In the early afternoon her father drove out of the pit yard. She ran at him, shouting, and hammered on the car for him to stop.
He wound down the window. ‘Get in,’ he said curtly.
They drove in stony silence along the Quarryhill road until the turnoff to Granville House.
‘I don’t want to come in,’ Carol told him as he parked in front of the house. ‘I just want you to explain why you’re trying to crucify my family.’ She glared at him.
He turned to face her in the car. He looked old. ‘I had no choice.’
‘Of course you have a choice, you’re the manager! Or so you’ve never tired of telling me.’
‘Listen, Carol. This is between you and me. We’ve been told to take a tough stand against the criminal element,’ Ben said stiffly.
‘You mean the Government’s told you to get rid of the activists?’ Carol said with scorn. ‘You know the Todds aren’t criminals.’
‘Mick’s been to prison, for God’s sake!’ Ben lost his temper. ‘I should’ve sacked him long ago.’
‘So why didn’t you?’ Carol demanded. ‘So I’d still bring Laura to see you?’
He did not answer.
‘You let us go on all these months thinking Mick still had a job and yet all the time you planned to get rid of him. He was one of your hardest workers, you’ve said so yourself. You’ve deceived us all!’
‘I didn’t mean to,’ Ben grew agitated. ‘I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. If he’d come back to work sooner like Dan or Sid Armstrong—’
‘Like Sid?’ Carol was contemptuous. ‘You know Mick would never have crossed the picket line. He’d rather die.’
‘What do you expect me to do, Carol?’ Ben said impatiently. ‘Is there any point to this outburst, or have you just come here to argue as usual?’
She looked at him long and hard, trying to control her frayed temper. When she spoke again, it was with a quiet, intense voice.
‘I’m appealing to you to take Mick and his father back on,’ she said. ‘Please. They’ve gone through enough. I lost Mick for three months while he was in prison. The courts punished him for what he did to Dan. Don’t punish him twice by taking away his job. It’s all he’s got. Mick lives for the pit, you know that.’ Carol’s voice wavered. ‘And I don’t think I could bear him not working again. I’ve had it up to here, Dad,’ she said, touching her forehead. ‘I can’t take any more.’
Ben saw the tears in her eyes and it struck him deep inside. He did not know if he loved or hated this young woman sitting beside him; he had felt both emotions. They had argued and disagreed all her life. But he was in awe of the way she pleaded now on her husband’s behalf; he had thought her too proud. And at that moment he was in no doubt of the strong love Carol had for Mick Todd. At the time he had thought she had only married Mick to defy him. Now he was ashamed of such a thought.
Would that his own marriage had been half as happy, he thought sadly. He knew Nancy did not stay with him out of love, merely security. Yet perhaps even he was no longer that secure. He was full of disillusion about how the strike had been handled and hijacked by the politicians and he feared for all their futures, but he could not say this to his daughter.
‘Carol,’ he said, feeling very tired, ‘I never wanted things to turn out like this. Brassbank is my life too. I know how Mick feels about the pit. But I’m under pressure. There’s a new manager being brought in under me, one of the new breed, from outside the industry. There’s very little I can do about the sackings.’ He saw the look of despair on her face and knew he would never be forgiven. ‘Look, I’ll see what I can do about Charlie. His sentence was suspended. There might be some leeway there. But Mick,’ he steeled himself to be firm. ‘I just couldn’t get away with taking him back on. There would be uproar. He put a man in hospital.’
‘For half a day!’ Carol protested.
They lapsed into tense silence.
Then she fixed him with her green eyes, always so sensuous and dangerous, but now ringed with fatigue. ‘Just tell me this. Would you have taken him back on if he’d scabbed, despite his criminal record?’
Ben flushed, offended by the question, yet knowing she deserved a truthful answer.
‘Probably,’ he admitted. ‘We were under enormous pressure to get anyone back to work.’
‘That stinks,’ Carol said bleakly and opened the car door. ‘Aren’t you just a little bit ashamed of the way your own men have been treated?’
Ben could not answer. He was stung by her words. She was right. Deep down he was ashamed that hardworking men like Mick would never work in the pits again, penalised for remaining loyal to their union and sticking to their principles. He had worked with such men all his life and he was not one of those who branded them troublemakers, only those who did not know them called them that.
Carol was climbing out.
‘Let me give you a lift,’ he urged, wretched at making her so unhappy. He felt this time he was losing her for ever.
She shook her head and began to walk away.
Ben forced himself to call out, ‘I’m sorry, Carol, I really am.’
She looked at him one last time. ‘Don’t say it to me, Dad, say it to Mick. He’s the one who’s just beginning his real sentence.’
As Carol walked away she saw her mother staring out of the sitting-room window. She had been watching them in the car but now darted away out of sight. How sad, Carol thought with detachment, to be so afraid of your own husband and so estranged from your own daughter not to be able to come out and greet them. But then her mother had run away from situations all her life.
Carol wandered out into the road, not knowing where she was going.
She had no recollection of getting to the beach and yet some time later she found herself sitting by Colly’s Leap, watching the fierce tide throw itself against the rocks. The light was already trickling out of the sky behind the rush of clouds and Carol knew it must be late afternoon.
Alone, she finally let go. The pain and anger bottled up for so long came gushing out in bitter sobbing. She shook and heaved and cried, quite unable to stop herself. She had been strong for so long and now she was beaten, not by the strike but by the thought of what came after it. While it continued, she had had a purpose. Now she had none. She ached with weakness and exhaustion. She wanted to sleep for ever, but she did not know how to stop crying.
The search party found her just before dark, shivering on a rock, unable to speak. Mick and Eddy raised her gently to her feet and helped her along the beach to the path through the dunes. Carol was vaguely aware of Charlie and Stan being there and Marty Dillon. She fell asleep in the warmth of someone’s car and remembered nothing else until the next morning.
She awoke in her own bed at home, her head pounding and body shivering with aches and pains. Her nose streamed and she either burned with heat and threw the covers off or grew cold and shivery again.
Lotty was there from time to time, with hot lemon drinks and once with Joanne. The doctor came and went, but Carol could not find the strength to speak to any of them. She slept a lot, woke confused, heard voices below, dozed and then sank into oblivion once more. Sometimes she heard Laura’s plaintive voice asking to be let in, then someone shooshing her away. In a detached way she knew she should have called out to her daughter, but she did not have the energy. She wanted no one’s company, not even Laura’s. Yet at times she was aware of a comforting presence. Someone who came and went and sat beside her in the silence, held her hand and wiped her sweating face with a damp cloth. After several days of not knowing or caring what day of the week it was, she woke feeling less feverish.
Mick was there, sitting in the corner reading a newspaper and doing a crossword. He looked up and smiled.
‘Feeling any better?’ he asked. ‘I’ve made some soup if you could manage it - well, I’ve opened a tin of your favourite,’ he grinned.
Carol felt slow tears run down her cheeks at his kindness. He was across the room
and holding her in his arms at once.
‘Hey, I’m not that bad at cooking,’ he teased.
Carol laughed and cried at the same time. She felt like a small child with no defences left, a weak baby who cried at whim.
‘Oh, Mick,’ she whispered tearfully into his neck, ‘I’ve let you down.’
‘Never.’
‘But I have. Look at the way I’ve gone to pieces. I’m a right mess. I’ve been no use to you or Laura.’
Mick held her tight, kissing her forehead. ‘You were strong for me for a whole year,’ he said. ‘You were there when I needed you most, even when I gave you a hard time. I’ll never forget that, Carol,’ he said, his voice full of emotion. ‘Now all I want is for you to get better. I couldn’t live without you, pet,’ he whispered.
Carol dissolved into tears again. ‘But Mick, how will we manage now with you out of work? It worries me so much.’
‘We’ll get by somehow,’ he was adamant. ‘Now, I’ll fetch some soup. And I’ll let Laura see you after school; she’s been pestering to get in for days.’ He stopped at the door and turned. ‘Me dad’s been taken back on at the pit,’ he said, his eyes gleaming. ‘So has Marty Dillon. His charges were dropped and the case thrown out of court.’
‘Thank God,’ Carol sighed. But she could not tell what Mick was thinking. She felt a deep sense of sadness for him, for he now stood apart from the men he had fought beside all year. They would be working all the hours that they could get to pay off their debts. Mick would never be a part of that camaraderie again.
Carol spent the next few weeks close to the house, while Mick took care of her and Laura. She marvelled at how he coped with his enforced domesticity. Lotty was one of the few people he allowed to come and visit her, as she found it hard to face old friends; she had lost her appetite for sociability. Her confidence had quite gone.
From Lotty she heard how the atmosphere at the pit was low, with the men being threatened with dismissal if they caused trouble with any of the scabs.
‘Charlie’s been put on night shift for the first time in twenty years,’ Lotty told her. ‘He’s not best pleased at that. And Eddy’s been moved to another part of the pit, but they’re not going to guarantee the same wage. There’s war on.’
Eddy came by one spring afternoon with a bunch of early daffodils for her.
‘Pinched these from your dad’s garden on the way back from The Ship,’ he grinned. ‘By, I thought Shannon was a dragon, but this new bugger!’ Eddy mimicked the new manager’s southern accent. ‘You’ve been calling us bastards for the past year, now you’re going to find out what a bastard I can be!’
Carol laughed as Eddy made jokes about the grim conditions at the pit.
‘Poor old Sid got a nasty surprise the other day. Someone shit in his bait tin.’
Carol grimaced. ‘That’s disgusting.’
‘Well, he shit on Mick, didn’t he?’ Eddy replied.
Carol was surprised by the sudden bitterness in his voice. ‘Are you very unhappy?’ she asked gently.
Eddy looked suddenly glum, his cheerfulness unmasked. ‘It’s not the same any more, flower,’ he answered sadly. ‘There’s that much bad feeling. That’s what the scabs have really done to us, robbed us of the old comradeship, of having a good laugh.’
Carol had never heard him speak like that before; Eddy had always been so flippant about everything. Life was always a joke. But she saw the sadness in his eyes and her heart went out to him.
‘Things’ll get better again.’ Carol tried to sound convinced. ‘We’ll start fighting for the sacked miners to be set back on.’ As she spoke, she felt the surge of interest in the outside world return. ‘Lotty says the women still meet now and again - we’ll take up the cause of Mick and the others.’
Eddy smiled at her wistfully. ‘By heck, you’re a Todd to your fingernails,’ he said, his eyes shining. He came over and briefly kissed her on the head. It was an unusual gesture for Eddy. He left her looking after him in surprise.
Spring turned into summer and outwardly the village returned to its old routine. Clanging and sighing came from the pit and the sound of men’s boots was heard once more tramping down the streets. People began the lengthy process of paying off arrears on mortgages and electricity. Some suffered the trauma of bailiffs calling to impound furniture against debts that could not be repaid, with the bailiffs shaking their heads at how little there was to take away. Others put their houses up for sale or were repossessed. This happened to the Dillons who found themselves and their family of five back in a cramped two-bedroomed colliery house, paying rent to the Coal Board.
‘It’s the house me Auntie Anna used to live in,’ May told Carol. ‘Hasn’t had any mod cons put in since she died, as far as I can see. I told Marty we’d open it as a museum and make some money that way.’
Carol heard the rumour that Vic Proud was buying up many of the houses at knock-down prices and had set up his own property company, but as she no longer visited her parents, the news was only second-hand. It made her sick to think how her brother-in-law had profited so much out of the strike and left a trail of unhappiness. She no longer saw Kelly or baby Sally Mary as they and Sid had moved out of the village to some outlying estate where they could live anonymously. Carol would have liked to have news of them, but she did not contact Kelly and Kelly had never tried to contact her. There was too much bitterness between their husbands.
Despite the campaign to win an amnesty for the sacked miners, Mick remained without work at the pit. He was blacklisted from any other pit in the area too. Charlie was growing old before their very eyes at the treatment to his son and at his impotence to do anything for him.
They were living off benefits and Carol knew how much that ate at his pride. They had debts that they could never repay without the help of the family. Yet Mick did not complain. The other men had paid him a wage out of their own for the first two weeks, but Mick had given it to the strike fund to provide food parcels for others. Then, before the end of the season, the rugby club had put on a special benefit match and raised several hundred pounds on his behalf. Mick had been overwhelmed and too overcome to speak at the presentation in the club house. He had split the money with Frankie Burt and it had helped pay off the washing machine and the gas bill. But finally they had to put their own house up for sale and themselves on the council waiting list.
Mick went to the Job Centre every day to look for work and walked into Whittledene and trawled around the factories, but got nothing. He had a prison record; no one wanted to know him. His only hope was that the Coal Board would have a change of heart towards the sacked men.
As Carol’s strength returned, she realised it was she who must now look for work. After a week of searching, Paul Dimarco took pity on her and offered a part-time job in his cafe, washing up and clearing tables.
‘Well, I’ve done plenty of that this past year,’ Carol joked. The pay was meagre, but Carol’s confidence blossomed again at getting out of the house for a few hours and among the company of others. Soon she was serving behind the counter and helping Lesley make sandwiches and snacks and her hours were increased. With help from Eddy and Mick’s parents, they were just able to pay their mortgage each month, but they did not like to be in debt to them so the house remained on the market.
By the autumn there was more money around again in the village and Paul was confident that his business was going to survive. He had extended so much credit to people during the long strike year that at times he thought the cafe would fold. Carol marvelled at his optimism and ability to carry on when things were so tight and still be cheerful to his customers.
‘My family have survived a world war, several major strikes and a move from Whitton Grange,’ Paul told her with a proud grin, ‘and we’re still in business!’
Carol glanced up at the old photograph of the handsome, moustached man with his pretty dark-haired wife and family, which Paul kept above the counter.
‘Your grandda would
be proud of you,’ Carol smiled.
‘Aye, maybes,’ Paul admitted and Carol knew the remark pleased him.
Autumn came and although Charlie and Eddy grumbled about conditions at the pit and the lack of trust and consultation with management, there was much activity, with new expensive machinery brought in and a high-security wall built round the yard.
‘At least they’re investing in Brassbank,’ Lotty said optimistically. But no one discussed the pit much for fear of upsetting Mick.
He had taken to going off on long walks again like he had following his release from prison. Carol knew from the state of his worn-out boots and trainers that he roamed for miles. But she did not criticise him as she had done before, because she knew it kept him sane and at least he was not wallowing in self-pity or drink like Tom Fowler. Tom, who had been sacked for daubing a colliery house with anti-scab graffiti, had been banned from most of the pubs in the village and his wife, Sheila, had left him and taken their young children back to her mother’s in Quarryhill.
They spent a quiet Christmas at home, going to Lotty’s for their tea. Eddy, who had moved back into a flat on his own, was there, and so was Val, who had begun a small dressmaking business from home. But Carol knew they all thought of Linda and young Calvin and wondered how they were spending their second Christmas away from the family. It was heartbreaking for Lotty to know her grandson was growing up nearby and yet to be denied all contact with him. Carol had written to Linda via Dan’s parents, pleading with her to bring Calvin to see his grandmother, but had heard nothing.
Carol looked for enjoyment in small events, such as decorating the cafe with tinsel and streamers and watching Laura play a noisy camel in the school nativity, but there were no parties like the year before and none of the togetherness and excitement of that demanding time.
The Women’s Group had finally disbanded in the summer when their funds had dried up and their attempts on behalf of the sacked miners had proved fruitless. Most had gone back to a quiet existence, but Denise had surprised them all by enrolling on a business course and had taken herself off to Sunderland. Carol noticed how many of the group came into the cafe to chat just before Christmas, as if they, too, felt something was now missing from their lives. She mentioned it to Lotty.
Durham Trilogy 03. Never Stand Alone Page 39