‘Come on, Kelly man, you’ve been like the vanishing woman these past few months,’ Carol challenged. ‘And I bet you tell Sid it’s me you’re coming to see when you gan out. So where have you been going? And don’t tell me you’ve taken up night classes in flower arranging.’
Kelly just laughed. ‘Nothing so exciting. I work hard and I sometimes work late, and just as well for Sid that I do. At least we’ve got money coming in. You’re as bad as he is with your suspicious mind.’ Kelly hauled herself out of her chair - she hadn’t bothered to take her coat off since she’d come in. ‘Mind you, I’ve started evening classes in Spanish.’
‘Spanish?’ Carol gawped. ‘What on earth for?’
‘If I learn a bit of Spanish I might get a job as courier on Proud’s bus tours to Spain,’ Kelly grinned. ‘Better than being stuck in that grotty office all day, eh?’
Carol was amazed. Kelly wasn’t the travelling type; she had never been further than Blackpool before. ‘Aye, I’m sure it would. What does Sid say about it?’
Kelly gave an impatient huff. ‘He’s not interested in what I do at work. He’ll just have to lump it, ‘specially if I’m the one bringing in the wages. Anyway, he’s getting to travel all over just now with picketing. Doesn’t it piss you off that the lads are away having a good time, playing footy on the picket line, and we’re stuck at home trying to get by on the little we’ve got?’
Carol was taken aback by Kelly’s resentment.
‘I don’t think it’s a bundle of laughs being chased by the police and that,’ Carol answered, but felt strangely unsettled by the criticism.
‘Bollocks!’ Kelly sneered. ‘They love getting up in the middle of the night and sneaking off around the country trying to outdo the coppers. They haven’t had such fun since they were bairns playing knocky-nine-doors.’
‘Cynic,’ Carol accused, getting up to see her friend out. But she wasn’t going to let her get away easily. Even if Kelly was not in favour of the strike and was giving Sid a hard time about it, she knew her friend was loyal to their own kind and just needed a little persuasion to help.
‘You’ll come along and support me meeting then?’ Carol insisted.
‘Oh, Carol man, you know I hate meetings. Five years ago you would have a run a mile from all this boring committee stuff too.’
‘Five years ago there wasn’t a need to get involved. Now there is,’ Carol pointed out.
Kelly took the leaflet she held out and stuffed it in her coat pocket. ‘Maybes I will. If I’ve nowt better to do,’ she said, her round face puckering in a smile. ‘But I’m not going to sit around knitting socks for strikers or owt like that.’
‘No knitting, I promise,’ Carol laughed.
When the night came, Carol packed Laura off to bed and Mick down to the Welfare and spent a nervous half-hour pushing back the furniture and re-arranging the crisps and nuts, until Lotty arrived with a large bottle of wine.
‘No one’s turned up,’ Carol said in panic.
‘They will,’ Lotty reassured.
‘What if too many come and there’s nowhere to sit them all? And what are we going to say to them? Is it warm enough in here?’
‘Sit down,’ Lotty ordered, ‘and stop your fussing while I pour you a drink.’
Carol perched on a chair arm, but was on her feet in seconds when the doorbell rang.
Lotty winked. ‘They must’ve heard the bottle opening.’
In the end, fifteen women gathered in Carol’s cosy sitting room, squeezed on to chairs or kneeling on the floor by the fire. There were Stan Savage’s wife Maureen and their newlywed daughter Angela; Lesley Dimarco and her friend Dot, Sid’s older sister Joanne, along with two of her neighbours, May and June, from the new estate at the top of the bank. May and June were sisters; large, big-boned women with pale frizzy hair who argued and laughed in equal amounts. May’s cheerful dumpy daughter Louise was in Laura’s class at school. The rest of the women Carol only knew by sight or from serving in the boutique, except for the most surprising guest of all, Linda’s silent best friend, Denise. She had probably been dragged along by her mother, Evelyn Wilson, who lived two doors away.
It was like old times having Denise squatting on the floor, black leggings and heavy black boots crossed under her black skirt, her pale face sullen under the cropped black hair. Carol thought it seemed an age ago that she had given birth on the settee with Linda sprawled on the floor trying to watch television, while Denise rapidly withdrew.
‘I haven’t seen you for months,’ Carol said. ‘Are you still working in that shoe shop over Whittledene?’
Denise shook her head. Her mother translated. ‘They laid her off after eleven months so she couldn’t be classed as permanent staff. Probably take her back on for the summer. But I thought she could make herself useful in the meantime.’
‘It’s good of you to come, Denise,’ Carol encouraged. ‘Seen anything of Linda lately?’
‘Na,’ Denise mumbled.
‘Used to be her shadow, our Denise,’ Evelyn said. ‘Doesn’t know what to do with herself with Linda living away.’
‘If she comes to visit me,’ Carol answered, ‘I’ll let you know and you can come round.’ In fact, she rarely saw Linda these days. Last week, she and Dan had appeared for Sunday lunch round at Septimus Street for the first time in months. Linda, now obviously pregnant, had been cheerful, but Dan had looked pale and surly. He had tucked into the roast chicken and spring vegetables from Charlie’s allotment as if he had not eaten for a week. Discovering that Dan had spent the last month sitting at home watching TV, Mick had encouraged him to go picketing and Dan had shown interest when told he would get a pound a day for his trouble. Carol had tried to take Linda aside and ask how things really were, but she brushed her away with the assurance that everything was fine.
Denise’s head drooped further at the possibility of seeing Linda and Carol was not sure if this was a nod of acceptance or a rebuff to mind her own business. She escaped to the kitchen where Lotty was pouring wine into a selection of glasses and tea cups. Her mother-in-law gave her a reassuring wink and said, ‘Ready, steady, go!’
At first everyone was a bit awkward, but by the time the wine had been drunk and the coffee and snacks handed round, the room was buzzing with talk and May’s loud cackle, and Carol had to open the window for air. Laura appeared in her nightie like a small pink-cheeked sprite.
‘I can’t sleep, you’re making too much noise,’ she accused, before Carol had time to send her back to bed.
‘Come here, pet,’ May Dillon insisted, pulling Laura on to her ample knee, ‘and tell Auntie May what you and our Louise have been getting up to at school.’
‘Why are you called May?’ Laura demanded. ‘And Mrs Burt’s called June.’
May chuckled. ‘Cos I was born in May and me sister was born in June. Imagine if we’d been born in November?’
It took Laura a moment to work this out and then her impish face broke into a grin.
‘Or February!’ Laura giggled. ‘Or March, or August, or—’
‘That’s enough,’ Carol warned.
Laura ignored her mother. ‘Or what if you and Mrs Burt had been boys,’ she tittered. ‘Would you still have been called May and June?’
May’s face wobbled like blancmange as she laughed with the girl. ‘No, we’d have been called Monday and Friday!’
Laura went into a giggly heap.
Lotty saw Carol’s cross look. ‘Let her stay. She doesn’t like to miss out and we’ll not be much longer.’
Carol could see that the women wanted to make a fuss of Laura and gave in. She went and made more coffee and by the time she returned, Kelly had turned up.
‘Hope I’ve missed the boring bit, have I?’ She laughed and squatted down beside Stan Savage’s daughter, Angela. ‘Saw your wedding picture in the paper - dress looked fantastic.’
Thanks,’ Angela beamed. ‘Carol helped make it.’
‘Clever-clogs Carol, eh?’ Kelly g
rinned at her friend. ‘Got any lager? Coffee makes me wee all night.’
Lotty gave her a disapproving look and Carol intervened quickly. ‘I think there’s a can in the fridge.’
Once Kelly had been quietened with her drink, Lotty took control again and was soon organising a rota for the soup kitchen.
‘What about the ones living out of the village?’ Joanne asked. ‘Maybes there’re families living too far out to come to the Welfare every day.’
‘Or too proud,’ Kelly added.
‘This isn’t charity,’ Lotty bristled. ‘It’s the least the men deserve.’
‘Aye, but people have their pride,’ Kelly insisted, ‘and some would rather sit at home and starve than be seen coming for free meals.’
‘She has a point,’ Carol agreed. ‘We don’t want families suffering more than they have to, and some lads might stay away whatever we tell them.’
‘Aye, it’s the families miss out if the men are too proud,’ June nodded. ‘It just means what little they’ve got has to go round further.’
‘And I’ll tell you something else. My Marty still expects his bit of pocket money for a pint at the social and his packet of fags,’ May complained. ‘But he says we can’t afford Easter eggs this year for the bairns.’
‘Your Marty says that every year,’ her sister June scoffed.
Carol waited for May to explode, but she just laughed. ‘Aye, Marty’s a miserable bugger, isn’t he?’
‘Well, I’ve a husband and two sons on strike,’ cut in Evelyn Wilson, ‘and Denise here is unemployed. I get nothing for the lads from Social Security. Apart from what Denise gets, we’ve to manage on six pounds forty-five a week. And me with five grown-ups to feed!’
The room suddenly broke into a heated discussion on benefits and the DHSS and how some were being paid a week in arrears because of the backlog of claims. Carol looked at Lotty for help, thinking that the whole meeting was going to degenerate into a grouse about their husbands and the DHSS. But Lotty let them carry on for several minutes while they aired their problems and shared their worries. Then she told Evelyn to go and see Charlie at the Welfare in the morning.
‘He can help sort out your late payments and see what else can be done,’ Lotty said. ‘And that goes for any of us who’re in trouble. Go to the union or come and tell one of us. Don’t sit at home worrying and letting things get worse. We’ve all got to help each other out. Now let’s get back to Joanne’s point about the families who can’t use the soup kitchen.’
‘We need to make a register of families - how many kids they’ve got, that sort of thing,’ Carol suggested. The others agreed and Lotty swiftly delegated the job to Carol and Joanne.
‘What we need to do is make up food parcels for them,’ Lesley suggested. ‘We could try and do it weekly.’
‘Aye, and we could put bits of toiletries and baby stuff in for the young families,’ Angela added. ‘Every bit helps.’
Kelly nudged her. ‘Have you something to tell us?’ she teased.
Angela blushed. ‘I hope not! Can’t afford a bairn this year.’
Carol gave Lotty a wary look, knowing she would be thinking about Linda whose baby was due in July.
‘We’ll have to do a canny bit of fundraising,’ June Burt commented. ‘One social isn’t going to help very much.’
‘We could go round the pubs collecting,’ Carol suggested.
‘Eeh, Marty wouldn’t let me do that!’ May said.
‘I’ll volunteer,’ Kelly laughed.
‘The idea is to make money, not spend it,’ Lotty said tartly.
‘Let’s decide on fundraising at the next meeting,’ Lesley intervened.
‘Where shall we have it?’ June asked.
Carol and Lotty exchanged glances, encouraged by the women’s enthusiasm to carry on.
‘I’ll book a room down the Welfare,’ Lotty decided, ‘so no one has to put themselves out. Then we can have a drink in the bar after.’
‘I might just come again then,’ Kelly whispered loudly.
‘There’s one other thing,’ Lotty continued, ignoring her. ‘There’s a bus going from the village to a rally in the Midlands. Our men are getting criticised in the media and the union want to show the country that most of us are behind the strike. I think some of us women should go to show our support for the lads - let the ordinary people of this country know what we’re really fighting for. Anybody want to come?’
There was a buzz of interest. Lotty had already mentioned it to Carol, but she had dismissed the idea because she had Laura to look after.
Just then her daughter piped up, ‘Can we go on the bus, Mam?’
Carol looked at Laura’s excited face and then at Lotty.
Her mother-in-law shrugged. ‘It’s a day out, I suppose. Why not take the bairn?’
‘Please, Mam!’ Laura pleaded. ‘It’ll be like the Big Meeting.’
Carol thought of the great annual gathering of miners in Durham with its carnival atmosphere and was carried away with excitement too. There might not be a gala in Durham this year if the strike dragged on into the summer, so why not take Laura to the rally?
‘If your dad agrees,’ Carol said.
‘Great!’ Laura squealed. ‘He will.’
At that moment, Carol was engulfed by a sense of togetherness and optimism for the future. There was such a will among them to pull together and help each other that anything seemed possible. With neighbours and friends standing up for what was right, the country would soon see the justice of their strike. How could they not win? Carol thought happily.
Chapter Fifteen
In the end, Mick could not go with them because he was sent on picketing duty to a local power station, but Carol and Laura went with Lotty and some of the new women’s support group on the bus. Kelly’s father was driving and they enjoyed the journey down, singing local songs and swapping news. Some, like Carol, had not been out of Brassbank all year and there was a holiday atmosphere on the coach.
‘Look at that, Denise is wearing grey instead of black today,’ Lotty whispered. ‘It must be spring.’
The night before, Joanne and June had come rushing round to Carol’s, saying they should have a banner to wave at the rally. Carol had fetched an old cot sheet and sent Joanne round to Val’s flat to borrow some marker pens. Mick had come in late to find them crouched on the floor designing their banner.
‘What are we calling ourselves?’ Carol asked.
‘Miners’ Wives Support Group?’ June had suggested.
Carol had thought of Denise. ‘We’re not all wives. Some are daughters, girlfriends . . .’
‘Women’s Support Group, then,’ Joanne had said.
‘We should say something about miners,’ June had argued, ‘so they know what we’re supporting.’
‘Miners’ Women’s Support Group?’ Carol had said.
‘Brassbank Miners’ Women’s Support Group,’ June had said, her round face pink with enthusiasm.
Mick had laughed. ‘You buggers, you’ll need a king-size bedsheet for all that.’
Carol had given him a playful push. ‘You could make yourself useful and find us some poles to tie the banner to.’
By midnight they had the banner marked out in black pen and glued to two old fence posts that Mick had scavenged from his father’s allotment in the dark.
‘That’s another job for the women’s group,’ Joanne had said, as they eyed the makeshift banner. ‘We’ll make a banner to be proud of for the next rally.’
Now the banner was draped across the back window of the bus and some of the overtaking cars hooted their support, giving Carol a thrill of pleasure. As a young teenager she had danced with Kelly in front of the lodge banner at the Durham gala, wearing a kiss-me-quick hat, when her parents had thought her safely in the charge of Auntie Jean. They would have gone into orbit, Carol thought, if they’d known that Jean had encouraged her to join in and had herself worn a hat declaring ‘Kiss me slowly, squeeze me tight’. B
ut her aunt had assured Carol that Nancy had danced into Durham behind the Brassbank band as a girl and they were just keeping up tradition. Even now, Carol found it impossible to imagine her mother dancing under anyone’s banner and wondered when it was that she had changed into the insecure woman who hid behind her rich friends and possessions, frightened of standing up to her husband on anything.
But today Carol resolved not to think of her parents as she marched with the banners again, this time under one of her own making, with her young daughter clutching her hand in excitement. However crude or ill-made the banner was, it was the symbol of the women around her, showing that they were active too. For a day they had left their homes and mundane chores, turned their backs on worries about money and mortgages and were going to march through the streets of a Nottinghamshire town to show the world that they cared.
‘Give us a B, give us an M, give us a W, give us an S, give us a G,’ Joanne and June chanted at the back of the bus. ‘Brassbank Miners’ Women’s Support Group!’
‘Give us a can of pop, June man,’ May cackled. ‘I’m gasping.’
Carol laughed and hugged Laura in excitement.
Mick stood ranked with the other pickets across the roadway leading into the plant. They waited in their dozens, their jackets discarded in the warm spring sunshine, sharing cigarettes and jokes with the miners who had travelled from Scotland and Yorkshire. Mick and Sid argued about football while Eddy eulogised about Kevin Keegan.
‘He’s the pride of Newcastle United,’ Eddy declared.
‘Aye, Stan’s hoping he’s going to give away the trophies at the sportsmen’s dinner next month,’ Mick said.
‘Oh, aye?’ Sid ridiculed. ‘Bet that’s been in Keegan’s diary all year. Dream on, Stan Savage.’
Mick was glad he and Sid were back to their old joking friendship. He had had words with Sid for voting against the strike, but Sid had been adamant. ‘I didn’t want to strike, but you should know I’ll not gan against the union. Nowt will make me cross a picket line, Mick man.’
Two police vans drew up and extra constables climbed out. Murmurs went around that a delivery was due soon.
Durham Trilogy 03. Never Stand Alone Page 17