by David Peace
The Jew sniffs again. The Jew squeezes his nose between his fingers and nods –
‘The show must go on, Neil,’ he says. ‘The show. Must. Go. On!’
Neil Fontaine goes back out into the corridor. He asks the four men to step inside. Tells them the Jew is feeling a little under the weather.
‘Maybe we can cheer him up,’ says Derek Williams.
‘Let’s hope so,’ says Neil Fontaine and opens the door for them.
Piers Harris and Dominic Reid lead the way. Don and Derek follow –
The Jew is sitting on the settee in his dressing-gown. The Jew says, ‘Welcome.’
Neil Fontaine sits the four men down. Neil Fontaine takes their orders –
Two gin and tonics. Two pints of bitter –
‘And a brandy for me,’ says the Jew. ‘A large one, please, Neil.’
The Jew turns to the men. His men. He says, ‘What news from the Inns of Court.’
‘The strike is unlawful in Derbyshire and unofficial in Yorkshire,’ says Piers.
Dominic nods. He says, ‘The judge did not order a ballot, though.’
‘Did the Union attend?’ asks the Jew.
Piers shakes his head. He says, “Their lawyer said they’d overlooked it.’
The Jew looks at Don and Derek. He asks, ‘Will you go to work on Monday?’
Derek looks at Don. Don looks at Derek –
Don and Derek both nod.
The Jew smiles at Don and Derek. The Jew looks at his watch. The Jew says, ‘Let’s see what Arthur Stalin has to say about that, then. Neil, the television, please.’
Neil Fontaine walks over to the TV. He switches on the Channel 4 News –
There he is. Bold as brass. Their president –
The Jew smiles. He picks up the remote control. He presses record on the video –
‘– I’m going to say this quite clearly: any miner in this Union and any official in this Union who urges or crosses a picket line in defiance of our Union’s instructions runs the risk of being disciplined. There is no High Court judge going to take away the democratic right of our Union to deal with internal affairs –’
The Jew presses stop. The Jew claps. The Jew applauds –
The Union would not accept the court’s decision. The Union insisted the strike was official –
Don Colby and Derek Williams would be scabs. Official.
The Jew looks over at Don and Derek again –
Don and Derek sitting on the fourth floor of Claridge’s with their two pints of bitter –
The Jew says, ‘That’s not very nice, is it?’
Don and Derek shake their heads and sip their pints of bitter.
The Jew looks over at Piers and Dominic with their two gin and tonics –
The Jew says, ‘That’s not strictly legal, either, is it?’
Piers and Dominic shake their heads and sip their gin and tonics.
The Jew looks at the four men and their four drinks –
The Jew says, ‘That’s contempt, isn’t it?’
The four men nod their heads.
The Jew laughs. The Jew claps his hands. The Jew shouts, ‘Champagne, Neil.’
Don and Derek smile and drain their two pints of bitter –
Piers and Dominic frown and put down their gin and tonics –
‘Might it not be rather tricky to actually serve a writ on them?’ asks Dominic.
The Jew shakes his head. The Jew winks. The Jew raises his brandy glass –
‘Piers, get me the writ,’ he shouts. ‘Neil, get me the helicopter.’
The Jew buries his brandy in one. The Jew picks up the telephone –
‘Hi-ho. Hi ho,’ sings the Jew. ‘It’s back to work we all go.’
*
Diane picked Terry Winters up after the Executive. Terry watched her legs as she drove. Diane took the A630 to Doncaster. Terry touched her knees as she drove. Diane passed through Rotherham. Terry squeezed her legs as she drove. Diane came to Conisbrough. Terry put his hands up her skirt as she drove. Diane turned left by Warmsworth Primary. Terry put his hands between her legs as she drove. Diane parked in Levitthagg Wood. Terry pulled down her tights and knickers. Diane pulled up her skirt. Terry undid his trousers. Diane undid her blouse. Terry took out his cock. Diane straddled Terry Winters. Terry was going to be late for his meeting with Mohammed Abdul Divan.
The Mechanic had seen him once before. In 1975 –
A recruitment meeting at a Heathrow hotel.
General William Walters doesn’t remember the Mechanic. But the Mechanic remembers him –
The Apprehensive Patriot –
The former NATO Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces, Northern Command. Friend of the late Lord Mountbatten. Templer of Malaya –
The Duke of Edinburgh.
Founder or member of Red Alert/Civil Assistance. Royal Society of St George. The Unison Committee for Action. Great Britain 1975. Aims of Industry. Self-Help. Movement for True Industrial Democracy. National Association for Freedom –
Philip for President.
The General’s man pours the malts. His man serves them. His man leaves them.
The General raises his glass. He says, ‘One of Frank’s boys in Ulster, I hear.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the Mechanic says.‘I was, sir.’
‘Imagine you must have spent some time in the Darklands, then.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the Mechanic says again. ‘Rhodesia, sir.’
‘Bloody mess,’ says the General. ‘Bloody mess. What do you do now?’
‘I rob supermarkets and threaten striking miners, sir.’
The General nods. He gets up slowly. He turns to his window and his local view –
Lock Linnhe. Lismore Island. Kingairloch. The Sound of Mull.
‘Never really cared for her much,’ says the General. ‘Problem was she was always Airey’s girl. Better than Queen Teddy and all those other sausage jockeys. But still much too fond of the clipped-cock brigade for my liking –
‘Poor woman has had bad advice. In love with the sound of her own voice now. Thatcherism. Reaganism. Monetarism. Load of tosh-ism. Forms of Socialism in disguise. End up selling us all down the river for a few votes from the council houses. Not a government, they’re a cabal. Bunch of bloody Jews who can’t keep their filthy hands to themselves. Plain greedy, the lot of them. That’s their problem. Mines should be owned by the government. Gas, water and electricity. Like the army and the police. Privatize this. Privatize that. End up with the whole bloody country owned by foreigners. Crush Communism, trample down trade unionism. By all means. Of course, you do –
‘But you don’t sell the bloody silver to do it –
‘I told her straight, “Lie down with dogs, Hilda, and you’ll get up with fleas –”
‘But you see, the problem with most people is that they think they’re immortal. That life is an inexhaustible well. But, in truth, everything happens only a certain number of times and a very small number really. How many more times will we remember a certain afternoon in our childhood? A former friend we have not seen for many years? How many more times will we watch the full moon rise? Perhaps ten? Maybe not that. Yet it all seems endless. Bloody endless. But not to men like us, David. Not to us –
‘Men who have seen slaughter. Felt fear. Tasted terror –’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Men like us know some things are simply not for sale.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The General watches the Mechanic. The General nods. The General smiles –
The sun sets late and long over Lock Linnhe.
The General pours more malts. The General pats the Mechanic on his back –
The full moon rises before it wanes.
The General says, ‘There really is only one solution to this problem.’
Martin
and me, then? Go on, just you and me? But they just laugh and charge at me. Four of them – Me thinking, Stay on your feet, Martin. Stay on your fucking feet – Bu
t I go straight over with first two bloody punches. Fucking hell, I think. It’s hammer time for me – Wham. Bam. Thank you, ma’am – They keep on belting me with fucking truncheons. Battering me, they are. Fucking leathering me – This one saying over and over, Get up and fucking walk, cunt! Get up and fucking walk! Then van must have come and they sling us in back – Keith on one seat. Hands full of teeth and gums – Me on other. Blood everywhere – Pig van sets off, then stops again. Doors open and they only go and sling in Chris – Fucking mess and all. Right proud, they are, all pigs. Chris being big lad he is – Head busted open. They’re still hitting him as van sets off again – You’re fucked, you three, they tell us. Having you for riot – I didn’t bloody do anything, Chris says. I were just stood there – Shut it, Haystacks, they say. Belt him one again – He can’t even get up on seat. Just lies there between their boots – I keep it shut. More worried about Keith. He’s not right, you can tell. He needs a fucking hospital – I look out back. Looks like Laughton Common. Think maybe they’re taking us to Dinnington. But then van turns off. Down a lane onto Common – Fucking hell, I think. No police stations down here. No fucking hospitals, either – Nothing. No one – Begin to think this is it. End of road. Van stops. Doors open – They say, Get out, you fucking scum. Bastards – I get out first. I’ve got Keith by arm. Chris behind us – Middle of fucking nowhere. Just fields and stuff. Light now – Two coppers grab each of us. By us hair. By us throats – Pin us up by some fence posts. Top of this banking – Then Big Cheese gets out of front of van. He walks over to us – I can tell he’s worried about Keith and all. Has a good look in his gob – It’s like fucking Nicaragua, this. They’ll rape us and shoot us and stick us in this fucking ditch – But then Brass turns to me. He says, Open your mouth. I look him in his eyes. I open my mouth. He looks inside. He says, Right, shut it. He goes over to Chris. He says same. He does same. Chris says, I want to go home now. Brass looks at three of us. Brass shakes his head. He says, Go on Queen’s Highway again today and I’ll have fucking lot of you. Then he looks at his lads. He smiles. He gives them nod – Fucking bastards kick us down banking into ditch. Fuck off in their van – Bastards. Bastards. Fucking, fucking bastards – I lie there in that ditch and I want to scream at sky, I do – Fuck me. I wish them dead. I wish her dead. Her and every fucking cunt that ever voted for her – I get up off ground. I look round – Keith face down in ditch. Chris caught on some barbed wire – I turn Keith over. I wipe his face with my hand – Keith, Keith, I say. Come on, lad. Let’s have you up and home. He shakes his head. He’s still got his eyes closed. Come on, I say. We’ve got to get off – But he just shakes his head again. I try to prop him up against side of ditch – Then I go over to get Chris off wire. He’s in a bad way and all – His face and hands all cut. Head split open. Nothing left of his bloody coat – He says, Our Val’s going to kill us – She’s not, I say. Don’t be daft. Takes about five minute to get him free of that barbed wire. Then I say, Give us a hand with Keith, will you? What we going to do? he asks. Where we going to go? Nearer Dinnington now, I say. Go down their Welfare. Use their telephone. Let your Val know where you are. His Margaret. Try to get hold of Pete. Then find someone to give us a lift to a bloody hospital. Chris nods. He walks over to where Keith is. He’s got his eyes open now. I say, Back in land of living, are we? Keith shakes his head. He says, That what you call this place, is it? Come on, I say. Shut up and get up – He just looks at me, though. Into my eyes – He says, Know who fucking scab is, don’t you? Day 210. I still can’t believe it’s him. I know fucking bloke – I like him. I drink with him – He can be tight. He can be moody. He can be a bit of a slack bastard. Bit of a moaner – But he’s not a fucking scab. Not the Geoff Brine I fucking know – Just can’t believe it’s him. I go over there. I want to see him with my own two eyes. I want to talk to him. To ask
The Thirty-first Week
Monday 1 – Sunday 7 October 1984
The President loved Blackpool. The Illuminations. The trams. The Tower. The rock –
The Winter Gardens. The Conference. The Heroes’ Welcome. The full support –
‘– we are witnessing not the Fascism of Hitler or Mussolini, nor the military dictatorship of a Pinochet or Franco, but the creation of a sort of controlled democracy, a sort of top-hatted Fascism, a mixture of Thatcher’s Victorian values and modernistic techniques. An Orwellian Big Sister-ism where the workers are kept as they believe in their proper place – at the bottom of the heap. This is very much the ugly face of Conservatism which tramples on the more responsible values of the one-nation Macmillanites –’
Most of all the President loved to see their leader suffer. The Welsh Windbag. His face as red as his hair. The man who had described the President as the labour movement’s equivalent of a First World War general. The President loved to see him suffer as he listened –
‘– this Conference pays tribute to the historic struggle of the miners in 1984. This Conference deplores the total dishonesty of the Conservative government’s determination to attack the National Union of Mineworkers and the whole trade union movement by repressive legislation and an unprecedented and wholesale operation involving unlawful actions of the police, organized violence against the miners, their picket lines, and their communities by means of an unconstitutional and nationally controlled police force –’
The Conference applauded and cheered. Their leader writhed and squirmed –
The President was in his element.
Personally, Terry Winters preferred the Pleasure Beach. The Gold Mine –
The roller-coasters and the rides. The circus and the hats –
Kiss me quick. Squeeze me slow –
The element of surprise –
The man came down the aisle during the debate on local Labour Party reforms. Terry opened his eyes and there he was. The man was standing over them with a photographer. The man had papers in his hand. The man leant across Terry. The man dropped the papers into the President’s lap. The President looked up. The man told him, ‘These are committal proceedings to put you in Pentonville Prison for contempt.’
*
The Jew bounced back. He always does. That’s the Jew for you. Like a bouncing bomb –
And Blackpool had been a big blast. His finest hour –
Mission impossible –
Death or glory.
The High Court had issued the orders for contempt early on the Monday morning. The orders had to be served on Stalin that day. Had to be served or they’d expire –
Neil Fontaine picked up the process server at dawn in Mansfield –
Don Colby and Derek Williams had packed their snap.
Neil drove the server down to Battersea heliport at ninety miles an hour –
Don and Derek had kissed their wives goodbye.
The Jew was waiting with the writ in his flying-jacket and his goggles –
Two thousand pickets waiting for Don and Derek at the Manton gates.
The Jew flew Neil and the server the two hundred miles to the Winter Gardens –
Two thousand pickets waiting to tell Don and Derek the strike was official.
Neil had forged the passes to the floor. Neil had bribed the stewards on the door –
Two thousand pickets waiting to call Don and Derek scab, scab, scabs.
Their President looked down at the papers in his lap –
The strike was not official Don and Derek were not scabs.
The server had served the writ –
The President was in contempt. Don and Derek were back at work.
It was, without a doubt, the Jew’s finest hour to date –
Mission accomplished –
The impetus regained.
*
The dogs bark and bound along the beach at Brighton. They play among the pebbles. Tails up and tongues out. They tumble through the tide –
The Earth tilts. The Earth turns.
There are the things you know. The things you don’t.
The Earth hungry. The Earth hunts.
The Jew is back on the road again. The Jew has an extra-special guest to guide today –
The Prime Minister to the North Yorkshire Police Divisional Headquarters –
The very centre of the target of the latest back-to-work drive.
The Prime Minister is here to thank the troops. Her boys –
The Prime Minister rallies them on their return. Back from the battle lines –
From Brodsworth. From Denby Grange. From Kellingley. From Rossington –
The Prime Minister is impressed by the job they’ve done –
The length of the land. The breadth of Britain –
From Harworth to Hunterston. From Kiveton Park to Kent, Woolley to Wales –
Everywhere they’ve been –
From Ollerton to Orgreave. From the village streets to the picket lines –
Everything they’ve done –
‘Many, many thanks,’ she says. ‘We are all extremely grateful for what you have done, and so are the overwhelming majority of the British public –
‘Many, many thanks for all you have done.’
The Prime Minister leaves by the rear of the building. Her car is waiting –
The black Mercedes, too.
The Prime Minister sits in the back with the Jew in the car park.
The Prime Minister is here to thank the Jew. Her boy –
The Prime Minister is impressed by the job he’s done –
The length of the land. The breadth of Britain –
From Cortonwood to Claridge’s. From Shirebrook to the Strand, Blackpool to Brighton –
Everywhere he’s been –
From the front lines of the North to the pocket books of the South –
From the coalfields to the courtrooms –
Everything he’s done –
‘Many, many thanks,’ she says again. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
The Jew blushes. The Jew gushes. The Jew presents her with his latest works –
The Miners’ Dispute: A Catalogue of Violence –