Love, Death, Chariot of Fire Page 22

  He feels the optimism he brought home with him from Martlesham Heath drain away. What use are hundreds of Spitfires, their plucky and skilful pilots, and a pioneering air defence system, if an insidious contagion at all levels of society is sapping the people’s will to resist fascist aggression?

  Chapter 18

  A battle

  Southampton. Thursday 8 October 1936, 7.15 pm. Flo and Reginald Mitchell leave their car parked on Newlands Road and walk towards the Atherley Cinema on the corner of Shirley Road. Flo has hooked her elbow round her husband’s left arm while he uses a walking cane with his right hand. So far he’s been able to dispense with his cane at work, thanks to the Supermarine technical office’s move into a new administration building that boasts a lift. But when he’s out and about, and likely to encounter flights of stairs, he feels safer using the cane.

  The advance of his disease not only causes him yet more pain; it also debilitates him. It’s as if it has accelerated the ageing process, turning him into an old man when he should be enjoying his best years. Will it be the cancer that kills him next year, or will frail old age get in first?

  Before he left for work today he surprised Flo with the suggestion that they drive into town this evening to see the new Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire film, Swing Time. He could no longer ignore the gloom gathering in the household as his physical deterioration became more obvious, while his unrelenting commitment to his work added to his sense of being a neglectful husband. As well, they no longer enjoy the leavening presence of Gordon on a regular basis at home; he now attends a boarding school in Salisbury. His parents wanted to spare him the daily reality of his father’s declining health. Gordon had no objections to the arrangement, and is thriving in his new school.

  Mitchell and his colleagues have put the finishing touches to the design of the Type 316 heavy bomber. The team worked well, and Mitchell takes pride in the outcome. Though the bomber is a far cry from an interceptor fighter like the Spitfire, the Type 316 design demonstrably comes out of the same stable. Its sleek lines defy all but minimal drag. According to his calculations the plane should fly fast enough to outrun a Spitfire! He’s just packed the design off to the ministry for its consideration.

  So now it’s time to make amends at home. Not that seeing the film in question constitutes a sacrifice on his part. He loves swing music, and he loved dancing to it with Flo when the occasions arose.

  But he does have an ulterior motive for this evening’s outing, one he hasn’t mentioned to Flo. He rang the cinema yesterday to check that it would also be showing a newsreel about an event that occurred last Sunday in East London. It was in all the papers the next day, and the BBC news broadcasts made much of it, as have commentators since. In the process the event in question has come to be known as the Battle of Cable Street.

  His sources more or less agree on the bare facts, even if one must average out the estimates they give of how many police, Blackshirts and protesters participated in the encounter. Mosley and his Blackshirts planned to foregather near Tower Bridge in Royal Mint Street and march showily through the East End to a spectacular rally in Victoria Park. The British fascists had been losing momentum, and they seem to have planned the event as a show of strength to reinvigorate the movement.

  Inexplicably the Metropolitan Commissioner of Police, Sir Philip Game, had given Mosley’s uniformed rabble permission to carry out this plan. In the East End of all places! Full of very poor people – Jewish refugees from pogroms in Eastern Europe, Irish dockworkers, small shopkeepers, their wives and children. Thus Mosley had chosen a deliberately provocative route for his march. Game must have understood this, as he deployed ten thousand of his officers, nearly half of them on horseback, to enforce the five thousand Blackshirts’ ‘right’ to march.

  The East Enders themselves had other ideas – as did their sympathisers from the mining regions of Wales, Northern England, and even Scotland. Around 100,000 protesters poured into the streets around Aldgate. Before the fascists’ parade could begin, a tram driver stopped his tram across the intersection of Commercial and Whitechapel Roads, locked it and walked off, thus blocking the route of the march. The protesters buttressed this obstruction with well-manned barricades.

  But Game and Mosley seem to have foreseen an action like this, and had an alternative route up their sleeves, along Cable Street. Someone tipped off the leaders of the protest about the contingency plan, however. An old lorry was parked athwart that street, rolled over on its side, and supplemented with more barricades consisting largely of old mattresses. Bearded Jews from Stepney stood shoulder to shoulder with Irish dockers from Wapping as they faced the huge number of police.

  And so the battle began. Three times the mounted police charged the crowd, trampling all and sundry with their horses, and lashing out with their batons, as they tried to clear a path for the Blackshirts. Who didn’t join in the battle at all, quite content to let the police do their fighting for them.

  The protesters held their ground. ‘One two three four five! We want Mosley dead or alive!’ they chanted, along with the anti-fascist slogan of the Spanish republicans now locked in their civil war: No pasarán! Just like French people’s answer to the German invasion of their country in the Great War. They shall not pass! Armed with bags full of marbles, children rolled them under the hooves of the police horses, which stumbled and threw their riders. Women hurled kitchen refuse and emptied chamber pots on the police from upper-storey windows. One hundred and eighty people were injured, and eighty arrested.

  After three hours the police abandoned their attempt to shift the crowd. The East Enders had successfully defended their patch. The Blackshirts broke up in disarray and straggled towards Hyde Park, having never managed to leave their starting blocks.

  A fine outcome, Mitchell thinks. Stand up to bullies, and they go to water! Isn’t that the lesson Britons must learn in the face of the German threat? And what a model of unity in diversity the resisters presented! As for Mosley himself, he reportedly slunk away from the scene of his humiliation and boarded a plane to Berlin. Where he’s now the guest of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s ‘Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda’. Back home Mosley’s guns seem to be well and truly spiked.

  For this reason Mitchell rankles at the slant the papers have taken in reporting the battle. How dare these scruffy, disorderly people defy the police and deny Mosley’s followers their ‘right’ to stage a street parade? The battle amounted to a ‘riot’, a dire threat to Law and Order. Some government and even opposition commentators have echoed this line.

  Who are these collaborators and commentators? Mitchell wonders. They seem to attract another term from the Spanish civil war, one minted by the fascist general Emilio Mola: a ‘fifth column’ to complement his four columns of regular troops. One sympathetic to fascism, embedded in Madrid and other areas on which the fascist forces are advancing. One ready to confuse and weaken the defenders. Mitchell’s suspicion falls on Commissioner Game in particular. In his previous appointment, as Governor of New South Wales, Mitchell vaguely recalls, he attracted notoriety here in England. He’d sacked an elected state government no less.

  Mitchell wants to see the footage from the battle himself, to see if it tallies with his own interpretation of the battle. He and Flo don’t have long to wait. They’ve only just settled into their seats when the lights dim and the national anthem sounds. Clips of the King, taken on various state occasions, succeed each other in quick succession on the screen to accompany it. Along with everyone else in the cinema they stand up, before plopping down again to the sound of clattering fold-down seats when the anthem fades.

  True to its genre, the newsreel shows only the most dramatic footage of the event it covers, with a voice-over in a rapid high-strung monotone. But the editorial line has to remain true to the images on the screen, not to the tutt-tutting of the establishment press. They are certainly dramatic, not least in depicting the mounted police’s repeated charges into the c
rowd. The savagery with which they swing their batons with maximum force down onto the heads of both men and women curdles the blood. People lie prone in their wake. But the wake of each horseman resembles that of a motor boat, with the crowd swirling back into the empty space to fill it again. The behaviour of the police is as vain as it is vicious.

  The newsreel editors have spliced in earlier footage of Mosley and his Blackshirts in full flight to show what was averted last Sunday. Here’s Mosley addressing his followers wearing his Blackshirt uniform complete with jackboots and matching cavalry britches flaring at the thighs; he’s sporting his fussily trimmed moustache that looks as if it’s been coated with mascara to appear jet black. His postures and gestures, like those of a crude mechanical doll, owe everything to his German and Italian role models. And here’s a Blackshirt march in progress. Accompanied by a brass band, the participants are singing the same smug marching ditty that one hears in newsreels showing parades of Hitler’s Brownshirts. One venerating Horst Wessel, a Nazi ‘martyr’, only now it’s rendered into a travesty of the English language.

  Violence invariably accompanies Blackshirt rallies, and the police ensured that last Sunday’s event would be no exception. If indeed it constituted a riot, then the police were the rioters. Nothing in the footage indicated violent actions by the crowd. Quite the contrary, the resisters refused to be provoked and acted with as much discipline as determination. They were simply repelling a foreign invasion of their own heartland. As against that, nothing could have been more alien to common English decency than the Blackshirts and the actions of the police.

  At interval Flo and Mitchell make their way out to the foyer and buy ice creams in cones from the refreshment bar. Just as they did when they were first sweethearts.

  ‘That newsreel was a shocker! Tell me darling, did it confirm your version of the Cable Street business?’ Flo asks.

  ‘Confirmed and reinforced it. This country does indeed have a back-bone after all, even if the damned government has little inkling of it.’

  ‘I think you’re right.’

  ‘You don’t always think that.’

  Flo laughs. ‘Well, Reg, even when you’re not right, you’re seldom wrong. Anyway, you now seem to be in the right mood for the film – an extravaganza of frocks, chorus lines of pretty girls, and the terpsichorean acrobatics of Ginger and Fred. Shall we go back in?’

  Mitchell grins broadly and kisses his wife on the cheek. ‘Can’t wait! Lead the way, my dear.’

  Chapter 19

  A decline

  Hampshire. Saturday 28 November 1936, 12 noon. The little open biplane skips and shies in the fluctuating late autumn tailwind. Over it grey clouds loom, but they’re too high to threaten rain or snow. Its lone occupant, Reginald Mitchell, enjoys the challenge of parrying the elements to steady his craft with rudder and stick, even though his bodily strength is depleted.

  He has decided that this will be his last flight at the controls. Two people from the Eastleigh flying school had to help him climb up into the cockpit and buckle on his harness. Though they don’t raise the matter with him, he can sense their doubts about his fitness to fly. He shares their doubts as he loses more and more weight and strength. When the stabs of pain come, they almost paralyse him. He wants to be realistic, and not make a fool of himself.

  He’s flown around the county now, sent a long farewell down to the South Downs, and set a course back to Eastleigh. Nether Wallop is slipping away astern as he heads for the Test Valley. Salisbury is visible beyond his starboard wings. In the opposite direction Winchester crouches under its thick blanket of coaldust. Outside of these cities the countryside remains an intense green, even if it exudes a huddled quality while it settles into winter, awaiting frost and occasional snow.

  His last flight. Flying is just one of the recurring experiences of his life that the approach of death intensifies. But when he adds the epithet ‘last’ to an experience, its poignancy becomes hard to bear. Up here he’s as free as a bird – he can climb or descend, choose any direction he wants. The cold airstream caresses his face below his goggles – the only bare skin it can touch. It sharpens his sense of being alive. On the ground, though, he has to rely on his feeble, doddery body to get around, all the while doing his best – at least at work – to mask his infirmity.

  When he glides into land he’ll put paid to this airborne ease and freedom for good. It’ll be something like dying. It’ll model a so-called fortunate death – a smooth painless slide into permanent oblivion. But he’s interrogated both Gabriel and Picken about how realistic such a prospect of dying is, and both reluctantly admit that in most cases it’s just romantic nonsense. Like birth, dying is usually a struggle, an agony to be dreaded, for everyone in the room. When oblivion finally descends, it comes as a rescuer.

  But that’s just where his landing in a few minutes will differ from a typical death. It will be the work of Reg Mitchell, the local spot-landing champion.

  The town of Romsey slides beneath his starboard wings – the cue for him to throttle back and start his descent. Silently he farewells these free celestial regions. He flies his circuit around Eastleigh aerodrome, aware of the attention this will arouse among the few people working at the flying school. He brings the Moth in for a copybook landing for the benefit of his audience, real or imagined. She touches down lightly and scoots along the turf until she’s moving slowly enough to pivot towards the hangar.

  He accepts the proffered help to dismount from the plane, and feigns normality as he walks to the school office to fill in his logbook.

  Supermarine administration building, Woolston. Tuesday 12 January 1937, 11 am. Reginald Mitchell sits at his desk facing Sir Robert McLean. They remain silent while Vera Cross serves them tea and biscuits. The wide windows of his office in the new building reveal the snow falling outside; it’s proving a hard winter. Mitchell appreciates the lift and the central heating in the new building as much as the view over the river. Were it not for this move he’d already have had to stop coming to work.

  The two men thank Vera as she leaves the room.

  ‘I have to congratulate you once again, RJ,’ McLean says. ‘At first the ministry people were rather cool towards your Type 316 bomber design. But whatever you told them when they interviewed you here in November seems to have turned them around. Your design has shot to the top of the pile. They’ll be putting in a written order for two prototypes.’

  ‘Good! But I gather they’ll want a few modifications.’

  ‘Pretty minor ones, which they’ll list in detail. Basically they’d like you to moderate the sweep-back angle of the wings, and replace the big tailfin with smaller twin fins. Which’ll also mean reworking the tailplane, obviously. The other changes are even more minor.’

  Mitchell frowns. ‘The larger changes will still require us to recalculate basic values like centre of gravity, stresses and loadings. I understand the urgency of this project, Bob, but we won’t leave anything to chance. For the sake of clarity we should change the type number for the modified version, too. How about Type 317?’

  ‘Settled! Now tell me, RJ, how was your Christmas and New Year?’

  ‘As usual, Flo, Gordon and I drove up to Stoke to celebrate them with our families. And as usual it was very pleasant. Including a white Christmas this year, of course.’

  McLean grimaces. ‘Look, RJ, we’ve been friends for a long time now. Not just colleagues. I want you to tell me how you’re really doing.’

  Mitchell stares at his companion as his instinct for privacy wrestles with his need for those closest to him to know how he’s deteriorating. He sighs.

  ‘I was in agony during the journey. Flo had to do most of the driving. While we were up there I tried to stay chipper and hide my physical frailty, especially from my mother, who’s doing poorly herself. But I’m not sure I convinced anyone. They all seemed to realise that it was my last Christmas with them. The thought weighed on me, too, of course. All in all I was quite the wet bla
nket! I just hope I’m not having the same effect around the works here.’

  ‘Not as far as I can see. Most of your colleagues seem to be blissfully ignorant of your condition. A couple of them have noticed your increased absences when you’re having a bad day and stay home. They’ve asked me if you’re all right. I just tell them you’re receiving treatment for something that doesn’t concern them, and leave it at that.’

  ‘Thanks for that, Bob. But barring a miracle the time will soon come when I will have to stop coming in at all. I’ll be able to see my senior colleagues at home – and Vera, naturally – to iron out any urgent issues.’

  ‘So you definitely won’t be able to oversee the work on the Type 317 prototypes?’

  ‘Not a chance. But Joe Smith will do you proud in that role. The whole team is more than ready to take over where I’ll be leaving off. My last service to this outfit will be to prove that no-one’s indispensable.’ He attempts a chuckle. ‘Supermarine will still give Herr Hitler a right royal bloody nose without me!’

  ‘The thought of this show without you depresses me no end, RJ. But I hope you’re right about the team you’ve built, and that promised bloody nose.’

  Mitchell feels a lot better after confiding in his colleague. ‘I know I’m right, Bob. Cheer up!’

  A consulting room in St Mark’s Hospital, London. Wednesday 24 February 1937, 10 am. Reginald and Florence Mitchell sit in adjacent chairs facing a nursing sister in her forties across a small Formica-topped table. The name ‘Sister Margaret Driscoll’ appears on the badge pinned below her collar. She hands two foolscap documents across to him.

  ‘I’d be grateful if you’d sign these discharge papers for me, Mr Mitchell. Just where the pencilled crosses appear, please.’

  Mitchell scans the documents briefly before signing them in his still-firm hand. ‘I’d like to thank you and your colleagues for the care I’ve received here over the last five days, sister. I felt I was in good hands the whole time.’