She wrote about upturned buses. She wrote about little old ladies casting their chamber pots out of their windows. Pots and pans. Skillets and stones. Anything that came to hand – and all to drive the police and the fascists they were protecting out. Cable Street, which Ray knew so well from the days dancing with his father – that long, bustling row of drinking dens and opium houses, of places where gentlemen could go to find a woman – had been consumed. What had happened in the Midnight Rooms was like two children playing rough-and-tumble in the park when set against the violence of Cable Street.

*

And who was there, with the best of ’em? Raymond de Guise? Was it Raymond, in his evening suit and dancing shoes, holding the line when the police tried to drive us out? Or was it his brother, Artie? Poor, destitute Artie – not a penny to his name, not a hope in the world of making a living for his self, but proud and determined to stand up for what’s right.

But I am not writing to scold you, Ray. You know what we think, and we got hope in our hearts that you see the light. No. I am writing for Artie’s sake. There was many fallen that day. And Artie among them. Some Metropolitan cantered by on his horse and brained him with his truncheon as he went into the crowds. His shoulder is broken and the doctor says he might never work again. You won’t remember, Ray, what being out of work and with no hope of getting it can do to a man. He can’t eat. He can’t sleep. But he has asked after you. You might not think it after last time you was here, but he still has faith in you, son.

We wait, in hope and in hunger. And I remain,

Your loving mother

Alma Cohen

Raymond stared at the letter for a long time. He tried to picture Artie, as battered and bruised and broken as Raymond himself. That was what it was like when you were little, wasn’t it, Ray? The two of you, tearaways together, and when one got beaten up, so did the other. There’s a nice irony in that. He lifted one of the fingers of his good hand and traced the black bruise around his eye. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I ought to have been there. I’m safe here in the Buckingham Hotel, safe where nobody knows my name. But step outside the ballroom, step outside the hotel grounds, and a fancy new name and a pair of dancing shoes doesn’t keep you safe for very long.

Artie, he thought, I’m sorry.

Starkly aware of Billy Brogan still lurking behind him, he screwed the letter up and cast it to the floor.

‘What is it, Mr de Guise? You upset on account of your brother?’