Edge of Eternity (67 page)

Verena appeared and came to their table. All three men stood up. She spoke to Greg. ‘Good morning, Senator. Good to see you again.’

Greg introduced her to Jasper, whose eyes were popping out. Verena had that effect on white and black men. ‘Verena works for Martin Luther King,’ Greg said.

Jasper turned a hundred-watt smile on Verena. ‘Could you get me an interview with him?’

George snapped: ‘Why?’

‘I’m a student journalist. Didn’t I mention that?’

‘No, you did not,’ George said with irritation.

‘I’m sorry.’

Verena was not immune to Jasper’s charm. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said with a rueful smile. ‘An interview with the Reverend Dr King is out of the question today.’

George was annoyed. Greg should have warned him that Jasper was a journalist. Last time George talked to a reporter he had embarrassed Bobby Kennedy. He hoped he had not said anything indiscreet today.

Verena turned to George, and her tone changed to annoyance. ‘I just talked to Charlton Heston. FBI agents are phoning our celebrity supporters this morning, telling them to stay in their hotel rooms for the day because there’s going to be violence.’

George made a disgusted noise. ‘The FBI is worried, not that the march will be violent, but that it will be a success.’

Verena was not satisfied with that. ‘Can’t you stop them trying to sabotage the whole event?’

‘I’ll speak to Bobby, but I don’t think he’ll want to cross swords with J. Edgar Hoover on something so minor.’ George stood up. ‘Verena and I have to talk. Excuse us, please.’

Verena said: ‘My table is over there.’

They crossed the room. George forgot about the sneaky Jasper Murray. As they sat down, he said to Verena: ‘What’s the situation?’

She leaned across the table and spoke in a low voice, but she was bursting with excitement. ‘It’s going to be bigger than we thought,’ she said, her eyes shining. ‘A hundred thousand people is an underestimate.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Every scheduled bus, train and plane to Washington today is full,’ she said. ‘At least twenty chartered trains arrived this morning. At Union Station you can’t hear yourself think for the people singing “We Shall Not Be Moved”. Special buses are coming through the Baltimore tunnel at the rate of one hundred per hour. My father chartered a plane from Los Angeles for all the movie stars. Marlon Brando is here, and James Garner. CBS is broadcasting the whole thing live.’

‘How many people do you think will show up altogether?’

‘Right now we’re guessing double the original estimate.’

George was flabbergasted. ‘Two hundred thousand people?’

‘That’s what we think now. It could go higher.’

‘I don’t know whether that’s good or bad.’

She frowned in irritation. ‘How could it be bad?’

‘We just haven’t planned for that many. I don’t want trouble.’

‘George, this is a protest movement – it’s
about
trouble.’

‘I wanted us to show that a hundred thousand Negroes could meet in a park without starting a goddamn fight.’

‘We’re in a fight already, and the whites started it. Hell, George, they broke your wrist for trying to go to the airport.’

George touched his left arm reflexively. The doctor said it had healed, but it still gave him a twinge sometimes. ‘Did you see
Meet the Press
?’ he asked her. Dr King had been questioned by a panel of journalists on the NBC news show.

‘Of course I did.’

‘Every question was about either Negro violence or Communists in the civil rights movement. We must not let these become the issues!’

‘We can’t let our strategy be dictated by
Meet the Press.
What do you think those white journalists are going to talk about? Don’t expect them to ask Martin about violent white cops, dishonest Southern juries, corrupt white judges, and the Ku Klux Klan!’

‘Let me put it to you another way,’ George said calmly. ‘Suppose today goes off peacefully, but Congress rejects the civil rights bill, and
then
there are riots. Dr King will be able to say: “A hundred thousand Negroes came here in peace, singing hymns, giving you the chance to do the right thing – but you spurned the opportunity we offered, and now you see the consequences of your obstinacy. If there are riots now, you have no one to blame but yourselves.” How about that?’

Verena smiled reluctantly and nodded assent. ‘You’re pretty smart, George,’ she said. ‘Did you know that?’

*  *  *

The National Mall was a three-hundred-acre park, long and narrow, stretching for two miles from the Capitol at one end to the Lincoln Memorial at the other. The marchers assembled in the middle, at the Washington Monument, an obelisk more than five hundred feet tall. A stage had been set up and, when Jasper arrived, the pure, thrilling voice of Joan Baez was ringing out ‘Oh, Freedom’.

Jasper looked for Beep Dewar, but the crowd was already at least fifty thousand strong, and not surprisingly he could not see her.

He was having the most interesting day of his life, and it was not yet eleven in the morning. Greg Peshkov and George Jakes were Washington insiders who had casually given him exclusive information: how he wished the
Daily Echo
was interested. And green-eyed Verena Marquand was possibly the most beautiful woman Jasper had ever seen. Was George sleeping with her? Lucky man, if so.

Joan Baez was followed by Odetta and Josh White, but the crowd went wild when Peter, Paul and Mary appeared. Jasper could hardly believe he was seeing these huge stars live on stage without even buying a ticket. Peter, Paul and Mary sang their latest hit, ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, a song written by Bob Dylan. It seemed to be about the civil rights movement, and included the line: ‘How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?’

The audience became even more madly enthusiastic when Dylan himself walked on. He sang a new song about the murder of Medgar Evers, called ‘Only a Pawn in Their Game’. The song sounded enigmatic to Jasper, but the listeners were oblivious to ambiguity, and rejoiced that the hottest new music star in America seemed to be on their side.

The throng was swelling minute by minute. Jasper was tall, and could look over most heads, but he could no longer see the edge of the multitude. To the west, the famous long reflecting pool led to the Greek temple commemorating Abraham Lincoln. The demonstrators were supposed to march to the Lincoln Memorial later, but Jasper could see that many were already migrating to the western end of the park, probably intent on securing the best seats for the speeches.

So far there had been no hint of violence, despite media pessimism – or had it been media wishful thinking?

There seemed to be news photographers and television cameras everywhere. They often focussed on Jasper, perhaps because of his pop-star haircut.

He started to write an article in his head. The event was a picnic in a forest, he decided, with revellers lunching in a sunlit glade while bloodthirsty predators skulked in the deep shade of the surrounding woods.

He strolled west with the crowd. The Negroes were dressed in their Sunday best, he noticed, the men in ties and straw hats, the women in bright print dresses and headscarves; whereas the whites were casual. The issue had widened from segregation, and the placards called for votes, jobs and housing. There were delegations from trade unions, churches and synagogues.

Near the Lincoln Memorial he ran into Beep. She was with a group of girls heading in the same direction. They found a spot where they had a clear view of the stage that had been set up on the steps.

The girls passed around a large bottle of warm Coca-Cola. Some of them were Beep’s friends, Jasper discovered; others had simply tagged along. They were interested in him as an exotic foreigner. He lay in the August sun chatting idly to them until the speeches began. By that time the crowd stretched farther than Jasper could see. He felt sure there were more than the one hundred thousand expected.

The lectern stood in front of the giant statue of the brooding President Lincoln, seated on a huge marble throne, his massive hands on the arms of the chair, his beetle brows drawn, his expression stern.

Most of the speakers were black, but there were a few whites, including a rabbi. Marlon Brando was on the platform, brandishing an electric cattle prod of the kind used on Negroes by the police in Gadsden, Alabama. Jasper liked the sharp-tongued union leader Walter Reuther, who said scathingly: ‘We cannot defend freedom in Berlin as long as we deny freedom in Birmingham.’

But the crowd grew restless and began to shout for Martin Luther King.

He was almost the last speaker.

King was a preacher, and a good one, Jasper knew immediately. His diction was crisp, his voice a vibrant baritone. He had the power to move the crowd’s emotions, a valuable skill that Jasper admired.

However, King had probably never before preached to so many people. Few men had.

He cautioned that the demonstration, triumphant though it was, meant nothing if it did not lead to real change. ‘Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam, and will now be content, will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.’ The audience cheered and whooped at every resonant phrase. ‘There will be neither rest nor tranquillity in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights,’ King warned. ‘The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.’

As he drew near to the end of his seven minutes, King became more biblical. ‘We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood, and robbed of their dignity, by signs stating “For Whites Only”,’ he said. ‘We will not be satisfied until justice runs down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’

On the platform behind him, the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson cried: ‘My Lord! My Lord!’

‘Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream,’ he said.

Jasper sensed that King had thrown away his prepared speech, for he was no longer manipulating his audience emotionally. Instead, he seemed to be drawing his words from a deep, cold well of suffering and pain, a well created by centuries of cruelty. Jasper realized that Negroes described their suffering in the words of the Old Testament prophets, and bore their pain with the consolation of Jesus’ gospel of hope.

King’s voice shook with emotion as he said: ‘I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

‘I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood – I have a dream.

‘That one day even the state of Mississippi – a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression – will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream.’

He had hit a rhythm, and two hundred thousand people felt it sway their souls. It was more than a speech: it was a poem and a canticle and a prayer as deep as the grave. The heartbreaking phrase ‘I have a dream’ came like an amen at the end of each ringing sentence.

‘. . . That my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character – I have a dream today.

‘I have a dream that one day down in Alabama – with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification – one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers – I have a dream today.

‘With this faith we will be able to hew, out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.

‘With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

‘With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.’

Looking around, Jasper saw that black and white faces alike were running with tears. Even he felt moved, and he had thought himself immune to this kind of thing.

‘And when this happens; when we allow freedom to ring; when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city; we will be able to speed up that day when
all
of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands . . .’

Here he slowed down, and the crowd was almost silent.

King’s voice trembled with the earthquake force of his passion. ‘. . . and sing, in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

‘Free at last!

‘Free at last!

‘Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’

He stepped back from the microphone.

The crowd gave a roar such as Jasper had never heard. They rose to their feet in a surge of rapturous hope. The applause rolled on, seeming as endless as the ocean waves.

It went on until King’s distinguished white-haired mentor Benjamin Mays stepped up to the microphone and pronounced a blessing. Then people knew it was over, and at last they turned away reluctantly from the stage to go home.

Jasper felt as if he had come through a storm, or a battle, or a love affair: he was spent but jubilant.

He and Beep headed for the Dewar apartment, hardly speaking. Surely, Jasper thought, the
Echo
would be interested in this? Hundreds of thousands of people had heard a heart-stopping plea for justice. Surely British politics, with its dismal sex scandals, could not compete with this for space on the front page of a newspaper?

He was right.

Beep’s mother, Bella, was sitting at the kitchen table, shelling peas, while Miss Betsy peeled potatoes. As soon as Jasper walked in, Bella said to him: ‘The
Daily Echo
in London has called twice for you. A Mr Pugh.’