I was still thinking that as I walked the ten minutes down the King’s Road towards Sloane Square Underground and took the train to Blackfriars. It was another ten-minute walk from there to the office. I was in before Faith and brewed up. She arrived promptly at 8.30, feigning shock to see me already at my desk, cup of tea on the go.
Faith Postings was a large ungainly girl from Bermondsey in her early twenties and a tireless and diligent worker. I think she rather worshipped me — nothing I could do would pre-empt her occasional outbursts of compliments. I’m sure it was my former life in New York that impressed her — given that I wasn’t much older than her, anyway — and that I had a career as a photographer. Or it may even have been the new stylish clothes I wore. In any event, she was steadily eroding her South London accent to make it conform more with mine but I liked her for her dedication to me, and by extension to GPW. I was only six years older than her, yet I felt I occupied not so much a sisterly as a near-maternal role in her life, much to my vague disquiet. She would do anything Aunt Amory asked of her, I knew.
Faith made herself a cup of tea and sat down at her desk, by the door across the room from mine, and flicked through her jotting pad.
‘Oh yes. After you left last night, Mr Mosley’s office called: they’ll accept an interview on Thursday week.’
This was most intriguing news. ‘Where do they suggest? Black House? It’s not far from me.’ Oswald Mosley’s headquarters were in Chelsea, in a former teacher training college.
‘To be confirmed. They said a hotel would be more suitable, perhaps.’
‘Send a teleprint to New York.’
The pride and joy of the GPW office — our Delphic Oracle, as I called it — was the Creed Teleprinter Mark II that stood on its own table in a corner. From time to time it would click into life and spew out a thin tape of paper with, miraculously, alphanumeric lettering on it. I had no idea who actually sent the instructions written on the tape — surely not Cleve himself — as they were never signed, but the Creed Teleprinter’s messages organised the business of our daily round. ‘Photo reqd of Dk and Dchess of Yrk’; ‘Arrange intrvw with Irene Ravenal’; ‘Supply team selections of FA Cup finalists’. And so on.
Yesterday the injunction had come: ‘Intrvw with Oswald Mosley soonest.’ Faith duly made the telephone call to the British Union of Fascists. While our petition was being considered — we were an American magazine, it always impressed — another quirkier message arrived: ‘BUF to march through East End. Investigate. Need photogs rgnt.’
What march? I made a few telephone calls to some of the journalists we employed but none of them had heard of any proposed fascist march. No marches or rallies were planned at all, as far as I could discover. I wasn’t surprised as Mosley’s BUF had suffered humiliating public defeats over the disruption of their rallies at Leicester, Hull and Newcastle in the previous year. Membership was dropping; they hadn’t stood in last year’s general election, so somebody in New York seemed to know more than we did in London. Therefore, clearly we needed better intelligence. I looked across the room at Faith Postings, Bermondsey girl, as she lit a cigarette.
‘What is it, Miss Clay?’
‘Grab your hat and coat. You’re going to join the British Union of Fascists.’
At lunchtime, feeling hungry, Faith having been gone a couple of hours, I walked down Shoe Lane to Fleet Street looking for a pie shop or a chop house. In the end I went to a Sandy’s Sandwich Bar and bought a chicken and ham croquette and a glass of milk and sat at a counter in the window watching the bustle of Fleet Street and wondering what news Faith would bring back with her.
I drained my glass of milk and was rummaging in my bag for my cigarette case when I heard a voice say, ‘Amory? Amory Clay?’
I turned in my seat to see God standing there. Miss Ashe, immaculate in black silk and velvet with a fur collar and a buckled sailor hat set cockily to one side.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, seemingly genuinely pleased to see me. ‘I was thinking of you just last night. How uncanny.’ She pointed at the scrap of veil folded up on her hat’s brim. ‘I’m off to a funeral at St Bride’s. Always gives me a terrible hunger, a funeral — I’ve just had two pork pies and a bottle of ginger beer.’
I walked out with her on to Fleet Street, telling myself that she was simply an elegant elderly woman and one, moreover, who wielded no power over me any more. Relax — I was allowed to smoke a cigarette if I wanted to — and I paused and pointedly lit up.
‘What’re you up to these days?’ she asked, as I put my lighter and cigarette case away. ‘Married? Children?’
‘No to both,’ I said.
‘Don’t leave it too late,’ she said.
‘Like you?’ I saw the old cold gaze come into her eyes for a moment and I said, quickly, ‘Actually, I’m almost engaged.’
‘Almost congratulations, then. Are you in town shopping?’
‘I’m running an office here.’ I pointed to Shoe Lane. ‘Just up there. Global-Photo-Watch. It’s an American magazine. I’m the London manager.’
‘Really?’ Miss Ashe paused and looked at me anew.
‘I’m a professional photographer,’ I said with some pride, letting the information sink in.
‘Goodness me.’
‘I make five hundred pounds a year,’ I lied.
‘You must come down and talk to the school. But don’t tell them how much money you make or they’ll all want to be photographers.’ She smiled her thin smile. ‘And that would never do.’
I felt a fool, now, having blurted out a sum of money like that, but I wanted her to know that she had been wrong, that she was fallible, that she didn’t know her girls as well as she thought she did.
‘I’d love to come,’ I said.
‘Have you a card?’
I searched my bag and found one and handed it over. She studied it intently, as if it might be forged.
‘Well, well, Amory Clay,’ she said. ‘Global-Photo-Watch. I’ll write with a formal invitation. How is your dear father?’
‘Not much improved, I’m afraid.’
‘I’m so sorry. Casualties of war. .’ She turned and pointed to a middle-aged man selling matches in a doorway. ‘Some brave soldier, no doubt, reduced to that.’ She looked moved, for a second, then briskly said, ‘Goodbye, Amory, my dear, I’m very proud of you.’
With that she touched my cheek with her gloved hand and darted away across Fleet Street towards St Bride’s.
I stood there for a while feeling oddly shaken by the encounter and irritated with myself. God still had the power to destabilise me, I was annoyed to realise. I walked slowly back to the office wondering how I could have handled the meeting better but coming up with no good or coherent ideas.
Faith was back and showed me her membership card of the British Union of Fascists.
‘Well done,’ I said. ‘Any news?’
‘Turns out there’s lots of marches planned,’ she said, pleased with herself. ‘Big ones — to celebrate the fourth anniversary.’
‘Fourth anniversary of what?’
‘The founding of the party. October ’32.’
‘Right. Of course. But the teleprinter said something soon.’
Faith consulted her notebook.
‘There’s a small march next week. Wednesday, 11 a.m. Sort of testing the water — a trial run for the big ones in October.’