by Kit Habianic
The shop bell shrilled. Geraint Mags-N-Fags looked up, saw Gwyn, fixed his gaze on his copy of The Sun. And there, next to the magazines, was the lad Gwyn was looking for: Alun Probert, the apprentice, skinny frame hunched like a question mark, curly head buried in Blue Apocalypse. Gwyn knew he’d find the boy here. The kid was obsessed with superhero magazines. Blue Apocalypse was his favourite. Same routine every week; rushed from his shift to the newsagents to pick up a copy ordered special. But the lad wasn’t buying today, stood in the shop to read it, strapped for cash, no doubt. It was tough on the single boys, the strike; not a penny in benefit. The married lads got a tenner a week from the social, plus child benefit.
‘Can I buy that for you lad?’
Alun Wet-Ears’ freckled face flushed pink. He dropped the comic back on the rack. ‘Only browsing,’ he muttered, eyes fixed on the floor. ‘Geraint said I could.’
The shopkeeper shot Gwyn a look to freeze a blast furnace. ‘Orright by there, Alun?’
Alun nodded.
‘Let’s step outside, have a conflab,’ Gwyn said.
‘Best not, boss.’
‘Fine,’ he lowered his voice. ‘Tell me, boy. How come you got an apprenticeship at a pit that stopped hiring?’
Beetroot-coloured, the lad’s face.
‘We both know why, eh? Mucked up your exams, didn’t you? But your dad begged me to take you on. I made a special case for you with Albright. Took you when no pit in the coalfield was taking new men. Didn’t I?’
‘Yes,’ Alun whispered.
‘Yes,’ Gwyn said. ‘So you’ll know what I’m expecting in return.’
The lad’s face crumpled. Gwyn took no pleasure in bringing a grown man to tears, even a fellow barely old enough to shave. Little Probert would thank him when his job was spared. Instinct told him to leave it for now; let the lad stew, follow up with a home visit.
‘If you change your mind about that rag, let me know,’ he said.
The shop bell shrilled again as he shut the door. A soft spring morning, birdsong all over, the trees in bud and sunlight warming his face as he headed off to work. Beyond the village, spring cast a sheen over the hillocks of waste coal and rubble, undisturbed since the strike. But no beauty could be found in that. He’d let them green this valley over his cold, dead corpse.
Down on the High Street, he perched on the wall near the bus stop, waited for Albright to pick him up. And that’s when he saw Matthew Price emerge from a flat above one of the shops. Furtive was the word that sprang to mind. Matt loped past butcher, bookies, funeral parlour and co-op, flinched and ducked his head on meeting Gwyn’s eye. Come from Siggy’s place, had he? So that was the lad’s game. If Matt was a ladies’ man, Gwyn was Shirley bloody Bassey.
— 9 —
Scrapper slumped on the back seat of the minibus, watched the light seep across the sky. Dawn stained the silver coast with the colours of a blast furnace, dimmed only by the smoke that belched from Port Talbot’s concrete stacks. The air blown in through the open window was so gritty that his breath rasped metal filings. Each street was greyer and more drab than the last. Finally, Dewi steered into the road that led to the industrial port. A tangle of conveyor belts and hoppers and pulleys dipped and swooped overhead, a black helter-skelter from hell.
‘What is this?’ he said.
‘It’s the gateway,’ Iwan said. ‘The bosses shipped out all the coal and iron and steel by here, built a new industrial world—’
‘Built it on sweat and blood and broken backs,’ Dai said.
Scrapper shuddered. He could imagine it: the labour forged into the steel bones of this place, the bodies sunk deep beneath the blackened concrete. Even the air had the metallic taste of blood. Back then, the ships steamed in empty, loaded iron ore and coal that his grandfathers and great-grandfathers ripped from the South Wales hills, steamed out again, leaving his forebears empty-handed.
‘We’ll stop ’em unloading scab coal, eh, fellas?’ he said.
‘Damn right,’ Matt said.
‘How we gonna stop ’em?’ Alun Probert sank deeper into his jacket.
It was Alun’s first time as a flying picket, too. But while Scrapper itched to reach the port to stop the coal shipments, Alun Wet-Ears was sucking the hwyl from the day. The apprentice hunched in his seat, face carefully blank, refused to sing along as Dai gave ‘Part of the Union’ a savaging. Dewi had driven across the valley to fetch the lad from his home. Mister Probert opened the door in his dressing gown, face like a squeezed lemon, had them wait ten minutes for Alun to come down. Which was why they were late. The kid had no heart for this. Alun’s question hung, unanswered. A dark, bulky object was steaming towards the line where sky met sea; a giant ship, emptied of its Polish coal at a port built to ship coal and steel and iron around the world. Scrapper gripped the seat in front of him. Coal sent to crush Welsh miners.
‘No, you gotta be bloody joking!’ Dewi leaned over the steering wheel.
Up ahead, at the entrance to the British Steel docks, a line of police blocked the road. They wore padded gilets and bowling-ball helmets, carried truncheons and Perspex shields. Tooled up to stop working men defending their livelihoods.
Scrapper vowed to give it some hwyl, alright. Buses from across the coalfield were parked the length of the road. He helped Dai and Matt to unfurl the lodge banner and thread it onto its poles and stepped back to admire it. Magnificent, the banner. Red velvet with gold fringing, images printed on it: the brickwork of Ystrad Stute, two brass miner’s lamps, a pickaxe and shovel laid crosswise. Across the top, picked out in gold stitching, National Union of Mineworkers, Blackthorn Lodge and a motto: nothing to lose but our chains.
Dai draped a long strip of black tulle between the tips of the poles, fixed it with rubber bands.
‘With us in spirit, eh, Gabe?’
He picked up a pole and set off towards the line of police, moved forward so fast that Scrapper, holding the second pole, struggled to keep his footing. The others hurried behind them. Dai went up to the tallest policeman. Behind him, against the port gates, Scrapper saw a crush of placards and banners.
‘We’re ’ere to join that lot by there,’ Dai said.
‘Right you are, mate,’ the Cockney policeman waved them through without argument.
The men at the gates roared a welcome. Scrapper turned back to see the police lines close around them, pinning them against the fence, caught like mice in a trap. Why were none of the others bothered about it? His dad and Dewi went into a huddle with the lads from the area strike committee. Dai nodded to him to prop the banner against the wire fence, went over to the others. Matt, fag in hand, wandered over to some student types. He took special pleasure in winding up students; especially the ones with Marxist newspapers. He had quite a routine: opened with a joke to turn the air blue. If that failed to raise a laugh, he’d pick a fight about women’s rights or the Falklands or the death penalty. The regular sellers had learned to laugh at Matt’s jokes, ply him with fags and move away.
A dozen men gathered round Dai, congratulating him on his latest sporting win. Only Alun didn’t mingle. He slouched on an oil drum next to the banner, scuffing the ground with the tips of his boots.
‘What in hell’s eating you?’ Scrapper said.
Alun Wet-Ears fixed his eyes to his boots. ‘Nothing.’
‘Don’t you get that we’re fighting for our jobs?’
‘By yelling at a bunch of coppers? When the folk that make them decisions are miles away in London. When them folk don’t give a flying fuck.’
‘So what d’you reckon we should do?’
‘There’s nothing we can do. No one listens to the likes of us.’
‘But that’s why we’re here. Gonna make them listen.’
Alun sighed. ‘We need to keep our heads down, cross our fingers that they leave Blackthorn be.’
‘But that’s—’
He never got to finish the sentence. Inside the port, a huge grey lorry was pulling up to t
he gates. All at once, the police charged into the crush, drove in and split the protesters down the middle. There was nowhere to run, no space to move. Bodies rammed him against the fence, chicken wire cutting into his cheek. When he pushed himself clear, Alun had vanished. A windscreen loomed over the crowd, steel mesh over the glass hiding the driver from view as the truck inched through the port gates. All around was mayhem, miners and coppers fighting hand to hand. Resin batons thudded bones, battered flesh. He heard the grunts of the hitters, the gasps of the hit, the low growl of truck engines.
Little by little, the police beat the crowd back, allowing half a dozen trucks to leave the port. He spotted Dai, half a head taller than everyone else, taking the worst of it. Truncheons slammed Dai’s shoulders as he fought, head lowered, shoulders working like pistons. Scrapper saw a truncheon catch Dai across the forehead. Dai sank into the scrum of bodies and vanished.
‘No!’ Scrapper yelled.
He tried to push forwards, but the crush was too dense. The police paused for a beat. Then, they drove in harder, a final push driving the protesters off the road. Again, bodies pinned him against the fence. Everyone was yelling now. Scrapper raised his voice along with the rest, the words jagged in his throat.
‘Scab, scab, scab!’
As the gates slammed shut, he saw Dai rise from the crush, policemen hanging off both his arms. Dai rallied his strength, shook them off like ants, but one clung on, tenacious. Dai levered his forearm against the man’s chest, flexed and sent him flying. The crowd cheered. It made no difference. The brawling continued, the police batons beating the miners back. In the distance, Scrapper heard the clank of chains and pulleys. Inside the gates, outlined against a shimmering morning sea, the cranes bowed and lifted, bowed and lifted, filling yet more trucks with strikebreaking coal.
Port Talbot’s proud cranes, grovelling to the bosses.
***
Scrapper’s hwyl was spent as he trouped behind the others towards the car park, his face a honeycomb of gashes. He was in better shape, even so, than half the men around him, a crushed army with cut hands and black eyes and bleeding noses. Matt had to lead Dai by the arm, he’d taken such a hammering, eyes puffed up nasty, a matching pair of shiners. Iwan had turned his ankle again. Looking at them, Scrapper felt a rush of guilt; every button was ripped off his jacket, but he’d suffered no real damage. He should have fought the bastards like Dai, and to hell with what his dad said.
‘All here, are we?’ Dewi said.
Someone was missing. It took Scrapper a while to work out who. ‘Where’s Alun?’
‘Christ, it would be him,’ Dewi said.
The apprentice had vanished. Dewi led Iwan and the casualties back to the minibus, leaving Scrapper, Matt and Eddie Hobnob to search for the lad. Scrapper and Matt retraced their steps towards the docks. Half the police vans had followed the coke trucks out of the docks, the grim convoy heading for the town’s eastern outskirts to join the motorway to Newport, making for the steelworks at Llanwern that lay beyond.
Dropped placards littered the road, smeared with footprints and tyre marks. A lone police van was parked outside the gate. Two women crouched on the tarmac, sorting piles of vests and shields. Behind them, a line of men in shirtsleeves and trousers perched like crows on a low wall, smoking and swigging cola. Stripped of armour and weapons, they looked human again. Matt marched straight over, Scrapper dragging along behind.
‘Spare us a tab, fellas?’
The man in the middle was short for a copper, but wiry. A Jack Russell type.
‘Ah, what the hell,’ he thrust a pack of B&H at Matt. ‘Put up a good fight, your lot.’
The accents gave them away; they were local officers. Not that it made any odds to Scrapper. Pigs were pigs. Matt took a cigarette, frowned at Scrapper to do the same. Scrapper accepted a fag and a light, sucked in smoke and tried not to gag.
‘Reinforcements, that lot?’ Matt nodded towards the east.
‘Bloody Met,’ the officer shook his head. ‘Loose fucking cannons.’
‘You’re not wrong,’ Matt said.
‘Scud missiles to take out a beehive,’ the policeman said.
‘The lads they nicked,’ Matt said. ‘Taken ’em to London, have they?’
The policeman clicked out a smoke ring. ‘There’s not been much nicking. Not today.’
‘Thing is, butt, we’ve lost one of our lads.’
The policeman shrugged. ‘Try Station Road. If not there, try Skewen or Maesteg.’
As they walked away, Scrapper flicked his cigarette into a puddle. ‘How could you talk to them like we’re mates?’
‘None of this is personal, Scrap. It’s just politics.’
‘You reckon? Cos it feels fucking personal, your butties getting their heads bashed in.’
Dewi had the engine running when they reached the minibus. Eddie had no joy finding Alun either. They set off for the town centre. There was no sign of Alun at Station Road and no sign at the smaller police station in Skewen. Maesteg was several miles up the valley. At last, they pulled up at the police station. Alun Wet-Ears stood outside, waiting in a queue of a dozen men to use the phone box. His jacket missed an arm and his nose was mashed up. He climbed in without saying a word.
‘Duw — a boxer’s job, that,’ Matt was impressed.
‘The mark of a man,’ Dewi ran a finger along his own flattened conk. ‘You’re a class warrior now, kid. Got battle scars to prove it.’
Alun’s eyes were red. He looked at no one, said nothing.
At last, the minibus pulled up outside the Stute. They climbed out, limping and exhausted and trooped inside, where Sion Jenkins was manning the tea urns. Scrapper was about to follow the others in when he realised Alun was slinking away by himself.
He rushed after him, grabbed his arm. ‘Charge you, did they?’
Alun shook his head.
‘What, then?’
‘Still reckon we can make ’em listen, do you, Scrapper Jones?’
— 10 —
Cosy, that was the word that sprang to mind. Gwyn sat in Mister Probert’s front room, April sunlight pouring through the windows. The schoolteacher was busy in the kitchen, preparing afternoon tea. The tang of pipe tobacco mingled with the black pepper scent of old books. It was lived-in, this room, but there was discipline too, in the batches of exam papers lined up in neat piles on the sideboard for marking.
He sank into the cracked leather armchair, eyed the bookshelves beside the chimney breast. A six-part encyclopaedia bound in faded red morocco. King James Bible. Life studies of Nye Bevan and Lloyd George. Shelf upon shelf of paperback classics, all dog-eared and thumbed. The bottom shelf piled with superhero comics. A library, this. He regretted not making time to read.
The schoolteacher had packed his oldest two off to university, got them settled in new lives in the city. Married, more was the pity, the oldest two. Either would have done nicely for the girl. This was everything Gwyn wanted for her: a cosy home filled with books, food in the cupboard, a warm hearth. Not rich, but solid, the man of the house a professional, two or three rosy-cheeked kids. A life that was secure and settled. The girl could be a modern young woman with prospects, if only she applied herself. It fell to her to seize the chance to flee the shadow of the pit.
He looked down at his hands, garden grime layered over workshop grime from the colliery, and felt a twinge of shame. He should have dipped them in Swarfega before coming over.
The schoolteacher elbowed open the door. He carried a tray loaded with an earthenware teapot, matching mugs, milk jug and sugar bowl, and a plate with two slices of simnel cake. His hands shook as he set the tray on a leather ottoman.
‘You’re okay with tea, Mr Pritchard? Unless you fancy something stronger—’
Gwyn smiled. ‘Tea is what’s required, Mr Probert.’
The teacher poured, served him a slice of cake. Gwyn took a bite. The cake was home-made. A perfect balance of marzipan, fruit and candied peel, the sponge lig
ht and fresh. They sat back and sipped their tea. The schoolteacher seemed to be fumbling for something to say.
‘You’ve come about our youngest, haven’t you?’ he said at last.
His directness surprised Gwyn. But fair dos. Better to get down to it than go wandering around the houses.
‘Alun, aye. A painful state of affairs, this strike.’
‘You’re sacking him?’
‘God, no. Why would I?’
The teacher hefted a sigh. ‘I wouldn’t blame you. All these weeks idle at home. Hasn’t earned a penny since March. And after everything you did for him—’
Gwyn batted away the teacher’s gratitude. ‘He’s a good little lad, Alun. Been well worth making an exception to hire him. But fact is, Mr Probert, stoppage will mean death for this pit. All of us’ll be out of work soon, unless—’
Mr Probert fixed his gaze on the bookcases. ‘The men would say that’s why we should back the strike. Force the Coal Board to rethink their closure plans.’
There was no conviction to the words. No fire or resolve. The schoolteacher was a Labour man of the modern tendency. His grandfather put himself through night school, got promoted to pit management. Worked all God’s hours to get there. His father was the first lad from Ystrad to make it from grammar school to university, got a job with the civil service. Three generations of Proberts, broken free from the pit. Ironic that little Alun had to beg to work at Blackthorn. The lad reckoned some mental block stopped him reading and writing. Lazy and slack-minded, more like.
‘Listen,’ Gwyn told the schoolteacher. ‘I got inside information. But you got to promise not to breathe a word—’
He explained what Smith-Tudor had said about how pits that made money would make it. But now the survey results had delivered a blow. They needed Blackthorn back up and running quick-sharp, or risk subsidence after the heavy rain this spring. The race was on to contain the damage or their costs would fall through the floor.
Mr Probert listened, attentive. Nodded thoughtfully. Did not interrupt.