The chair on which he was seated had, Mr. Behrens concluded, been designed by a sadist. Its seat was not only hard, but knobbly in all the wrong places. It was tilted at an angle which threw you forward, but it was so short it gave no real support to the thighs.
“—but I will detain you no longer with blasts from my feeble trumpet. The object of our gathering is an exchange of ideas. A cross-fertilization of mind with mind. After we have heard the report of our International Secretary, Reverend Bligh, of the Unitarian Church of Minnesota, and have considered the financial statement produced by our hardworking treasurer, Mr. Ferris, we will be pleased to deal with the many questions which must, I feel sure, be agitating your minds.”
Reverend Bligh plunged straight into business. “Support for our movement,” he said, “continues to be global. In the period since we last met, messages of encouragement, and donations, have been received from Anatolia, Algeria, the Andaman Islands, Bahrain, Bangkok, Barbados—”
The raised edge of the seat dug into the femoral artery, cutting off the blood supply, and causing Mr. Behrens agonizing pins and needles.
“—Venezuela, Western Germany, Yucatan, and Zanzibar. In the light of such universal support we should be wrong to consider ourselves as lonely fighters. We must feel ourselves to be, as it were, the advance guard of a great invisible army with banners, marching as to war.” Feeling, perhaps, that this was an unhappy metaphor, he added, “A war for peace,” and sat down; whereupon Mr. Ferris, armed with a bundle of documents, reeled off a quantity of figures. The young man in horn-rimmed spectacles on Mr. Behrens’ left woke up and started to make notes. Pins and needles were succeeded by complete paralysis of the lower leg.
Question time was kicked off with an inquiry from a lady who had a nephew in Tanzania; it touched on devaluation (dealt with by Mr. Ferris), the role of the Church (a “natural” for Bishop Bligh), and the iniquities of the Government (blocked by Lord Axminster, whose peerage was political). It did not take them long to reach Vietnam.
A tall man, with insecure false teeth, managed to ask, “Would the platform expound to us its proposals with regard to the unhappy conflict at present decimating the peaceful people of Vietnam?”
“Certainly,” said Lord Axminster. “Our proposal is that the fighting cease at once.”
“On a more concrete plane,” said the young man with horn rimmed spectacles, “how is it proposed that this solution with which we all, of course, agree, should actually be attained?”
“It will be attained automatically, and immediately, when the United States withdraws its armed forces from the country.”
When the applause had subsided, Mr. Behrens rose to his feet and said, “Would it be proposed that the South Vietnamese forces should also withdraw from the country?”
“Certainly not,” said Lord Axminster. “The Vietnamese of the South would lay down their arms and embrace their brothers from the North in fraternal friendship.”
Renewed applause.
When the meeting was finished, Mr. Behrens got out as fast as the state of his legs would allow.
He had spotted a familiar-shaped head of gray hair in the front row. When its owner emerged into the foyer, Mr. Behrens had his back turned and was examining one of the campaign posters. He allowed the gray-headed, red-faced figure to get ahead of him, then followed. A taxi cruised past. The man ignored it and strode on. Evidently he had a car parked nearby somewhere.
Mr. Behrens secured the taxi. He said to the driver, “If I was leaving here by car for the West End, which way would I have to go?”
The driver meditated. He said, “You’re bound to go over the railway bridge. Carnelpit. All one way, see.”
“Excellent,” said Mr. Behrens. “Get to the railway bridge and stop there.”
“Want me to follow someone?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Police?”
“Special Constable.”
“You look a bit old for a policeman.”
“They’re so short of men these days,” said Mr. Behrens sadly. “They have to call up anyone they can get hold of.”
It was an interesting chase. The gray-haired man was a bad-tempered driver and took a lot of chances with traffic lights and other motorists, but the taxi driver stuck to him with the ease of an expert angler playing a fresh-water fish. They finished up, fifty yards apart, outside a house in Eaton Terrace. Mr. Behrens noted the number and signaled the taxi driver to keep going. Once they were round the comer he redirected him to the Dons-in-London Club. He had a long report to write.
Two hundred miles to the North, in the industrial outskirts of a Midland town, a different sort of meeting was taking place. A couple of hundred men, mostly in overalls or old working clothes, were crowded into the small open space in front of the main gates of the Amalgamated Motor Traction Company’s factory. Since it was the lunch hour many of them were eating sandwiches, out of small dispatch cases, but all were listening to the speaker.
“Punchy” Lewis had a jerky but forceful delivery. He had learned the value of short simple sentences, and his timing was expert. Lord Axminster could have learned a lot from him.
“And who gains from this lovely arrangement? Who actually gains from it? I’ll tell you one thing. We don’t. And if we don’t, who does? You don’t need to be a genius at mathematics to work that out. Who gains?”
“They do,” shouted the crowd.
Mr. Lewis smiled down on his listeners. “You heard what they call it! They call it a new deal. That’s not what I call it. I call it a crooked deal. A deal with a stacked deck. And shall I tell you who’s champion at stacking cards?” Pause for effect. “The bloody Yanks, that’s who.”
There was a roar from the crowd.
Mr. Calder who was standing inconspicuously in the rear found it difficult to tell whether the applause was a tribute to the speaker’s timing, or whether there was genuine warmth in it.
“That’s what I said. The bloody Yanks.” Lewis turned his head toward the building behind him and shouted, “And I hope you heard that in the Board Room.” Swinging round on the meeting and lowering his voice to a conversational level he added, “What we’ve had plenty of since these bloody Yanks took over is Amalgamated Motors is trouble. A big handout of trouble. Now they want us to crawl in and lick their boots and say thank you for a lovely new deal. If you want to do that, I don’t.”
Mr. Calder became aware of movement behind him. The workers who wanted to get back, because the lunch break was over, were forming up in some sort of order at the rear of the crowd, which blocked the way. Lewis saw them too.
“I notice some of our mates,” he said, “hanging round the back there, waiting to crawl in. That’s why we’re holding our meeting right here. Because if they want to crawl in they’ll have to crawl past us, and we can just see them do it.”
There were police there too, Mr. Calder noticed, in plain clothes as well as in uniform. Leading them was a Superintendent, with the beefy red face and light blue eyes of a fighter. He pushed his way through the crowd and made straight for Lewis.
He said, “Stand back. Clear the way there. If these men want to get in you’ve got no right to stop them.”