Beyond the fairground, beyond Islington, London went on forever, the roads and the rails and the tramlines snaking outward like the Gorgon’s hair in the story his mother had told him about Perseus, the hero who had killed the monster by avoiding her eye, taking care only to look at her reflection in the face of his shining silver shield.
At weekends he helped the cabbies at Euston and King’s Cross, loading and unloading bags, and used the pennies he earned to ride the brightly painted trams as they swayed through the city streets – he liked it best in the evenings when the flashes from their overhead cables lit up the darkness like blue lightning.
Or he would sit on the open upper deck of the new motor buses feeling the wind and the rain on his face as he looked down at the people in the streets – people everywhere, poor and rich, idle and hurrying, no end to them. He wondered where he fitted in amongst them all, what his place might be in this mad rushing world that stopped for no one.
He was getting older. He gambled with his school friends for cigarette cards on the canal towpath. If the policeman caught them, he passed his hat round for a bribe, the price of turning a blind eye, but often they just threw it in the water and then dived in themselves, surfacing on the other side, laughing. Always laughter surging up through Adam like life, making it possible to forget for a moment about his troubles: his mother’s sickness, his father’s anger, the endless need for money.
Everything changed when Halley’s Comet came. That’s how Adam remembered it afterwards. He was transfixed by its brightness – the flash of dazzling light drawn across the still night sky. He knew it was only gas and dust and rock held together by gravity, but he couldn’t shake off the sense of foreboding that everyone seemed to feel as the comet approached its zenith. And when the King died it seemed as if the doomsayers might be right.
Adam went to Westminster with his parents to watch the funeral procession. Daniel had been going to stay at home but relented at the last moment. ‘I’m coming to watch, not to mourn,’ he said defiantly, refusing to put on his newly purchased best suit which Lilian had laid out for him, hoping for a change of mind. ‘He was king of his class, king of the one per cent who own half the wealth of this country and want to keep it that way,’ he added as he pulled on his working clothes and straightened his cloth cap.
‘Daniel, please don’t speak ill of the dead,’ said his long-suffering wife. She’d heard it all before – every statistic, every argument. Repeating them didn’t change anything.
‘He embodied them,’ Daniel went on, ignoring her. ‘I’ll say that much for him. Gorging his way through four huge meals a day while the rest of us were left to starve; filling his fat stomach with disgusting rich food. I’m surprised the old devil lived as long as he did.’
Something inside Lilian snapped. ‘Don’t come if you don’t want to. You’re not doing me any favours. In fact, to tell you the truth, I’d prefer it if you didn’t,’ she told her husband. She was soft-spoken by nature and her harsh tone startled him, making him look up. ‘You talk to me like I’m not here, like I don’t exist except as an audience for your politics. But I do exist. I’m flesh and blood and tears and pain and—’ She broke off, unable to go on as she strangled the cry in her throat, but the tears on her cheeks bore witness to the depth of her distress.
Out on the half-landing, Adam, uncomfortable in his tight Sunday suit, stood watching his parents’ argument through the open door of their bedroom, the bed between them covered with a cheap eiderdown, the dust motes in the air illuminated by the morning sun coming in through the open window, a cheap wooden cross the only ornament on the mildew-stained wall. The moment burnt into his memory like an X-ray photograph.
Daniel was white-faced, standing up straight as if he had been struck, searching for words. He wanted to go to his wife, beg her forgiveness, but he couldn’t, forced back by the intensity of her emotion.
‘I’m sorry, Lil,’ he said, stumbling over his words. ‘You’re right. I get carried away sometimes.’ He reached out his hand across the bed, but she ignored it, wiping her tears away instead with the back of her arm.
‘It’s for Adam’s sake I want to go,’ she said. ‘It’s history when the King of England dies and our son needs to see it. What you do is your own affair.’
Daniel nodded, accepting the reproof. He picked up his best suit and began to change his clothes.
In the streets everyone was in black. The women seemed like giant crows behind heavy crape veils. Everywhere was closed up, silent, except for the muffled tolling of the church bells and the monotonous tread of the mourners walking from all directions towards Westminster.
It was still early when they reached Hyde Park and they were able to work their way to the front of the crowd by the time the draped gun carriage with the King’s coffin came into view, followed immediately by a small dog, the King’s fox terrier, Caesar, led by a kilted Highland soldier. But that was the last homely touch. The new king, George, rode behind his father’s coffin at the front of a group of men dressed in wildly extravagant uniforms. The bright May sun reflected on their shining white-plumed helmets, half blinding Adam as they came abreast of where he was standing. And then for no apparent reason the cortège stopped – only for a moment or two but it was enough for the horseman closest to Adam to look down and catch the boy’s eye. Immediately Adam recognized him. The huge absurd upturned moustache was unmistakable – it was the German Kaiser. It was only a few seconds at most, but Adam had time to sense the man’s extraordinary rigidity – his frozen left arm, his chin thrust forward, his unblinking blue eyes; his concentration and self-absorption. He seemed mad somehow, capable of anything. And then, while Adam’s impression was still forming, he was gone – a memory of scarlet and silver and gold. And the marching soldiers and sailors followed – thousands and thousands of them following their dead king down the road that led to Paddington Station, while the drums beat and the bagpipes wailed.
It was as if the old order had passed away into the mist, and now everything was changing. It was an age of wonders: a Frenchman had flown a monoplane across the Channel; there was newsreel of it at the Picture Palace where Adam also went to watch the official motion picture of the King’s funeral, peering up at the grey-specked screen, hoping in vain to catch a glimpse of himself in the crowd, a participant in history.
The world seemed to be turning faster, rushing towards some invisible climax. Motor cars were everywhere, blowing their horns, whipping up clouds of dust from the poorly surfaced roads, running down people who left the safety of the pavements. And above the noise the newspaper boys cried out their violent headlines about a country torn apart by strife: suffragettes breaking windows in Whitehall; the need for more dreadnoughts; riots and mayhem.
And strikes – that word was on everyone’s lips. Everywhere men were demanding better pay; better hours; better conditions. It was the time Daniel Raine had been waiting for: the dawn of a new age of social justice when workers would be fairly rewarded for their toil. He was the secretary of the local branch of the building workers’ union, which met in a small private room at the Cricketers, the pub on the corner of his street. Membership was up and meetings went on late into the night, taking all his attention. But Adam’s mother was unwell again and sometimes she sent Adam with messages to ask her husband to come home. Like other women on the street, she hated the pub, although in her case it was not for the usual reasons. Daniel had never been a drinker, wasting what little money they had on alcohol. Politics and the union were his addiction and the pub was where he was able to indulge his passion. Fired