1

He woke up on Sunday morning in a state of extreme irritation, or rather, he emerged by degrees from a dreaming exasperation to an aching discontent. He woke up and stared at his discoloured ceiling. A realisation of absolute ineffectiveness overwhelmed him.

"Defeat!" he whispered. "Defeat. Self defeat. Here's the Popular Socialist demonstration will be petering out as usual in Hyde Park as if nothing had happened; here's a plain situation before us that won't wait, that can't wait, and I'm doing nothing. My guns are spiked.

"What good am I?

"I might as well not exist."

The tension accumulated. It reached the breaking point. He exploded.

"Oh God!" he screamed.

He leapt out of bed as though some unseen beast in it had bitten him. He threw his bedclothes into the corner; he gashed his chin shaving; he kicked his shoes across the room, he quarrelled with his shabby suit of clothes and broke his only pair of braces. He made hay of his room in his search for a piece of string or a safety–pin to repair the damage. Instead of cooking his egg he beat it up raw in his milk and drank it like that with a trembling hand. He was too agitated to light his Primus and make tea.

He betook himself to Camborne Square.

He shouted Steenhold out of bed and stamped and bawled about the room. He was determined to act, and now, at any cost. It was not only Steenhold he bawled into action, but himself. "Now or never," he said. "The time has come to act. Now, when no one expects it, is our moment. I have waited—I told you the other night I was waiting. Well—the time is now."

Steenhold received his announcement in a state of stunned admiration. He had always felt the latent explosives in Rud's composition, and here at last, thank the gods, they were exploding!

"You mean get the boys together?"

"I mean get them together now."

"Right, Chief."

Steenhold went to the telephone and began dialling. "Funny!" he said. "Bodisham gave me this list of names three days ago. And I didn't see what it was for. Really! Didn't see what it was for…That you, Rogers?…Rogers!—The Hour has come."

The group and its associates assembled bit by bit. A miscellany of odd cars parked outside in the Square. Rud was exalted, and they listened with close attention. He walked up and down, he sat and twisted himself about the back of his chair, reiterating his conviction of a crisis.

"They've shot men in South Carolina. They landed marines to co–operate with the state police. British marines shooting American strikers. Think of it! The affair can't wait. Don't you see how urgent it is and what it means to us?…

"I begged and prayed the Boss to take a line, and he put a flat veto on the whole thing…I must speak. There are things that must be said.

"How and where? I'll tell you exactly…There's that platform in Hyde Park with one or two trained droolers, drooling his old stuff…We go there. We take control."

Bodisham thought for a while, grasped Rud's idea and began to fill in particulars.

"We go there by twos and threes and gather round the platform," said Bodisham. "Then when Rud thinks fit we put him on the platform. There'll be some raw greenhorn in charge. If necessary Rogers and you other stalwarts can hustle him…

"Can we get reporters? I don't mean news–hounds, I mean reporters."

"I know a man or two," said Irwell.

"Shorthand?"

"We could have a man for a verbatim report," said Steenhold. "We ought to have a man for a verbatim report."

"And after your speech?"

"I don't know," said Rud. "But get what I say reported. Get it reported. And now I'm going upstairs to be still—perfectly still—until it is time to go."

He vanished.

"He'll do it," said Steenhold, not at all clear in his own mind what it was Rud would do.

The conspirators ate casually, wandering about the flat with mugs and chunks of bread and cheese. There was a lot of staring out of the window—as though the Future might be visible there already. After one o'clock they began to depart by twos and threes for Hyde Park.