a young man in glasses with white-blond hair stood there, a summery linen cap in his hand and a striped college scarf round his neck.
“I am so sorry to call without any warning. My name is Julian Richardson. I am a friend of May Thomas. I do hope I have got the right number?”
For a moment Nat quite forgot about Rachel and Sarah as he put out his hand to Julian in greeting. “Delighted to meet you,” he said. “Really delighted. Do come in. May is upstairs. I’ll fetch her at once.”
“I wondered if she might want to come up and join me at the march,” Julian explained.
Nat hesitated on his way up the stairs. “The march? Are you planning on going up to Aldgate?”
“Yes I am. And I thought May might want to come with me.”
On hearing voices, May had already begun to make her way downstairs, her surprise at seeing Julian lighting up her face.
“I thought it would be Sarah and Rachel back from the park. You are always turning up when I least expect you,” she said, beaming at him. “Nat, this is Julian. Nat’s my cousin. You know.”
But Nat was looking worried. “My wife and her mother are somewhere out in the streets. I was expecting them home an hour ago.”
May turned to him. Her earlier smile had vanished.
“Gardiner’s. They’ve gone to Gardiner’s. Up at Aldgate. You’re right, Nat. They should have been back quite a while ago. We must go and find them at once. We can take the bikes. Julian, will you come with me? Nat, you wait here in case they turn up.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Julian followed May out to the back where she was heaving two bicycles out of the shed.
“I know the way,” May shouted to Julian over her shoulder as she began to pedal. “Follow me.”
Gardiner’s was about half an hour’s walk from Oak Street, or ten minutes on a bicycle, perhaps less. May pedalled fast, passing the boarded-up shop fronts at speed and hoping that Julian was close behind.
A thunderous commotion was coming from the direction of Aldgate and as they approached the junction of Commercial Street and Whitechapel High Street, they found their way blocked by an overturned truck, weighted down with bricks. Whole chunks of concrete had been dug up from the pavement, the square patches of bare earth turning the pavements into giant, uneven chessboards. By now they could hear the cries and shouts of a huge crowd ahead. Dismounting from their bikes and squeezing through a gap beside the truck, May and Julian turned the corner, where the full force of the protest hit them.
Hundreds of police, many on horseback, were struggling with a threateningly volatile crowd as bricks and stones and lemonade bottles flew through the air. Although there was no sign of Mosley himself, all of humanity seemed to be there as Jews and fascists and communists and police jostled with the angry, the curious, the young and the old, the fearless and the fearful. The hefty slabs of pavement had been smashed up to provide weapons that were now in the hands of the protestors who pushed and shoved their way through the crowds. All along the pavement, people were sitting with their heads in their hands, blood streaming from wounds to their faces as doctors and ambulance workers did their best to attend to the dozens of injuries. Red flags were flying from the lampposts. A couple of parked tramcars had been emptied and were lying on their sides outside Aldgate underground station. Placards held up high announced marchers variously affiliated with the Stepney Jewish People’s Council against Fascism and Anti-Semitism, the Labour Party and the Communist Party. The words “Bar the Road to Fascism” had been written in huge chalk letters on several walls. Some people were shouting the popular solgan of the Spanish Civil War “No Pasarán”—“They Shall Not Pass.”
A familiar tune reached May above the incredible noise, although new words were given to the old American socialist-solidarity song, “Solidarity Forever,” a song popular with the plantation workers back home.
“We’ll hang Oswald Mosley on a sour apple tree, when the red revolution comes,” the marchers sang in the streets of London’s East End, before an ominous chant drowned out their words.
“The Yids, the Yids. We must get rid of the Yids.”
Fear flushed through May’s face as she and Julian paused to catch their breath. Julian put an arm round May’s shoulders. A lad of perhaps eight years old