to Trafalgar Square. Let’s tell our friends from South Wales that we’re proud to march behind them.’
There was a great burst of cheering, but there were other shouts too and Amy struggled to hear what the raw voices were threatening. The police horses wheeled round again and the miners raised their banners once more. The dark-faced men in their black clothes turned and led the way along Oxford Street with their lamps swinging and the band, playing behind them. Amy let herself be carried forward in the press as the police chain broke to let them through and then she was walking too, past the familiar shopfronts and the curious, staring faces of shoppers on the city pavements. For one odd, hallucinatory moment she thought she saw herself and Violet Trent among them, faces blank under their smart little hats. The gutters were huge puddles after the heavy rain, and Amy’s shoes were unsuitable for walking any distance. Her feet and trouser legs were soon soaked, but she was oblivious. She felt as proud as Jake Silverman could have hoped, and she cheered and sang at the top of her voice with everyone else. The fat man with the tight coat was still at her side, and he winked at her. ‘We’ll show ‘em, eh?’ He was holding one side of a placard that read National Unemployed Workers Movement.
I am unemployed, that’s true enough, Amy thought wryly.
They passed Oxford Circus. The police were holding up the traffic and she glimpsed Regent Street choked with stationary buses. At the far end of Oxford Street they turned and streamed down Charing Cross Road. Amy’s right shoe had rubbed her heel into a blister, and she thought again of the hundreds of miles from South Wales in boots tied up with rags.
At last they reached Trafalgar Square. There was another, bigger platform here, draped with banners that read ‘London Workers Welcome the SWMF Marchers’. The square filled up behind her and Amy found herself pushed closer to the front. Just ahead of her and to the right, on the steps between Landseer’s lions, she saw Jake and Kay again. There were still more policemen here, on foot and on horseback, and another brass band playing outside the National Gallery. The cheering and shouting was deafening, and the crowd surged and swayed in pulsating waves, suddenly much bigger. More people must have been waiting for the marchers to arrive in the square.
It was difficult to hear the speakers and Amy strained to catch the words of one after another of the march leaders and organizers. ‘This government … be made to see that the failure of private enterprise in our industries … chronic poverty and destitution among unemployed men … persistent pit closures … repeal of the Eight-Hour Day Act … iniquity of the not seeking work clause …’
Then, as she struggled to hear through the din, she caught the sound of different chanting.
‘Commie scum! Commie scum!’
The crowd bulged around her and swayed towards the sound with a sudden, ominous life of its own.
‘Dirty reds! Dirty reds!’
Amy glimpsed Jake Silverman hoisting Kay out of the way on to the steps and then plunging forward. The chanting broke up into urgent shouting. Four police horses and a dozen bobbing helmets converged on the spot where Jake had disappeared. From somewhere ahead of her Amy heard a woman’s scream, and then as if at a signal the boiling crowd erupted into violence. Right beside her a man’s fist came up and smashed into another’s face, and a spurt of blood sprang from his nose before he fell backwards under the trampling feet. Amy heard her own scream rising with the others, and then she was propelled violently forward by the fighting breaking out behind her. She stumbled forward, catching at clothes and arms to stop herself being pushed over, and almost fell over another man lying on the ground with his arms up to protect his head and face. Then the high brown flanks of a police horse loomed over her and she saw the great polished hooves only a foot or so from the man’s head. She ducked down to try to help him but be was already being hauled to his feet by his friends.
The crowd from the back of the square was still pushing forward to the steps, and Amy felt an instant of pure, panicky certainty that she would be crushed to death or suffocated in this dense, heaving mass of bodies.
The steps, she told herself. Try to reach the steps where she had seen Jake lift Kay up. The next blind surge carried her forward, and she saw that she had come up against the solid phalanx of miners in front of the platform. A lamp was still swinging in someone’s hand. The steps were only a few yards away.
Then, right beside her, Jake Silverman was fighting to pull away from two men who held his arms pinned savagely behind his back. A mounted policeman was just behind them with his stick raised. Amy saw the leather thong wrapped around his gloved fist. Then there was a third man right beside Jake with something short and heavy in his hand.
A lead bar. A length of piping. Whatever, it was for Jake.
Amy opened her mouth to scream but he would never have heard the warning. As she watched, frozen, the bar came up and then down. The dull crack of metal against bone and skin made her feel sick to the pit of her stomach. Jake’s head flopped forward and he fell like an empty sack.
Horror gave Amy strength. She thrust past the men blocking her way and knelt beside Jake. His face was as white as candle wax and his eyes were closed. When Amy looked up again to scream for help the three men had vanished and there was nothing in the world except trampling feet and swaying bodies that threatened to topple over them. In feeble desperation she tried to pull at Jake’s coat and realized that she would never be able to drag his weight to safety. Then someone else was pulling her aside and stooping beside Jake. She saw the blue scars on the hand turning Jake’s unconscious face, and the lamp hooked to his belt.
‘Murdering bastards,’ the miner said.
Then he bent and scooped Jake up. He hoisted the dead weight over his shoulder as if it was nothing, and began to strike through the tangle of people. Amy looked wildly around for Kay or another familiar face, but there was no one. The police were moving through the crowd in blue lines now, and the violence was ebbing away. Most people were standing still, bewildered, with their arms hanging at their sides. A little path opened in front of the miner with his burden and Amy ran after him, almost sobbing with relief.
He didn’t stop or look round until they were clear of the mass in the square. In front of St Martin-in-the-Fields he glanced back over his shoulder and then very gently swung Jake down and put him on the pavement. His face was so white that Amy was afraid he was already dead. There was a tiny trickle of dark blood at the corner of his mouth.
‘Are you his friend?’ the miner asked abruptly.
Amy nodded.
‘See to him, then. I’ll run for the ambulance. Bloody First Aid Post’s the other side of the square.’
He was gone immediately.
Amy knelt down beside Jake. He must still be alive if that man’s gone for help, she thought stupidly. She undid her coat and took it off, wrapping the soft folds over the crumpled body as best she could. Then she untied her silk scarf and put it under his head. He was so heavy, and there wasn’t a flicker of movement.
‘Jake,’ she whispered. ‘What can I do to help you?’
She had no idea. She took his cold hand and held it, bitterly thinking that she was completely useless. She had marched along Oxford Street, singing and shouting and feeling proud of herself, yet now she was needed for something real and she was failing them. Jake was going to die here on the pavement outside St Martin-in-the-Fields because she didn’t know how to save him.
A knot of people had gathered round them, and she looked up at the faces. ‘Does anyone know any first aid?’
