Edge of Eternity (48 page)

“I'll see what I can do,” said Moore, and put his walkie-talkie to his ear.

But before he could speak into it, the state troopers arrived.

They wore blue helmets and they carried carbines and double-barreled shotguns. They arrived in a rush, most in cars, some on horseback. Within seconds there were two hundred or more. George stared in horror. This was a catastrophe—they would restart the riot. But that was what Governor George Wallace wanted, he realized. Wallace, like Bull Connor and the bombers, saw that the only hope now for the segregationists was a complete breakdown of law and order.

A car drew up and Wallace's director of public safety, Colonel Al Lingo, jumped out, toting a shotgun. Two men with him, apparently bodyguards, had Thompson submachine guns.

Chief Moore holstered his walkie-talkie. He spoke softly, but carefully did not address Lingo by his military rank. “If you'd leave, Mr. Lingo, I'd appreciate it.”

Lingo did not trouble to be courteous. “Get your cowardly ass back to your office,” he said. “I'm in charge now, and my orders are to put those black bastards to bed.”

George expected them to tell him to get lost, but they were too intent on their argument to care about him.

“Those guns are not needed,” said Moore. “Will you please put them up? Somebody's going to get killed.”

“You're damn right!” said Lingo.

George walked away quickly, heading back to the motel.

Just before he went inside he turned to look, just in time to see the state troopers charge the crowd.

Then the riot started all over again.

George found Verena in the motel courtyard. “I have to go to Washington,” he said.

He did not want to go. He wanted to spend time with Verena, talking to her, deepening their newfound intimacy. He wanted to make her fall in love with him. But that would have to wait.

She said: “What are you going to do in Washington?”

“Make sure the Kennedy brothers understand what's happening. They have to be told that Governor Wallace is provoking violence in order to undermine the deal.”

“It's three o'clock in the morning.”

“I'd like to get to the airport as early as possible and catch the first flight out. I might have to go via Atlanta.”

“How will you get to the airport?”

“I'm going to look for a taxi.”

“No cab will pick up a black man tonight—especially one with a lump on his forehead.”

George touched his face exploratively and found a bump just where she said. “How did that happen?” he said.

“I seem to remember seeing a bottle hit you.”

“Oh, yes. Well, it may be dumb, but I have to try to get to the airport.”

“What about your luggage?”

“I can't pack in the dark. Besides, I don't have much. I'm just going to go.”

“Be careful,” she said.

He kissed her. She put her arms around his neck and pressed her slim body to his. “It was great,” she whispered. Then she let him go.

He left the motel. The avenues heading directly downtown were
blocked to the east: he would have to take a circuitous route. He walked west, then north, then turned east when he felt he was well clear of the rioting. He did not see any taxis. He might have to wait for the first bus of Sunday morning.

A faint light was showing in the eastern sky when a car screeched to a halt alongside him. He got ready to run, fearing white vigilantes, then changed his mind when three state troopers got out, rifles at the ready.

They won't need much of an excuse to kill me, he thought fearfully.

The leader was a short man with a swagger. George noticed he had a sergeant's chevrons on his sleeve. “Where are you going, boy?” the sergeant said.

“I'm trying to get to the airport, Sarge,” George said. “Maybe you can tell me where I can find a taxicab.”

The leader turned to the others with a grin. “He's trying to get to the airport,” he repeated, as if the idea were risible. “He thinks we can help him find a taxi!”

His subordinates laughed appreciatively.

“What are you going to do at the airport?” the sergeant asked George. “Clean the toilets?”

“I'm going to catch a plane to Washington. I work at the Department of Justice. I'm a lawyer.”

“Is that so? Well, I work for George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, and we don't pay too much mind to Washington, down here. So get in the goddamn car before I break your woolly head.”

“What are you arresting me for?”

“Don't get smart with me, boy.”

“If you seize me without good cause, you're a criminal, not a trooper.”

With a sudden quick motion the sergeant swung his rifle, butt first. George ducked and instinctively raised his hand to protect his face. The wooden butt of the rifle struck his left wrist painfully. The other two troopers seized his arms. He offered no resistance, but they dragged him along as if he were struggling. The sergeant opened the rear door of the car and they threw him on the backseat. They slammed the door before he was fully inside, and it jammed his leg, causing him to shout in pain. They opened the door again, shoved his injured leg inside, and closed the door.

He lay slumped on the backseat. His leg hurt but his wrist was worse. They can do anything they like to us, he thought, because we're black. At that moment he wished he had thrown rocks and bottles at the police instead of running around telling people to calm down and go home.

The troopers drove to the Gaston. There they opened the back door of the car and pushed George out. Holding his left wrist in his right hand, he limped back into the courtyard.

•   •   •

Later that Sunday morning George at last found a working taxi with a black driver and went to the airport, where he caught a flight to Washington. His left wrist hurt so badly that he could not use his arm, and kept his hand in his pocket for support. The wrist was swollen, and to ease the pain he took off his watch and unbuttoned his shirt cuff.

From a pay phone at National Airport he called the Department of Justice and learned that there would be an emergency meeting at the White House at six
P.M
. The president was flying in from Camp David, and Burke Marshall had been helicoptered in from West Virginia. Bobby was on his way to Justice and urgently required a briefing, and no, there was no time for George to go home and change his clothes.

Vowing to keep a clean shirt in his desk drawer from now on, George got a taxi to the Justice Department and went straight to Bobby's office.

George insisted that his injuries were too trivial to require medical treatment, though he winced every time he tried to move his left arm. He summarized the night's events for the attorney general and a group of advisers including Marshall. For some reason Bobby's huge black Newfoundland dog, Brumus, was there too.

“The truce that was agreed on with such difficulty this week is now in jeopardy,” George told them in conclusion. “The bombings, and the brutality of the state troopers, have weakened the Negroes' commitment to nonviolence. On the other side, the riots threaten to undermine the position of the whites who negotiated with Martin Luther King. The enemies of integration, George Wallace and Bull Connor, hope that one side or both will renounce the agreement. Somehow we have to prevent that happening.”

“Well, that's pretty clear,” said Bobby.

They all got into Bobby's car, a Ford Galaxie 500. It was spring, and he had the top down. They drove the short distance to the White House. Brumus enjoyed the ride.

Several thousand demonstrators were outside the White House, noticeably a mixture of black and white, carrying placards that said
SAVE THE SCHOOLCHILDREN OF BIRMINGHAM.

President Kennedy was in the Oval Office, sitting in his favorite chair, a rocker, waiting for the group from Justice. With him was a powerful trio of military men: Bob McNamara, the whiz kid secretary of defense, plus the army secretary and the army chief of staff.

This group had gathered here today, George realized, because the Negroes of Birmingham had started fires and thrown bottles last night. Such an emergency meeting had never been called during all the years of nonviolent civil rights protest, even when the Ku Klux Klan bombed the homes of Negroes. Rioting brought results.

The military men were present to discuss sending the army into Birmingham. Bobby focused as always on the political reality. “People are going to be calling for the president to take action,” he said. “But here's the problem. We can't admit that we're sending federal troops to control the state troopers—that would be the White House declaring war on the state of Alabama. So we'd have to say it was to control the rioters—and that would be the White House declaring war on Negroes.”

President Kennedy got it right away. “Once the white people have the protection of federal troops, they might just tear up the agreement they just made,” he said.

In other words, George thought, the threat of Negro riots is keeping the agreement alive. He did not like this conclusion, but it was hard to escape.

Burke Marshall spoke up. He saw the agreement as his baby. “If that agreement blows up,” he said wearily, “the Negroes will be, uh . . .”

The president finished his sentence. “Uncontrollable,” he said.

Marshall added: “And not only in Birmingham.”

The room went quiet as they all contemplated the prospect of similar riots in other American cities.

President Kennedy said: “What is King doing today?”

George said: “Flying back to Birmingham.” He had learned this just before leaving the Gaston. “By now, I have no doubt, he's making the rounds of the big churches, urging people to go home peacefully after the service and stay indoors tonight.”

“Will they do what he says?”

“Yes, provided there are no further bombings, and the state troopers are brought under control.”

“How can we guarantee that?”

“Could you deploy U.S. troops
near
Birmingham, but not actually
in
the city? That would demonstrate support for the agreement. Connor and Wallace would know that if they misbehave, they will forfeit their power. But it would not give the whites the chance to renege on the deal.”

They talked it up and down for a while, and in the end that was what they decided to do.

George and a small subgroup moved to the Cabinet Room to draft a statement for the press. The president's secretary typed it. Press conferences were usually held in Pierre Salinger's office, but today there were too many reporters and television cameras for that room, and it was a warm spring evening, so the announcement was made in the Rose Garden. George watched President Kennedy step outside, stand in front of the world's press, and say: “The Birmingham agreement was and is a just accord. The federal government will not permit it to be sabotaged by a few extremists on either side.”

Two steps forward, one step back, and two more forward, George thought; but we make progress.

D
ave Williams had a plan for Saturday night. Three girls from his class at school were going to the Jump Club in Soho, and Dave and two other boys had said, casually, that they might meet the girls there. Linda Robertson was one of the girls. Dave thought she liked him. Most people assumed he was thick, because he always came bottom of the class in exams, but Linda talked to him intelligently about politics, which he knew about because of his family.

Dave was going to wear a new shirt with startlingly long collar points. He was a good dancer—even his male friends conceded that he had a stylish way of doing the Twist. He thought he had a good chance of starting a romance with Linda.

Dave was fifteen but, to his intense annoyance, most girls of his age preferred older boys. He still winced when he remembered how, more than a year ago, he had followed the enchanting Beep Dewar, hoping to steal a kiss, and had found her locked in a passionate embrace with eighteen-year-old Jasper Murray.

On Saturday mornings the Williams children went to their father's study to receive their weekly allowances. Evie, who was seventeen, was given a pound; Dave got ten shillings. Like Victorian paupers, they often had to listen to a sermon first. Today Evie was given her money and dismissed, but Dave was told to wait. When the door closed, his father, Lloyd, said: “Your exam results are very bad.”

Dave knew that. In ten years of schooling he had failed every written test he had ever taken. “I'm sorry,” he said. He did not want to get into an argument: he just wanted to take his money and go.

Dad was wearing a check shirt and a cardigan, his Saturday morning outfit. “But you're not stupid,” he said.

“The teachers think I'm thick,” Dave said.

“I don't believe that. You're intelligent, but lazy.”

“I'm not lazy.”

“What are you, then?”

Dave did not have an answer. He was a slow reader, but worse than that he always forgot what he had read as soon as he turned the page. He was a poor writer, too: when he wanted to put “bread” his pen would write “beard” and he would not notice the difference. His spelling was atrocious. “I got top marks in oral French and German,” he said.

“Which only proves you can do it when you try.”

It did not prove any such thing, but Dave did not know how to explain that.

Lloyd said: “I've thought long and hard about what to do, and your mother and I have talked about it endlessly.”

This sounded ominous to Dave. What the hell was coming now?

“You're too old to be spanked, and anyway we never had much faith in physical punishment.”

That was true. Most kids were smacked when they misbehaved, but Dave's mother had not struck him for years; his father, never. What bothered Dave now, however, was the word
punishment.
Clearly he was in for it.

“The only thing I can think of, to force you to concentrate on your studies, is to withdraw your allowance.”

Dave could not believe what he was hearing. “What do you mean, withdraw?”

“I'm not giving you any more money until I see an improvement in your schoolwork.”

Dave had not seen this coming. “But how am I supposed to get around London?” And buy cigarettes, and get into the Jump Club, he thought in a panic.

“You walk to school anyway. If you want to go anywhere else, you'll have to do better in your lessons.”

“I can't live like that!”

“You get fed for nothing, and you have a wardrobe full of clothes, so you won't lack for much. Just remember that if you don't study, you'll never have the money to get around.”

Dave was outraged. His plan for this evening was ruined. He felt helpless and infantile. “So that's it?”

“Yes.”

“I'm wasting my time here, then.”

“You're listening to your father trying to guide you as best he can.”

“Same bloody thing,” Dave said, and he stamped out.

He took his leather jacket off the hook in the hall and left the house. It was a mild spring morning. What was he going to do? His plan for the day had been to meet some friends in Piccadilly Circus, stroll along Denmark Street looking at guitars, have a pint of beer in a pub, then come home and put on the shirt with the long collar points.

He had some change in his pocket—enough for half a pint of beer. How could he get the money for admission to the Jump Club? Perhaps he could work. Who would employ him at short notice? Some of his friends had jobs on Saturday or Sunday, working in shops and restaurants that needed extra people at the weekend. He considered walking into a café and offering to wash up in the kitchen. It was worth a try. He turned his steps toward the West End.

Then he had another idea.

He had relatives who might employ him. His father's sister, Millie, was in the fashion business, with three shops in affluent north London suburbs: Harrow, Golders Green, and Hampstead. She might give him a Saturday job, though he did not know how good he would be at selling frocks to ladies. Millie was married to a leather wholesaler, Abie Avery, and his warehouse in east London might be a better bet. But both Auntie Millie and Uncle Abie would probably check with Lloyd, who would tell them that Dave was supposed to be studying, not working. However, Millie and Abie had a son, Lenny, aged twenty-three, who was a small-time businessman and hustler. On Saturdays Lenny operated a market stall in Aldgate, in the East End. He sold Chanel No. 5 and other expensive perfumes at ludicrously low prices. He whispered to his customers that they were stolen, but in fact they were simple fakes, cheap scent in expensive-looking bottles.

Lenny might give Dave a day's work.

Dave had just enough money for the Tube fare. He turned into the nearest station and bought his ticket. If Lenny turned him down he did
not know how he was going to get back. He guessed he could walk a few miles if necessary.

The train took him underneath London from the affluent west to the working-class east. The market was already crowded with shoppers eager to buy at prices lower than those in the regular stores. Some of the goods
were
stolen, Dave guessed: electric kettles, shavers, irons, and radio sets slipped out of the back door of the factory. Others were surplus production sold off cheaply by the makers: records no one wanted, books that had failed to become bestsellers, ugly photo frames, ashtrays in the shape of seashells. But most were defective. There were boxes of stale chocolates, striped scarves with a flaw in the weave, piebald leather boots that had been unevenly dyed, china plates decorated with half a flower.

Lenny resembled his and Dave's grandfather, the late Bernie Leckwith, with thick dark hair and brown eyes. Lenny's hair was oiled and combed into an Elvis Presley pompadour. His greeting was warm. “Hello, young Dave! Want some scent for the girlfriend? Try Fleur Sauvage.” He pronounced it “flewer savidge.” “Guaranteed to make her knickers fall down, yours for two shillings and sixpence.”

“I need a job, Lenny,” said Dave. “Can I work for you?”

“Need a job? Your mother's a millionaire, ain't she?” said Lenny evasively.

“Dad cut off my allowance.”

“Why did he do that?”

“Because my schoolwork is poor. So I'm broke. I just want to earn enough money to go out tonight.”

For the third time, Lenny replied with a question. “What am I, the Labour Exchange?”

“Give me a chance. I bet I could sell perfume.”

Lenny turned to a customer. “You, madam, have got very good taste. Yardley perfumes are the classiest on the market—yet that bottle in your hand is only three shillings, and I had to pay two-and-six to the bloke that stole it, I mean to say supplied it to me.”

The woman giggled and bought the perfume.

“I can't pay you a wage,” Lenny said to Dave. “But I tell you what I'll do: I'll give you ten percent of everything you take.”

“It's a deal,” said Dave, and he joined Lenny behind the display.

“Keep the money in your pockets and we'll settle up later.” Lenny gave him a “float” of a pound in coins to make change.

Dave picked up a bottle of Yardley, hesitated, smiled at a passing woman, and said: “The classiest perfume on the market.”

She smiled back and walked on.

He kept trying, imitating Lenny's patter, and after a few minutes he sold a bottle of Joy by Patou for two-and-six. He soon knew all Lenny's lines: “Not every woman has the flair to wear this one, but you . . . Only buy this if there's a man you
really
want to please . . . Discontinued line, the government banned this scent because it's too sexy . . .”

The crowds were cheerful and always ready to laugh. They dressed up to come to the market: it was a social event. Dave learned a whole range of new slang for money: a sixpenny piece was a Tilbury, five shillings was a dollar, and a ten-shilling note was half a knicker.

The time passed quickly. A waitress from a nearby café brought two sandwiches of thick white bread with fried bacon and ketchup, and Lenny paid her and gave one of the sandwiches to Dave, who was surprised to learn that it was lunchtime. The pockets of his drainpipe jeans grew heavy with coins, and he recalled with pleasure that 10 percent of the money was his. At midafternoon he noticed that there were hardly any men on the streets, and Lenny explained that they had all gone to a football match.

Toward the end of the afternoon, business slowed to almost nothing. Dave thought the money in his pockets might amount to as much as five pounds, in which case he had made ten shillings, the amount of his normal allowance—and he could go to the Jump Club.

At five o'clock Lenny began to dismantle the stall, and Dave helped to put the unsold goods in cardboard boxes, then they loaded everything into Lenny's yellow Bedford van.

When they counted Dave's money, he had taken just over nine pounds. Lenny gave him a pound, a little more than the agreed ten percent, “because you helped me pack up.” Dave was delighted: he had made twice the amount his father should have given him this morning. He would gladly do this every Saturday, he thought, especially if it meant he did not have to listen to his father's preaching.

They went to the nearest pub and got pint glasses of beer. “You play the guitar a bit, don't you?” Lenny said as they sat at a grimy table with a full ashtray.

“Yes.”

“What sort of instrument have you got?”

“An Eko. It's a cheap copy of a Gibson.”

“Electric?”

“It's semi-hollow.”

Lenny looked impatient: perhaps he did not know much about guitars. “Can you plug it in, is what I'm asking.”

“Yes—why?”

“Because I need a rhythm guitarist for my group.”

That was exciting. Dave had not thought of joining a group, but the idea appealed to him instantly. “I didn't know you had a group,” he said.

“The Guardsmen. I play piano and do most of the singing.”

“What kind of music?”

“Rock and roll—the only kind.”

“By which you mean . . .”

“Elvis, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash . . . All the greats.”

Dave could play three-chord songs without difficulty. “What about the Beatles?” Their chords were more difficult.

Lenny said: “Who?”

“A new group. They're fab.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Well, anyway, I can play rhythm guitar on old rock songs.”

Lenny looked mildly offended at the phrase, but he said: “So, do you want to audition for the Guardsmen?”

“I'd love to!”

Lenny looked at his watch. “How long will it take you to go home and get your guitar?”

“Half an hour, and half an hour to get back.”

“Meet me at the Aldgate Workingmen's Club at seven. We'll be setting up. We can audition you before we play. Have you got an amplifier?”

“Small one.”

“It'll have to do.”

Dave got the Tube. His success as a salesman, and the beer he had drunk, gave him an inner glow. He smoked a cigarette on the train,
rejoicing at his victory over his father. He imagined saying casually to Linda Robertson: “I play guitar in a beat group.” That could hardly fail to impress her.

He arrived home and entered the house by the back door. He managed to slip up to his room without seeing either of his parents. It took him only a few moments to put his guitar in its carrying case and pick up his amplifier.

He was about to leave when his sister, Evie, came into his room, dressed up for Saturday night. She wore a short skirt and knee boots, and her hair was back-combed in a beehive. She had heavy eye makeup in the panda style made fashionable by Dusty Springfield. She looked older than seventeen. “Where are you going?” Dave asked her.

“To a party. Hank Remington is supposed to be there.”

Remington, lead singer of the Kords, sympathized with some of Evie's causes, and had said so in interviews.

“You've caused a stir today,” Evie said. She was not accusing him: she always took his side in arguments with the parents, and he did the same for her.

“What makes you say that?”

“Dad's really upset.”

“Upset?” Dave was not sure what to make of that. His father could be angry, disappointed, stern, authoritarian, or tyrannical, and he knew how to react; but upset? “Why?”

“I gather you and he had a row.”

“He wouldn't give me my allowance because I failed all my exams.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. I walked out. I probably slammed the door.”

“Where have you been all day?”

“I worked on Lenny Avery's market stall and earned a pound.”

“Good for you! Where are you off to now, with your guitar?”

“Lenny has a beat group. He wants me to play rhythm guitar.” That was an exaggeration: Dave did not have the job yet.