Who was the first to overturn a car? Not Rook. He was too small and breathless and had no comrades. Some young men who loved their cars had tried to back them out of danger, reversing into spaces where people stood, pressing their bumpers against the bumpers of the car behind, attempting three-point turns where there was not sufficient room to turn a hand-cart. Some drivers at the front tried to clear a path at the fire’s feet. They blared their horns, were more concerned for paintwork than for flesh. They found themselves enclosed by men. Their cars were rocked and turned. They had to scramble free. One young man — his back tyres melting smoke, his windscreen smashed — sought reparation with a flaming stick. He’d kill to save his car.
The Soap Market did not have enough exits for all the vehicles that were parked. Besides, the narrow roads and pavements which led away were blocked by other cars and more crowds, drawn to the place by noise and light and smoke. What chance then for the fire brigade? Their engines could get no closer to the fires than the hydrants at Tower Square and on Saints Row would allow. The hoses that they ran could not reach the market rim. The firemen did not care. This fire was self-contained. It could not leap the cobbles to the town. Besides, at dawn, as everybody knew, the demolition would begin. So ‘Let the fire burn out,’ the police advised. ‘We’ll clear the marketplace of people. We don’t want injuries.’ But try to separate a drunken crowd from fire, or owners from their cars, or market men from what was left of all their working lives. No one would budge, though the captain of the district police made announcements with his megaphone.
It did not take long for those two trees to burn. The flames climbed down the trunk and sped along the ground. They jumped like cats across the roofs of outhouses and drink stores and kitchens at the back of bars. The drinkers and the beggars took their chance to loot before the fire drank all the beer and wine. They dragged out cases, smashing open bottles. They helped themselves to anything to eat or spend or sell. They fought the fire with German lager. They egged it on with Scotch and rum and wooden chairs. The bars and gardens had no time to bargain with the flames. There was too much wood. Only the burgher laurels were reluctant to join in. Their leaves seemed proofed, their branches far too flexible for flames. But when they burned at last, their molten marzipan hung in a cloud of country cooking which settled on the night like frost on fields.
The city police are not as patient as their country brothers. It seemed to them that this was a market protest which had gone mad. They well remembered what the market traders had done to the traffic when they marched on Big Vic, and — years before — the mayhem of the produce strike. The soapies had a reputation for independence, for cussedness. The police had little time for marketeers. And they were not fond, either, of the ‘dross’, the down-and-outs, who slept out there. Now these two groups were teaming up with young drunk men. A fearsome trinity. And there was fighting, looting, fires. Already there were pockets of disturbance on the streets beyond the Soap Market. Young men attacked big cars, blocked trams, uprooted shrubs in the Mathematical Park. They took revenge on everything and everyone as if violence was the only way to make the city notice them. They knew instinctively that they were invisible unless they rioted and smashed and stole. And then their faces made the television screen.
The local police — exhausted, shocked — did not need a permit from a priest or mayor to draw their truncheons, raise their shields, and bruise the crowd. What was the point in holding back, in softening their blows? If they did not put an end to this disturbance now, then who could tell where it might lead and what it might achieve?
9
SO FAR, SO GOOD. A little local trouble, nurtured at the festive chest of New Year’s Eve. But though the cobbles held the flames at bay, the heat and passion spread. Emptied bottles soon were filled with fuel from cars and stopped with rags and lit and thrown. What had held beer arced through the night like fairground comets, falling short on cars, exploding in the air, or showering the firemen and the police in flaming rain. In other times the older traders would have called for calm for fear their pitches might be destroyed, their customers abused. But what had they to lose now that the marketplace was stripped, their trestles and their canvas already up in flames, their stomachs full of drink? It shouldn’t end like this, they thought, but not with sufficient certainty to interfere. Instead they raised their arms and voices with the mob. Midnight made them brave, eloquent, and loud.
What wisdom caused the captain of the police to radio for help? Why did he lose his nerve? Was he alarmed he could not stop his men from cracking heads? Was it the flaming bottles? Was it the cars? Or was he simply calm and procedural, judging that his men were now outnumbered by a mob and that diplomacy and night would not damp down its fire?
He radioed for help at five-past one on that first, smoke-filled morning of the year, though what he said to his superiors is in dispute. The public enquiry that was held could not unravel truth and lies. But this is sure, his plea for — so he claimed — another fifty policemen at the most, disturbed the brandy and cigars of the city’s powered notables. The chief of police, the mayor, the owner-publisher of all three city newspapers (my remote, rotund boss), three of the city’s four leading financiers (no Victor, naturally), their partners and their consorts (my boss’s blatant wife), had all been top-table guests at the businessmen’s annual dinner. They’d made their annual speeches, dispensed their annual handshakes and their pledges. They’d joined in the choruses of New Year songs. (Once more the buxom sisters of the Band Accord were wheezing music for a fee.) And now they were alone, except for waitresses and cocktail staff, in a private suite.
The chief of police was trying hard to understand an anecdote the mayor was telling when a waitress brought him a folded note on an enamelled Persian tray. He read: ‘HAPPY NEW YEAR, and to celebrate the occasion there is organized rioting in the market area. Briefly: arson, vehicles and property destroyed, incendiary devices, injuries (fatalities?). The district captain is flapping like a scorched moth. Requests urgent help. What action?’ The ornamented B.L. below the note was the signature of the chief’s uniformed aide.
‘At last, the Revolution,’ the chief said, and read the note out loud.
His wife raised her eyebrows. ‘I suppose this means we have to leave,’ she said. ‘Who’d be married to a policeman? I never get to finish meals. Or drink. Though duty never calls so loudly during working hours. Oddly.’
‘We stay,’ her husband said. ‘That is my resolution for the New Year. Never leave a party before you’ve smoked the butt and drunk the dregs.’
‘And what about the Revolution, dear? That starchy little man who calls himself your aide won’t give you any peace until you’ve done his bidding. I’m never sure who works for whom.’
The chief preferred his wife when she was sober, and out of sight. He passed her comments off as family jokes. ‘I do not need to leave the room to settle this,’ he said. He took a ballpoint from his jacket and added just two words to his aide’s short note. ‘Deploy URCU.’ His signature, attempted with a flourish, pierced and tore the paper. He held the paper up dramatically.