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to be smiling. Sir Alan said something to Betsy that I didn’t catch, and then we were in front of a rostrum next to the bonfire. “This is where the singing will be,” Sir Alan said. I could hear band music in the distance, and nearer, an orator addressing part of the crowd from another rostrum.
    There was a group of Jews directly under the rostrum; two men, four women, and a little girl. They might have been the ones Betsy had seen before, because the child had blood running down her face from a cut on her temple. They all looked terrified. The ones I’d seen earlier had looked a little resigned to what was happening, and even exchanged some banter with the crowds. These kept looking from side to side and flinching, though nobody was taking any especial notice of them.
    “What happens to them after?” Betsy asked.
    “Mostly they’re let go again, sometimes they’re handed over to the police to be sent off to the Continent where they know how to deal with them,” Sir Alan said.
    Just then a young man in a black shirt jumped up onto the rostrum and shot out his hand in the Continental fascist salute. The crowd responded, of course, copying him and cheering. He was very good-looking, with such an air of health and vitality that you didn’t really notice the details of his appearance. He seemed very young. I thought him my own age and the age of the young men I was used to dancing with at parties. There was something appealing about that. “Are you proud to be British?” he called. He had an unusual accent; not a foreign one, but not London either. The crowd roared. He leaned down into the crowd and took something fromone of the men to the side of him, then straightened up again with a guitar. He started to play almost immediately, not waiting for the crowd to quiet, so I didn’t catch the beginning of the song. The tune was lovely, but the words were the usual stuff about patriotism and motherland, with a chorus we soon started singing along to that went “Power, power, British power.”
    When he finished the song, he handed the guitar back down and called again, “Are you proud to be British?” The shout of affirmation seemed louder this time, maybe because I was part of it. He quieted us by lowering his hand. “Are you proud to be fascists?” he asked next. Another great roar. I was still roaring with them. I noticed Betsy wasn’t shouting; she was looking at the cowering Jews again. “Are you proud of your country, your Empire, your leaders?” We cheered more heartily than ever. The young man lowered his hand again and spoke quite quietly into the hush. “Then why are we giving the Hitler salute?” He gestured downwards. “Why are these Jews waiting to go to Germany to be dealt with? Why do we call ourselves Ironsides, instead of Blackshirts as we used to?” He paused, and the hush of people listening to him spread. I could no longer hear any other orators. “Because Germany has a proper leader, and we don’t!” he shouted. “What kind of a leader is Mark Normanby? His main claim to fame is that he was crippled when sitting next to Hitler! He’s a fraud and a cripple! He’s no sort of man, no sort of leader. He’s a politician, he politicked his way to power, he didn’t rise on a wave of belief like Hitler, like Mussolini, like Franco. He took Hitler’s name for us and called us Ironsides. He’s a lapdog! Who believes in him and his Farthing elite? Who wants second-rate watered-down fascism, as if the British Empire wasn’t the greatest state the world has ever known? British power!”
    A group of men in black shirts with a banner to the side of the rostrum began singing the chorus line over and over, “Power, power, British power!”
    “Normanby!” others in the crowd were shouting, in a much less organized way.
    I looked at Sir Alan. His smile seemed uncomfortable. Betsy was biting her lip. “I think we should slip away now,” Sir Alan said, taking my arm, and took a step backwards