A Man Lies Dreaming Read Free

and theatregoers strolled along the avenue mingling with pickpockets and dollymops. At the Apollo Theatre on the corner the electric signs advertised Patrick Hamilton’s
Gaslight
. A pair of coppers I knew by sight went past me, eyeing the whores openly. I nodded to them and went on.
Gerrard Street was full of little clubs and dusty alcoves. At this time of night gentlemen were heading out to supper with their wives, and young men of a literary bent were debating the merits and faults in the poetry of H.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound and Modernism in general. On the corner with Dean Street I saw a group of Blackshirts standing together in a dark mob, eying the passers-by with sullen hostility. On a wall I saw a placard for Mosley’s election campaign. Oswald’s handsome British face stared out at me with its dapper moustache and ironic smile. I saluted him, crisply. Then I went into the Hofgarten.
It lay at the bottom of a narrow staircase behind a grey wooden door that bore no plaque. It was not a members-only club but then it was not
not
a members-only club, either. It was a place for like-minded people to meet and talk of the past. I abhorred it for all that it represented and all that it wasn’t, and couldn’t be. I pushed the heavy door at the bottom of the stairs and went in.
It was dark and smoky inside. The smell of heavy Bavarian beer hung in the air like a peasant woman’s thick skirts hanging to dry. I could hear laughter, men’s drunken talk, the tap-tap-tap of chess pieces against a chessboard. A small piano stood in the corner, but no one was playing. It was too early and years too late for anyone to be playing the Horst Wessel Song.
I could feel eyes on me. Heard the pitch of conversation change. In years past I would have revelled in it. Now I set my jaw and bore it. I hung up my coat and my hat and made my way to the bar counter.
‘What could I get you, sir?’
‘I would like a herbal tea,’ I said.
He was a big ugly brute of a man; a fine Aryan. The face he turned on me began to open its maw in a display of mockery or outrage, revealing a wealth of gold. He truly was a man who carried his valuables on his person. He never did finish, though. He took me in and his face changed and his mouth closed without voicing whatever wisdom it was he had been about to impart.
‘Tea, sir?’
‘If you would be so kind.’
‘But of course. Of course. Herr—’
‘Wolf,’ I said.
He rubbed his hands together, as if he were cold. ‘Wolf. Of course.’
‘Has Herr Hess come in yet?’ I said.
At that he all but stood to attention. ‘Not yet, sir,’ he said.
I gestured to an empty table in the corner. ‘I shall be sitting over there,’ I said. ‘Please be so kind as to bring me the tea when it is ready.’
He nodded that great big head of his. A farmer boy from Austria, of the kind I had grown up amongst. Salt of the earth. I wondered if he was smarter than he looked. I made my way to the empty table and sat down. I was glad of the darkness of the room. Too many familiar faces, too many reminders of a past the world had already forgotten and I was trying to. I fingered the roll of money in my suit pocket. I had not been to the Hofgarten in three years.
     
‘Our fight is for the soul of this country, and the soul of the world. We must struggle, for nothing comes easily to men such as us, who will change the world. We, the Blackshirts, have been called, and we shall lead this nation to a new and higher civilisation. There is a cancer growing in our midst, the cancer of Judaism. This is our revolution. We shall be baptised in fire. Remember, you have a voice. You have a vote. Vote Mosley. We shall triumph in adversity—’
‘Turn the God damned radio off,’ someone said.
His shadow fell on the table before I saw him. I may have dozed off. The cigarette and pipe smoke hurt my eyes. My tea had been cooling on the table for some time.
‘Hess,’ I said. He had thick wavy black hair and thick black eyebrows. His smile