The Heights

by Juliet Bell

  A line of vans and buses was making its way along the road from town. In the front were two white police vans. Behind them was a bus, its windows blacked out to hide the occupants. And behind the bus, two more police vans.

  ‘Let’s go down there.’ Heathcliff scrambled to his feet.

  Without a word, Cathy followed him.

  They stopped at the side of the road, where a caravan sat on the grass. It was covered with posters and graffiti and served the miners as headquarters for the pickets. It also served Cathy and Heathcliff as a hiding place.

  ‘Scabs! Scabs!’

  The chant was louder now. Harder. Aggressive and angry. The miners were pushing forward against the police lines.

  The first police van was almost at the gates when the miners surged forward as one. They made it to the bus and were pounding its sides with their fists.

  The doors of the first two police vans swung open and officers poured out. They were in full riot gear, helmeted and armed with truncheons. The miners began to fall back at the sight.

  ‘They’re going to lose,’ Heathcliff said. ‘Come on.’

  He grabbed a large rock lying near his feet and darted forward. Cathy tried to grab his arms and hold him back, but he was gone. She followed him into the melee.

  ‘Fucking scabs!’

  The voices around Ray were getting angrier by the moment. The jostling gave way to serious shoving as the men tried to force themselves between the bus and the gates to the pit.

  He looked up at the sides of the bus. Through the blacked-out windows, he could see faint shapes within. Who were these men, he wondered, who would betray their brothers, who were not prepared to fight for the cause? Were they frightened, those men inside the bus, as they listened to the fury all around them? They should be, because Ray was beginning to be a little afraid himself.

  A swinging truncheon clipped his shoulder. There wasn’t much force behind it, but it hurt, nonetheless. The doors of the second police van opened and another wall of blue poured out. The bus was moving forward again, forcing its way inexorably through the heaving mass of men. A huge stone flung with great skill and force suddenly crashed against the helmet of the policeman in front of Ray. The man staggered and started to go down. This close, Ray could see his face through the visor, frozen with panic. If he fell beneath the heaving mass of angry men, or beneath the bus wheels…

  He was wearing the uniform, but he was just a boy. Not much older than Mick. The pickets weren’t the only lines Ray Earnshaw wouldn’t cross.

  Ray reached out a hand and grabbed the copper’s arm. With a grunt of effort, he pulled the lad back onto his feet. He saw the relief and gratitude on the boy’s face for a second before the surging crowd separated them.

  Ray was pushed back against a solid wall of men behind him. He looked around, but knew none of the faces. These weren’t his men. They were from other pits. Their faces were hard. There’d been a lot of violence on some of the lines, and for the first time, Ray was uncertain. He believed in the cause. He didn’t want the scabs working. But this was starting to look like war. And he was too old for a war. He had a houseful to feed and he coughed and wheezed every morning when he woke up. A war was what it was going to take, but without some cash in their pockets, Ray didn’t think any of them were going to last that long.

  The crowd around him shifted, and Ray found himself near the edge of the crowd. He turned.

  ‘What the…’

  His daughter stood in front of him at the edge of the crowd. ‘What are you two doing ‘ere?’ He stepped forward and grabbed Cathy’s arm. ‘This is no place for kids. Get out of here.’

  Cathy shook off his hand, her face fixed in defiance. Heathcliff was at her side, as he always was. A shout went up behind them as another police van drew forward to be immediately surrounded by shouting, angry men.

  ‘It’s not safe. Get her out of this,’ he told Heathcliff.

  Another flurry of violence erupted near the police van. Ray shoved his way forward. He had to try to calm things down. At this rate, someone was going to get seriously hurt. He was close to the van when he heard a noise. Short and sharp, almost like a gunshot, followed by a roar from the crowd. A second sound overtook the first as the door of the police van shot open and the occupants poured out. Ray could see one man was bleeding from a wound on the side of his neck. His eyes as he scanned the crowd were full of unmasked hatred.

  ‘A nail gun!’ The words were passed through the crowd. Ray cursed silently. What sort of a fool would fire a nail gun into a police van full of men?

  Then he saw Mick. His son was standing near the van, looking like some wild creature. His eyes were wide, his mouth spread in a grin. He looked almost joyful.

  ‘God help us.’ Ray scanned the crowd, desperately looking for the nearest familiar face. ‘It was Mick,’ he said. His mate closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Just get him out of here.’

  ‘Right. Come on.’

  A handful of men surged forward again, surrounding Mick even as the wounded policeman began scanning the faces of the crowd. Ray raised his arms and locked them around the shoulders of the men either side of him, protecting the boy.

  ‘It’s the Earnshaw kid. We gotta get him outta here.’

  If Ray could hear them, so too could the police. That wasn’t good. Ray started chanting, and the men around him joined in as the bus inched forward towards the gate. They were going to lose this one, but Ray’s mind was elsewhere. He believed in this strike. He believed in the union. The violence he’d seen on the lines wasn’t his way. And now the boy he had raised as his own had crossed a line equally as important as the picket. Mick might not be his flesh and blood, but he’d promised to look after him, like he’d promised the lads on his shift he’d look after them. And a promise was still a promise.

  And it wasn’t done yet. He’s seen the look in that policeman’s eyes. He’d been lucky to escape with just a scratch on his neck.

  He wasn’t about to forget.

  Mick sucked the last of the beer out of the can, then crushed the thin metal between his hands. As he did, the front door crashed open.

  ‘Mick?’

  He said nothing. He carefully placed the crushed can on the kitchen table and got to his feet. He could hear the anger in his father’s voice and his hands curled into fists.

  ‘What the bloody hell were you thinking?’ Ray stormed as he walked into the kitchen. ‘A nail gun? For fuck’s sake, boy. You could have killed one of them.’

  ‘Would have served them right,’ Mick muttered. ‘Anyway, I didn’t do it.’

  With surprising speed, Ray took a step closer and cuffed Mick around the side of the head. It wasn’t a hard blow, not enough to set his head spinning. It was the kind of blow a father gave a child, not even a proper man-to-man punch.

  ‘I said, I didn’t do it.’ Mick drew himself up. ‘Dunno who did, but I’m glad they did. I wish they’d killed one of them cops.’

  Mick wasn’t sure what he wanted to see in his father’s face. What reaction he wanted to provoke. Just something to show that his father gave a shit about what happened to him.

  ‘You’re an idiot.’ Ray’s voice dripped with contempt. ‘Kill a pig and the whole bloody lot of them will be down on us like the wrath of God.’

  ‘That don’t scare me.’

  ‘Well, it should,’ Ray said. ‘Right now I don’t care if they lock you up and throw away the key, but I’m not having anyone saying it were the Earnshaws that sent this whole place up in flames.’

  ‘I tell you, I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘I saw you carrying the nail gun.’

  Mick hesitated, tempted to lie. A sound in the doorway caught his attention. Cathy had come into the room. She was staring at him, her eyes wide open. And behind her, Heathcliff stood, his lips twitching as if trying to keep a grin off his face.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ Mick said again. ‘Well, I had the gun, but I didn’t
use it. Someone pulled it out of my hand. Haven’t seen it since. I swear.’

  His father leaned on the table and coughed a long, hacking cough. Mick looked across the room again at Heathcliff.

  ‘It were him,’ Mick said. ‘That Heathcliff. It were him that did it.’

  His father’s open palm caught the back of his head again, this time hard enough to snap his jaws together. He tasted warm blood from his bitten tongue.

  ‘That’s right. Try and blame a child. Coward. You haven’t even got the courage to stand up for what you did.’ Ray Earnshaw shook his head. ‘You’re no son of mine.’

  Silence fell over the kitchen. Mick frowned. That was just his father’s anger talking, wasn’t it? Okay, they’d not always been close, but…

  Two short, sharp honks from a car horn fell into the silence in the kitchen.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Ray. ‘Pete from the mine is outside waiting for you. He’s got a cousin in the building trade in Manchester. Get a few things and get in that car.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want you gone before anyone has the chance to ask questions. And they will. Get in that car and get out of here. I don’t want to see your face again.’

  Mick stared at his father, but Ray turned away. He walked through into the kitchen, and slammed the door behind him. Mick knew he had no choice. Brushing past Cathy and Heathcliff, he took the steps two at a time to his room. He grabbed a sports bag and thrust some clothes into it. A couple of minutes later he was back down the stairs. He looked into the back room, but his father wasn’t there. Only Cathy and Heathcliff stood watching him silently.

  Heathcliff’s eyes were shining. Heathcliff was to blame for this. For everything. Life had been shit since that brat arrived.

  ‘This doesn’t end here.’ Mick directed the words at Heathcliff in a voice that was all the more dangerous for being soft. ‘Just you wait.’

  One of these days, Mick was going to get his own back.

  He turned and walked out the front door.

  Chapter Nine

  February, 1985

  ‘Godless heathens,’ Father Joseph muttered as a white police van swept past. He pulled his heavy black coat tighter against the bitter February winds. The hem of his cassock was damp with the rain as it flapped around his ankles, but at least the snow was gone.

  The mid-morning light was dim and dreary, and his stomach was rumbling as he closed the church gate behind him and set out along the road into the town. His Ash Wednesday fast was two days away. To be followed by forty days of Lent. Father Joseph observed the fast with passion. But there was nothing in the canon law to say he couldn’t have one good meal before Lent started. God knew he’d been hungry more than once in this past year.

  Father Joseph turned the corner into the high street. It was deserted. All the men were down the picket line. Most of the women too. Those that weren’t stayed home. There was no money to spend, so no reason to come up the shops. The pub was empty too. For a long time, the pub had stayed open. It was a place for the men to cheer themselves on with strong words and talk about their upcoming victory. Then it had become a place to meet and console themselves. Now, there was no money for beer.

  Father Joseph could have gone into the pub for a shot of the whisky he so enjoyed. The church always had money, and not all of his stipend had gone into the pool to feed the mine families. But he didn’t want to get aggro from some parishioner who didn’t understand that his situation was rightly different to theirs.

  And he did have that one last bottle stashed back at the rectory, jealously guarded and eked out for almost a year of this cursed strike. There was one shot left. Perhaps tonight…

  The sound of laughter caused him to stop and turn.

  A few yards behind him, two figures darted out from behind the deserted pub. He knew them in an instant.

  ‘Catherine Earnshaw. Heathcliff. Come here. Immediately.’

  The two paused in mid-flight and turned to look at him. Father Joseph frowned as Cathy’s hand closed around the boy’s. They shared a look that was so intense and so private it was almost like they were hearing each other’s thoughts. Then they walked towards him, their hands still linked.

  ‘What do you two think you’re doing?’ Father Joseph demanded. ‘Come with me.’ He grabbed the girl by the arm to drag her back around the corner. As he did, the youth at her side made a strangled sound in his throat. If he’d been a dog, he would have been growling. Father Joseph would have crossed himself, had he not needed to hang on to the girl.

  The wall behind the pub was covered in graffiti. Two fresh paint cans lay tossed to one side on the footpath. One end of the wall glistened with fresh paint. Cathy, it said, in huge letters.

  Father Joseph turned to Heathcliff. ‘You did this?’

  The two shared another look, but said nothing. Nor did they hang their heads in shame, as rightly they should. In fact, the girl lifted her eyes to his face, her large brown eyes shining with wickedness as her lips curled into a smile.

  By Jesus and all the saints, the girl was trying to tease him. But she was just a child. Father Joseph took a closer look. The way the girl looked at Heathcliff was nothing short of sinful.

  Before he could say another word, the two turned and ran down the street. Cathy, in hand-me-down trousers that were far too tight for her, paused and flung a final glare back at the priest.

  They disappeared down a side lane and were gone. He knew they’d be heading up into the blue hills. Well, it was time that was stopped. The good Lord only knew what they were doing all alone up there and unsupervised. Ray Earnshaw was a good man, but he’d been neglecting those two since his harlot of a wife ran off. No more, Father Joseph vowed. Those children had to be brought back under control before the devil took them.

  He turned around, all thoughts of shopping for his supper gone. He looked across the valley towards the mine. The crowd around the gates seemed even larger than usual. The newspapers were predicting that the strike was almost over. That Thatcher had won. Anyone looking at the picket line would disagree. There were more miners there now than ever before. They had come from far and wide to stand behind the lads from Gimmerton.

  Movement at the base of the blue hills caught his eye. It was too big to be those kids. Vehicles. Horse trailers, and that meant mounted police. This time, Father Joseph did cross himself. He’d seen the violence from the other pits on the telly. May all the saints preserve them; today it was Gimmerton’s turn.

  He began to run towards the bridge over the stream. He had to warn the miners what was coming. Help them prepare. And God help him, he would stand by their side against the heathen police.

  He was gasping for breath as he crossed the bridge and started up the hill towards the mine gates. He could hear the noise; the chant as familiar to him as the Lord’s Prayer.

  ‘Miners united will never be defeated.’

  He rounded the last corner and slid to a halt, taking in the scene in front of him.

  The pickets had formed a long line, three or four men deep across the road, blocking the gates of the pit. Opposite them, twice that number of police were standing, protected by their shields, and with truncheons at the ready. And behind them, Father Joseph could see the mounted police moving into formation.

  There was an almighty uproar to his left. Some of the lads had thrown their weight and a couple of crow bars at a brick wall which was now falling around them. Willing hands were reaching for the bricks. Ammunition for the battle to come.

  Father Joseph felt his legs begin to shake. He could not have moved even had he wanted to.

  With another roar, the strikers launched a hail of bricks at the police, and surged forward. The police lines held for a few heartbeats, then they began to fall back. A couple of men were dragged to safety by their neighbours as the solid wall of blue began to disintegrate. A long whistle blast sounded, and the police began to fall back at a run. Opening a wide path, down which the horses were now advancing at a c
anter.

  Father Joseph could see the fear on the faces of the miners. There was Ray Earnshaw, right in the middle of the line. Ray’s face stood out for a second, white among the dark clothes that surrounded him. And then everything was confusion. Miners running in every direction. People yelling. Anything that could be picked up was being thrown. So much anger. Between the miners and the police, between the men driven back to work by starvation and those determined to hold out. A man could fall in a melee like that and nobody would ever be able to say what caused it.

  ‘Mick! Mick! Earnshaw!’ Mick turned off his drill and looked towards the voice. The gaffer jerked his thumb towards the doorway of the half-finished new-build. ‘Your girl’s in the office.’

  ‘Who?’ Mick had a girl, but he’d been keeping that pretty quiet. He didn’t fancy the comments and jokes he heard every time another one of the lads fell by the wayside. The whip-crack mimes and ‘under the thumb’ jokes. And the other stuff. The jokes about the size of her boobs and arse, over cards when they’d finished up onsite. He wasn’t having that. She was a special, his Frances, a cut about the Sharons and Julies he usually got off with.

  Doug shrugged. ‘Some blonde bint.’

  Mick put his tools down and took the two-minute walk across the site to the foreman’s portakabin. Frances really was a bit of all right. He’d met her at his digs. It was mainly builders and apprentices, but the three rooms on the top floor were all girls. Dancers. Two of them were right stuck-up, but Frances was different. She’d always smiled at him when they passed on the stairs, even when he was staggering back after a skinful. He didn’t do that so much any more. He spent more time with Frances and less down the pub. He was saving his money because he had plans, he did, and those plans involved Frances. Now, she was standing on her own in the middle of the cramped room, not sitting on the orange plastic chair. She had arms wrapped tightly across her body. Mick moved towards her and she stepped back. ‘Have you heard the news?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nah. Can’t hear the radio. Have to wear these things.’ He tapped the set of ear protectors hanging round his neck.