5

There was little excitement outside the Canton Hall when the hour of the meeting arrived. It was a private meeting of the Party and there were no police precautions in evidence. Men and youths arrived by twos and threes and were swallowed up by the portals. But presently there were shouts within.

Mr. Abrahams could not distinguish anything of the shouting. It grew louder and then there was laughter and more laughter—a jeering sort of laughter.

He made a move towards the door and then restrained himself and turned away.

Whistling pensively, Mr. Abrahams strolled to the corner of the road which ran towards the corner house. He glanced about him furtively. He was unobserved. Very quickly he produced a red ticket from his breast pocket, a ticket he had over–printed, he looked at it for a moment with his head appreciatively on one side, shifted it conveniently to his outer pocket, slapped it, and then, with an entire change of bearing, marched back to the Hall, presented his illicit credential, and pushed his way into a room already completely packed.

"Quite at the back," he whispered, as if to an absent Mrs. Abrahams. "Quite at the back."

He remained an unobtrusive but appreciative spectator of all that followed. He tried to make a rough computation of the number of people present. It astonished him that there was still room to breathe. He reckoned up about four hundred, four hundred–odd. But he had printed—what had he printed?—five hundred and fifty. And one.

"They can't have come. If they were turned away I should have seen them outside."

The four men appointed to organise the secret meeting had behaved very much in the manner of seconds preparing for a duel. Very plainly it was a duel. It was to be held, they had agreed, with an absolute minimum of notification. All the tickets were to be stamped Private and Confidential. The outside public was to know nothing about it. Both sides had insisted that there was absolutely no need for police, no need for any sort of publicity at all. "It is just a little matter among ourselves." That had been accepted with what was afterwards recognised as suspicious alacrity by both sides.

After that there had been some cautious diplomacy about the agenda. Neither side was prepared to name a chairman. "We want a sort of non–interventionist," said Bodisham. "We want our principals to have the amplest play."

The organisers pitched at last upon Frobisher.

It was Lord Horatio's desire that Rud should open with his case. And he didn't want to hear Rud open his case. It would certainly bore him, he said, and he might get indignant and interrupt. He wanted to give Rud fair play. Rud could have all the rope he needed to hang himself. Rud could have the meeting to himself for his charges against the leadership, and at the psychological moment Lord Horatio would come in, come forward and state his own position. "Practically, what Rud will say will be on the lines of the Hyde Park speech?" Hoggin assumed.

"Practically," said Bodisham ambiguously.

It was not in the philosophy of either Bohun or Hoggin that Rud—or indeed anyone—could make an entirely different speech—several different speeches. For the Bohunites, one's speech was one's speech like one's height or one's complexion.

"There is a verbatim report?"

"Mrs. Crumb has been given a copy."

"You want Rud to fire off his ammunition first and then, you want Lord Horatio to come in and jump on him?" said Bodisham, shaking his head.

"We give him the opening," said Hoggin.

"Any right of reply?"

"Do you think that will be needed?"

"I suppose we must agree to that," said Bodisham with an air of reluctance. "I don't like it. He will have to start from cold. No. It's not fair…"

So that what Mr. Abrahams came in for first, when he wriggled into the back of the Canton Hall, was Rud's opening address. And if Rud had started from cold, he had taken a remarkably short time to develop a high temperature. He was indulging in a tirade against Lord Horatio, a torrent or abuse and insult that would have made Milton's controversial style seem propitiatory and Tertullian a gentleman. "And there wasn't to be a reporter present," whispered Mr. Abrahams to himself, appreciatively, counting three men within range who were more or less overtly making notes. "Oh! This is jam."

And the things Whitlow kept saying! Abrahams could hardly believe his ears.

He was not only saying them. He was getting away with them. He was provoking angry shouts and abusive cries, but he was getting support and more support.

"Hear what I've got to say," shouted Rud. "Hear what I've got to say."

Uproar.

"This is a private meeting of the Party and if you don't agree with me—say it afterwards. But hear my case."

The majority was for him. No doubt of it. Abrahams' arithmetic was swift and sound.

If that other hundred try to get in, he resolved, I quit. What was he saying?

"I tell you we've had this—this Guy making us ridiculous long enough. I tell you he's not leading. I tell you he's standing in our way. He's selling us to Bankers and rich Americans. He's setting us against the trade unionists and Communists who have a case—a poor case, but they have a case. He's doing nothing for the Socialist cause, while our navy, our navy, the navy this country pays for, bombards American workers' homes…He's making mischief for us with the Jews.

"What's the sense of quarrelling with Jews?"

Abrahams applauded internally.

"Do they do any harm here? Do people mind them? But that's the game they played in Germany and so here—where everything is different—where never in the whole of history has there been such a thing as a pogrom—we have to do likewise! Just to split the workers…

"Come to think of it:—he looks half a Jew himself, a ginger–white Jew, the worst sort…

"I've got no quarrel with a Jew as such—Who has here?—but these anti–Jews and these pro–Jews are poison, It's a stale old quarrel from the Middle Ages. Who wants that rotten quarrel in our new world? To hell with all this Jew–consciousness, either way! I tell you it's a new world we're living in—and we want to get on with it and get it in order. Who wants to play Jews against Gentiles, Catholics against Protestants, Socialists against Individualists, Sunnites against Shiites now? It's all old stuff. It's dead stuff. It's Yesterday–ism. Politics from Petticoat Lane. What I say about these Jews is, Smash up the Ghetto and let them run. We want New Against old—and this leader who has been pretending to lead us is so old, so stale; he's sort of antiquarian. He's a curio. He's a collector…I could tell you things…But never mind that.

("Is he ready, Bodisham?"—a swift aside.

"He's quite ready.")

"I said he looks half a Jew. I apologise to the Jews. Anyhow, he's selling you old clothes, boys. Do you want to be dressed up in second–hand Dago tights? Do you want to strut about with your chests and your behinds stuck out, doing comic gladiator salutes? You Englishmen? Salute. Hand out. Can I leave the room please? Eh?…We who are about to die salute you, Horatio!…Bah! We want the reality of our own sort. Look here! Here's the sort of animal he wants to make of you!"

And forthwith a masked figure mounted the steps at the back of the platform and marched forward, with a sort of staccato goose–step, giving the Popular Socialist salute. It halted, still saluting. It turned this way and that. It opened a large mouth and drummed thoughtfully at its pasteboard teeth.

It was a turn that one of the Sunday evening music–hall group at Steenhold's flat had improvised, and which Steenhold had insisted upon making a feature of this debate. The mask was a cleverly simplified caricature of Bohun's visage and the ginger wig and forelock might have been the Boss's natural hair. The apparition took the meeting's breath away and then, after a silence, the crowd broke into a confusion of booing, applause and protests. But the protests were in a minority, and the noise died down to listen as Rud proceeded, after the manner of a showman:

"That's the model Bohun gave us…Yes—you can shout shame! but that's shame…

"No, don't howl now. You'll have your turn to say things."

Somebody in the front of the hall had to be suppressed. But the very crowding of the hall helped to keep the peace. They were too jammed together there for anything but pushing, face–thrusting and elbow fighting. No one could swing for a kick or a punch.

"Look at him, I say. Do you see how tight he is behind, boys? See his rump? Ain't it a behind? It beats his chest, don't it? Look how it sticks out! Why?"

Various suggestions were made amidst raucous laughter.

"I'll tell you," Rud went on. "He's got his tail there, mates. Hidden in his pants. It's a monkey. That's what it is. A nice furry–tailed Capuchin monkey. It's a performing monkey on old Mussolini's organ, and it only dances to foreign tunes. Popular Socialist he calls himself—patriot and all that—and not a home–grown idea from start to finish! Can't we do better than that? On our own? I ask you…

"Walk up and down the platform, Horry–boy. There you are, the very picture of him. Salute, please. That's the hero of the society Judys. That's the darling of dear old Lady Ragbag. And our spirited, pro–Nazi, Lady Garbees, who spends her whole life trying not to speak with a nasty native American accent. And old Lady Twinkletoes. And all the rest of them. Eh? Give me a good rough Red every time, if it comes to that. Not that I hold with that Moscow stuff for a moment. That's stale, too. But dammit, if they're muddle–headed, they're real. This—this isn't politics." (Angry Voice: "No, it isn't politics." Replies and a slight struggle to suppress the angry voice.) "It's private theatricals."

"Yus!" said the angry voice, and something happened to it; it went under for good.

Something was happening at the back of the platform. "What!" said Bodisham. "Already? Right. Here—" to the effigy—"you just stand back for a moment."

The masker was pushed into a corner and out of sight behind the group of B.M.G.s.

Rud wound up his speech.

"Well, I've made most of my case! Here's Lord Horatio himself, the great original, ten minutes before his time. But I've said enough, Mr. Chairman. I think I've said enough. Now let us hear what Lord Horatio has to say for himself once more."

"Those other tickets," checked Mr. Abrahams. "A hundred more of them. And I'm as flat as a pancake already now!"

He tried to edge towards the door, but unavailingly.

Frobisher was gesticulating with his long limbs for the platform crowd to clear the way from behind. And then Mr. Abrahams perceived Hoggin and Smike opening a path for the advance of Lord Horatio.

It was always his way to advance upon a meeting slowly, portentously. In spite of the congestion of the platform he did so now. He arrived amidst an unusually thin applause at the front, raised his arm in a dignified salute and stood silently radiating his personality upon the audience. Beside him, and a little behind him, was Frobisher. By contrast with these two tall figures Rud looked gnome–like, lacking in dignity, inferior. Yet also he looked much more alive and malignant. A lull in the shouting ensued. Expectation stilled the crowd. Then on the right the masquerader reappeared, advanced sublimely and struck an attitude exactly parallel with Lord Horatio's.

There was not much laughter. It was funny in a derisive way. It was not, however, hilariously funny. It produced guffaws rather than merriment, and everyone was alert for the next incident, which was the realisation of this mocking presence by Bohun himself.

He turned and saw his parody.

He should have featured outraged dignity, but he was too astonished. Sublimity vanished. "You mean to make out I'm like that!" he cried, and then, advancing with upraised fist, "You silly Ape, you!"

Then he paused for a moment and cried to Hoggin: "Bring our men in now!" he cried.

"I knew it," whispered Mr. Abrahams. "A hundred of 'em!" For a crucial moment his face was jammed against the broad, back of the man in front of him. When he got a clear view of the platform again Bohun was grappling with Rogers, who had intervened between him and his pseudo–double; the masker and one or two others of the platform crowd had been pushed right over the edge and on to the front rows of the audience; and the chairman, who had become as long–limbed it seemed as a gibbon, had produced a bell which he was not so much ringing as using as an impartial mace upon the heads about him. A wedge of toughs had appeared from the back of the platform in response to Bohun's cry. One extremely ugly face stood out among these newcomers, and Abrahams seemed to recognise it as the face of the Terrible Slew, the all–in wrestler. Then he felt sure it was the Terrible Slew. "Gollys!" Rud had been pushed against the wall to the left of the platform and was apparently having difficulty in keeping his footing and not being shoved down into the hall. He was hitting about weakly with one fist and seemed then to be resisting pressure rather than actually fighting.

But it was very hard to grasp the situation as a whole and Mr. Abrahams found his powers of observation confused by the danger of being trodden on and crushed, and by a desire to pull back a chair against the wall and stand on it and see more. There were too many heads and too much minor action between him and the drama on the stage. Everyone was standing up and a lot of men were kneeling and standing on the chairs. The chairs were having a bad time, cracking and collapsing with a sort of squelch. The general thrust, happily for little Mr. Abrahams, was towards the platform.

So far as he could grasp the situation, the hall had been packed against Lord Horatio, but now a formidable counterattack from the back entrance had been unmasked. "Slew!" said Mr. Abrahams. "He'll hurt somebody."

A lot of people were shouting: "We want Rud Whitlow!" But that cry was not sweeping the meeting. It was just as if some cue had gone wrong. "We want Rud!" bawled a youngster close to Abraham's ear. "Why aren't you shouting, sir? What's the matter with you?"

"Oh, I'm neutral," said Mr. Abrahams.

"Neutral are you? Then what the devil are you doing here?"

"I'm the printer."

"Printer be damned. You lift your voice, sir, and show your colours."

"I want Rud!" shouted Abrahams perfunctorily. "What's happening now?"

The attention of the young man who had challenged him was happily diverted.

The milling crowd on the left of the platform reminded Abrahams of swarming bees. He saw a chair–leg go spinning across the hall to no definite address. Somebody in the front row began yelping shrilly with pain.

Bohun, the Terrible Slew, Rogers and Steenhold towered over the swaying platform battle and there seemed to be a convergence of conflict towards the back entrance. And then there were cries of "Where is Rud? What are they doing to Rud?"

Someone quite near to Abrahams said: "They've got hold of Rud…"

Someone was blowing a policeman's whistle outside.

A voice of agony sounded quite near to Mr. Abrahams.

"I'm the caretaker of the bloody place. A quiet meeting. They said it was to be a quiet, friendly meeting. Not a single policeman. Oh, my God! my God! The chairs! Who's going to pay for them chairs?"

Then there was a cracking of timber as part of the platform gave way.