Frank Baker Read online

  I was alone again, alone with the shadow of the youth in the desolate City. The shadow stirred, I thought. “Go home,” it said, “go home, and tell them not what you have seen here.”

  So silently, quickly, without turning my head, I mounted Fallow and rode away.

  For many seasons I could speak only to your mother of what I had seen and remembered in that place. Now you know. But the story I have to tell you is the story of that shadow who stood by me on the temple steps; the story of that youth who, sixty years ago, lived and worked in the great City.

  *

  In that old life before the birds came, I was a marine insurance clerk. You must try to picture me travelling morning and night to and from the City, descending to dark underground passages, penned in a chain of moving boxes together with thousands of my kind, male and female. We all sat and allowed ourselves to be shot from place to place under the streets of the City without a murmur of complaint. Were you en­abled to study us from some timeless altitude, you would remark the pathetic inertia of our faces, so heavy with grief, unrest, ill-health, and pride, that if a natural smile broke upon the mouth of any one of us, we were in danger of being labelled eccentric. Yet you must not imagine that the people of this island were possessed of serious minds. If you examined their attitude to their work you would find that it rarely interested them. They blundered into it: often executing it with complete lack of skill; they discussed it flippantly and treated the gravest issues with a non-committal gesture, known as a “shrug of the shoulders.” Any man finding himself in an awkward or dangerous situation, responded to the emotional pressure put upon him by a “shrug of the shoulders.” I cannot imitate the action; I have almost forgotten how to shrug.

  In those days very few people were immune from a spirit of aggressive nationalism. It did not only affect countries, it affected individuals, so that even a man’s family was “better” than the family who lived in the house adjoining his. There was a complete absence of trust between individuals. There also existed a singular craving for in­animate possessions of all types. This fever, described by a poet as the “mania for owning things,” gave birth to a rivalry between those who possessed much and those who possessed little; and it entirely obscured the elementary principles of the brotherhood and equality of man with man.

  At that time every nation, heavy with suspicion, feared oppres­sion by another nation. For this reason, great armies of fighting men were reared at the expense of poor and ill-nourished people who, in taxes, were forced to support these entirely unnecessary bodies of soldiers. Factories all over the world employed thousands of people in the making of intricate machines capable of destroying large sections of mankind. The ingenuity of practical scientists was more expended upon this type of labour than upon anything else. Yet here is something more difficult to understand. The factories that made such engines of destruction were in the hands of a few rich men who, in order to sell their products, did their utmost to encourage the intense spirit of jealous rivalry between nations. The law—which could imprison a man were he to appear in public unclothed, or take a twopenny loaf from a baker’s shop—had no power over such curious freaks of nature as these factory managers. Outwardly humane men, they had even been known to sell guns to the country engaged in warfare with their own country, at the same time simulating possession of the automatic national spirit. When I tell you, Anna, that this state of affairs existed only a few years following upon a great slaughter of youth in a war such as had never before been known, you will begin to perceive something of the singular stupidity of man. It cannot be understood, it can only be marvelled at.

  This, then, was the temper of my world, and to the great seething centre of it I was delivered every day in a growing spirit of dis­content. A certain day comes back to me very clearly; that fateful summer day when I sat on the roof of our office, eating my bread-and-cheese lunch, looking over the City and wondering how, from so calm a prospect, so much unrest could arise. For weeks we had suffered a drought not comparable in living memory; rain had not fallen since early in the spring. Now it was August. I was oppressed by my heavy clothes and tired of labour which seemed, like so many professions in those days, to be estab­lished upon the misfortunes of others. I had spent a busy morning copying at great speed numbers of risks of insurance served upon me by an endless flow of brokers, those who made it their business to go between the insured—that is the merchant—and the insurer, an important being known as underwriter.

  Yes, I was weary—impatient for some green river-bank where a man could again relate himself to the natural rhythm of life. I could not be content with the company of my colleagues at the long desk in the underwriting room. I liked these people, but I resented having to be with them. So, instead of going to one of the many city eating-houses for my midday meal, I had brought bread, cheese, and fruit and climbed to the roof of the building where I worked. Here, all my thoughts were gathered up in contemplation of that beautiful city—its chimneys, domes, spires, roofs, and monuments softened in the trembling waves of a hot summer day.

  My eyes were on the river, that fair Thames which at the port of the City widens out to the sea. I saw, trail­ing in the air above a small barge, a dense moving cloud as small as a man’s hand. Travelling towards the bridge it grew larger as I watched it. An intense lassitude overcame me. The air was very still, smoke hung like cloth in the sky. I was aware that a group of people had gathered on the roof of a building opposite, and were pointing to the growing cloud that sailed along above the river.

  I heard steps on the iron ladder behind me. Two or three youths came up and began to talk excitedly. Below in the street, a string of vehicles had stopped, waiting at a cross road; people on top of omnibuses were craning their heads out of windows and staring into the sky. The policeman who controlled the movement of the traffic had forgotten his duty, and stood with arms outstretched, his mouth agape, his face turned upward. Now the cloud had grown large above the City; the sun was partially obscured, it was as though there was an eclipse. I heard shouts and a quick spasmodic fluttering. It was no cloud that hovered above the streets and obscured the sun. It was a great com­pany of small twittering birds of bright plumage. They circled round and round like creatures looking for a landing-place. Mingled with their piping voices and the fluttering of their little wings, were the cries of amused people and the strident signals of motor-cars. The traffic stream thickened. One man in a powerful car impatiently sounded his alarm several times; he did not seem interested in the birds. All down the street I saw people, running in and out of offices, and crowding on to roofs in order to obtain a better view of the birds.

  Suddenly, with a swoop as though one of their number had given them a command, they descended. Regardless of the people they brushed in passing, they settled some few hundred yards away from me, in the great open square in the heart of the City, called Royal Exchange.

  *

  The sky was clear again now, and the sun intensely hot. For a few moments I stayed, trying to read a purpose into what I had seen. My companions had left me and joined the crowd. I saw them pushing their way in and out of the mass of people below. There were policemen at­tempting to coerce the crowd in other directions and clear a path for the traffic. But they could do very little. At last, I too went down and pushed my way through. The Royal Exchange was a large building in the ancient Greek style—of more antiquarian than practical value, for little business was transacted within its walls in those days, though carols were sung in it at Christmas-time. At the main entrance was a colonnade of smoke-blackened pillars raised upon a lofty tier of stone steps. Two streets branched away on either side: one, Cornhill—the other, Threadneedle. Because of this singularly domestic title, the large and important building, not unlike a prison, which ran parallel to the street, was popularly known as “the old lady of Threadneedle Street.” It was an apt title. For this edifice was the restraining influence over our national extrav
agance—a fortress of formidable power. Its actual name was the Bank of England.

  Bank? No, nothing to do with green fields or riversides. We could spend a long time discussing it, but I must content myself with no more than a passing reference.

  It was a vast building with vaults in which were locked gold bars. Upon these the country established its trade with other countries. We actually no longer dealt in gold; we transacted business with slim pieces of paper which were based upon the value of the gold in the Bank.

  It was thus a most important place, and although the control of the country’s affairs was supposed to emanate from some historic houses in another part of London, called Westminster, few govern­mental policies could be evolved without the assistance of the Bank of England. It might be said that the actual seat of government was in the City of London, not in Westminster.

  One other building, with the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England completed that trinity of temples to commerce which were at the centre of the dying heart of the City of London. This was the Mansion House. I do not know why it was ever given that redundant and comic title, unless to lend more importance to its annual tenant, a person known as Lord Mayor, the master of London’s merchants, who was elected every year by other merchants who formed what was known as the Corporation of London. He was always a popular dignitary, having usually mounted his way from shop or humble store to the Italianate corridors of his vast home. The original Lord Mayor had been one, Dick Whittington, an enterprising boy with a cat. Now he had become a legend, always remembered in the great sooty Mansion House which, like the Exchange, had a classical colonnade before it.

  Here, then, were Royal Exchange, Bank, and Mansion House, and converging into the centre of these three main build­ings, a bewildering number of streets, all thick with slow-moving traffic and slower-moving people. There were steps leading underground to the various sub­terranean railways which delivered people to their houses in the outer suburbs. Shops of all descriptions lined a street called Cheapside, which led westwards and ran parallel with another street of like nature, named after a recently reigning queen. Hemmed in by jostling shops, many old churches strove to raise their grey heads to the sky. They were refreshing haunts of solitude and peace in busy midday hours, many of them in those days, when orthodox religion was suffering a steady decline, offering entertainments of music as a bait to people who might otherwise have forgotten their existence.

  This, then, is a vague picture of the whirlpool of activity into which I plunged that still summer afternoon. With urchins shouting in my ears news of the entire breakdown of all peace negotiations in Europe; with hot, bewildered people hurrying along Cornhill; with the engines of innumerable vehicles grumbling angrily, like beasts in cages unable to move more than a yard or so; with the unremitting fire of the afternoon sun, merciless as it can only be in a great city; with all this bubble of humanity fermenting around me; with no tree or flower in sight, to cool the passage of the sun’s rays, I came to the Bank, there to witness the extraordinary spec­tacle of thousands of small birds, thick as a mighty swarm of clustered bees, twittering and ruffling their shining feathers, spread like an autumn fall of forest leaves over the steps and in the square before the Exchange. And all round, on every side, were people, pressed thick against each other, talking in quick, half-amused, half-timid whispers, full of wonder and amazement.

  It was a strange scene.

  *

  I was hemmed in at the back of the crowd and could only catch an occasional glimpse of the birds. A messenger in a tall shining hat and a green uniform with brass buttons, stood beside me.

  “Can you see them?” I asked. “What are they like?”

  “Some say they’re pink, some say they’re purple, but I haven’t been able to get near enough myself to see. Never mind, they’ll tell us all about them in the papers to-morrow.”

  He referred to the daily printed accounts of current events which were published throughout the country. These journals were per­mitted a remarkable licence in their commentaries, all giving different accounts of the same event as it best suited their purpose—that is to say, the tastes of their particular section of the public. They told not only stories of the past, but prophesied concerning the future. And since any prophet, however false, has a magnetic power over people’s activities, many of the events forecast in the Press actually came to pass. People, in fact, did what the Press told them to do.

  I grew impatient, and began to push my way nearer to the front. Eventually I reached a line of policemen who struggled with out­stretched arms to prevent the people from swaying into the midst of the birds. The policemen did not look happy; sweat trickled from their helmets down the sides of their faces. Nobody seemed to know what to do. There was no known law or remedy which could effec­tively cope with a sudden invasion of many thousand strange birds.

  I was able to study them closely now. About as large as starlings, they were neither pink nor purple as the messenger had surmised, but an ambiguous shade of dark jade green. This colour, catching the bright sunlight, sometimes shone blue, sometimes purple. Each one had a little ruff of feathers round his neck which stuck out like a hat above his head. The brightest part of their colouring was in the breast, from the throat downwards, where the feathers were smooth and of a glossy sheen which seemed to reflect all colours. Their little beaks were curved, not unlike a parrot; they had sharp, very lively eyes which gave them an inquisitive, imperti­nent expression. Their tail feathers were rather bedraggled, so that from behind they appeared to be dull, squalid creatures. Whereas from the front they were alive and full of colour. Their behaviour was interesting. Lined in thick ranks up the steps, they did nothing but sit there, looking at the people who studied them, with almost critical intensity, as though they themselves were studying us. Indeed, the longer I watched them, the more I felt that it was ourselves, rather than the birds, who had no place in this City. They showed no sign either of aggression or timidity. They twittered occasionally and sometimes ruffled their feathers; otherwise they were silent. The noise they made was not very pleasant; much of it would have been intensely irritating. And the longer I looked at them, the more irritated I began to feel. That flamboyant colouring, that impudent little ruff which had first charmed me, began now to annoy me as would a person of great wealth who dressed in opulent bad taste. Yet I was too fascinated to try to break away from the crowd.

  I heard a disturbance not far from me. An old woman was trying to push her way towards the police.

  “I do wish you’d let me through,” she kept snapping in a thin wavering voice. “I do wish you’d make way. All frightened of a few birds. They’re hungry, that’s what it is. They want a peck of seed, poor things.”

  She had a large paper bag in her hand.

  “Now then, ma’am,” said a policeman, “you leave those birds alone.”

  “Not me,” she replied. Suddenly she plunged her hand into the bag, and threw a handful of seed into the midst of the flock.

  They paid not the slightest attention.

  Everybody laughed and people began to talk more easily. The old woman stood, perplexed, not knowing what to do.

  “Try again, mother,” urged a small boy near her.

  “No,” she whimpered, “no, I don’t think so.”

  She clutched her bag and attempted to break farther back into the crowd, away from the birds.

  I remember two things happening at once, which quickened this inert mass of people to incipient movement. The Exchange clock struck the half after two; and one bird suddenly rose from the centre of the flock, impelled as it seemed by some individual urge, and flew straight towards that section of the crowd where the old woman was standing.

  This had an extraordinary effect upon her. She screamed, darted her head down, and began to butt her way through the crowd. The bird flew above, low over our heads. Some tried to coax it towards them; some bac
ked away as it seemed to approach them. The old woman’s hat fell off her head; she paid no attention to it but pursued her difficult path.

  “Let me out,” I heard her scream. “I’ve never done no harm to anyone. Let me out.”

  This declaration seemed irrelevant. But her alarm was con­tagious. Two or three girls began to laugh hysterically; there was danger of some being suffocated in the seething mob. I myself, weary and sick with heat, made efforts to get away. But I could do no more than go where I was pushed. I saw the solitary bird, hanging above the people like a child’s bright toy swaying from a cord. Somebody struck at it with a stick, missed, and struck again.

  “Leave it alone,” screamed the old woman. “Else it’ll get me and pay me out. Leave it alone.”

  One of the policemen pushed savagely past me and forced his way to a telephone box.

  Then suddenly, the entire flock of birds rose into the air, higher and higher, darkening, as they had before, the sun’s light.

  The crowd broke rapidly then over the courtyard and steps of the Exchange, where a moment before the birds had been assembled. Everybody looked up to the sky. From the jutting triangle of a jeweller’s shop some hundred yards away, to the portico of the Exchange, the dense cloud of birds hung and diminished like a thick pall over the City. They seemed bound together by an in­visible thread; not one straggler hung on the edge of their great company.