Some Here Among Us Read Online Free PDF Page A

Californian geniality to him, as if all problems could be dissolved with a little blast of sunlight, but now he had taken against Morgan. He had been outplayed. He wanted Race to join forces with him. But Race had no desire to join forces against Morgan. In the first place, Morgan was already almost a loner, which meant, in Race’s view, you didn’t gang up on him. Secondly, though, and more important, he showed no sign of caring or even noticing if all the forces in the universe were against him. This gave him the air of someone with a valuable secret. ‘He knows something,’ Race had come to think. ‘He knows something we don’t. I wonder what it is.’ Chadwick read some of this in Race’s expression. He gave up and danced backwards a few yards to join the Gudgeon sisters. The procession reached The Terrace; chants began to echo among the office blocks. The rain began to fall more heavily. High above the street the windows were crowded with office workers watching the march. They looked down on the marchers angrily, as if allowed up from their desks for a minute or two only on that condition. The police had just deciphered FitzGerald’s sign and dashed into the crowd to seize it. FitzGerald resisted. There was a scuffle. FitzGerald disappeared, somehow with an air of triumph, into a paddy-wagon. The rain-cloud darkened overhead as the crowd reached parliament. It was then just on noon. Inside the building the talks with the Americans had been going on for two hours. The prime minister suggested an adjournment for lunch. He led his guests through the building and, passing the windows, he stopped to give his guests a view of the demonstration outside. He was pleased at the size of the crowd. He had no desire to send more troops to Vietnam. He could plead public dislike of the war. Just at that moment, as he and the envoys stopped to look at the crowd and the rain-cloud came in low over the city, someone turned on the lights and the crowd saw the little golden lamps of chandeliers come twinkling on deep in the parliament building and three grey-headed men looking down from a tall window. There was a sort of mumble, a baying, a booing: someone shouted something about guns and butter. A man leapt over the barricade and swerved past the police guard towards the steps of parliament, which were wide and impressive as befits a public building, but also unusually steep. He began to run up this cliff of stairs, but his progress was slower than he expected. Two plain-clothes men went after him but they were slow as well. All three toiled towards the great front door like figures in a dream. Then one of the policemen made a dive and caught the man by the ankles. At the same time, a fight had broken out further west near the cathedral, where pro-war demonstrators began to scuffle with the Trotskyites. The police made a charge. There was a dipping and swirling of placards like gunwales. ALL YOU NEEDIS rose briefly then fell from view. The prime minister and his visitors turned and went away to their lunch. And quite suddenly the flurries came to an end as if a gust of wind passed over a body of water and left it calm again – the Trots and the pro-war crowd stopped fighting, the workers on the cathedral scaffolding stopped cheering them on, the man on the steps and the police running after him had vanished as if they had never existed, and the gulls settled down again, folding their wings comfortably on the marble heads and the up-flung hands of various statues. Chadwick appeared by Race’s side.
    ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘The old bores are starting.’
    An old man with a clear, ruddy complexion and a noble expression had unfolded a little aluminium step-ladder in front of the crowd and he sprang up the first three steps.
    ‘Comwades!’ he shouted, twirling his hand up like Lenin.
    Chadwick and Race went away down the grassy slope towards the Cenotaph. And there was Tolerton as well, zipping past in his expensive tweed