‘Divvint worry, kidder, takes a while to get it. Took me long enough.’
Paul was stealing looks back up from whence they had come. ‘John, we’re away off down to Joe’s shop, if you want to come with.’
They turned off smartly into the narrow east–west side street of High Bridge, and John scuttled along in their stead. ‘That was a bit sticky back there,’ he ventured.
‘Keeps wuh on wor toes,’ Joe tossed back over his shoulder. ‘This one here but, he’s in bother already.’
Paul was smiling mildly. ‘Got me’sel into a barney a while back, see, John. On a picket. Done for breach of the peace, obstructing an officer.’
‘God. What happened?’
‘Got fined, banned from off the picket lines. And any Coal Board property.’
‘God. Isn’t it risky then? To still be – doing stuff?’
‘No choice, man. We need bodies. If you saw all the coppers they’ve got in.’
They had slipped into the narrow wind of Pink Lane, where Joe pulled up in front of a small commercial premises and fished in his pocket. The cramped window display was full of worthy faded paperbacks, and a painted awning read NINE HOURS BOOKS. Inside, John keenly inspected the shelves and stacked front tables – remainders and second-hand editions of Christopher Hill and E. P. Thompson. He had not known the Trades Union Congress published so widely. Mr Pallister pressed a button on an answering machine that clicked and whirred. Hearing a woman’s voice, he frowned and waved at his guests. ‘You’s gan on in the back, eh?’
Paul led John into a windowless boxroom set with a work desk and chair, one set of shelves and a metal filing cabinet. Paul did not sit, and still seemed preoccupied.
‘So what all else are you involved with? With the strike?’
‘Well, you’ve maybe heard, there’s a lot goes into stopping them shifting coal about the place. From the private mines, the open cast. Blyth. Tow Law.’ Paul grinned. They’re not Coal Board property.’
‘And how did you meet –?’ John jerked his head toward the door.
‘Joe? At a demo. He’s sound as hell is Joe. Martin Pallister’s dad, y’knaa? But he’s the real thing, Joe. Used to be foreman up at Alderton Works? Tell you, I’ve made some proper friends on this strike. Some right clever people. Lawyers, writers – it’s funny, but it’s true. I’ve lost friends and all.’ He shrugged. ‘Tell you, everything I thought before all this started? It was just wrong. I was dreaming.’
Joe entered, squeezing past his juniors, took the seat behind the desk and set down a biscuit tin on top of a ledger book. With his left hand he pushed the tin flush to his impaired right forearm and began to withdraw coins and notes carefully with the good hand, stacking the coins by denomination.
‘Can I ask?’ John ventured. ‘Why’s the shop called Nine Hours?’
‘You never heard of the Nine Hours’ Strike, kidder? Eighteen seventy-one, engineers striking for an hour off the working day. Started in Sunderland, spread to Newcastle. The bosses brung in foreign blacklegs, see, so the leaders went and petitioned Marx hisself. It were Marx translated their leaflets into foreign, to gan all round the continent.’
Marx himself! John was still marvelling quietly as Joe held up a pound note barely held together with tape. ‘Damn it, what bugger give us that?’
As Pallister groused into his chest, John glanced at Paul. ‘Are you okay for money?’
‘Well, I divvint buy so many records … But I’ve not got kids. Me girlfriend’s mam and dad have give us a hand. They’re not mad keen. Michelle’s not mad herself.’
A tutting sound issued from Joe, his eyes flicking upward. ‘Women, see, reactionary tendencies.’ But he was surely kidding, for his face had puckered in amusement, and he began to whistle a tune John recalled vaguely as one from My Fair Lady.
*
With a robber’s stealth John turned his key in the latch, then stood in the hushed hallway at the threshold of the dining room, cursing himself. Ahead of him the kitchen was deserted, but the oven was still lit and shuddering. A bad sign. He peered into the dining room through the doorjamb. Bill sat alone at the table, lit only by the sideboard lamps, a mug of tea steaming unattended before him. Similarly neglected was an unopened bottle of champagne, shiny blue ribbon tangled at its neck.
There was a heavy tread on the stairs behind him, and he turned to see his mother, wearing the white silk blouse she wore for special parties.
‘Where were you, John?’ she hissed. He held up his hands in futile contrition. ‘Just get in there and say you’re sorry, will you?’
He sloped into the dining room, Audrey behind him. His father looked up, wan, his silver helmet-fringe looking to have suffered a comb.
‘I’m sorry, Dad. I lost track of time.’
Bill let out a sigh that must have inflated within him over a silent hour or so. ‘You make time, John. You can always make time. When you’re bothered to.’
John realised to his great surprise that he would have rather his father had been blazingly angry. ‘There was this demo for the miners. I met a mate, we got talking.’
‘Oh, friend of yours, eh?’
‘A miner. From Sacriston. Bloke I met in London on that CND march.’
A compound of meagre causes to Bill’s hearing, John didn’t doubt. His father put his hands round his mug and stared down for some moments.
‘John, shall I tell you a story? Back in, must have been, nineteen fifty-one? My dad, your grandda, one morning he told us get dressed and took us down to Bearpark. To meet the training officer. I was sixteen. Wasn’t doing so badly at school. But there I was, Bearpark Colliery. And we were talking about a job. A job for me. And next thing I knew, I was in. Nee bother. I was in, cos me dad was a great bloke.’ John nodded, as he had been nodding, but Bill scowled. ‘Like that was all I was good for. See? It wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t what anyone I knew wanted. Who’d want to work down there? Your granddad even, you think he’d have chosen that?’
John mustered a shake of his head. ‘Sorry, what are you saying then? Them who are doing it now, they should just – go do something else?’
‘John, it’s just how the world is, man. People used to have jobs making wheels for wagons. They used to need an operator to dial America. Sometimes people just have to learn to do summat different.’
‘What if someone came to you and said, “Sorry, that job you’ve done all your life? We don’t need you any more, you’re fucking finished –”’ He saw the line of his father’s mouth harden at last. But Audrey was standing, with the help of a hand on the table, looking wan and queasy. And then Bill was on his feet too.
‘Are y’alright, love?’
‘No I’m not. I’ve got to take me pill.’
‘Do you need a hand, Mam?’ John gestured uselessly.
‘No, I said. But you two carry on by all means.’ Audrey pushed her chair in under the table and walked, a little ungainly, from the room. John stared at the dining-table surface, at the redundant champagne, then at his father.
‘She gets very weary sometimes,’ Bill muttered. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
John nodded, feeling worse than flattened, for he would have readily resumed their quarrel but that the teeth had been drawn from it so sharply. He would await another turn, then, to fight the good fight down to its right and dialectical end.
Chapter V
TYNESIDE CLASSICAL
Monday, 23 September 1996
‘I don’t like to tell you your business, Father, but this is the sort of decision you want to get right.’
Gore nodded resignedly, accepting that the argument was lost, his afternoon wasted. For half an hour he had been in conference across a counter from Mrs Paulette Wicker, tiny and strident professional seamstress of John Dobson Street. The project at hand was the commission of a formal cloth for the altar of the new church of St Luke’s. They had discussed material, agreeing that rayon was tasteless, linen much the best. They had discussed colour, th
ough Gore found his preference for oyster overruled, since purple was really the nicest and most popular. They had even discussed design and lettering, and Mrs Wicker let it be known she was very partial to cuneiform characters, most especially fish. Then progress had abruptly foundered on the question of the cloth’s dimensions, its exact width and fold and drop on each side. These were precision matters, and Gore now knew he was a fool not to have come armed with the information. But then how could he?
‘So you mean you’ve not actually got an altar?’
‘Not yet. Like I said, I’m starting from scratch. I thought I’d get the set dressings gathered first, you see.’
‘Well, that sounds very novel. Tell you what, I’ll keep a note we’ve spoken, and you come back to us when you know better what’s what, eh? Cos we don’t want to make a whoopsie, do we? Not at forty pound a yard.’
*
Shouldering his way down the pedestrian thoroughfare of Northumberland Street, Gore found his mood didn’t improve. It was strange to have quit the funeral-parlour murk of Mrs Wicker’s little shop and find himself among so many who were lively and purposeful. The street was a chattering hubbub of mercantile activity, the world and his wife and kids streaming in and out of Next, Primark, HMV, Dixons, Marks and Spencer – larking youths, overweight couples, pushchairs and wheelchairs, pensioners lugging bags with chrome handles. All had come to the high-street bazaar, heralded by synthetic pop music drifting from every doorway. It seemed almost a form of recreation, no purchase necessary. Gore was not himself enticed, not by any glaring window. So why were so many out here, in the midst of a working day, picking up stuff just to put it down again? By the time he reached Blackett Street he was musing over themes and keywords for a sermon. ‘Adrift’, ‘rudderless’, ‘beguiled’. ‘Zombies’ was probably too rude. ‘Commodity fetishism’ too Marxian. What, though, was the true meaning of ‘popular’? Might there be anything in the etymology he could make instructive use of?
Then he paused and looked all about him, from the Body Shop to Berry’s the Jeweller and Gregg’s the Baker. And he knew that if he could draw a fraction of such a crowd on a Sunday then he would count himself a lucky fool. Would any of these people count it an attractive proposition to sit and listen to him for an hour or more? To sit and be with each other, quietly and thoughtfully, without visible gain? To ask the question was to answer it.
He had reached the broad open square of the Monument. Earl Grey stood serenely on his Doric plinth, a small bird atop his Portland stone head, two hundred feet above the afternoon trade. Citizens clustered at the base, resting their feet, some unwrapping takeaway sandwiches. Gore was headed homeward, down the steep wind of Grey Street, past facades of fine stone, Athenian detail and symmetry, enduringly handsome despite the wear and tear and general distress of the years and the rain and the pigeons.
As he neared the entrance of the Theatre Royal he made out that directly before its stately portico of Corinthian columns a crowd of bodies were milling – clearly composed of members of the press as much as onlookers, for the crowd made a crescent that bore all the hallmarks of a photo opportunity, if not a car crash.
He inveigled himself into the back of the throng. All attention was facing forward, its unlikely object a portly man in a grey suit, his bootlace hair slicked over his scalp, a sheet of paper clutched in one hand that quivered as if in want of a drink. Beside him, a similarly nervy, somewhat androgynous young woman in a shapeless blue smock. Beside her – indeed towering over her, tucked into the base of a column – was an extraordinary oddity: a square-sided monolith, seemingly constructed of white Perspex, perhaps ten feet tall and five feet wide with a doorway cut into one side, immaculately blank and madly incongruous.
‘What’s going on?’ Gore whispered to a man adjacent who toyed with the levers and triggers of a Nikon camera and flash.
‘Better listen,’ came the shrugged response.
‘Well now, as you may know, I’m Bob Muir –’
A ripple of presumably sardonic cheers. Mr Muir’s scalp flushed.
‘Aye, aye, and I just want to say – briefly now, you’ll be glad to know – I want to say a few words about why we’re here, on behalf of the council.’
‘Sweating like a rapist,’ Gore heard the photographer mutter.
‘So, as you see, we’re here outside our marvellous theatre that we’ve given a bit help to in the past. And this street, you might know, is known all over, really, by all the knowledgeable people, for the fine architecture of Grainger and Dobson, which I’m told they call “Tyneside Classical”. Brilliant, eh?’ Muir cast a more hopeful eye about the gathering. ‘And, really, we’re in one of the best spots in the city right here, a conservation area, all your listed buildings and whatnot. Now, we know, of course, these great streets of ours have seen their better days. But it’s a big hope for us on the council that we can find a way to give ’em back their former glories. Revive the spirit of Grainger, if you want. So – and, well, but before that we want to start it all off by – aw, hang on, sorry.’ Muir peered avidly at his piece of paper.
‘Eh, Bob, I’ll bet you mean to tell us you’ll be listening to the people …’
The heckle – if heckle it was, for it issued affably from somewhere to Gore’s right – seemed to tickle the crowd more than anything the councillor had yet mustered, and Muir looked piqued. ‘Aye well, of course I defer to the Member for Tyneside West, knowing his expertise. You’re a good mile out of your jurisdiction but, Martin.’
‘Hey, Bob, man, I’m only here to help.’
Gore craned his neck and saw a familiar – an unmistakeable – figure, blue-eyed and blue-suited, rocking on his heels at the head of the spectators, fists in pockets, chomping on a wad of gum.
‘Pallister gets his oar in as usual …’ This muttered by another near to Gore, into the photographer’s ear – presumably his scribbling sidekick.
‘Right, so the name of this game is consultation with the people of Newcastle, what we want is, yes, to listen to local people and take their input onboard and – and do summat with it. So I’m delighted to unveil today this installation which we hope will get us kicked off. We were pleased to commission Anthea Morrow here, who’s a fine artist and a canny lass, and we thank her for her thought and effort on this here – piece.’
‘Can you tell us what it is, Bob?’ Gore’s neighbour had his biro poised.
‘Oh aye, well, it’s sort of a suggestion box, really, isn’t it, Anthea pet?’
Ms Morrow looked sceptical. ‘If you like. On a certain scale …’
‘Yes, that’s what it’s for, anyhow it’ll be stood here for a couple of months and – well, you can see – people can just walk in through the doorway there and write what they want to on the walls. Pens will be provided.’
‘You mean graffiti, Bob?’ enquired Martin Pallister, as if innocent.
‘Aye, like in a pub netty?’ offered one of the hacks, emboldened.
‘Well, eh, no. Because, inside, you’ll see, there’s, like, questions already printed on the walls – proper questions about the city and that. So I fancy there’ll be smarter things get said than what you’re saying. Any road, let’s just wait and see what the people say, eh? Let’s have a bit faith in that.’
‘C’mon, Bob, you can’t tell us lads aren’t gunna walk in there of a Friday night and piss in it.’
‘Eh now, fellas, I mean for God’s sake show a bit of enthusiasm. And a bit of respect for what Anthea’s done here.’ Some faltering applause was mustered, and one or two hoots. ‘Alright, whatever you’s want, get your bloody photos then.’
As the gathering began to disperse, Gore kept his eye on Martin Pallister, for the MP lingered meaningfully, apart from the VIP contingent yet fraternising easily with the members of the press – as though the day were all about him, or indeed had anything to do with him. Why did they pay him such courtesy in turn? Because he was better-dressed, better-groomed than the hapless Councillor Muir? It was, by
any standard, peerless effrontery. Discreetly Gore planted himself near enough to hear what sounded for all the world like a briefing.
‘… No, fine, look – off the record? I’m not knocking the intention. But it’s not just about intentions. It’s got to look professional, hasn’t it? You’ve got to put the proper frame round these things. If you want to get investors interested, developers onboard – which you have to. And they’re not mugs, not in those games. See, what bothers me is how many bloody meetings it took ’em all to decide this was a good idea.’
Gore wasn’t sure what to make of the little pantomime he had witnessed. Without doubt, there was disrepair in the heart of Newcastle – nothing much seemed thriving about it, between the greying gloom of these Victorian streets and the outright plastic horrors of the 60s and 70s, the likes of Eldon Square. Yes, the condition of Hoxheath was much the more dire. Yes, the council’s efforts today had been, perhaps, a little under-rehearsed, under-resourced – maybe a bit shallow, a token gesture even? And yet Gore found his sympathies resting with the harassed Muir rather than the self-professed know-all.
It was dancing in his mind now, a fancy to step forward, introduce himself anew to Martin Pallister, shake his hand, enquire after Susannah – see what he got back for his trouble. On reflection, though, this was not a hand he was well-disposed to shake. Did he have anything properly pleasant to say? No, so say nothing. Hadn’t this poser once presumed to tell the miners how to win a strike? How could a man face himself in the mirror after cashing in his former convictions for all the world to see? No, he could not and should not be taken seriously. Gore turned his face from the dwindling assembly.
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