“I didn’t vote for you Mrs Thatcher,” Harold Strettle declared. “I voted Labour. Pity a few more people didn’t. Maybe we wouldn’t be in such a mess if we’d had good old Hugh Gaitskell in Number Ten eighteen months ago. Not that Hugh was the real thing. Still, we can’t change the past, can we?”
Harold Strettle was about the Prime Minister’s height. His green eyes met her stare unblinking. The moment was pregnant with possibilities and Margaret Thatcher recognised the prickling, electric hostility in the air as a physical, malevolent thing until by a simple gesture, the self-styled King of London stuck out his right hand in welcome and comprehensively punctured the expanding balloon of mistrust with a broad welcoming grin.
Shifting her handbag — a grey, somewhat battered specimen today — to the crook of her left arm she shook the man’s hand. His grip was firm but in no way testing. His palm was dry, rough, calloused.
It was sunny morning. The spring time of the year would soon be upon them. There had been no real summer last year, perhaps this year would be more normal.
Margaret Thatcher looked around.
“I plan to rebuild this country, Mr Strettle,” she declaimed, loudly. “Will you join me in this great endeavour?”
To her surprise the King of London shrugged.
“Show me your plan and I’ll show you mine.”
Roy Jenkins, the Home Secretary got the joke and so did the Chief of the General Staff; all of King Harold’s men and women also got the joke. Margaret Thatcher did not, her mind was too literal a strength and a flaw as yet unexplored in her short but eventful premiership.
The Home Secretary quickly stepped forward.
Sometimes in moments of stress he pronounced a ‘w’ in the wrong place, not quite a lisp or a speech impediment, more a mannerism.
“Pewhaps,” he suggested anxiously, “we should carwy on this conversation in pwivate…”
This time everybody laughed, even the Prime Minister.
The Royal Marines struggled to stop the crowd pressing through the doors after the King and his visitors, to no avail because soon people were clambering into College Hall through open windows. Chairs were arranged haphazardly around a roughly oval area free of furniture in the approximate centre of the floor.
“You should sit over there,” Miriam Prior pointed to the least rickety of the chairs on the brighter side of College Hall.
Margaret Thatcher was pleasantly surprised to discover that the glass in the windows was intact and that the gloominess was because curtains or blinds had been drawn closed. In a moment bright lights switched on.
“We have generators,” the red-headed woman said employing the tone of somebody who was making a very important point.
While the Angry Widow’s Royal Marines packed the rows at her back and edged in around the sides of the Prime Minister’s small delegation, the room filled with ragged, but surprisingly fit and healthy people. Some of the newcomers were cleaner than others but practically everybody stank of sweat, mud and dampness. Margaret Thatcher stared more than she knew she ought at the numerous members of ‘the King’s’ following who might have been dressed for the occasion by a theatrical costumier. Most of the women wore trousers or leggings under dresses and skirts that seemed otherwise rather too short, well above the knee and in some cases, mid-thigh. Several men had long shoulder length hair, moustaches, but not all had beards. Others wore coats with golden epaulettes, or military badges or rings on their cuffs. As her eyes grew accustomed to the light she saw that there was a large CND — Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament — banner nailed up on the end wall of the hall. King Harold’s followers looked like a band of gypsies!
She would ask Pat Harding-Grayson to check her hair for unwanted passengers tonight. Although she doubted these people were any more or less lousy than the other crowds with which she mingled; one had to be constantly aware of one’s personal hygiene to stay fit and free of parasites. The worst problem was the availability of safe drinking water if one was away from civilization, she knew several colleagues who had had worms. Things that one had taken for granted before the cataclysm could so easily lead to debilitating, often fatal infections and illnesses.
“I’m sorry, Prime Minister,” Roy Jenkins muttered. “I had no idea things would develop in this fashion.”
“Please don’t concern yourself, Mr Jenkins.” In so saying Margaret Thatcher placed her handbag on the floor by her chair, stood up and brushed down her skirt. “To whom should I address my remarks, Miss Prior?” She asked.
“To us all.”
“Neither you or Mr Strettle speak for your, er, group?”
“That’s not the way it works.”
“Enlighten me, how does it work?”
Harold Strettle put a hand on Miriam Prior’s shoulder. He had taken off his Eton top hat and dropped it on a chair, now he wiped the thinning hair across his balding pate.
“You wouldn’t be talking to me, to any of us, if you didn’t want something. We’ve got radios and people passing through tell us things. One way and another we know what’s happening out there,” he waved dismissively at thin air. “Half the Navy got sunk in the Mediterranean last month and Malta got bombed before Christmas. Blimey, the Russians tried to kill the Queen! First off the Yanks were our best friends, and then they were our enemies, now they may be our friends again. As for what’s going on the other side of the Irish Sea!” The man spoke with a sanguine voice that belied the trouble in his eyes. “So, I’m guessing you want us to help you clear the main roads to the docks so big ships can come straight up the Thames. What with Liverpool getting hit in the war, not having a big port like London is a problem? Right?”
“It is,” she agreed. If the man did not look so ridiculous she would have had much more respect for him.
Is that his fault or mine?
The King of London shrugged as if he did not know the answer to her silent question.
“Once you’ve got roads cleared,” he went on, “you can send in the Army to dig up all the bank vaults. The way I see it, once you’ve done that you’ll forget all about us.”
Roy Jenkins was on his feet.
“That is not our intention!”
“Forgive me, sir,” Margaret Thatcher enunciated with chilling clarity, “what do you take us for?”
Harold Strettle returned her glare with dull eyes.
“The last time I trusted politicians and people like him” he nodded at General Sir Richard Hull, I ended up spending most of the next four years in a Japanese prison camp. After what happened a year or so back I don’t reckon an awful lot has changed since 1942.”
It was not lost on Margaret Thatcher that Miriam Prior had extended her arm around the man’s waist as he spoke.
“Singapore?” The Chief of the General Staff inquired flatly.
Harold Strettle nodded.
“Bad business,” Sir Richard Hull agreed. “The people in charge ought to have been shot. For what it is worth, Mr Strettle,” he added, dryly, “that sort of thing would never have happened if Mrs Thatcher had been in charge in those days!”
The Prime Minister let this compliment — she was fairly certain it was a compliment — pass unremarked. She decided to try a different approach.
“Mr Strettle,” she began, softening a little, “it is true that my Government has a vested interested in re-opening the Greater London area and restoring it as a national transportation and telecommunications hub. One look at the map tells one that all roads in the United Kingdom go to London. Less well known is that the national telephone system used to radiate out from Farringdon which lies in the centre of the devastated area. Yes, it is our objective to clear the roads and open up the docks. And yes, at some point we intend to discover what remains of the telecommunications infrastructure beneath the streets of the capital. Yes, our plans will involve clearing key road routes and if possible, re-establishing railways and other communications, like a working telephone system if not in the capital, then passing through it. It is also true that it is in the national interest to ‘mine’, as you say, the vaults of banks and the basements of other public and commercial buildings for valuables, materials and documentary archives which may have survived the October War. However, the reason I am here today is to seek your co-operation in the first step of national reconstruction.”