The Thing Itself

THIRTY-THREE

Victor Tempest exercise book two

There was a big meeting on in Olympia in June and Oswald Mosley was rallying the troops up and down the country. He brought a few of his bigwigs down. He stayed at the Grand, of course. The local branch hired the Music Room in the Royal Pavilion for the meeting. Very ornate. We were all sitting there waiting when the back doors opened and he came in with about a dozen men. We jumped to our feet and I felt a fool half-heartedly shouting: ‘Hail Mosley!’

He was a big man — around six feet four — and held himself very erect. His walk was an odd stride. I’d been told he’d broken his ankle twice. Once in 1914 at Sandhurst, jumping out of a window to escape some other cadets who were out to get him. He fell thirty-five feet. Then, when he’d finished his training to be a flier in the First World War, he broke it again when he crashed his plane at Shoreham, showing off in front of his mum and her friends.

Before his ankle had healed he’d gone off to fight in the trenches. His leg rotted. He was invalided out and ended up with one leg an inch and a half shorter than the other. Hence the limp. Even so, after a twenty-year lay-off he came back into fencing in 1932 and was a runner-up in the British epee championship.

You had to admire someone with that determination. But at the same time you could see why I wondered whether the other cadets would have thrown him out of the window if he hadn’t done it himself.

He was arrogant and vain. He stood behind the top table and thirty or so of us sat waiting. There were four men sitting with him. The rest were his bodyguard, stationed at the doors now. Strapping blokes, all my sort of height.

He introduced his companions — his Top Table, he called them. William Joyce — another tall man. I’d heard him speak when I first joined up. Bloody clever bloke. A real orator. He’d started off quoting Greek. He said it was Greek — it was double Dutch to me. When he wanted to make a point, he put his right foot forward and shook his fist, his jaw thrust out. He had a bad scar running from his ear to his mouth — he’d been slashed with a cut-throat razor in a street fight with the Reds. He became notorious later, of course, as Lord Haw-Haw. I knew his hangman, but I’ll get on to that in due course.

He sat now, leaning forward on the table, his chin resting on his fist, scanning the room with keen eyes. I was sitting in the front with Philip and Charlie. We’d changed into our Blackshirt uniforms in the toilets downstairs. It was the first time we’d worn the jackboots. Bloody hell. It took us about ten minutes to get them on, three of us tugging at the same boot, weak with laughter. You had to get your foot as if you were standing on tiptoe in order to get it in. We’d decided we wouldn’t get them off again this side of Christmas.

William Joyce kept glancing at me. I thought I was imagining it until he leaned over to the man next to him and whispered something, pointing my way. The man next to him gave me a cold, appraising look, then nodded. Maybe Joyce was thinking what I was thinking: that this man, though slighter than me, looked like me twenty years on. Then again, I am a type. Aryan poster boy. Tall, thick shock of blond hair, blue eyes, long face.

The man was introduced as Eric Knowles, who had fought alongside Mosley in the trenches and was now one of his most important aides. His duties weren’t specified.

I only remember the name of one of the men on the other side of Mosley. Captain Ralph Morrison, the BUF’s quartermaster. I knew him better as the Galloping Major.

I glanced back to where Charteris was sitting. He caught my eye but sat there as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Then gave a quick wink.

Mosley launched into a long speech about the parliamentary system having failed us. Mosley wasn’t a natural orator — I’d heard he practised in front of the mirror and had taken lessons in voice production. His voice was shrill. He yelled at us as if he was at a mass rally of thousands instead of in a small room with forty people. It was exhausting.

At the end there were cups of tea, but somebody — Joyce, I think — produced a couple of bottles of whisky so we all toasted Mosley and the party out of chipped cups. Mosley went round speaking to each of us in turn. Joyce and Knowles came over to me.

‘Are you in work?’ Knowles said.

I nodded.

‘You’re a big lad,’ Joyce said. ‘Can you look after yourself?’

‘So far,’ I said.

Knowles gestured to a couple of the big men at the door.

‘We’re always looking for fit fellows to join our leader’s praetorian guard. Are you interested?’

‘In theory,’ I said. ‘But I like to work my brain too.’

Both men looked at me but I held their look.

‘Do you?’ Joyce finally said. ‘Do you indeed?’

‘What’s your name?’ Knowles said, taking out a small pad with a pencil sticking out of one end.

‘Victor Tempest.’

‘OK. Well, we’d definitely like you to attend the Olympia meeting on the seventh of June. We’ll be in touch.’

Just then Oswald Mosley joined us. I didn’t know what the form was so I stood to attention. He appraised me for a moment.

‘Do you box?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He suddenly feinted a left jab at my head. I swayed out of the way and automatically got my fists up and shifted my feet. He smiled and opened his fist to give me a pat on the arm.

‘Quick reflexes.’

‘He says he’s got a brain too, sir,’ Joyce said drily. ‘Name is Victor Tempest.’

‘Mind and body — that’s good. That’s what we should all aim for. Where are you from, Tempest?’

‘I was born and bred in Haywards Heath, sir, but the family is from Blackburn.’

‘A fellow northerner,’ Mosley said in his upper-class drawl. ‘My family is from Manchester — Rolleston’s our home. Got to protect our cotton.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What did you father do?’

‘He was a weaver, sir, but he died in the war. I never knew him.’

I was aware that during this conversation both Joyce and Knowles were staring at me intently, weighing me up.

‘A lot of good men died far too young.’ He looked from Knowles to Joyce then back at me. ‘We could do with a good man in the north-west. A man with a brain.’

‘He’s in work,’ Knowles said.

‘Quick advancement for the right people in the BUF,’ Mosley said, his eyes still fixed on me. ‘I promote on merit. What’s your job?’

I lowered my voice. Unless Charteris had blabbed, nobody in the branch knew Simpson, Ridge and I were policemen.

‘I’m a bobby, sir. A constable.’

Mosley tilted his head to one side.

‘Are you? Are you? Good man — I already know then that you stand for law and order — as do we.’

He exchanged glances with Joyce and Knowles again.

‘Stay where you are for now but let’s talk again after Olympia. That rally will be the making of us. Eric, make a note.’

‘Already done, sir.’

And that was it. I left that meeting thinking this day could mark the start of a new life in uncharted territories for me — 10th May 1934. The same day the first Brighton Trunk Murder was committed, though nobody knew it then.