The Thing Itself

THIRTY-TWO

Victor Tempest exercise book one cont.

I was a bit wary of the Blackshirt organization by now. Mosley had made a big thing about not being anti-Semitic. That suited me as I’d no time for such stupidity. But I’d heard him give a speech about a month after I joined at which he’d responded to hecklers by calling them ‘three warriors of class war, all from Jerusalem’.

I mentioned that to Charlie Ridge but he shrugged it off.

‘Do you know who Mosley has hired to teach self-defence to the stewards? Former welterweight champion of the world, Ted Kid Lewis.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Ted’s real name is Gershom Mendeloff. He’s a Jew from Whitechapel.’

But I was hearing other things that were both disturbing and funny. The Brixton branch was organized as a brothel. The secretary of one of the Newcastle branches had been convicted of housebreaking. The first national leader of the women’s section had been caught with her hand in the till and kicked out.

Then there was the violence. The minute Mosley organized his defence force on military lines and put his men in jackboots, he was making it clear he was out for trouble. In the cities Blackshirts were driven to meetings in armour-plated vans.

When he set up the New Party in 1931, Mosley said he would defend his meetings with ‘the good clean English fist’. He was a good boxer himself, with a straight left that had knocked hecklers out cold a couple of times, so the stories went. I was fine with that — as I’ve said, I was used to getting stuck in whilst on duty, especially when the pubs called time.

However, party members didn’t just rely on their fists. I read in the papers that Blackshirts in Liverpool had clashed with rival fascists — the Social Credit Greenshirts — and used knuckledusters and leaded hosepipes.

I wasn’t sure about the classless thing either. Although I never knew him, my dad had been a weaver in Blackburn. He died in the Great War. My mum was a teacher. So I suppose I was a working-class/lower-middle-class mix. The BUF magazine — Action! — had quite a lot of posh society stuff alongside the uplifting political sentiment. It was edited by A. K. Chesterton, the cousin of G. K. Chesterton, the author of the Father Brown stories. There was a regular gardening column by Vita Sackville-West.

I read an article once saying that Mosley’s wife, Cimmie, wanted to turn Sousa’s Stars and Stripes into a fascist anthem with words by Osbert Sitwell. William Walton was asked to write the music. This all sounded a bit highfalutin to me.

As a read, I much preferred Wide World, the magazine I got second-hand for sixpence on Brighton market. It was full of stories of adventure from all over the world. I liked the monthly column at the back of the magazine written by ‘The Captain’ called ‘Man and His Needs — a monthly causerie of matters masculine’.

In March 1934 Martin Charteris turned up again. He was vague about where he’d been. Turned out he knew Jack Notyre and the three of us hung about a bit. Charteris wasn’t working but he always seemed to have money on him. He was definitely a chancer. He was staying with Notyre and Mrs Saunders.

I didn’t tell them I was a copper but someone saw me in the white helmet and word got back. They got stand-offish. We still played cards in the Skylark and I saw them down the dance halls, but they pushed me out a bit. I’d always been a bit of an outsider with them anyway as they’d known each other in London.

Then a funny thing happened at the end of the month. I was off-duty and went into the Bath Arms in the middle of the Laines for a pint. I could hardly see for the fug in there. Pipe and cigarette smoke hung in a solid grey mass below the ceiling and billowed down over people’s heads. It was as if a heavy sea fret had come through the door.

It was noisy too. Quite a few street girls came in here and they were hogging the bar now, screeching and laughing about their clients. I forced my way through to the counter and ordered a pint of mild.

I made a space for myself at the bar and took a sip of the beer. I could see Charteris over in the corner.

He was with a man in his early forties. Clipped moustache, hair plastered back, check sports jacket, striped tie. They were sitting at a table, so I couldn’t see his legs, but I guessed cavalry twill. Ex-army officer. And I guessed white socks. He was one of the brown-ring boys, I could tell.

There were a lot in Brighton. Brighton Pier gave its name to them in rhyming slang: Brighton Pier = queer.

I watched Charteris. He didn’t notice, although he kept flicking his eyes round the pub. He and the captain kept a certain distance between them. All very respectable. Two men talking in a pub. But I knew.

One of my first jobs when I joined the police was going to a crime scene in Hove. A queer suicide pact. I didn’t know what it was about Brighton that attracted all the back-room boys, then another bobby told me it was all the bloody thespians down here.

‘They prefer backstage to front-of-house,’ he said. ‘Half of them are fairies and half of them pretend to be, putting it on.’

When I was younger I just wanted to punch them in the face, and if they approached me I did. But now I wasn’t so definite. My pal Philip Simpson told me once, after a bit of a pub crawl, that he liked boys as much as girls.

‘Why limit your options?’ he said.

‘Live and let live, Phil,’ I told him, ‘but keep your hands off my trouser buttons.’

So my views mellowed a bit, especially as I saw how quick Simpson was to get stuck in when it was required. And even when it wasn’t.

Anyway, we broke down the door of this flat in Hove. Big living room, nice furniture. There was a man lying by the fire. He was wearing a blooming cravat. His head was near the gas fire. There was a terrible smell of gas.

We cranked the window open. The hot air didn’t really gush in, it just hung there, but the gas eventually cleared away.

It was too late for the man in the bedroom. He was my first dead body. His tongue looked horrible, like a fat slug, hanging down from one side of his mouth. There were blankets tucked up round his neck.

It was a strange scene. Everything so tidy — it looked like a film set, especially as they were so well dressed. That cravat.

I felt sorry for the one who survived — the bloke lying by the gas fire. He got done and put away in prison, which seemed bloody harsh. Though you know what they say about queers in prison.

The next time I saw Charteris, he was in SS Brighton, the big new swimming pool on the seafront, ogling the girls draped around the pool. Same reason I was there.

I came up behind him quiet — though a stampede wouldn’t have made any difference as the noise bounced around so much in there — and flicked his back with my towel.

‘Oy!’ he said, turning so fast he almost slipped on the wet floor. ‘Don, you almost copped for that. ’Ere, that’s almost a whatchamacallit.’

‘A pun,’ I said.

‘That’s the one.’

‘But not a very good one.’

‘You going in?’ he said.

‘Bit nippy for me. All very well having a seawater pool but they should warm it up before it gets here.’

‘At least they take the fishes out,’ he said, flashing a grin.

He had a quick sense of humour did Charteris. He was a good-looking boy with black wavy hair and a little Ronald Colman moustache.

I smiled and said to him: ‘How’s the Galloping Major?’

He looked shifty for a moment.

‘Who?’

‘You know. The Bath Arms the other night?’

‘Oh him. Just a party member, Don. A fellow Blackshirt.’

‘Come off it, Charteris, and we’ll get along much better. I know your game.’

‘You do?’

‘You’re a cut-rate gigolo.’

‘No need to be insulting, Don.’

‘Which bit?’

He grinned again.

‘Cut-rate.’

‘So what’s your game? He just pays for your company or you get into a bit of blackmail with him after?’

Charteris looked around.

‘Nothing he can’t afford.’

I shook my head.

‘Is Jack Notyre in the same line of work?’

Charteris looked sly.

‘He’s a step up. Managerial.’

I frowned.

‘Meaning?’

‘He’s living with a tart. And off her.’

I digested that.

‘Charteris — what are you both?’

He gave me the wide-eyes.

‘Just men trying to make a living.’ He leaned in. ‘He’s taking me to Eastbourne for a fortnight. In a caravan.’

‘Notyre?’

‘The Galloping Major.’

‘Definitely not cut-rate,’ I said sarcastically. He looked a bit miffed at that.

‘What’s it to you anyway?’ he said.

‘It’s illegal,’ I said.

‘So are a lot of things you turn a blind eye to.’

He stepped back as I stepped forward.

‘I’m just saying, Don. Is it a cut you want?’

‘I want information, Martin Charteris. Always. Good stuff. Keep your ears open when you’re up to your shenanigans. Keep me informed and we’ll continue to get along fine.’

In May 1934 quite a few things happened. For one thing, Jack Notyre started work at the Skylark as a waiter. I think it was because there was a waitress there he was doing things with and there was a room out the back they’d disappear to from time to time.

Then Oswald Mosley came to Brighton on a visit.