by Kit Habianic
Contents
About the author
Title Page
Dedication
Quote
Transcript, radio news broadcast, 9am, March 1, 19
WINTER 1984
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SPRING 1984
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SUMMER 1984
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AUTUMN 1984
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WINTER 1985
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Acknowledgements
Further acknowledgements
Copyright
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Kit Habianic grew up in Caerphilly, Colwyn Bay and Cardiff. As a freelance journalist, she slept under the stars in the Western Sahara, chewed qat in the souqs of Yemen and sailed the backwaters of Kerala, purely for research purposes. Her journalism has appeared in The Guardian, The Daily Mirror, The Times, Marie Claire (US) and Time Out and in trade titles in Europe and the Middle East. Based in London, she processes copy for a business daily, all the while plotting new stories to write. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines and made the shortlist for the Willesden Herald short story prize. Until Our Blood is Dry is her first novel.
UNTIL OUR BLOOD IS DRY
Kit Habianic
For Jack and Marion. With love and thanks.
It is bitter to know that history
Fails to teach the present to be better than the past
For man was a slave in the morning of time
And a slave he remains to the last
Idris Davies, Gwalia Deserta
‘Tributes are pouring in for a miner who died earlier this morning following an incident at a churchyard at Ystrad, a village on the South Wales coalfield.
‘The dead man has been named as Gwyn Pritchard, 45, an overman at Blackthorn Colliery near Ystrad.
‘Mr Pritchard was one of just three miners to have continued to work at nearby Blackthorn Colliery, breaking a strike that has halted the UK’s coal production for nearly 12 months.
‘In a statement released minutes ago, the National Coal Board paid tribute to the dead man. Area manager Adam Smith-Tudor described Mr Pritchard as “a solid family man who died defending his right to go to work at the pit he loved”.
‘South Wales police have made one arrest and say they are looking for a second person in connection with the incident. A police spokesman declined to confirm reports that the dead man was attacked by striking miners.’
Transcript, radio news broadcast, 9am, March 1, 1985
WINTER 1984
— 1 —
Mid-evening, and The Red Lion was empty. Gwyn Pritchard sat at his usual table in the lounge bar and sipped ale from his tankard. No music pounded from the jukebox in the main bar. There was no tobacco fug above the pool table. Not tonight. He twitched a faded chintz curtain, raised a nostril-full of dust, and stared out into the gloom. The north wind howled, vicious. At the bottom of Ystrad High Street, the pavement was pooled with light spilt from the windows of the Miners’ Institute. His men were still in there, still stewing over the morning’s accident, that bastard Dewi Power stirring up their grief, no doubt.
He dropped the curtain, turned his attention back to his pint. His fourth. But the beer wasn’t doing what it should. Tonight, the more he drank, the more he ended up dwelling on it. The rescue workers trooping out of the wheel house to the courtyard. The stretcher covered with grime-streaked canvas.
Steve Red Lion plucked the last packet of peanuts from the poster pinned behind the bar to reveal a topless blonde in all her glory, tits like ice creams. He stared at her, damn as near dribbling. Gwyn caught the landlord’s eye. Steve flushed pink from neck to pate and started polishing the optics, at a loss to know what to say.
‘Cold out tonight, eh, Gwyn,’ he tried.
‘That piece’d keep a fellow warm.’
Time was, Mrs Steve ran the pub. A proper little dragon, barely the height of a bar stool but not afraid, come closing time, to grab a drunken collier by the collar, drag him outside and drop him on the pavement. There were no topless posters at The Red Lion when that one was around.
‘I heard about Gabe, poor old bugger,’ Steve said. ‘Hit you hard, I’ll bet.’
There it was. The image assaulted him again. Gabe Parry, face peaceful despite the broken-doll neck, the forehead flecked with bone and brain and clotted blood.
He shrugged. ‘Seen a fair few deaths in my time. Won’t be the last.’
Steve gathered up Gwyn’s tankard, filled it, waved away his money, waited as though expecting more.
And what point saying anything. Best to leave fresh wounds to heal, leave old wounds be. The first to go was the old boy who trained him, a sarky old Trotskyist known as Alf Manifesto. A good old boy, for all his piss-and-vinegar about miners being the vanguard of the revolution. Killed when a pack hole collapsed on him, buried him chest-deep in fallen rocks. Gwyn had attacks of the shakes for months after his butty died, body sweating rivers as the cage rattled down to the pit.
Not the loss that haunted him, even so.
Steve’s lips were moving. ‘—after what happened to your old dad.’
Gwyn didn’t answer. He’d paid his dues to that bloody pit, him and his forebears.
‘—then going down again tomorrow. No life for a man, that, Gwyn. No life for a beast.’ Pink with emotion, Steve’s face.
Gwyn touched his thumb to his one good finger. One hell of a price to pay for coal. Every piece of anthracite ripped from the earth repaid in blood. Nights like this, a man needed his butties around him. Nights like this, it was only other colliers who understood. It was alright for his men. They had each other.
Steve was still jabbering. Gwyn turned away and looked out over Ystrad again. He’d known it all his life, this little high street, as familiar as the stumps at the end of his knuckles. Blindfold him, he could make his way down from the pub to the parade of shops, past the Victorian Miners’ Institute, take a sharp right-turn downhill to reach Blackthorn pit.
It was nothing special, the village, the usual shops overlooking the usual valley floor. Italian bracchi, unisex fashion boutique, hairdressers, butchers, bookies, funeral parlour and co-op. Behind these, up a slope fit for sledging,
the usual two rows of terraced houses. And at the top, a row of semis that dwarfed the homes below, built for pit management. Superior properties on the top tier. He had barely enough puff in his old lungs to get up there, lately. Worth the effort, even so.
Footsteps approached the pub. Here they were at last: Dewi Power and that rabble from the lodge. The swing doors flew open and in they trooped, falling silent as they walked past, shooting dark looks in Gwyn’s direction. Uncalled for, that. They walked through the lounge bar as usual, piled into the main bar with its jukebox and pool table and dartboard, voices muted, not a glance for the peanut girl as they crowded round the taps and waited for Steve to serve them.
Pints in hand, they gathered round the long table at the back, talking quiet, talking serious. There would be trouble in the morning, for sure. If his lads clocked in at all. Dewi Power tapped his glass. The hum of voices faded. The lodge secretary hefted himself onto the bar, face pale against coal dust-rimmed eyes, a broken-nosed little pharaoh addressing his worker hordes. His voice was low, commanding the lads’ attention.
‘Listen up, fellas. A sad day it’s been for Blackthorn. We lost a good man today. One o’ the best.’ He clapped an arm around the man-mountain standing next to him. ‘You do the honours, Dai.’
Gabe’s butty Dai Dumbells bowed his head, launched into the Wobbly anthem sung for many a dead collier.
‘I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
Alive as you or me
Says I, but Joe you’re ten years dead.
I never died said he. I never died, said he.’
There was pathos to Dai’s tuneless baritone, for once. It got the rest of the lads to their feet, voices soaring together:
‘Where workers strike and organise
It’s there you’ll find Joe Hill
It’s there you’ll find Joe Hill.’
Gwyn sat, heart in his boots, willed his lads not to court trouble. Willed them not to get it wrong – so very badly wrong – yet again. Everyone knew damn well what was coming. Smith-Tudor, the area manager, had called him in at Christmas, sat him down for a chat, man to man. Promised he’d see Gwyn right if he kept his lads in line. There was a time for trouble and a time for knuckling down. Smith-Tudor spelled it out for him. It fell to Gwyn to break the lodge’s grip on his lads. If he let the lodge use a man’s death to stoke his lads’ anger, there was only one way things would fall.
But Dewi Power wasn’t done yet. ‘Here’s to Gabriel Parry,’ he raised his glass.
Gwyn made to raise his tankard, caught Dewi’s eye across the bar, thought better of it. His tankard was drunk dry in any case.
Dewi fixed him with a cold dark stare. ‘Gabe’s dead, and the overman’s suspended two of our boys,’ he said. ‘Suspended two decent, hard-working colliers for going to help a fallen comrade. We won’t go back to work. Not until Iwan and Scrapper Jones get reinstated.’
‘Damn right,’ bleach-blond Matt Price cut in.
The rest nodded agreement. Gwyn saw no point staying for a fifth pint after that. He had no truck with the lodge’s nonsense. Particularly not tonight. He might as well head off home to Carol and the girl.
Keep the boys in line, keep the coal flowing, the area manager told him. Fat chance, Smith-Tudor. Fat bloody chance.
— 2 —
Helen lay in Scrapper’s arms, skin damp against his skin, carpet rough beneath her thighs. So that was it, then, the dirty deed. Nothing like she’d overheard the sixth-form girls at school whispering and giggling about. No blood, no pain. Nothing like her mam warned her about the day she started her periods, told her to keep herself nice until the day her Prince Charming walked her up the aisle. If her mam knew what she and Scrapper had done. If her dad—
Goosebumps studded her arms and legs. Scrapper’s chest rose and fell against her shoulder. His eyes were closed, breath coming soft and regular. His hands and arms were scratched and bruised, the marks all too fresh. She shuddered and snuggled closer.
Next to the hearth, two mismatched, ceiling-high shelves hugged a library of books. A small television teetered on a three-legged stool. Under the window, a scuffed wooden desk held a battered typewriter, piles of newspapers and magazines and a box spilling pamphlets. Photos of Scrapper and his parents lined the mantelpiece beneath a red pennant, crossed symbols stitched in golden thread and a tinted portrait of a beardy old man with a mane of white hair. The clothes she and Scrapper tore off each other were scattered on the sofa. The faces on the mantelpiece looked none too impressed.
She tugged the hair that sprouted across Scrapper’s chest. ‘Scrap.’
‘Hmmm?’
‘You won’t tell anyone?’
‘About what, bach?’
She tugged harder. ‘About this, stupid.’
‘Aw,’ he opened one eye, smiled lazily at her. ‘Reckoned I’d put an ad in Ystrad Herald.’
‘I swear to god, Scrapper Jones – you breathe one word o’ this, one word, to your creep of a butty or anyone else, I’ll come after you with Dad’s garden shears.’
She tried to sit up, but he yanked her down again, flipped her over and smacked her backside.
‘It’ll be your dad after me wi’ them shears, Red.’
He got up and shrugged on his clothes, all matter-of-fact, like it was normal to strip off and make love to a girl on his parents’ living room carpet. Like what happened between them was everyday business. Like a line had not been crossed.
‘Get your clothes on, Red. You’ll catch your death. I’ll fix us some lunch.’
‘But it’s dark out,’ she objected. ‘Too late for—’
But he was gone.
She perched on the sofa, pulled on her school uniform. He was right, of course. To think of his parents coming home and catching them at it— The shame, to have fiery Angela Schiappa and bookish Iwan Jones walk in on them. She dressed, wishing she was old enough to be a proper girlfriend. Free to go on dates with Scrapper, to come home with him and stay over. To walk down the road holding hands with him. To not be the wrong side of sixteen.
Debbie Power used to stay over. Helen saw her once, on a Sunday morning, kissing Scrapper goodbye in the doorway of the ice cream parlour, his mam and dad busy behind the counter, paying them no mind. No one noticed the freckled, ginger-haired kid at the corner table, spoon dug into a forgotten sundae, gawping at Scrapper as Debbie strode across the road to the bus stop, glossy black bob and long legs in nurse’s whites turning every man’s head.
The sound of a car horn yanked her back from her thoughts. She twitched the curtain, saw the flashy daffodil-coloured Capri that belonged to Albright, the pit manager, stop outside The Red Lion. A man leaned into the passenger window, speaking to the driver, then the car pulled away. She would have known that tweed cap and jacket anywhere. She slid behind the curtain as the man turned, hands cupped against the wind to light his cigarette. He paused under a street lamp, raised his head. For a heart-stopping second, she thought her dad had seen her. But he was hawking and spitting a gob of phlegm into the gutter. Nasty, that collier habit of his.
She drew the curtains hurriedly and turned on the lights. Her satchel hung from the doorknob. She fished out her makeup bag and snapped open her compact. A right state on her, rats’ tails for curls, mascara in flakes. She raked a comb through her hair, backcombed the front section and pinned it, quiff-style, above her forehead, dabbed her lips with a matt red shade that clashed with her hair. She squinted at herself, expecting her face to betray her crime.
‘So wunnerfly, wunnerfly, wunnerfly pretty—’ Scrapper was humming as he clattered around in the kitchen.
Scented steam drifted into the living room. She wondered when Iwan and Angela would get home. Scrapper had never brought her home as his girlfriend. Not once, in four months of courting. And here he was, tray loaded, two huge bowls of something pale and stringy, soaked in sauce and topped with cheese.
He set down the tray, turned on the television. ‘Sorry it’s only leftovers, b
ach. We’re out of oysters an’ champagne.’
‘On a miner’s wage?’
‘Aye, well. But a glass o’ something would be tidy.’
He slipped back into the kitchen, came back with a glass of red wine. She took a careful sip. The one time she drank wine, she and her friends got bladdered at a party on half-drunk bottles of sour red plonk that Bethan Edwards’ dad filched from his boss’s restaurant.
They snuggled together on the sofa and ate their tea.
Scrapper stared at the TV with empty eyes. ‘I hate that pit,’ he said at last. ‘It chews a man up, bleeds the strength from his bones, spits out a dried old husk.’
‘So leave.’
‘And do what?’
‘You got to keep looking.’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘What, get on my bike?’
‘Even my dad says you’re dead good at your job. You’ll find something. My dad says—’
‘Oh, right, yeah. Your dad says.’
There was an edge to his voice that shocked her. ‘What about my dad?’
He looked away, didn’t answer.
‘What,’ she repeated.
‘Don’t mind me. Bad day at the office.’
‘I know. Poor old Gabe. And I’m sorry about Saturday.’
He shook his head.
‘You know. That pathetic fight we had. About you kissing your ex.’
‘What, Debbie?’ Scrapper said. ‘Her and Dai Dumbells got engaged. She was just telling me. Said it’s an ex-boyfriend’s duty to kiss the bride.’
She pinched his arm crossly. ‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘Too busy tearing strips off me to hear it, weren’t you?’
She paused, taking in the news. Debbie Power engaged, to that strapping firebrand, Dai Dobrosielski. Quite a catch, Dai, arms on him like girders, that big, solemn face splashed across the sports pages.
‘And after Debbie?’
‘After Debbie, what?’
‘Have you had other women?’
He set down the wine glass, grabbed her in an arm-lock and ruffled her hair. Her quiff collapsed, tumbling into her eyes.
‘What answer d’you want? If it’s no, you’ll say I’m pining after Debbie. If it’s yes, you’ll say I’m Casanova.’