a familiar figure in a tweed jacket with his back to her, deep in conversation with a youngish bespectacled man with wild-looking hair. But there was no time to go up to the pair as all at once a loud burst of marching music announced the arrival of the speaker. May recognised the tall figure of Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, as he strode up the central aisle of the hall accompanied by two of his black-suited consorts. May shuddered inwardly, feeling yet again a disturbing physical excitement in this man’s presence.
As Mosley reached the stage and saluted his audience, his elbow bent and his palm facing outwards as if directing the traffic, May took in every detail of the man. His hair was slicked back, not a strand out of place beneath its smooth, oiled pomade, just as it had been when he had passed by so close to her in the hall at Cuckmere several weeks before. Now that she had time to scrutinise him more closely, she saw that his small moustache looked as if it had been pencilled on and given the same greased-down treatment as his hair. His taut, athletic build reinforced his authority. May was near enough to see that instead of the thick, side-fastening cotton shirt favoured by his escorts, Mosley was wearing a far sleeker version made from silk. His eyes shone black. The audience was mesmerised, silenced and stilled by this dynamite combination of haughtiness and sexuality. A woman behind May whispered to her companion, “My word, Glenda, what a virile animal!”
May knew exactly what she meant. She wondered what would happen if one was quite alone in a room with Oswald Mosley. She might as well ask Mrs. Cage, who would have discovered the answer when she took up the breakfast tray to the flowered spare room at Cuckmere and had returned so flustered.
Lifting his arms above him for silence and taking a deep breath, Oswald Mosley’s chest expanded like a swimmer about to take an Olympic dive. As he began to speak, several dozen people raised their newspapers and, pretending to read, produced a synchronised rustling that filled the room. The sentinels shifted on their feet. From behind a screen of Daily Workers came a barrage of offensive remarks as Mosley continued speaking to a wall of newsprint. After little more than half a minute of sustained interruption, Mosley paused in his attack on the Jewish financiers of the Labour Party, warning that any disturbance in the hall would be firmly dealt with. The heckling continued from behind the anonymous protection of the newspapers.
“Red Front” came a cry from the back of the room, followed by a burst of enthusiastic applause. Two or three Blackshirts moved into the central aisle.
“If anyone repeats those words they will be evicted from the room,” Mosley thundered, adding the single word “forthwith” to emphasise there would be no delay to his threat. His exaggerated vowels rang around the room.
“Stand fast!” he shouted.
The bespectacled man, his hair by now sticking up in disarray, pushed his way into the centre of the hall to find himself trapped in a thicket of raised chairs and fists.
“Red Front!” came the cry once again from the back.
A steel chain held by one of the Blackshirts was brought down in one stroke onto the spectacled man’s face, while at the same time May saw a hefty knee rammed between his thighs. The spectacles tumbled to the ground. The noise in the room was fantastic. Another of Mosley’s men had removed his belt, revealing the sharp, upright spikes that had up until then lain dormant behind the shiny buckle. Whirling the belt round his head the Blackshirt brought it down with a whack on the buttocks of one of the Cowley men. And just as the confrontation began to escalate into something truly frightening, half a dozen policemen broke into the room.
“All women onto the platform at once!” May heard someone shout, but everyone, women included, was leaving the hall as quickly as possible by the main exit. May spotted Mosley vanishing through a side door escorted by two of his men, but there was no sign of the recently de-spectacled victim, nor of the familiar tweed jacket.
May was about to make her way back to the car when she turned round one more time to look at the empty platform. Something was moving beneath the piano, within three feet of where Mosley’s black boots had