Dust to Dust

by Patricia Hall

  “Did the strike kill it off?” Laura asked.

  “It’s not closed down completely,” Baxter protested. He glanced at his watch. “It generally opens at lunchtime and a few of the older men come in for a drink and a game of dominoes. But I shouldn’t think it can survive much longer. The old boys are dying off, and the younger men don’t want to relive lost battles any more. They’ve got their own problems, getting worse again with unemployment the way it is. A lot have got out completely, like I did. It’s only really the fact that my brother’s still rotting in prison that reminds people of ‘84 any more. There’s still a feeling that there was something very wrong with that, even after all this time. I was quite surprised by the strength of feeling, to be honest. I thought Billy was pretty well dead and buried and forgotten by everyone but the family.”

  “My grandmother certainly hasn’t forgotten,” Laura said. “Nor DS Ferguson, by the look of it,” Laura said.

  “No, not him,” Baxter agreed. “You know he was here during the strike? I don’t just mean after the murder. He was here before that. The whole policing thing gradually escalated. At first it was just our local bobby, Tom Becket, who carried on more or less as normal. The strike was solid here, so there was no trouble. He knew everybody and everybody knew him. But later it got much more heavy after outsiders were drafted in. They were much more aggressive, almost as if they’d been told to go out looking for confrontation. I remember one night when Craig and I had been

  picking coal on the tip, scrabbling and sliding about in the dark, and getting frozen as well as

  filthy, someone caught us coming down. We were petrified. We didn’t recognise Tom Becket in the dark as he grabbed us and shone his torch into our faces. ‘Where do you think you’re going wi’that, you thieving little beggars?’ he said, but when we heard the local accent we reckoned maybe we weren’t in for a hiding after all. He let us go. Even let us take our sack of coal with us. I think he could see we were half starved by that stage. Mind, that wouldn’t have made any difference if it had been one of London coppers who’d caught us. They used to drive the whole village wild. They’d be on duty outside the pit, right over there, though why anyone would think anyone in Urmstone would damage Urmstone Main, I’ve no idea. They were bored out of their skulls, of course, because all the men were picketing miles away, and the coppers reckoned that’s where the fun was going on, so they used to amuse themselves by waving wads of cash at the women going to the shops: their overtime money that must have been.”

  “My grandmother says it was a war,” Laura said.

  “Your grandmother’s right.”

  “So tell me more about your brother,” she said.

  Baxter gazed through the windscreen for a long time without speaking, watching the first speckles of a grey drizzle blot out the view of the deserted main street and the drab rows of miners’ houses which no longer sheltered any miners.

  “He was my father’s blue eyed boy,” he said, not bothering to hide his bitterness. “He went down the pit with my dad as soon as he left school, him and his best friend, Roy Atkinson, who lived next door – my friend Craig’s brother, that was – and Col Randall. My dad and Col’s father Vic pretty well ran this village. They were the union officials who persuaded the pit to vote one hundred per cent for the strike. There were no scabs here, until Pete Atkinson broke ranks towards the end. He’s never been forgiven, by all accounts. We knew he was taking a lot of flak from his wife, Brenda, because we could hear them rowing in our house, through the wall. She was dead

  against the strike and never failed to let anyone who’d listen know just what she thought. She had a job in Bradfield, so the Atkinson men never went as hungry as the rest of us, and that rankled too, of course. And Pete never went picketing, so there was bad blood between him and Roy. Absolutely solid, Roy was. Went everywhere with our Billy. But by the end, his dad went back to work on his own. The only one ”

  “But Billy?” Laura prompted. “Tell me about him.”

  “I idolised him,” Ian said. “He was always laughing, was our Billy, the joker of those three lads, Billy, Roy and Col. Craig and I thought the sun shone out of his arse, and Craig couldn’t wait to get down the pit himself with his own brother. But Billy was the joker, the leader, ready for anything. But…” He hesitated as if the memory was as fresh as yesterday.

  “But?” Laura prompted quietly.

  “But as the strike went on he began to fall apart. They went hungry, you know, the men. There was never enough to eat that year and they were big men with big appetites. They lost weight. And Billy got beaten up more than once on the picket line. He was always black and blue. The police were in riot gear and not shy of using their batons, police horses, anything. The night of the murder I watched Billy get out of bed. We shared a bedroom, and he could hardly move because he’d had a run in with a mounted copper the previous day. That’s why I know he couldn’t have killed Fielding even if he’d wanted to. He walked out of the room that night like an old man. I actually tried to persuade him to give the picket a miss. They set off for Nottingham and the pits that were still working at four or five in the morning to catch the shift going in. I told him to give himself a break and go back to bed. But he wouldn’t. He just laughed at me and told me to go back to sleep. But Craig and I used to get up with the men half the time, just to be a part of the excitement. We’d watch what was going on, watch the cars going.”

  “And you watched that night. The night of the murder?”

  “We did. Though it was no help to Billy when they accused him of ambushing the copper and leaving the village late. There was one car left late, but we couldn’t see who was in it, and I never believed it was Billy. So when our mothers swore we’d slept through whatever was going on we didn’t say anything different in case it just made it worse for him. Whatever happened that night, we weren’t sharp enough to catch sight of it. And by the time we’d all made statements to the police, saying we were fast asleep, we couldn’t start changing our story when Billy got arrested. No-one would have believed us.”

  “Did they arrest Billy straight away?” Laura asked.

  “No, not until later, when the pit reopened and the men were all back at work. They arrested Col for the other business on the motorway, and he was already in jail by the time they arrested Billy. My dad and Vic were convinced Col was set up and I think they were taken by surprise when they came for Billy for the Fielding murder months later. I think the police waited deliberately. There was a sort of honeymoon period in Urmstone after the strike. Back to work, the men were told, no recriminations, for some at least, and a long term future for the pit. There were a lot got taken in, including my mate Craig. He jumped at a job down the pit as soon as he could leave school, called me a poncey idiot for staying on into the sixth form, though I’d never wanted a job underground. My mother knew that, even if my father couldn’t accept it. But within three years they were all dumped on the scrapheap. That woman wanted us dead and buried and that’s what she got in the end. But our Billy was buried deeper than most and still is. And Ferguson seems intent on adding a few more to the total, even after all this time. My dad, me, Craig, he seems to have his sights set on the lot of us, though Craig’s long gone.”

  “Gone?” Laura said. “Where did he go?”

  “No-one knows, according to my mother. Neither he nor his brother Roy were speaking to their father by the time he left, they were so furious about his scabbing. The family pretty well fell apart when Craig’s younger brother was killed and Pete going back to work just about finished them off. My mother blames Brenda, but you can’t tell, can you? You can’t tell what goes on in families. But she always liked her little luxuries, did Brenda. If I wanted a treat during the strike, I knew to go round to the Atkinsons. She had her job and her wages while the rest of us were half starved. The marriage didn’t last, of course, after all that. She went off in the end with some bloke she met through work, and Craig vanished too. It all kicked off af
ter I went to university, so I never got the whole story. Brenda went to live in Bradfield, but no-one seems to know where Craig got to. He used to talk about going to Australia so maybe that’s where he finished up.”

  “What happened to the younger brother, then? You said he was killed,” Laura asked, but Baxter’s attention had been taken by two elderly men walking slowly across the car-park towards the entrance to the miners’ hall.

  “I’ll tell you about that another time,” he said, opening the car door. “That’s Vic Randall. I want you to meet him. He was the treasurer of the union lodge during the strike and he’ll be able to tell you far more about what went on back then than I can. I was only a kid, but Vic and my dad ran the strike here like a military campaign. Come on, we’ll buy him a pint.” They got out of the car and stood for a moment gazing round the almost deserted centre of the village.

  “It’s pretty well dead now, Urmstone,” Baxter said. “They put in some industrial units on the edge up by the secondary school but most of those have closed now, in this latest crisis or the last. They were crap jobs anyway, minimum wage stuff, a lot of them went to women rather than the ex-miners. They had to move away for work, if they could find it.” He waved a dismissive hand at the boarded up shops. “That’s where the post office was, that was a hairdresser’s, even the betting shop’s closed down. There’s just the one shop open now, run by an Asian and he gets bricks through his window half the time. A few of the men are working at the mining museum down Barnsley way. How sad is that? Come and look at us living dinosaurs, and how we used to get covered in muck down there in the dark? D’you wonder I can’t bear to come back?”

  “But you can’t mine coal if its not there any more,” Laura objected, finding Baxter’s gloom

  oppressive.

  “But it is there,” Baxter said, his voice harsh. “And we need it now. But they’ll have the devil’s own job getting at it again. They could have kept the efficient pits going and the research to find clean ways of burning it. But that’s all gone. Anyway, come on in. Vic will tell you. He knows a lot more about it than I do. My family just suffers the consequences.”

  He marched across the car park leaving Laura trailing doubtfully in his wake. She wondered

  where she could find a more objective view of what had happened in Urmstone all those years ago, quite sure that she wouldn’t get it from Baxter or from a former official of the National Union of Mineworkers.

  It was eerily quiet when Baxter pushed open the creaking swing doors of the welfare hall, with not even a faint echo of the glory days of ear-splitting discos and raucous boozy nights when boys like Ian and Craig must have got their sweaty hands on their first girls and sipped their first surreptitiously acquired pints of lager. A couple of dead-eyed young men playing pool looked up as they came in but the small group of older men leaning on the bar with pints of Tetleys in front of them seemed oblivious to their arrival. Baxter hesitated, one hand on Laura’s arm, but then seemed to make up his mind.

  “There he is,” he said. “My God, he’s aged. I hardly recognised him. His hair used to be as red as yours.” The group was standing beneath the scarlet Lodge banner.” “They used to march that banner once a year. The last time I saw it was when they marched back to the pit after the strike. They insisted on going back with banners flying and band playing even though they’d been screwed. It’s ironic, isn’t it? The bastards who screwed them, who thought money was God, and there was no such thing as society, are getting screwed themselves now. But I don’t reckon it’ll do Urmstone much good.”

  Laura took in the group of old men, visibly decaying and stranded like dying whales on some Antarctic beach, and shivered slightly, feeling the dead passion of old battles like a chill wind through this dilapidated wreck of a building.

  “I suppose it’s too late for them,” she said.

  “But not for Billy,” Baxter came back fiercely. “He was only twenty when he got sent down. It’s not too late for him.”

  They were both conscious now that the group by the bar was watching them as they stood uncertainly by the door. Suddenly, Baxter strode over to them and five pairs of eyes met his,

  neutral if not actually unfriendly as they assessed his jeans and leather jacket and fashionable trainers.

  “Vic Randall?” he asked, his voice still slightly tentative as if not quite sure of his powers of identification after all these years. Eventually the broad, bull-necked man with the high colour and just perceptibly tawney hair nodded.

  “Who’s asking?” he said.

  “Ian Baxter, Ken’s son.” There was a pause as the five of them absorbed this information without expression, looking him up and down.

  “I’d not have recognised you, lad,” Randall said eventually. “We’ve had police nosing round again this week, after all these years, making new allegations. It’ll be reporters next. You can’t be too careful.” Laura took a cautious step forward at that, but Baxter flashed her a warning glance.

  “There’s reporters and reporters,” he said carefully. “This is Laura Ackroyd from the Bradfield Gazette. I’ve persuaded her to take an interest in Billy’s case. We’re trying to get it looked at again.”

  “Oh, aye,” Randall said, not bothering to hide his hostility. “That’d be a first, but you know your own business best, I dare say. I suppose that’d explain why this London copper says he’s on the case.” He turned away and took a draught of his pint.

  “ How’s your dad, any road.” he asked eventually, as if closing the previous subject. “I’ve not been up to see him for a day or so.”

  “Not good,” Baxter said. “My mother asked me to come up.”

  “Not before time,” Randall said, his eyes as unforgiving as rain-soaked slate, and Laura saw Baxter flush slightly. “I reckoned you’d forgotten what went on here.”

  “Forgotten it?” Baxter hissed, his pale face flushing with suppressed emotion. “You think I could forget how your bloody strike wrecked my brother’s life. I think about it every day. That’s the trouble. I remember all too much of it. I should never have come back at all, and that’s the truth.” Baxter spun on his heel, and Laura turned hastily to follow him to the door.

  “I’ll go back to London tonight,” he said, as it swung shut behind them. “I’ve seen my father now. I can’t do anything for him and I need to get on with my life. I’ll leave Miriam to pursue Billy’s case. I can’t get involved. It’s too much. I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time, Laura, honestly I am, but it’s all been a dreadful mistake. I need to get back home to my family and some sort of sanity.” Laura put a hand on his arm, appalled by the despair on Baxter’s face.

  “If your brother’s case was worth fighting when you came up, it must still be worth fighting,” she said. “Your mother and my grandmother obviously think so, and your lawyer colleague in London. You don’t need to stay here, but I’m quite happy to make some inquiries, see what I can dig up.”

  “It’s all old history,” Baxter said. “You’ll not find anything new.”

  “But DS Ferguson obviously thinks he will,” Laura objected. “The police won’t be wasting their time if they don’t think there’s something to uncover.” But before they could take the argument any further they heard the swing doors behind them open and close again and turned to find Vic Randall approaching, still wiping the foam from his pint from his lips.

  “Hey up, lad,” the older man said, putting a hand on Baxter’s arm. “I didn’t mean owt. I get a bit sharp these days seeing so many sliding downhill like your dad. It’s not easy. I get in to see him when I can, but I’m still kept busy. There’s not been coal mined round here for more than twenty years now but there’s still men waiting for compensation for the damage they suffered down the pits. And the longer it goes on the harder it gets to prove the dust was to blame. Your dad’s not the only one who’ll be dead before his case is settled.”

  “There were too many lives lost, one way or another,” Baxter said. “How’s you
r Colin? He was luckier than Billy.” Laura could see the effect those words would have even before they were out of his mouth.

  “He was set up, an’all,” Randall said angrily. “And they’d have done him for murder if the driver had died, which he bloody near did. He was nowhere near that motorway that night. I know that and so should you.”

  “Sorry,” Baxter said quickly. “Is he working?”

  “He gets by,” Randall said. “He’s got a market garden up Bradfield way. But he’ll never get over the time he spent in gaol for summat he didn’t do.”

  “Nor Billy,” Ian muttered.

  “What they didn’t know, they bloody well made up, the police,” Randall said.

  “They tracked me down all the way to London this week to talk to me about Billy’s case,” Baxter said. “They say they think someone else was involved.”

  “Aye, well, they never give up on dead coppers, do they? You must know that. This man Ferguson came to talk to me, an’all. Reckons he’s got summat new. But I don’t reckon owt will come of it. It’s too long ago, too many people have died or buggered off, like your mate Craig Atkinson. No-one seems to have heard from him for years. There’s not many left who’ll remember a dark night in ‘84. Your mam tells me you’re a lawyer now. What do you reckon?” Baxter did not reply. He turned away for a moment and gazed across the windswept car- park, his eyes bleak.

  “They won’t have reopened their inquiries without something to go on,” he said at last. “I just wonder if our new plan to get Billy out has sparked the whole thing off. I can’t bear the thought that something I’ve done is going to put someone else in the frame after all these years. All I can think is that they’ve found some new forensic evidence, so God knows where that will lead.”

  “Ferguson wanted to know who was out that morning, going over it all over again. I can’t be expected to remember details of the picketing rosters after all this time. We were sending dozens of lads all over t’bloody place. We gave them their money and sent them off and that were that. We made a note for the records, like, so we knew who’d been paid. It was just the same the night they came rampaging through the village themselves, questions and no answers, who was here, who was there, and if they weren’t here, where had they gone. It were lucky that night most of them had gone off to London fund-raising. But I told them straight: if they come roaring through folk’s houses, cracking heads and trashing homes and scaring the kiddies, somebody’s likely to hit back at the finish. I’m not excusing murder, you know that. I always tried to keep the thing peaceful. But it were them bastards from the Met rioted first off. It wasn’t right surprising someone went too far later.”