‘Wednesday morning, eleven o’clock, Tower of London.’
‘What is it?’
I explained — and added I’d be working as well.
‘But we won’t be seen together,’ I said. ‘And be discreet, keep the camera hidden as much as possible. I’ve heard that the blackshirts don’t like photographers.’
Lockwood thought for a few seconds, smoothing his small moustache with his fingertips.
‘What’re you paying?’
‘Five pounds for the day. Plus ten shillings for every photo we use.’
‘Sounds good to me.’
I went on to tell him the kind of photograph that GPW liked to run but I could see he wasn’t really listening and stopped.
‘I think about you a lot, Amory,’ he said, a little awkwardly. ‘Can’t get you out of my mind, sometimes. Wondering where you are, what you’re up to. .’
‘I’ve been away for a good while,’ I said. ‘After Berlin I went to New York and was even in Mexico.’
‘Ah. The glamorous life.’
‘It wasn’t that glamorous, to be honest.’
He went to the bar to buy another round of drinks and I looked at him standing there — slim, tall, broad-shouldered — and I thought about the times we’d had in his small garret above Greville’s darkroom. And I didn’t feel anything. It’s strange how strong emotions can be so easily diminished as your life continues; how deepest intimacies become commonplace half-recalled memories — such as an exotic holiday you once went on, or a cocktail party where you drank far too much, or winning a race at the school sports day. Nothing stirs any more. My affair with Lockwood had happened and had ended and had become part of the texture and detail of my personal history. I was fond of Lockwood and I knew he was a good photographer — that was what mattered, now.
I remember a letter arriving from Hanna, from Berlin, on the day before the march. She was back from her travels, she said, but she was really writing to me to convey the sad news that Constanze had taken her own life some two months earlier in São Paulo. I was initially shocked and then the shock became surprise and then a kind of understanding. I didn’t know Constanze well but I could see how febrile and overwrought she was and how she clashed with the world. It turned out that the two had quarrelled — ‘it was very bitter’, Hanna wrote — and had split up after almost a year living in Costa Rica. Hanna went east and roved the Caribbean while Constanze headed south for Brazil. The letter accompanied a copy of the book they had somehow managed to compile together before the eruption: Winter in Mexico und Costa Rica: Tagebuch einer Reise. It contained three of my photographs, uncredited. It was my first appearance between hard covers.
Hannelore Hahn, Guadalajara, Mexico, 1934.
2. THE MAROON STREET RIOT
ON THE WEDNESDAY MORNING I met Lockwood at Fenchurch Street station, as pre-arranged, at ten o’clock. He showed me the small camera he was using, a Foth Derby. I had my Zeiss Contax that fitted neatly into my handbag. It had rained in the night and the streets were still damp, giving the morning air a raw grey light. I was glad I was wearing my mackintosh and a green felt bowler.
We found a coffee stall and each had a mug of tea.
‘You hungry?’ he said. ‘I fancy one of them cream buns.’
‘Help yourself, Lockwood, please. You’re on unlimited expenses.’
‘Looking forward to this,’ he said, munching away.
‘I think we just have to be extra careful,’ I said. ‘This march hasn’t been announced. The police know, but the details have only been circulated to BUF members. They don’t want any press attention otherwise there’d be posters everywhere.’
‘Why so secretive?’
‘They’ve got bigger marches in October. This is a trial run. If someone spots you taking photos just pocket the camera and move on.’
‘You’re the boss, Amory.’
We made arrangements to keep as separate from each other as possible so as not to reproduce the same photographs and to meet back at the office at the end of the day. We’d then go straight to a darkroom, develop, print and select the images we liked and send them straight off to America.
We wandered down to Trinity Square, opposite the Tower, where we could see a crowd had gathered — about 200 marchers, I calculated and, also, some thirty blackshirts, young burly men in their pseudo-uniforms, peaked caps and jackboots, giving off an air of pre-emptive menace and self-importance as they organised the marchers (BUF members, I assumed) into a column. I spotted Faith amongst them, wearing no hat, just a violet scarf tied over her hair.
At eleven o’clock a large banner was unfurled that read ‘BRITISH UNION OF FASCISTS AND NATIONAL SOCIALISTS’ and four mounted policemen appeared on their magnificent chargers.
There was a series of blasts on a whistle and the march moved off sedately, led by the blackshirts, heading north up Minories then turning right into Whitechapel High Street, and then everyone was diverted once more on to Commercial Road. Traffic was stopped by the police on their horses and passers-by looked on in mildly amused curiosity, it seemed to me. There was no sense of a fascist threat overwhelming the nation’s capital.
I walked briskly ahead and overtook the front of the march and then, hiding in doorways and lurking behind parked cars and vans, started taking photographs. I looked around but could see no sign of Lockwood.
As the march moved on in orderly fashion down Commercial Road I became aware of small groups of young men standing watching on street corners, but watching in a nervy, fidgety way, chatting amongst themselves in lowered voices. Then the odd unlocatable shout could be heard — ‘Fascists!’ and ‘Fascists go home!’ These shouts were answered in turn by the blackshirts, raising their hands in a Roman ‘hail’ salute and shouting back in unison, ‘Aliens! Aliens! Aliens!’ As soon as any of the blackshirt stewards approached the groups of spectators, the young men split up and drifted away. However, it was evident that the mood had intensified. The march was evidently no surprise; intelligence had been leaked. The marchers closed ranks and the blackshirt stewards spread out to cover the column’s flanks.
I felt a premonition that this was going to turn nasty and I noticed that, mysteriously, the number of blackshirt stewards was increasing as more young, uniformed men joined the march, inconspicuously. I managed to take a photograph of twenty or so blackshirts coming out of Stepney station in a kind of phalanx as the whole march now veered left up White Horse Street, heading for the meeting hall at St Dunstan’s.
And here I saw the absolute proof that the secret march had never been secret. At the junction of Matlock Street a lorry had been turned over on its side and rudimentary barricades flanked it — barrows, packing cases, bits of old furniture. The police horses stopped, more whistles were blown and the march slowed and halted. The groups of young men standing in the alleys and side streets were much larger, now, and I saw there were women with them, also. Stepney wasn’t prepared to let this march happen. They began to chant: ‘You shall not pass! You shall not pass!’
I took a photograph of a young woman holding a frying pan behind her back — as a potential weapon, I supposed. Then across the street I saw Lockwood hovering around a gaggle of police officers, one of them an inspector holding a megaphone.
The inspector stepped forward and shouted through the megaphone, apparently addressing the upended lorry itself, as if it were intentionally responsible for the obstruction it posed.