January and February were savagely cold. The Thames froze almost up to Tower Bridge; beyond that the Pool and the estuary were thick with floating ice. One of the evening papers promoted a Winter Fair on the river, but it was not a success. The wind rose in the night, and many of the flimsy structures that had been erected on the ice were blown down and scattered. It was too bitter, in any case, to encourage people to venture far from shelter.
March opened on a comparatively milder note, but there was still no thaw. Food prices, which had been rising for some time, began to rocket, and there was a wave of strikes throughout the country. They culminated in a general strike, which lasted three days: during those days prices doubled and re-doubled. The Government, which had proclaimed a State of Emergency and taken necessary powers, showed no sign of yielding them again. There was strict censorship, and the police were armed. Rationing and price controls were introduced for a wide range of foods; patient queues lengthened in the grubby snow outside provision shops. Press and television called on the people to endure, to show their ancient phlegm. ‘If winter comes,’ quoted the Prime Minister in his clipped and confident voice, ‘can spring be far behind?’
Andrew had gone to his solicitors after Christmas, and they had approached Carol. She had not proved difficult. She had agreed to the children being made wards of Court, pending a decision on care and custody at the time of the granting of the divorce. The hearing had been set down for the beginning of April.
Meanwhile, at the end of March, there were to be the Easter holidays, and it was arranged that Andrew should meet the boys at Waterloo. The taxi which took him there, in a snow storm, carried chains on its wheels. Andrew realized that very little gravelling was being done now, and that little in a perfunctory manner.
‘Shockin’ wevver,’ the driver said. ‘Don’t get no better, neiver, do it?’
‘No,’ Andrew said. He glanced at his watch. ‘We’re going to be late.’
‘Shouldn’t worry. Not as late as the train’ll be.’
At the station, Andrew went to the indicator board. A ninety-minute delay was signalled. He turned away to go in search of a snack, and found David coming towards him.
David said: ‘Hello, Andy. Hoped I’d find you here.’
He had been away from the studios all morning, and presumed Carol had been trying to get in touch with him. It crossed his mind that the school, which was five miles from its railhead, might have been cut off by the latest blizzard, and that the boys might not be able to get to London for the time being.
‘About the boys?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ David took his arm. ‘Something I want to draw your attention to first, though.’
He pointed. There was an armed sentry guarding the gate at Platform 9. Other soldiers were on duty elsewhere in the station.
‘What’s all that about?’ Andrew asked.
‘The Army,’ David said, ‘is standing to. Not just here, but in strategic places all over the country. England is now under martial law.’
‘Do they expect trouble?’
‘A cut in the ration scale will be announced this afternoon. A very large cut.’
‘That reminds me,’ Andrew said. ‘I missed breakfast. I was going to get a sausage roll.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ David said. ‘You can have mine as well.’
The rule in snack bars had been one item of food per person for some time. As they approached the door of the Buffet, Andrew saw another familiar sign: SORRY – NO BEER.
He said: ‘What was it, about the boys? Are they keeping them at school for the present?’
‘I have a letter for you,’ David said.
The envelope was blank. Andrew opened it and took out a sheet of paper. The letter was in Carol’s handwriting.
Dear Andy,
By the time this reaches you, the boys and I will be in Africa. I’m sorry to have to let you down again, but it’s the best thing for everybody. David is quite right: things are going to get worse. If you have any sense at all you’ll get out yourself while there’s time. I may say I’ve sold the house, forging your signature on the contract. You won’t have expected me to draw a line at that, will you? I only got £3,200, and was lucky to get it. I’ve also cleared out my account and cashed the Savings certificates. My total capital is just under £4,000. On David’s advice, I’ve chosen Lagos as our best bet. I’ll send you an address as soon as I have one. I really think you ought to come out yourself.
Yours,
Carol
‘You’ve read it, I expect,’ Andrew said. David shook his head, and Andrew gave him the letter. ‘You’ll know what’s in it. It was your idea, wasn’t it?’
‘Basically,’ David said. He handed back the letter. ‘Will you go out there?’
‘To Lagos? And find she’s taken them to Cairo, or Salisbury, or Johannesburg? I’d be a fool to trust anything she writes or you say, wouldn’t I?’
‘They’ve gone to Lagos, all right,’ David said. ‘The idea in your going out would be to bring them back?’
‘What else?’
‘Things are a bit chaotic there. It would take you some time to get a court order. By the time you got one, I don’t think you would want to use it.’
‘Why not?’ David nodded towards the soldier with an automatic rifle, patrolling a few feet away from them. ‘Because someone has called out the military?’
‘Glasgow,’ David said, ‘has been in the hands of a mob for the past two days. By some accounts a communist mob, by others just a mob. I don’t think it’s an important point.’
Andrew looked at him. ‘I would have heard that – through the news room …’
‘Security is now very tight. But you probably will hear it soon. And a few other items. If you do leave the country, you’ll be surprised how different things look from out there. I know a bit about it. I’ve had access to the foreign press.’
‘More propaganda for emigration?’
Andrew was a little surprised at the mildness of his own reaction; he would have expected to feel anger at David’s part in this new betrayal. It made him realize how greatly things had changed, how his own apprehensions about the situation had unconsciously sharpened. There was relief in his mind as well as resentment. He thought of the children in the strong safe sunshine of Africa, and was not altogether unhappy about it.
‘I think you should go,’ David said. ‘The insolation figure, by the way, is down to 1.74.’
‘That’s a slower rate of decline. It was 1.75 at the beginning of the month.’
‘Yes, it is slower.’
‘So it looks as though it’s bottoming out. We may be over the worst.’
David shook his head, in a gesture of negation and certainty.
‘We’re not over the worst. We haven’t reached it yet.’
The London mob erupted on Easter Monday. The morning was bright and by midday one could hear small trickles and gurgles of water as ice and snow melted from roofs and gutters. In the afternoon, Andrew and Madeleine walked to Knightsbridge and the Park. They were not alone in seeking this outing; the streets suddenly were full of people, and so was the Park itself. Children snowballed each other along Rotten Row. Young men and women skated under the Serpentine bridge.
As they came in sight of Marble Arch, Andrew said:
‘It’s even thicker up this way. Shall we turn back?’
Madeleine looked at the crowd ahead of them.
‘The orators,’ she said. ‘It might be fun to go and listen.’
He objected: ‘We’d never get near the speakers. There must be thousands there.’
‘If we can’t hear them, we’ll come away.’
‘All right.’ Andrew nodded towards the sky. ‘It’s clouding over.’
A cloud took the sun and, as though this were a signal, things changed in front of them. It was confusing at first, a formless whirl, a savage ripple in a hitherto motionless pool. Madeleine clutched his arm.
‘What is it? Are they running away?’
‘Towards us.’ He looked behind them to see if there was any obvious focus for the movement, but saw nothing. ‘Trouble with the police, perhaps?’
Later he learned what had happened. The mob had collected, chiefly from Paddington and North Kensington, and had been harangued by its leaders. Men had a right to food, and there was food in the shops. It was there for the rich, who could buy on the black market:
‘My week’s ration!’ shouted one speaker. He waved in the air a single rasher of bacon. ‘There’s the Dorchester down the road. Do you think they’re living on one rasher of bacon in the Dorchester?’
There were now two authorities – the police and the military. The officer commanding troops had wanted to move in and break up the meeting from the start, but the police chief had overruled him. He preferred defensive to offensive action. Machine-gun posts had been set up at the Arch and along Park Lane and Oxford Street, and he did not think the mob was desperate enough to rush the defences, or strong enough to break through if they did. He was right in the first conclusion and may have been right in the second, but he had failed to anticipate what actually happened. There were no defences in the open spaces of the park itself. This was something the mob’s temporary leader and spokesman had realized.
‘They’ve put the police on to stop us,’ he yelled, ‘– the police and the bloody soldiers. If we go to the Dorchester, or the Ritz, or Fortnum and Friggin Mason’s, to take what’s our due, they’ll shoot us down. But we don’t have to go that way, brothers! What about a little run across the Park? What about Harrods, say? The rich buy their food there, too. You don’t pay cash in Harrods. You give them a cheque, and to hell with the coupons! Let’s go and give them a cheque, then. We’ll write one out on the Bank of England. What do you say?’
As the crowd moved and surged forward, there was a moment when it might have been scattered by a few shots, but the movement had taken place too quickly, and in the wrong direction. It was a different matter ordering men to fire on their unarmed fellow citizens when they were, to all intents, running away, than it would have been if they had been advancing against the guns. A minute or two later an order was given, and a few shots were fired over their heads, but the only effect then was to quicken the charge.
Andrew took hold of Madeleine’s arm as it burst over them.
‘Go with it!’ he said. ‘Whatever’s happening, don’t try to stand against it. You would be knocked over and trampled.’
They were swept several hundred yards before they succeeded in easing their way to the edge and, finally, out of the stampede. They watched the mob move on towards Knightsbridge, leaving fallen figures in its wake. A boy about seven sat in the snow, weeping. He would not be comforted when Madeleine spoke to him and at last, still sobbing, picked himself up and ran after the others.
‘Should we stop him?’ Madeleine asked.
‘No.’ He had a sense of helplessness. ‘I don’t think it would do any good.’
They made their way back through the side streets. They heard shots, and distant shouting, and at one point, seeing Harrods in the distance, had a glimpse also of the rioting crowd round it and heard the crash of glass. The sun was still hidden by clouds and there was a cold wind. In these parts the streets were empty, apart from occasional figures who came to their doors to look and listen, but did not stay long in the open. Andrew and Madeleine did not say much until they reached her house.
Then he said: ‘I’m going to move in with you, Madeleine. It’s the safest thing.’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Please do.’