There was only one way
that Cohen knew of drowning his sorrows, and that was to immerse
himself in his work, which he did with great relish, as his work was
something he absolutely loved.
He loved being able to
walk through the streets of east London and to be greeted every few
yards by people who knew him, others who wanted to know him, and
those who made out to know him. Cohen hardly ever went anywhere on
his own, he was nearly always accompanied by at least two of his
cronies, more if the occasion called for it. Hymie and Meyer were his
most constant companions, mainly because he had known them since his
teens, and now they also worked for him.
It had now been over a
year since his brief yet memorable meeting with Ruth. He still
carried the scrap of paper she had given him with her phone number on
it, in his wallet, but in his heart he knew he would never contact
her again; he couldn’t, it would be far too dangerous. As much as
he knew all this, he still couldn’t help turning round to look,
every time he saw someone who looked like her. What would he have
done if he had seen her? Would he stop and talk to her - who knows?
He wasn’t here in Brick Lane this Sunday morning looking for love;
he was here on business.
Cohen, Hymie, and Meyer
had been to Blooms Restaurant in Whitechapel for breakfast, and were
now making their way down Brick Lane to collect the weekly
contributions from the shops and stallholders. They passed the Great
Synagogue on the corner of Fournier Street, and then the Truman’s
Brewery.
Their work would start
when they actually entered the part of Brick Lane where all the
stalls were situated, which was just after the huge iron railway
bridge, which straddled the street. An elderly man was turning the
handle of a large old barrel organ and smiling at passers by, in the
hope of receiving a penny or two. “Who’s he looking at?”
snarled Hymie. Cohen looked round at Hymie, “He’s only trying to
earn a few pennies for Christ sake” Hymie wasn’t talking about
the organ grinder, he was talking about one of two men who were
standing on the corner of Pedley Street, opposite them.
Both men were well built,
and were wearing dark suits and black roll-neck jumpers. The man with
his back to them was looking up and down the street all the time, as
if he was expecting someone, but the other man was staring straight
at them.
There was something about
these men that Cohen didn’t like. Why were they, or one of them to
be precise, paying so much attention to him and his group? Even the
police wouldn’t be that blatant; would they? But if they weren’t
plain-clothes police officers, then they had to be a rival gang.
Cohen wasn’t worried
about the men; he had handled bigger men than them in the past, but
it did play on his mind as he carried on along the street, with Hymie
and Meyer.
As they got to the railway
bridge, a sudden deafening din assaulted their senses, and their path
was almost entirely blocked by a huge crowd, which had gathered at
the junction of Sclater Street and Brick Lane. The Lane was always
crowded on a Sunday morning, but never this dense, and what the hell
was all this noise?
One of the advantages of
being tall is that you can always see over the heads of those in
front of you. This came in handy for Cohen at sporting events, such
as boxing, and he put it to good use now, as he raised his head up
more and managed to see a man standing on the back of an open lorry.
The man was Oswald Mosley, the Blackshirt leader of Britain’s
Fascist party. He was shouting through a megaphone, ranting, raving,
and taunting the Jews.
Cohen, Hymie, and Meyer
pushed their way through the crowd; they weren’t about to let this
insane Fascist denigrate their own race without giving him as good as
he was giving other people, who for some reason, seemed too
frightened to answer him or shout him down. It wasn’t until they
reached the front of the crowd that Cohen saw why the crowd were too
frightened to oppose this loud mouth, for there were at least twenty
of Mosley’s men, circling the lorry, all facing the crowd, and
nearly all with one hand in their pocket or inside their jacket, as
if hiding a weapon of some sort.
Although he had heard
about them, this was the first time Cohen had ever come face to face
with Mosley or his Blackshirts. Not all big men, he thought, that was
for sure, but an awful lot of ugly ones, and nearly every one wearing
a black roll neck jumper, which answered the other problem, which had
been nagging away at the back of his mind; the two men they had seen
earlier, they were obviously Mosley’s lookouts.
Cohen, Hymie, and Meyer,
were undoubtedly big men who could hold their own in a fight, but
when Cohen looked at Mosley’s men, he realised they were hopelessly
outnumbered. He felt like he was boiling inside, standing there and
listening to the anti-Semitic taunts of Mosley, whilst being pushed
from behind, closer and closer to one of Mosley’s thugs, who
sneered at him and uttered, “Move away Yid, before you get hurt”
Cohen didn’t mind being
called a Yid, as that is exactly what he saw himself as; his parents
both spoke Yiddish, so as far as he was concerned this was no big
deal, but what made his hackles rise, was being told to move away; no
one told Jack Cohen to move away.
He grabbed the Fascist oaf
by the collar of his jumper, pulled him forward and head butted him,
immediately opening up a large gash on the man’s eyebrow. As other
Mosley men rushed forward to help their stricken comrade, so Hymie,
and Meyer waded in as well, and not just with their fists, but with a
brass knuckleduster, and a policeman’s truncheon, which Hymie had
acquired somewhat surreptitiously at a earlier fracas he had been
involved in.
Within minutes the street
looked like a battlefield, with many of the Jewish shopkeepers and
stallholders now also joining in. This is what they had been waiting
for, someone to lead them.
Stalls were overturned and
shop windows were being smashed, but at least the Jews were fighting
back, and Mosley was starting to look decidedly scared. The look on
his face suddenly changed however, when another gang decided to join
in, but this gang was the police.
