James Philip - Empire Day

“I thought today was supposed to be a white man’s holiday?” His wife teased him, on the verge of giggling. Kate had been giggling a lot since we had arrived. She never made any attempt to hide it when she was happy.

True, today was the Empire Day Holiday; the whole of New England shut down and did not get back to normal for a week or so after the ‘EDH’. Originally, the First Thirteen had celebrated the anniversary of the Mayflower’s arrival in the New World in November 1620, this had become a colonial second ‘harvest festival’ imported from the old country and later a ‘Thanksgiving Day’ usually on the last Saturday in November each year. After 1776 there had been various festivities to gloat over the subjugation of the infamous rebellion, usually held around the end of August each year which had morphed into a traditional English late summer Bank Holiday. But then back in the 1870s somebody in Whitehall had had the bright idea of having a day of ‘Imperial celebrations’, the then King, Edward VII, had thought it was a marvellous idea and after a Royal Commission had sat and reviewed things Empire Day had been born, its first celebration occurring in 1881 after several years ‘coming and going’ over exactly when it ought to be celebrated.

The First Thirteen colonies of New England had acquired, and maintained ever since, an influential, and periodically, powerful lobby in Westminster during the World War of 1857-65 and it had been a famous New England parliamentarian, Jefferson Wilson, who had laid the Private Member’s Bill before the House of Commons proposing that Empire Day should henceforth be the first Sunday after 4th July unless that day was actually the Sabbath. In later years Wilson had courted no little controversy by plainly and repeatedly stating that his motive in making 4th July – the anniversary of the treachery of Philadelphia – Empire Day was no more or less than to ‘rub the noses of recidivist republicans in the mire of 1776’.

On the East Coast the festivities went on until, as Abe’s father used to say ‘until they stopped’ every year. In some colonies factories and whole towns literally shut down and the whole population went on vacation. Perhaps, half the people who would have flocked to the shores of the Upper Bay yesterday to enjoy the spectacle of the Fleet Review and to try to catch a glimpse of the King and Queen, would probably have been ‘out-of-towners’.

On Long Island hotel and bed-and-breakfast proprietors eagerly rubbed their hands together for the coming of Empire Day which marked the end of the first summer school term, and the real start of the holiday season which went on into the early autumn.

However, apart from thrilling the crowds at air show the CAF tended to stay well and truly grounded during Empire Day Week. It was a standing joke in New England that if anybody wanted to invade then the day or two after Empire Day would be the best time; because probably, nobody would actually notice!

So, the question was: what were those fellows doing flying up and down the valley?

“It is supposed to be a holiday,” Abe murmured, unable to shake of his uneasiness.

“What is it, husband?”

“Nothing. I guess I’m still a bit getting used to stuff,” he apologised.

Kate was quiet, very serious.

“I know you’ve given up a lot for me.”

Abe shook his head.

“I’d give up everything for you, wife.”

She buried her face in his chest and he hugged her.

The breeze was blowing up the Mohawk valley from the south east, rustling the leaves overhead and carrying the roaring of aero engines in faint waves from far, far away, like waves crashing on a distant shore.

New Brunswick, New Jersey

“Dad!”

After the excitement of recent days Henry Howland had determined to spend the day – which had dawned gloriously sunny – catching up with the garden chores he had neglected last week. The Colonial Security Service always paid well but frankly, lately some of the commissions he and his daughter, Jennifer, had been asked to undertake had been, to say the least, challenging.

He and Jennifer’s dearly departed mother, Samantha, had first started working for Matthew Harrison about twenty years ago. The CSS had ‘talent spotted’ them, it seemed, after a Special Agent had attended the New Brunswick Players Christmas production of A Winter’s Tale at the local playhouse. Jennifer had demonstrated a natural aptitude for ‘the work’ almost as soon as they had tested the waters of the ‘surveillance and smoke and mirrors game’.

Usually, their work involved being anonymous, frequenting and listening, looking and occasionally spying on ‘persons of interest’ in public places, or impersonating this or that character. They were paid on a job by job basis, invariably in cash and if necessary, given ample time to prepare, to read themselves into their roles, and to rehearse. Occasionally, they were ‘briefed’ on the generalities, never the specifics, of a given CSS ‘operation’. He and Samantha had never wanted to know anything they absolutely did not need to know. Jennifer was more curious but that was simply the consequence of her precocious youth.

Nonetheless, the last week had been something of a trial for them both.

Henry had been uncomfortable impersonating a police officer and told his employers as much. And as for actually attending that dreadful raid in the middle of the night in Gravesend. Goodness, the police had gone out of their way to wake up the whole street!

‘What do you mean?’ He had queried in alarm. ‘I might be left alone with the suspect?”

“He’s not violent and he’ll be cuffed all the time.’

Both he and Jennifer had given each other odd looks when they finally got the interview scripts in the small hours of Saturday morning. It was one thing to ask them to distract everybody with a faux argument in a shopping mall or listen in a crowd as an agent provocateur stirred up trouble, or act as couriers across colony lines, or even to attend services or meetings where sedition might be talked but to actually conduct an interview in a police station!

‘Just follow the script. We’ll be just outside the door all the time.’

The CSS had put them up in a nice hotel at West Sayville last night after keeping them waiting around in Hempstead incommunicado all day yesterday so they had missed all the unpleasantness at the dockyard and out in the Upper Bay. That business at Wallabout Bay sounded bad enough but what had happened in the Upper Bay was a positive outrage…

“Dad!”

Henry had been on his knees weeding half-way down the garden, some twenty yards from the back door of the family’s four-bedroom wood-framed house on Somerset Drive. Beyond the neat, pine-board fence at the bottom of the property one could always – whatever the time of year – see the masts of sail boats moored in the Raritan River. At this season there were always sails flapping, and elegant movement in the near distance.

Samantha had loved that view across to Middlesex County from whence she had hailed. They had met as student teachers at the old Cornwallis College – now long gone – and it had been if not love at first sight then the nearest thing to it!

“Daddy!”

Henry looked up, realising he had been wool gathering.

“That man that we interviewed at Hempstead has just been on the TV!”

The father staggered to his feet.

“Well, we knew he was suspected of being involved in…” He was going to say ‘serious offences against the crown’ before he was cut off.

“The CSS has just issued a statement saying he is suspected of being the guiding hand behind the disaster at the shipyard on Saturday afternoon, the attacks on the fleet yesterday and have asked the Director of Public Prosecutions to charge him with attempted Regicide!”