wanting to betray any more ignorance, Amy went back to studying the Oxford Street windows. The shops were familiar but she felt that she was travelling past them into new territory. It was if by simply stepping on to the bus she had set out in a new direction. She was looking forward to what the evening would bring, with an eagerness that she hadn’t felt for a long time.
When the bus reached High Holborn, Tony rang the bell and they jumped off together.
Amy had never penetrated into this corner of London before. She peered interestedly at the shops, mostly small grocers, and bookshops with pavement display cases emptied and locked up for the night. There was hardly anyone in the streets, and no traffic at all, but the lights behind curtained windows over the shops spoke of tiny flats full of people.
Appleyard Street was exactly like the others. Tony stopped in front of a bookshop with a smeared window crammed full of haphazardly arranged books. A violently lettered poster stuck to the glass commanded UNITE. FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS. Tony rang the side door bell and then pushed the door open. The hallway and steep stairs facing them were completely bare, and lit by a single bulb with a cracked glass shade.
Tony waved her inside with an ironic flourish. ‘Welcome to the Centre for Socialist Studies. First floor. Jake has a flat at the top, where we shall adjourn later. Shall I lead the way?’
Amy nodded. She was very cold, and annoyed to find that she was disconcerted by the bleakness of their destination.
The big first-floor room had three uncurtained windows overlooking the street. It was packed with rows of upright wooden chairs, most of them occupied. At the front was a table covered with a red cloth, with another half-dozen chairs arranged behind it. The room was warm, heated by a glowing gas fire. At the rickety card table beside the door Tony stopped to sign his name in a register. Underneath it he wrote ‘A. Lovell. Guest.’
‘It’s not a public meeting,’ he told her. ‘You have to be a member, or an invited guest.’ Then he guided Amy to a pair of empty chairs, mercifully close to the fire. It welcomed her with a gentle hiss.
Tony smiled at her as they sat down, acknowledging her sense of disorientation, and mocking her a little for it. Amy peeled off her suède gloves and he saw that her fingers were white with cold. ‘Poor Amy! Where have I dragged you to?’ He took her hands and rubbed them in his own warm ones, and Amy was sorry when the circulation was restored to her fingers and he laid them gently back in her lap. She made herself stop looking at the way his fine, rather long hair fell over his ear, and turned her attention to the rest of the room.
Her first reaction was relief that she didn’t look too conspicuous. She had been right not to come in her dinner dress. Amy had dined alone with her father, and as soon as Gerald had left for his club Amy had gone upstairs again and exchanged her dress for a cashmere sweater and a tweed skirt. With a plain woollen coat, low-heeled shoes and a soft hat pulled down to cover her hair, she imagined she looked exactly like any of the girls in Tony’s office. If anything, she thought now, she was conspicuous for her ordinariness. A girl just in front of her was wearing her hair wound up in a brilliant green turban with a big fake emerald pinned to the front. Her eyes were shadowed in the same green as the turban. She was talking to another girl with a mass of black curly hair and big brass earrings that jangled as she shook her head. Her skirt was a tight tube of scarlet flounces and her legs, hooked casually over the chair in front of her, flashed stockings in the same colour. Another woman, grey-haired, in a raincoat and a rakish velvet beret, was smoking a man’s cigar. The men, much more numerous, had nothing in common from their appearance. One or two, in blue suits and stiff collars, might have been bank officials. Others were clearly working men, with red faces and flannel shirts. The rest were like Tony, somewhere between the two, with an occasional touch of flamboyance. Not a single person wore evening clothes, although it was well after nine o’clock.
Amy’s feet were beginning to thaw out, and her interest revived with them. She was looking around the room again when without ceremony a big man stood up and went to the table. He was young, Tony’s age or a little older. He had a full black beard that made his lips look very red, a big nose, and glittering dark eyes. He was wearing a red and black plaid shirt, with a red handkerchief tied at the throat.
‘Comrades,’ he said quietly. Silence fell immediately. ‘The meeting is called to order.’ He nodded at two or three other men, and they filed up to join him behind the table.
Tony nudged Amy. ‘Jacob Silverman,’ he whispered. His manner, and the attention given to him by his audience, told Amy that Jacob Silverman was someone to be reckoned with. He welcomed them all briefly to the meeting, greeted new members by name, and added that other guests were welcome too. As he looked along the rows his eyes fixed briefly on Amy, and she knew that Jake Silverman would miss nothing.
A patter of applause met the first speaker who stood up and began to talk, very fast and rather loudly. He had none of Silverman’s quiet, commanding fluency. Amy tried hard to concentrate, but her attention drifted away to the rest of the audience, and then to Tony beside her. He was frowning a little, and there was a sceptical twist to his mouth that indicated he didn’t think much of the speaker either. It was nice being here with him, Amy thought. The warmth of the room and the monotony of the speaker’s voice grew soporific, and she lost herself in comfortable dreams.
The second speaker was a blunt, brusque little man who launched himself into an analysis of trades union power bases. Amy’s interest quickened again, in spite of the happy reverie she had fallen into. She knew in theory that two or three extra shillings were important enough so that bargaining over them could go on for weeks, but she had never exactly thought what those shillings would mean every week to a man and his family. Much of the talk was beyond her, but it made her think for the first time about the right to work, its rewards, and the deprivation of those who had none. The memory of her own petulant behaviour on the night of Isabel’s wedding made her feel faintly uncomfortable.
The speaker moved on to talk about the power wielded by strikers, making Amy think back to her vague memories of the General Strike. Adeline had gone out in her silliest hat to serve soup to the strike-breakers. The sons of family friends had driven buses, and it had all been regarded as tremendously good fun. Tonight, surrounded by these intent faces, she saw it in a different light. Her feeling of discomfort deepened into shame, and she wriggled lower in her seat. Suddenly she was conscious of the diamond clip fastening the soft brim of her hat.
Before the last part of the meeting, Tony turned to grin at her. Amy saw that he was challenging her, and that the whole evening’s expedition was a challenge. He was more or less expecting her to be bored and uncomprehending. How would he judge her when he discovered that she wasn’t? Amy was aware that her perceptions were shifting slightly. She wanted Tony to approve of her, but she also wanted to know more about what she had heard tonight for its own sake.
Jake Silverman stood up again.
‘Thank you, Comrade Easterbrook,’ he said. ‘Now. I want to call for the meeting’s help in connection with the hunger march. The response from workers between South Wales and here has been excellent. The march will last twelve days, and we have been able to plan overnight stops in places where a school hall or something similar will be made available for the marchers to sleep in. The problem, ironically, arises when they reach London. Accommodation for men without money is harder to come by in this great city of ours. There will be several hundred men by the time the march reaches here, possibly a thousand or more. Even if every comrade here and in the movement offered his home, there would be barely enough room.’
‘Kingsway Hall?’ someone suggested.
‘Salvation Army hostels?’ another man said.
‘They
