The Whispering Swarm Read Free Page A

surprised me how many of those blokes who were at Dunkirk and Normandy didn’t seem comfortable without a rifle in their hands. Shooting back as they hadn’t been able to do? A funny, distant look in their eyes. Was it some unresolved terror? Were they trying for what people these days call ‘closure’? They played the slots with the same intensity. We had an ancient cast-iron post office red What the Butler Saw machine and that was about it. Uncle Fred reckoned his granddad had been a successful travelling showman, putting on circuses and fairs all over the country. He had a few faded posters to prove it. My favourite was MOORCOCK ’ S TREASURY OF ANIMALS , actually a rather tame-looking menagerie. ‘We go back, our people, to the time of the mummers,’ Uncle Fred said. He was deeply and widely educated, my Uncle Fred. All from books, of course. His wasn’t the last self-educated generation of his kind (mine was) but his might have been the best. He kept his wisdom and knowledge to himself, only answering when asked. Except within the family, naturally. At work, his longest and most frequent response was ‘Right you are, guv’nor.’
    He took the Daily Herald every day and read the New Statesman from cover to cover every week. He gave me my first nonfiction books, like Winwood Reade’s The Martyrdom of Man or Wells’s Short History of the World . He was an atheist but his mind wasn’t closed. I read Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy from his library. All my inspiration comes from those books my Uncle Fred recommended. We’d discuss Shaw’s The Apple Cart on the morning walk to the Arcade but spoke in professional monosyllables all day at work. ‘Cuppa?’ ‘Ta.’ Or to a regular customer ‘Chilly today, eh?’ or whatever the weather happened to be.
    MY MUM AND THE WELFARE STATE
    My mum kept her wealth of common sense but she got a bit weirder as I grew up. Uncle Fred and Mr Ackermann tried to counsel me, told me not to feel guilty. Her upset was inevitable, they said, as she sensed me making my own life separate to hers. So I stayed away from home a bit longer, just for the peace. Sometimes I went home via the Westminster Reference Library where you sat and read without interruption because nobody was allowed to take books out. We were all serious readers, sitting on wooden chairs at rows of lecterns, turning the pages, united in mutual love of isolation.
    I had been born into a world that had learned to value important things. The Tories didn’t dare mess with that infrastructure. An air of equality and tranquility filled my world. Class would still be with us for another generation but it was disappearing and the evidence was everywhere. Cheap travel. Cheap credit. Cheap and gentle little black-and-white comedies. Holidays abroad. As a result of our first great socialist government, we became the freest people in the world, if not the richest. Sometimes you had to make the choice between a nice meal or a trip to the West End cinema. The wealth was spread, the country became stronger and, bit by bit, better off. For a while I saw working-class London grow happier, better educated and more optimistic. Before they took it all away again.
    UNCLE FRED’S WISDOM
    Oxford Street these days, of course, is far too posh for a shabby little amusement arcade like my Uncle Fred’s. His lease came up in 1958. There’s a tourist shop there now. They pay a fortune for those leases. Mugs and T-shirts. Postcards and miniature Beefeaters. Union Jacks on everything. Red, white and blue bunting. Bags. Hats. Coppers’ helmets. Red double-deckers. ‘London,’ as my cousin Denny always says, ‘is ikon rich. And that makes us rich, Michael, my son.’ They move thousands of little Beefeaters and queens on horseback a day, they turn over hundreds of thousands of pounds. Their turnover makes you feel sick. And crowded! Push and