The Battersea Barricades Page 2

  It was during this dark time that Princess Mary made her famous broadcast, ‘Enough is Enough.’ She spoke from a derelict bookshop in West Bute Street, her voice sometimes lost in the crackle of static. As a near miss brought part of the ceiling down around her, she called on the people to remember their loyalty to King and country. It’s a wonderful speech. (I used the ‘Extraordinary people achieve extraordinary things’ part myself, when I was caretaker director of St Mary’s.) And it worked. They said it was written everywhere – scrawled on walls, on homemade posters in windows, on bumper stickers. ‘Enough Is Enough.’ And it was. The Fascist forces were thrown out of Cardiff, and, for the government, it was the beginning of the end.

  So that’s the background to what’s known today as the Civil Uprisings. They – whoever they are – think it sounds better than calling it civil war. The fighting was bloody and so was the aftermath – any number of people found it expedient to rethink their political loyalties – but it was short-lived. More painful was the process of reunification.

  Some sort of a government was cobbled together. Bearing in mind that by now most people thought their dog could do a better job than their former Member of Parliament, party lines were temporarily abandoned and the revolutionary idea of appointing the best person for the job, rather than simply rewarding some political crony, was embraced. Interestingly, no one particularly wanted to be prime minister, and it was as if the idea of the People’s President had never existed. With some reluctance, Princess Mary undertook to lead a government while making it very clear this was for a period of no more than twelve months – if that – after which full elections would be held. And so, the rebuilding began.

  Astonishingly, the best person for the job idea worked. Election time came – all the rules were strictly adhered to – even those concerning expenses and the claiming thereof – and the country found itself with a somewhat nervous and unusually well-behaved government.

  The problems didn’t go away, of course. There was still massive inequality and poverty and resentment, and there still is today. There probably always will be, but at least now everyone knows what will happen if genuine attempts to rectify the situation are not made.

  And here I was, looking at three middle-aged ladies who’d been there. Right on the front line. They never talked about it. I knew they’d all received awards for their roles. Mrs Mack had received a chestful of medals she never wore, but, every year on this day, they, together with Mr Strong, Major Guthrie, Professor Rapson and Dr Dowson, would pin on their roses and attend the local remembrance ceremony at St Stephens.

  I was very conscious that I was intruding on a private moment.

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Enderby. It’s only the new schedule. I’ll leave it on your desk.’

  ‘No, no, come in, Max.’

  I closed the door behind me and went to join them.

  I’d hardly sat down when the door opened again and Dr Bairstow limped in, bearing two bottles of wine, waving us to stay seated. No one seemed particularly surprised to see him and I wondered if this was a regular thing. A little ritual carefully observed every year. A mark of respect.

  Mrs Enderby got up and rummaged in a cupboard for glasses. Judging by the clinking, they seemed to have a good supply. I made a mental note to investigate in the near future because, in theory, Wardrobe was supposed to be part of my remit. She passed them round, together with a corkscrew, and Mrs Mack opened the wine.

  We stood for the toast.

  ‘For those not here today.’

  We nodded solemnly, clinked our glasses and drank.

  I would have gone away. They weren’t making me feel as if I was intruding, but this was a private moment. Their private moment. On the other hand, I didn’t want to appear rude, so I decided I’d drink my wine as quickly as was polite and quietly leave them to it. And there was something going on outside that I really should investigate because it’s never a good idea to leave my department unsupervised for too long.

  I drained my glass, set it down and prepared to get to my feet. Mrs Mack immediately topped it up again. It would seem I was to stay.

  Mrs Shaw said something I didn’t catch and Mrs Enderby shook her head.

  ‘All those years ago. Who’d have thought?’

  ‘Well, not me,’ said Mrs Enderby. ‘With everything that happened, I never thought I’d survive. I never knew whether I was going to be blown up, drowned, arrested, executed, shot …’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Mrs Shaw. ‘Thought you would survive, I mean.’

  ‘I can’t believe any of us did,’ said Mrs Mack. ‘The whole thing was a scrambling shambles from start to finish.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Enderby comfortably. ‘We’re British. That’s how we do things. We leave efficiency and organisation to other nations. We stick with what we know.’

  ‘A shambles?’ I said. ‘In what way? In school we learned about Cardiff, and what they did at Thirsk and then the Barricades. It was all over in less than three weeks, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was,’ she said grimly. ‘And just as well because we were finished. It was just good luck, really …’ she tailed away.

  Dr Bairstow set down his glass. ‘With the greatest respect, I really must dispute that statement. Yes, you were lucky, no one would argue with that. Every winning side has more than its fair share of luck, but you had more than that. You had purpose. A burning purpose. You believed in what you were doing. You all did. And it was that belief that carried you through. Possibly, the same could not be said for some of the government forces.’

  ‘It might have been for Theresa here,’ said Mrs Enderby tartly. ‘Some of us struggled a little.’

  Mrs Shaw shrugged. ‘It’s not Theresa’s fault the pub fell on you. Or that we got involved with that weird woman. And if you will go stealing bicycles …’

  ‘Really?’ I said, interested, because, of course, the best stuff is never in the history books. ‘Tell me.’

  Mrs Mack sat back and gestured to the other two. ‘You go first.’

  ‘Well, I will,’ said Mrs Enderby, with dignity. ‘And possibly it’s not quite how we should have done it, but it’s the way we did do it and, as I always say, it’s the winning that’s important, not the taking part.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ I said, raising my glass to her, pleased to find someone else shared my point of view.

  She topped up her wine and began.

  ‘Well, I started off in Oxford,’ she said, ‘distributing supplies across the country.’

  ‘Were you a rebel?’

  ‘I would have liked to have been. A lot of us wished we were, but we had families to think of. I was married then, and so was Theresa, of course.’

  ‘Did you all know each other?’

  ‘Not then,’ said Mrs Shaw. ‘Mavis and I met at Gloucester.’

  ‘I’d never fired a gun,’ said Mrs Enderby. ‘Or been fired at. I wasn’t even sure what I was doing there. I’d studied design at college and somehow found myself in logistics and communications.’

  ‘You were with the government forces?’ I said, surprised.

  ‘Not quite. I was with the old Civil Service. They were trying to pretend none of this was anything to do with them and their primary function was to keep the country running. That’s what a lot of us told ourselves. Anyway, I wasn’t there that long. From Oxford, I was posted to the big storage depots near the Severn Tunnel. I was there when they blew it up. That was quite an exciting night, I can tell you.’ She stared accusingly at Mrs Mack.

  ‘Nothing to do with me,’ said Mrs Mack calmly. ‘I was in Cardiff.’

  ‘Well, after that, I think I was posted to Cirencester … but I never got there.’

  ‘Just as well,’ said Mrs Shaw scornfully. ‘I keep telling you they’d never have let you in. They’re quite posh in Cirencester.’

  Mrs Enderby ignored them. ‘… but I think I got on the wrong transport or they mixed up my orders or something, and I finished up in Gloucester. I joined the logistics team. I was based down in the docks, dealing with the stuff coming up the Sharpness Canal to be unloaded at Gloucester.’

  ‘Were you top-slicing?’ asked Dr Bairstow.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Top-slicing?’ I said.

  ‘Top-slicing and skimming,’ she said. ‘For the cause. I’d discreetly put one or two boxes of … stuff … to one side and, would you believe it, while my back was turned some thieving tow rag would have it away and, the next moment, it was halfway across the country and I’d have to mark the paperwork as “lost” or “damaged in transit”.’

  ‘Where would it go?’

  ‘I never asked. Wherever it was needed, presumably. East to London. West to Wales. North to Thirsk and beyond.’

  She sighed. ‘We had to be careful, of course. There were plenty of spot checks and snap audits. And the place was full of nasty little people who’d grass you up for a month’s extra rations. I did what I could, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing like enough. And even when we’d smuggled it out, there were the roadblocks and inspections and government patrols and so on, but some of the stuff got through. Enough to keep people going, anyway.’

  She sipped her wine. ‘And it wasn’t just supplies. There was human cargo as well. People were smuggled in and out. I’d be ticking things off and a tarpaulin would bulge and some poor bedraggled soul would emerge, croak, ‘Gloucester?’ and I’d nod and blink and by the time I looked again, they’d been spirited away. I learned never to ask any questions.’

  ‘We …’ she nodded towards Mrs Shaw, ‘were billeted in Herbert Warehouse. It was pretty awful inside, but at least we had a roof over our heads.’

  ‘Oh, we didn’t do too badly,’ said Mrs Shaw. ‘We had a bed, a locker and two chairs.’

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p; Mrs Enderby grinned. ‘One of the chairs disappeared almost immediately – we never found out where – and we chopped the other one up for firewood. And the locker went the week after that. It didn’t matter because we didn’t have much to put in it anyway. None of us had much in those days.’

  ‘I always remember the cold,’ said Mrs Shaw. ‘We had a space heater but it didn’t work very well and there wasn’t always any power anyway.’ She laughed. ‘We tried building a fire, once. We lit it and tried to persuade the smoke to go out of the window and then discovered, too late, that it was a sealed unit, so that didn’t work.’

  ‘I remember that,’ said Mrs Enderby. ‘Everything stank of smoke for weeks afterwards.’

  They were laughing but when you think about it, it’s not that funny. These days, they had the benefit of hindsight. They knew that everything would eventually turn out well, but they couldn’t have known that at the time. How cold must you be to set fire to your furniture? Had they laughed about it then? I imagined Mrs Enderby, wearing as many clothes as she could find, standing, shivering in the biting wind, checking off supplies as the cold, scummy water slapped around the bobbing boats. Risking her liberty – if not her life – every time she ‘lost’ another piece of cargo. And to be so cold that you would set fire to anything that would burn, regardless of its function. Without heat you can’t dry your shoes or your clothes. You get chilblains. Your clothes become damp and mouldy. And you get colder and colder until one day it’s just not worth struggling any longer. I’ve been there – I know.

  ‘It wasn’t just us, though, was it?’ said Mrs Enderby. ‘Things were falling apart for everyone. Yes, we were cold, isolated, hungry, and lacking even basic amenities, but the government forces weren’t much better off. Except for the leaders, of course, because they always make sure they’re all right, don’t they? But for the people on the ground – well, there were all sorts of rumours about mass desertions. And subsequent executions. Everything was falling apart. It was just a case of who could hold out the longest.’

  ‘And,’ said Mrs Shaw, ‘no one knew what was happening anywhere else. That’s what I meant when I said isolated. There was no internet, no TV, hardly any radio. There were pirate stations, of course, but you certainly couldn’t trust everything they said, so we just kept our heads down and got on with it.’

  Mrs Enderby accepted a top up. ‘We didn’t see much of each other – Elizabeth was on nights and I was on days – hence only the one bed between us. We worked seven days or nights a week, which wasn’t much of a hardship really, because there wasn’t anywhere else to go or anything else to do. Gloucester was in a dreadful state, broken down, dirty, stinking – every doorway was stuffed full of displaced people and it was a long and bitter winter that year. We took them mugs of tea and sandwiches when we could. Bread, cheap spread and jam usually, but what more could we do? We weren’t much better off ourselves.’

  ‘And then, one bitterly cold day, I was down at the docks, supervising a barge unloading. I had a few motor vehicles lined up to take things away, but the majority of the vehicles were horse-drawn. Fuel was only for the military. Anyway, this day, right out of the blue, there was a stir. Suddenly, people were running around all over the place, waving their arms and shouting. There was news from Cardiff. They’d won. They’d prevailed over the government forces and actually chucked them out of Cardiff. Well, not so much chucked them out – the government was calling it an “ordered retreat” back to London, but it was a victory all the same. And when everyone least expected it. I can’t tell you how it lifted my spirits. I think that was the moment I finally made up my mind that I was going to see things through. I was going to fight. Because now, suddenly, everyone was coming our way. The race was on to get to London first and I was going to go with them.’

  She paused and looked around. ‘It was time for everyone to do what they could and I was going to do it in London. There was a small group of rebels at Chepstow, a rear guard, engaging the government forces and trying to buy us time to get ready. The real rebels, that’s Theresa’s lot,’ she nodded at Mrs Mack, ‘had disabled the Severn Bridges and the tunnel had gone, which made Gloucester the lowest bridging point on the Severn. From Gloucester, we weren’t sure if the government forces would head for the supply depots at Oxford – not a good move, Fascists and students are never a happy mix – or press straight on to London. Whichever it was, they’d be crossing at Gloucester. Suddenly, everyone was declaring for the rebels and vowing to hold the government forces here to try to give Theresa’s lot enough time to get to London first. The race was on because, obviously, whoever controls London controls the country.

  ‘Our tiny local garrison had already fled. Civilians were being urged to get out and I’m sure they would have, but they had nowhere to go. It looked as if Gloucester was to be defended by a rag-tag bunch of volunteers because anyone with any military expertise or combat experience, whether for or against the government – they were all on their way to London. We were on our own.’

  She smiled. ‘Suddenly, I wasn’t quite as brave as I’d been half an hour before. We did what we could to prepare, but it wasn’t much. We were only logistics and communications – not a combat unit. And most of us were female.’

  ‘Or elderly,’ added Mrs Mack.

  Mrs Shaw nodded. ‘I was in the old telephone exchange. In one of the underground rooms there. Codebreaking. And some other stuff.’

  I was curious. ‘What other stuff?’

  She was vague. Deliberately so, I think. ‘Oh, you know, misdirecting messages. Changing a word here or there. Generally getting things wrong because, of course, I was just a little flibbertigibbet girl who didn’t know any better.’

  She turned back to me. ‘Anyway, we had to do something, so we thought we’d block off the main road. We assembled everything we could find that we thought might be useful. It was amazing. People dragged out their furniture. They brought it down on carts and then when they were unloaded, they turned the carts over as well. There were burned-out cars, old freezers, filing cabinets, a couple of washing machines …’

  ‘There was that old bus, as well,’ said Mrs Enderby.

  ‘Yes, I’d forgotten that. Anyway, we heaved, dragged or rammed it all into place and prepared to make a fight of it. We closed off the bottom of Westgate Street as best we could while everything was evacuated behind us. Everyone was running around and shouting. There was panic in the air. I don’t know why. The government forces had Chepstow to get past before they would arrive at Gloucester and we had lookouts and scouts watching the roads.

  ‘Our Cardiff forces arrived the next day. Chepstow had fallen. They fought almost to the last person there, you know. We kept the barricades open for our people, urging them through because the government forces were hard on their heels. There were people clinging to vehicles or piled onto old buses. There were ancient pieces of artillery bumping along behind equally ancient vehicles. Liberated from museums, we thought, although whether they would even fire was anyone’s guess. And if they did fire would they be more dangerous to those behind them or in front? We cheered them through anyway. I remember jumping up and down and waving as they went past.’

  Mrs Shaw said quietly, ‘Do you remember that old man?’

  ‘I do.’ Mrs Enderby turned to me. ‘There was an old man on the corner. Standing on the roof of a burnt-out car. He saluted as they went past.’

  ‘I saw him,’ said Mrs Mack quietly. ‘I waved to him.’

  ‘And I saw you,’ said Mrs Enderby. ‘I actually saw you come through. You were in a Land Rover and you roared past in a convoy heading up towards the Cross. You didn’t see me but I saw you.’

  ‘I remember that,’ said Mrs Mack. ‘Trevor was driving.’

  ‘He was,’ said Mrs Enderby quietly. ‘He nearly hit that pile of sandbags outside Shire Hall.’

  Mrs Mack grinned suddenly. ‘I didn’t say he was a good driver.’

  ‘He wasn’t, was he?’

  Mrs Enderby continued. ‘Anyway, we were all at the barricade, screaming at people, refugees from the fighting, people on their way to London – everyone – to get a move on because we could hear the government forces coming. We could hear their engines in the distance and we had to get the barricade closed. A group of us ran out and grabbed the last bunch and dragged them through. They were mostly women and children. Exhausted and terrified out of their wits.’