by Kit Habianic
She smoothed her glossy hair, flashed a smile that showed too many teeth. Everyone in the room, male and female, was watching Debbie and didn’t she know it.
‘Just one thing, Debbie,’ Helen said.
‘What’s that, then?’
‘It’s Jones now. Helen Jones.’
Debbie’s smile stretched wider. ‘You wish, kid. You’ll always be a Pritchard to the rest of us.’
She strutted across the hall, white court shoes clack-clacking on the parquet, satin jumpsuit swishing, and stamped the Black Cherry outline of her lips on Scrapper’s cheek. One of her spaghetti straps slipped, accidentally-on-purpose. She slid it up with a flick of her shiny bob, said something that made Scrapper lean in closer. Helen glared at Debbie’s tanned back, wished she had a fistful of darts. Too late, she realised Scrapper had caught the look on her face. She flapped her hands, frantic now. He took the hint at last.
‘Sure you can tear yourself away, Scrap?’
His cheeks were flushed. ‘Had to thank Dai’s missus for helping wi’ that spread.’
Debbie joined the women, said something that made the whole table turn to look at them. Helen grabbed Scrapper’s arm and bundled him through the swing doors onto the street. Outside, she rubbed the lipstick off his cheek, hurried him up the deserted High Street.
‘Why the rush, Red?’
‘Your mam an’ dad; they staying?’
Scrapper shook his head. ‘Said they’d be along in a jiffy.’
She slipped her hand inside his waistband. ‘Let’s go up the barn.’
‘What, why?’
‘You know why, Scrap.’
‘But we’re married now.’
‘We’d be all alone up there. We could make all the noise we wanted.’
His kiss tasted of scrumpy. ‘I’m knackered, Red. Let’s crash at home.’
They trudged up the street to the ice cream parlour. Scrapper tumbled into their bedroom. She slipped into the bathroom. It was heaven to shed the itchy dress. The seams had raised welts along her ribs and shoulders. In the bath, she soaped herself and rinsed her sores with tepid water, washed off the concealer she used to camouflage the scars on her legs. Towel over damp skin, she burst into the bedroom.
‘Ladies and gentlemen: the one, the only — Missus Helen Schiappa-Jones!’
But Scrapper didn’t answer. The room was dark. In the light that spilled in from the hallway, she saw he was naked, head thrown back and snoring. She shut the door, dropped clothes and towel on the floor and picked her way across the room, still uncertain of her bearings.
‘Scrapper?’
He rolled over onto his side, pulled her towards him and wrapped his arms and legs around her. His breathing slowed. For the first time all day, she felt safe.
***
When she woke, Scrapper was pacing the room, searching for something. He rummaged on shelves and in drawers, patted the pockets of his clothes. Helen lay still, eyeing the crease between the pads of muscle on his shoulder blades, his narrow waist and the apple swell of his butt.
He turned, caught her watching him. His face split in a grin. ‘There’s something I want you to have.’
He landed on her with a flying leap, one hand hidden behind his back.
‘Show me, show me!’
He uncurled his fingers. A dark shape nestled in his palm, three-cornered and smaller than an egg. It was a lump of coal, but glossier, heavier and more dense than regular coal. It felt cool to touch, but caught the light like molten tar.
‘What is it?’
‘Anthracite,’ Scrapper said. ‘Top-grade coal. They found it in my granddad’s pocket when he died. Now it’s yours.’
‘Mine, why?’
‘Closest thing I got to a diamond. Keep it safe. We win the strike, I’ll trade you my granddad’s anthracite for a diamond and gold band. Deal?’
‘Deal.’
She kissed him until their bodies melted together. They moved slowly, fingers lighting fires, lips shooting sparks. She cried out, heard something clatter in the kitchen down the hall, the sound of a kettle being filled. She lay still, certain that the whole village could hear her pounding blood. Scrapper wriggled into his kecks, padded off to the bathroom. She pulled the duvet up to her chin, listened to the cistern gurgle, to the creaking of floorboards and the voices drifting in from the kitchen. She closed her fingers around the lump of anthracite, felt it warm to the touch. She was dozing off when a knock on the door woke her. Angela walked in, set a tray on the bedside table. She perched on the bed, ruffled Helen’s hair.
‘Angie, you didn’t have to.’
‘Is a little something to say welcome to the family, bella.’
The tray held a plate of heart-shaped biscuits and two steaming cups of coffee the colour of gravy browning. Angela took one cup herself and offered Helen the other. She took a sip and nearly dropped the cup. Heat and bitterness singed her taste buds. She longed, then, for her mam’s tea, served lukewarm the way her dad liked it; too much milk and stiff with sugar. The thought surprised her. She hated her mam’s tea, but maybe nothing else tasted like home.
— 6 —
Scrapper woke with a jolt as Dewi halted the minibus in a narrow country lane. He climbed out after the others, stretched his spine and yawned. Lately, he and the boys seemed to be picketing other pits most days, setting off hours before dawn. Barely three hours’ kip and off to Yorkshire, arriving in time to see a lazy sun haul itself towards the horizon. The breeze raised a meaty scent from the blossom that spattered the hedgerows. Other minibuses were pulling into the lane. It was shaping to be a tidy crowd, the men around him sparking up their first smokes of the day, trading bleary-eyed jokes and wrestling poles and canvas to raise their banners.
Iwan handed him a placard. ‘Listen, son. It said on the news there’s coppers drafted in from all over. Reckon it may get hairy today. Stick with your butties and stay out of trouble.’
‘Aw, change the record, Dad.’
‘I’m not bloody joking, Simon.’
‘What happened to Matt?’
Dai, Dewi and all the boys were here, but not his butty. Scrapper hadn’t seen him since the wedding. No sign of Matt on the picket, not in two weeks. He’d phoned Dewi, given him some half-baked tale about his mam falling sick. None of the boys believed a word of it. Dewi had read Scrapper the riot act, ordered him to visit Matt, set things straight with him for the good of the lodge. Scrapper felt a twinge of guilt. He’d made excuse after excuse not to go. And now, with all the boys dispatched to Yorkshire, Matt’s absence was obvious. He vowed to track him down that night. What kind of man fell out with his butty over a stupid piece of gold?
They gathered under the Blackthorn banner, waited for the signal to set off. At last a group of policemen approached, an officer in the lead.
The officer raised his megaphone. ‘Move off the road. You’re blocking the lane. Move away from the road.’
Scrapper fell in with Iwan and Dai Dumbells, followed the bodies and banners through a gap between the hedgerows that opened into a vast field. Up ahead, beyond the trees, he spotted the coking plant’s square quenching tower and sooty chimneys. It was as dark and forbidding as a fortress. He rolled his sweater over his elbows, caught the scent of Helen on his fingers, wondered what kind of prat went tramping across a Yorkshire field at stupid o’clock, rather than stopping in bed with his wife.
The field filled with people. They weren’t just the usual NUM die-hards and the grey brigade with their communist newspapers. He spotted banners from France and Belgium and Italy, slogans in other languages. And between the banners, there were kids of his age, done up all alternative, ripped black jeans or khaki fatigues, regulation exotic hair. Students, hundreds of them, waving placards printed by the Socialist Workers or the Revolutionary Communists or Militant. There were no boys and girls like these in Ystrad. He wished he had Sue and Debbie with him. They knew how to talk to students. Students left him feeling stupid and ignorant and shy.
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Dai nudged him, pointed at a skinny lad, thin, hook-nosed face under a crest of multi-coloured spikes.
‘State on that,’ he murmured.
But Scrapper couldn’t fault the lad; a parrot in a flock of sparrows.
The field stretched across a hillside, looking down on the coke plant. Below them, a line of police stood ten deep, long shields glittering coldly. Scrapper shuddered. The couple of thousand miners and supporters were well outnumbered by the boys in blue. Behind the shields, he saw dog handlers, muscular Alsatians straining at the leash, and other officers on horseback. Time passed and heat rose as the sun hardened in the sky. At the top of the field, some boys from Kent kicked a ball between them. Scrapper stripped down to his vest, tied the arms of his sweater around his waist, tried not to stare at a group of knotty-haired students sprawled against a tree trunk, breathing clouds of pungent smoke. A girl with pink hair, long legs in torn fishnets, marched up to Dai, hustled him to sign a petition for free abortion on demand. She smiled, thanked him, moved on. Scrapper wished desperately that Matt was there. He could see it; his butty chasing after the girl, demanding to know about men’s rights.
The lines of police and dogs and horses drew closer together, shifted into a solid mass. The miners did the same. Scrapper sensed both sides waiting for some kind of signal. Then he heard it – the far-off growl of engines. On the road beyond the hedgerows, a lorry was approaching the plant. The mood darkened so fast, he thought clouds had closed around the sun. All at once, his boys were shouting, bodies crushed against him, carrying him forwards. A slow, heavy beat rose from behind the line of long shields, batons thudding on Perspex, daring the miners to come down.
The cry went up: ‘The workers. United. Will never be defeated.’
Goosebumps studded Scrapper’s arms and legs. He and his butties, stood shoulder to shoulder with men from the other coalfields, with trade unionists and newspaper sellers and students. Tears pricked his eyes. He was proud – so fucking proud – to be a part of it. He grabbed Dai’s belt with one hand, Iwan’s arm with the other. His toes snagged molehills and rabbit holes, but the scrum was so tight he couldn’t fall. He kept moving forward, breath forced from his lungs, the roar of the crowd hurting his ears. He flinched as a brick flew over his head. They were close now. Close enough to hear the brick thud against the wall of shields. As suddenly as they had surged forwards, the crowd slammed to a halt. Panic rippled through the crowd. Howls of pain rose from the men at the front of the crush. He heard the muffled thud of batons on flesh; the grunts of the hitters and yelps of the hit.
Dai, jammed against him, had a good few inches’ advantage.
‘What’s happening?’
‘Bastards are going in,’ Dai said. ‘Giving the front line a pasting.’
He ducked as bricks, stones and bottles whizzed overhead. Scrapper heard the thuds and grunts and yelps more clearly now. He found himself getting sucked forwards, the crush in front of him thinning as men fell or were dragged through the police lines. His boot caught something on the ground. He looked down and saw a man of Iwan’s age curled up in a ball, dark blood oozing from his ear. He tried to reach down to the man but the crowd drove him on.
Rage kicked in, then. This was a massacre. The police lines loomed yards in front. Behind the shields, he saw blue helmets, round and dense and shiny like bowling balls, their visors lowered, steel rivets glinting in the sunshine. He squinted, tried to see the riot policemen’s faces. But the light bounced off the Perspex, dazzling him. He saw nothing beneath those helmets. The enemy was faceless. Masked like executioners.
The wall of long shields parted. Horses charged at the crowd, flailing hooves and tails, so close that Scrapper could smell them. A truncheon grazed his shoulder.
Dai dragged him clear. ‘The bastards are trying to kill us,’ he gasped.
Scrapper was too furious now to feel scared. The blood juddered in his veins. He braced to push forwards, and to hell with his dad’s warning. But where was his dad? Dai was mouthing something, pointing towards the lane. Beyond the banners and placards, Scrapper saw the shuttered roof of a coke lorry approach the plant. The gates inched open. Dai flexed his massive shoulders, started wading through the crush towards the riot shields. Scrapper grabbed Dai’s belt and went after him. The crush tightened again, as the other men pressed forwards too, fists raised. The men at the front raised a yell of triumph as a clutch of miners crashed through the police lines. But to no avail. Cheers turned to boos and whistles as the coke truck slid through the gates.
They had failed.
The cry went up. ‘Move back, lads. Move back!’
The horses were coming back in. Scrapper grabbed Dai, pointed, yelled at him to turn and run. Everyone seemed to realise the danger at the same time. The crowd thinned and dissolved and everyone was running. Hooves thudded in pursuit. Batons fell on bone and flesh. The cries of the injured men filled the air. He felt heat singe the back of his neck as a horse bore down on him. Something hard and heavy caught him across the back of his skull.
He went down.
***
He opened his eyes to find his dad, Dai and Dewi bent over him, taking cover under a hedge. The back of his head pulsed pain. When he touched the spot, his fingers came away red and sticky.
Dai looked close to tears. ‘They could’ve bloody killed you, Scrapper Jones.’
Dewi held up his hand. ‘How many fingers, lad?’
‘Give over,’ Scrapper struggled up onto his elbows. ‘Still got my fucking marbles.’
‘Language,’ Iwan scolded.
Scrapper peered out from under the hedge. What he saw made him suck in his breath. Groups of police roamed the hillside, beating any man they could catch. Fallen bodies littered the field, horses charging past and over them. The walking wounded dragged their comrades to safety. At the top of the field a group of men, faces bloodied, clothes ripped, were staging a half-hearted fightback, but they were outnumbered and out-armed, bare limbs no defence against batons and horses and dogs.
‘The pigs are out o’ control,’ Dai whispered.
‘Are you soft in the head?’ Iwan rounded on him. ‘They’re teaching us a lesson.’
Then Scrapper spotted the kid, the one with multi-coloured spikes for hair. He was standing alone on the field, a squad of short-shield officers pelting towards him. The kid held out his arms to them, as though in surrender. The batons fell on him. Scrapper heard the crunch of resin on bone, saw the kid spit broken teeth. Two pickets ran to help, but the police beat them down and dragged them away. The kid crumpled on the ground.
Beyond the field, the coking plant gates opened and the coke trucks slipped away.
‘What the fuck is this?’
Scrapper realised he had spoken the words aloud.
‘It’s war,’ Iwan said.
***
Dewi gathered the boys for a headcount. By some miracle they were all present and correct, only the banner missing. Dai and Eddie slipped away, returned triumphant. The banner had survived the worst of it, only the gold trim torn and flapping in the breeze. Scrapper helped Dai to fold the cloth and dismantle the poles. They waited for a signal from Iwan, who was watching the field, to let them know when it was safe to move. When Iwan gave the signal, Dai led the way. He burst out of the undergrowth and charged across the field like a bullock.
‘Where we going?’ Scrapper said.
Dai pointed at a gap in the hedgerow on the far side of the field. ‘Reckon there’s a way out by there, across the railway. Reach the other side, we’re home an’ dry.’
They were nearly at the hedge when Scrapper heard footsteps. He turned to see half a dozen short-shield officers closing in on them.
‘Run, lads,’ he yelled.
He picked up pace, too scared to look back. He could hear the coppers’ ragged breath, the crackle of radios and the jangling of metal cuffs. Dai reached the wire fence first. They could go no further. The fence blocked a steep embankment, beyond it the
railway line.
‘Christ,’ Iwan said. ‘We’ll get ourselves killed.’
‘We got no choice, Dad.’
Scrapper placed fingers and thumbs between the metal barbs, lifted the wire for the others to pass underneath, shouted at the boys to move it. He hefted himself after them, kept running. Half way down the embankment, he lost his footing. He fell a good twenty feet, rolling over stones and rubble, coming to a stop beside the track. Then he was up and running again, no chance to check for trains, towards a cluster of industrial units.
He turned to see the policemen grab two miners who were half way through the fence. They dragged the men back, no thought to the wire barbs that raked their skin, gloved fists smashing into faces and torsos.
***
He chased the others up the far embankment. They found themselves in a kind of scrap yard, pieces of steel and aluminium strewn all over, rusting iron sheets piled against the walls. Students were hefting lumps and sheets of metal towards the gates, setting fire to tyres to hold off the police. The air stank of oil and burning rubber and fear. It smelled like his rage. He picked up a rusty bumper.
Iwan wrenched it from his hands. ‘No you bloody don’t.’
Out on the road, a long-shield squad was chasing a group of pickets. Dai found a gap in the bushes at the back of the yard and signalled for them to follow him. They skirted a wall, sprinted across a patch of wasteland that split the industrial estate and ducked behind buildings, crouching to pass under office windows, to creep around waiting trucks. At last, they got back to the minibus. Scrapper collapsed in his seat, panting, feeling the adrenalin ebb away. His head hurt and there was a heaviness to his chest that wouldn’t shift.
***
No one spoke as the minibus sped south. Somewhere outside Birmingham, Dewi switched on the radio.
‘…Violent clashes have been reported in South Yorkshire this morning after miners surrounded a coking plant at Orgreave near Sheffield. Police came under fire from bottles, stones and other missiles. There are reports of heavy casualties, at least seventy-two policemen injured in the clash…’