Vignette: I Pity the Fool

By James Hall.

On the Sea Lion Press Forums, we run a monthly Vignette Challenge. Contributors are invited to write short stories on a specific theme (changed monthly).

The theme for the 85th vignette contest was The Fool.

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As the big Humber swept through the dark night, headlights illuminating the raindrops lashing down from the storm-threatened sky and throwing the dark hedges into monstrous shadows, Stanley Baldwin thought back to a conversation with Lloyd-George. Was it really just five years ago? It had been raining that evening, too. Grey and grim, he recalled, with the rain bouncing back up off the pavements of the metropolis.

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“Mosley is a fool.” He didn't look at the old man, preferring to gaze at the sodden street below.

“A fool who has gained a significant following,” the ageing Liberal had countered.

“I know he has a following: in the press, in the streets, even in the Commons, damn the man.” He glared out of the window, seeing people scuttling past, collars turned up, hats down low, desperately dodging the puddles.

The older man coughed up a storm. “The Commons, though, makes him important.”

Baldwin scowled, “Important? The man has eighty-five MPs.”

“Given the febrile state of the Commons, and the nation, eighty-five MPs is not to be sniffed at. It could be enough to stop Lansbury, Clynes, and the rest of their cloth-capped comrades.” He leaned back in his chair and brought his hand up to smooth his moustache.

Outside the window, a man’s umbrella turned inside out, due to the wind, while an omnibus splashed a young lady who’d strayed too close to the kerb. Baldwin snorted. Not at the lady's misfortune: at the prospect of Mosley being useful.

“He can’t control his party. He had one hundred and two MPs this time last month.”

He heard Lloyd-George leave the chair with a groan, and soon the man was next to him, watching the poor unfortunate chap in the Homburg vainly wrestling the increasingly tattered remains of his umbrella. He waited for the Welshman to speak.

“The ructions in Italy were always going to damage the fascists. Mussolini’s thugs murdered a parliamentarian on the street.”

“But a split?” Baldwin still didn’t face the older man. “It smacks of bad party management.”

He then realised what he had said and flushed, but Lloyd-George got there first.

“National Liberals, Liberal Unionists, Unionists, Conservative Unionists, Liberal Radicals, Independent Conservatives, to say nothing of the left…”

“I do take the point. But the left is in ascendancy, thanks to Italy and Spain.” The man in the homburg had given up on the umbrella and put it in the nearest bin.

“This,” ground out Lloyd-George, “is why we need to bring Mosley and his black-shirted mob in now. With the split in his ranks, he’s weak. And we can’t let the left prosper like in Spain. We risk having the whole fabric of the nation overturned on a tide of Bolshevism and Labourism.”

Silence reigned. A morose policeman, water dripping from his oilskin cape, processed along the opposite pavement with a steady gait. Eventually, with a will, Baldwin spoke again.

“I don’t like him.”

“You don’t have to.” Baldwin’s attention was almost dragged away by the policeman halting to direct a lorry around a parked cart. “He’s a tool. To be used against the left and discarded when the time is right.”

“A tool you say. Perhaps," Baldwin repeated, “but still a fool.”

“All the easier to get rid of when the red scare has passed,” Lloyd-George responded. “Bring him in as PM but keep all the great offices. “

“Why?”

“Because then he’s attacking the left, but the legislation will come from the established figures of the party. It will gradually cut him off from his own base.”

“Destroying the left and right in the process…” This sounded increasingly clever to Baldwin. “Of course, power abhors a vacuum. It might revive the Liberal Party.”

The old man’s eyes had sparkled then.

“I hadn’t considered that at all. A happy side effect, perhaps.”

And they both turned back, to look at the torrential rain.

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Five years later, the phrase “Mosley is a fool” rang in Baldwin’s ears once more. Albeit an increasingly hollow sound, he thought bitterly, as the car turned off the main road onto a narrow lane.

He had crushed the left, of course. But he’d somehow used that temporary power to get his tentacles into all areas of government. Police, the military, the BBC had all ended up under his increasingly large shadow, especially after Risdon’s attempted coup. Although how much Risdon had known about the supposed plot was never clear in Baldwin’s mind.

A bump in the road, another turning. They must be getting close now.

Of course, Lloyd-George hadn’t lived to see much of this takeover. It was probably just as well, he mused, because the Liberals, like all other parties – other than the rump Conservative party that acted as a token opposition – had been driven out of the Commons all together. Well, not driven out, but the new voting system, which was overseen by the BUF Yeomanry, of course, had seen their votes dwindle into non-representation. The Liberals had fared better than Labour. They’d been driven out of the counties and the boroughs, rounded up and arrested.

Well, the lucky ones had. Poor Clynes.

“Sorry sir,” called the driver. “Cattle grid.”

So, he was still afforded that dignity. Sir. As the car rumbled over the iron grate, he noticed several black-shirted men who appeared to be on sentry duty. Only keeping people out, of course. Definitely not keeping people in. Public safety in a national emergency. Not a hint of people being detained, sir. The sound of the gravel told him they were now on a driveway. Chestnut trees lined the avenue.

Churchill had called it a Devil’s bargain. He probably still was, from his pulpit in the American press, but you couldn’t get your hands on international papers anymore, not without a lot of skullduggery. The tale being told on this side of the Atlantic had Churchill as an increasingly irrelevant alcoholic blowhard. Given everything that had happened, he might well be, but he hadn’t been wrong about Mosley. There was a difference, though: in the stories, the Devil waited to collect his debts. Mosley seemed to have worked far faster.

He saw the house up ahead, looming out of the rain. A shadow in the light of the doorway. Two men, one holding an umbrella that covered the other. Both in loathsome black. As the car pulled to a halt, he identified the one under the brolly. Joyce. He almost scoffed as the driver opened the door.

“Ah, Baldwin. So good of you to join us.” As if he had any choice in the matter.

“I’m not really sure it was necessary.” The ridiculous voice cut him off,

“Oh no. Grave threat against your person. You know these red brigades. Can’t be too careful. Look what happened to Hoare.”

Baldwin wasn’t entirely sure that Hoare’s demise was at the hands of socialists, but he couldn’t really say that now. It was at least two years too late for such qualms. He was swiftly ushered inside out of the rain. He noticed that Joyce was doing that goose-step march. Just as affected as the voice. Just as nonsensical. But nobody was laughing now. Nobody dared.

“How long do you expect this," he paused, just for a moment, "protective custody to last?” He noted the check in Joyce's step.

“Just until the emergency is over. The reds are receiving support from Spain, you know. Just a temporary measure.”

As Baldwin grimly thought about all of the so-called temporary measures that had been enacted over the last four years, he couldn’t think of a single one that had been repealed.

Once again, the words rang in his head,

Mosley is a fool.

Somebody was, certainly.

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James Hall has written for the Sea Lion Press anthologies Fight Them on The Beaches and 10 Leaders Britain Never Had.