to ask the protesters to move. Batons came out and they struck the first striker before he had time to rise. He fell back among his comrades, blood coming from his forehead. The small girl screamed and Brendan reached out to touch her shoulder reassuringly. A woman among the crowd pulled the child away, claiming that he had tried to snatch her. For a moment both the protesters and police glared at him, each man becoming a protective father. Then he was forgotten as the strikers rose and tried to defend themselves. Women screamed and the volunteer bus driver raised his hands to his face as a stone crashed through his windscreen.
Brendan’s attention became fixed on one protester, the only man who did not seem panicked. He remained in position before the bus, staring defiantly ahead amidst the melee. His cloth cap was pulled low and his clothes ragged, but Brendan knew that jaw and those defiant eyes. An aura seemed to protect him from the blows overhead. Here at last was the struggle Brendan had left school for, being played out at its most raw. It afforded him the chance to step from the pavement and sit down beside his brother as Art’s equal at last. Brendan kept telling himself that at any moment he would do so, but then a space cleared in the affray and a policeman glanced down at Art, baffled by the calm way he sat awaiting his fate. He aimed a blow and Art fell forward unhurriedly, sprawling onto the cobbles with blood seeping from his head. This blow activated the crowd’s sense of injustice. There were shouts with people pushing forward as the police started to make arrests. The bus driver was screaming, holding his eyes as he sat covered in shards of glass. Nobody remained on the bus. The woman holding the small girl hurried her away.
Amid the confusion Brendan saw two men lift Art and drag him into the shelter of the crowd. They moved quickly, anxious to get him to safety. One looked back at Brendan who followed. He lifted a threatening fist. Brendan slackened his pace but kept them in his sights as they hurried down a side street. They knocked at a house and were admitted. The door closed as Brendan approached. It reopened as he reached it and the man who had raised his fist grabbed Brendan’s jacket and flung him against a wall.
‘What do you want, you little police snitch? Lead the coppers here and I swear I’ll come after you. I never forget a face and I’ll break your legs. Understand? Now get the hell away.’
‘That’s my brother,’ Brendan said. ‘I want to see him.’
The men peered at Brendan. ‘Say something.’
‘What?’
‘Anything. Say “proletariat”.’
Brendan swallowed, being choked by the man’s grip. ‘Proletariat.’
The grip was relaxed. ‘That’s his favourite bloody word and I never heard anyone else make such a bloody mouthful of it as you. You must be his brother. Get in before the cops come.’
They entered a narrow hallway stinking of damp and boiled cabbage. He opened a door and Brendan saw an attractive girl of eighteen cleaning the wound on Art’s head.
‘You okay, Verschoyle?’ the man asked.
Art grimaced, but nodded.
‘Leave his skull alone for a minute, sis. He has a visitor.’
Art looked up to see Brendan holding a suitcase. He shook his head, annoying the girl who scolded him for not keeping it still.
‘What are you doing here?’ Art demanded. ‘You’ve run away from school, haven’t you? You bloody fool.’
‘Why am I a fool?’ Brendan was aggrieved.
‘Because they’ll blame me in Donegal for this as well. They’ll say I encouraged you.’
‘I didn’t think you cared what anyone thought?’
‘Of course I care. You’re my baby brother.’
‘Well, you’re wrong. Firstly, it has nothing to do with you, and secondly, I did not run away. I walked at my own pace. I gave Father my word to stay until I was sixteen. I am now a free man.’
‘You’re a child. They’d never forgive me for harbouring you.’
The girl lifted a bloodstained rag away from the wound and surveyed it. ‘Not too deep. You’re lucky. It was one soft baton or you have one hard head. Has your brother really run away from a posh boarding school? Funny, my ambition was always to run away to one.’
‘As what?’ her brother laughed, lighting a cigarette. ‘A cleaning lady?’
‘I have brains, you know, though God knows I must have lost them to start helping out your ragtail socialist friends. Are you saying I couldn’t hold my own in a class of posh bitches? I’d knock them dead. Now give me a ciggie.’
Art smiled at Brendan. ‘This is Ruth Davis. She’s been running a virtual field hospital in this kitchen all week.’
Brendan nodded, slightly bashful under her gaze, then attacked Art. ‘Did I ask you to harbour me? I’ve asked nothing of you, though I’ll take a bed for a few nights until I get sorted. Anyway, why send me pamphlets if you wanted me to believe in nothing? You opened my eyes and now what do you expect me to do? Stay in school and become a minion of the Empire?’
Art nodded, respecting his brother’s intensity. ‘All right. It’s inbred in me to feel responsible. What will you do?’
‘Live. All my life I’ve been sheltered. But I’ve never felt more alive than today. I want to dance.’
Art grimaced slightly and smiled. ‘Forgive me if I don’t waltz with you. My head is slightly sore.’
Satisfied that she had stemmed the bleeding, Ruth began to apply a makeshift bandage to Art’s head. ‘I’ll dance,’ she said. ‘Any Saturday night. I like a man who dances. The problem with revolution is that there’s too much talk and not enough dancing.’
‘I saw you being hit,’ Brendan confessed to Art. ‘I wanted to join you but I was too scared.’
The girl snorted. ‘You’d too much sense, more like.’
‘Leave it out, Ruth,’ her brother hissed.
‘It’s my kitchen, I’ll say what I like.’
‘Your time will come,’ Art assured him. ‘Today’s battle was lost. There was no point in joining in.’
‘There’ll be another one tomorrow.’
‘No.’ Art went to touch his head and Ruth gently slapped his hand away. ‘The workers are being betrayed. Ever since this strike started the Trades Union Congress have been seeking a compromise. They can’t see that this is our chance to galvanise the proletariat into one huge push forward. If it happened in Russia it can happen here. But the lackeys are already looking for a way to capitulate. The miners will wind up standing alone again.’
‘What would you have us do?’ Ruth said. ‘The strike is crumbling. If the TUC don’t back down, ordinary workers will simply leave their unions. A compromise must be found.’
‘I don’t believe in compromise,’ Art insisted.
‘That’s because hunger is a novelty for you.’ She tilted his head to tie the bandage.
‘If we lose this strike,’ Art said, ‘the revolution in England is finished before it has even begun.’
‘Maybe I don’t want a revolution,’ Ruth snapped. ‘I want a wage that lets me fill my belly and go out dancing at weekends with a good-looking fellow like your brother. If you want every girl in London to join your revolution then produce a hundred bashful lads like him.’ She laughed teasingly. ‘I believe he’s blushing. What’s his name?’
‘My name is Brendan,’ Brendan said, annoyed that his cheeks were red.
‘You’re probably not used to girls in boarding school, Brendan. You might not know one end of us from the other. Are you sticking around London or tramping off to Russia like your brother?’
Brendan stared at Art. ‘Are you going to Russia?’
‘If there’s nothing to fight for here. I want to see it for myself like Ffrench did. But I’ll introduce you to people before I go.’
‘I’ll give him the guided tour,’ Ruth teased. ‘Parts he didn’t even know existed.’ She inspected her handiwork. ‘I think you’ll live with that thick skull of yours. Now scarper out the back way before my father comes in.’ She looked at Brendan. ‘You are a bloody fool. Go back to school and learn sense. He’ll lead you astray.’
Brendan smiled. ‘Maybe I want to be led astray.’
‘You have my address.’
Brendan held her gaze so that it was she who blushed. ‘What age are you?’ he asked.
‘Eighteen. Old enough to know not to cradle snatch.’
‘I climbed out of my cradle long ago.’
‘You needn’t think of climbing into mine. Still, you have nice manners and clean nails. I always knew I’d meet a man one day with clean nails. Keep your brother out of trouble until he gets home at least.’ She turned to the man who had let Brendan in. ‘Joe, give Art the loan of a cap: his own is covered in blood.’
They climbed over the scullery yard wall and dropped into an alleyway, with Art unsteady on his feet. Joe went to the corner and waved, indicating that no police were about.
The cap covered Art’s wound and once they merged back into the crowds there was nothing suspicious about them beyond the contrast in their dress.
The broken glass had been swept up and blood on the cobbles was the only sign that an altercation had occurred. A bus passed unhindered. The British Gazette was right after all in that the strike was crumbling. But correct about nothing else. Maybe this strike was not the decisive moment but a dress rehearsal like the 1916 Rising had been in Dublin.
Art was sombre, but Brendan did not know how to be downhearted. He could remember being carried on Art’s back along the stones on Mr Ffrench’s pier and it felt good now to stride beside him through these London streets, two grown men and comrades, desperadoes avoiding the law.
Art stopped at a doorway and led the way up four flights of stairs to a tiny attic flat. He indicated the patch of floor that was the only place where Brendan could sleep, then asked Brendan to excuse him while he lay on the bed. Brendan knew that his brother’s head was throbbing, although Art did not complain. Art turned his face to the wall and Brendan sat quietly on his suitcase so as not to disturb him. Tomorrow he would write to Father and begin to make plans. But for now he just wanted to sit and stare out of this attic window at the London streets that seemed to stretch away for ever like the infinite possibilities of his future.