Until Our Blood Is Dry

by Kit Habianic

  ‘Seventy-two fucking policemen,’ Dai thumped the dashboard.

  Dewi snapped the radio off.

  At last, they pulled up outside The Red Lion. No one spoke.

  ‘Look, I could murder a bloody pint,’ Scrapper said.

  He was in no rush to head home. Red would get upset about the lump on his head. Worse, Angela would have listened to the news on her tinny shop radio, heard it and feared the worst, her rage gathering force all afternoon, a scolding to come for the pair of them.

  He led the others into the bar. The pub was busy, for once, and the regulars raised a cheer on seeing them.

  ‘First round on the house, lads,’ Steve Red Lion grinned. ‘Yous’ve earned it.’

  They gathered round their usual table.

  ‘Heroes’ welcome, this,’ said Eddie Hobnob.

  ‘Feel like a hero, do you?’ Dai said.

  ‘Steady on,’ Iwan said. ‘Not one of us threw a stone. Not one hit a copper.’

  ‘A bitter thing, to be brutalised in your own country,’ Dai said.

  ‘What the hell d’you expect from the police?’ Iwan said. ‘Flowers? Dancing girls?’

  The door opened and a small figure shuffled in wheezing.

  ‘A pint on the house for Sion Jenkins, for holding the fort at Blackthorn,’ Steve proclaimed.

  Sion sank onto a stool, fighting for breath. There was something shrunken about his posture, the light gone from his eyes.

  ‘Cheer up, butty, we all made it back,’ Iwan said. ‘Eyes, teeth, arms and legs all present and correct.’

  Sion was struggling to speak. ‘We got scabs,’ he said at last.

  Someone dropped a pint. Glass shattered on the floor. No one moved.

  Dewi gripped the table. ‘Who?’

  ‘Matt Price an’ Alun Probert. The pair o’ them sat behind Gwyn Pritchard in Albright’s car. Captain Hook smirkin’ like he’s won the pools.’

  ‘Matt would never do that,’ Scrapper said.

  ‘Strike’s been hardest on the single lads,’ Iwan said. ‘No benefit. Not a penny, in fourteen weeks.’

  It was bullshit. All of it was bullshit. Scrapper snatched up his stool and lobbed it across the room. It slammed into the pool table, two legs snapping clean away. He went to pick up a second stool, but Dai grabbed him, pinned his arms to his sides. Held on to him, speaking softly, until Scrapper stopped struggling, flopped limply against his chest.

  — 7 —

  Helen struggled to settle at her in-laws’. It was no fault of Angela and Iwan, who treated her like family, encouraged her to muck in around the house and in the coffeeshop. But she struggled to shake dark thoughts about her mam and dad. The village had a hundred theories about how her dad had talked two good men into breaking the strike. Down the shops and in the bracchi, everyone had an opinion. Everyone, bar Scrapper. Scrapper said nothing. Not about her dad and not about his butty, Matthew Price. Helen felt she had to make good her dad’s sins. Angela agreed to let her mind the bracchi: she had work to do in her garden. As summer peaked, Angela thinned and weeded, mulched and harvested. Staked and fed, pruned and hefted, gathered and composted, as though it fell to her, single-handed, to keep the family from ruin.

  Helen helped her mam-in-law to preserve and store the day’s harvest. She was a willing but hopeless apprentice. Her mam’s practical skills stretched no further than knitting quilt squares. It fell to her mam-in-law to teach her to braid onions, dry tomatoes in a low oven, top and tail bucketloads of fresh-picked beans to stow in the bracchi freezer. Her mam-in-law was a stickler for instructions; no truck with improvising. It took a long time before she trusted Helen to stir the boiling vats of spiced vinegar and to clean and chop the beetroot and baby onions for pickling.

  Helen was washing the men’s breakfast mugs, when her mam-in-law appeared later than usual, skin creased with sleep, wrapped despite the heat in a heavy dressing gown.

  ‘Have the men gone, bella?’

  ‘Two hours back.’

  Angela peeled off her robe. She was dressed up proper smart, in her favourite mauve silk blouse and a taupe skirt suit.

  ‘You’re off out?’

  ‘Is nothing.’

  It was a proper effort for nothing. Angela was powdered and lipsticked and trailed a scent of crushed flowers. She slipped into the patent heels she kept for best and pulled a cardboard folder from the drawer in the kitchen table.

  Seeing Helen’s face, she flapped her hands. ‘Is no big deal. Is meeting with bank.’

  ‘That’s not nothing.’

  ‘Listen, bella, didn’t want to worry Iwan, is all. You’ll open up for me?’

  After her mam-in-law left, Helen put away the dishes, wandered downstairs to get the bracchi ready. There was no rush, with business slower by the day. She lifted the chairs off the tables, set up the coffee machine and emptied crumbs from the huge toaster. It was her first time to open shop unsupervised. Not that there was anything to it. She piled home-made Welsh cakes under a cloche and placed tubs of vanilla, strawberry and chocolate in the ice cream counter. Before the strike, the bracchi stocked eight flavours of ice cream, sold three large cakes a day. They’d eat leftover Welsh cakes for tea that night.

  It was dead quiet all morning. Helen was pouring tea for her elevenses, when the bell jangled and the vicar and his wife walked in with their twin grandsons. They ordered the works; two coffees, two portions of Welsh cakes, a plate of sandwiches, two banana splits and two milkshakes. The vicar patted her hand on the way out, told her to keep the change. Later, a road-building crew stopped by, ordered cheese rolls to take away. At lunchtime, Dr O’Connell’s nurse and receptionist sat in the window sharing a sundae and moaning about their men.

  After they left, no one else turned up and the afternoon began to drag. Helen watched the clock. No sign of Angela. She was wondering whether to pack up for the day when the bell jangled. The man looked familiar; large square spectacles, a snooty tilt to his large square head.

  ‘Table for two, sweetheart.’

  She blinked at him, confused, waved him to Iwan’s favourite table in the corner and went over to take his order.

  ‘No Angela? Still, you’ll look after me, eh?’

  ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Hmm,’ his eyes travelled along her legs. ‘How about a coffee. To start with.’

  A right sleaze, this one. She wanted to run back to the counter. A man of his age. Disgusting. He was at least as old as her dad. The doorbell jangled again. James Hackett walked straight past her. She knew him from the news. Scrapper had thrown his newspaper at the screen when Hackett said something about the lodge being Scargill’s boot boys, said the men went to Yorkshire looking for a fight. Said they deserved the bashing they got.

  Jimmy Mosquito, Iwan called him. ‘Always buzzing around, looking for blood.’

  ‘Harry – great to see you again!’

  Helen recognised the older man then. Harry Cross, member of parliament for Bryn Tawel and Ystrad. Always being interviewed on the telly, more often than not by Jimmy Mosquito. The reporter barked an order for tea and a cheese sandwich and pulled a pen and notebook from his jacket, eyes fixed on Harry Cross.

  ‘Off the record, eh, boyo?’

  The reporter nodded.

  ‘The branch would lynch me if I said this publicly,’ Cross said. ‘Denounce the strike, they’ll deselect me. But they’ve got the party over a barrel, Jim. The miners win, we’ll lose the entire labour movement to the hard left.’

  The reporter was twitching like a flea. ‘Can’t allow them to win; can’t be seen to hope they lose?’

  ‘Quite.’

  She served the reporter his tea and sandwiches. The cutlery clattered more loudly than she meant it to. ‘You’ll need to make it quick, gentlemen. We’re about to close.’

  Harry Cross grabbed her hand, trapped it between two damp palms. ‘You’ll be glad to see the strike end, won’t you, sweetheart?’ He shot the reporter a meaningful look. ‘These are the
people we need to reach, Jim. The little people. The small, hard-working businesses that the unions threaten to destroy.’ He gripped Helen’s hand, tugged it. ‘The strike’s been a disaster for this cafe, hasn’t it, girlie?’

  She pulled her hand free, closed her fingers on the lump of anthracite in her pocket. It was warm, reassuring, gave her strength to square up to Harry Cross.

  ‘A bigger disaster if we lose the pit.’

  ***

  The MP and the reporter dragged out her afternoon. On and on they talked, even after she started stacking the chairs. She was sorely tempted to drop the shutters, lock up and leave them to it, but they took the hint at last, paid and left her to close up. She gathered the day’s post and went upstairs, spread the envelopes on the kitchen table. Five brown envelopes: two addressed to The Occupier, no doubt from one of the loan companies come skittering out of the woodwork since the strike. The third was a telephone bill, printed in red ink; the fourth a bill for the electric. The fifth was addressed to her, typed address crossed out and redirected in her dad’s jagged handwriting. Her exam results. She ripped the envelope open. Four passes; four fails.

  ***

  The knock on the back door startled her. The kitchen was thick with steam, the kettle boiled nearly dry. She turned off the hot plate, shoved the letter in her pocket. Why would her mam-in-law knock? But it wasn’t Angela. She opened the door to a tall woman with tanned skin and a dandelion shock of grey-blonde hair. It was Mary, Dewi Power’s wife.

  ‘I was lookin’ for your mam-in-law. Shut shop early, has she?’

  ‘She’s—’

  ‘Not a problem. Wanted to give her this, is all.’

  Mary handed her a carrier bag filled with tins, cardboard packages and vegetables.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Food parcel. First o’ many, we hope. Compliments of Ystrad Women Against Pit Closures.’

  Helen looked at the bag. Was this to be her life, then? A train wreck for O-levels, a drain on her in-laws, Angela hauled up to the bank to explain their money troubles, the family forced to live on handouts. Shame flooded her cheeks. Her dad had drummed it into her long and loud that hard work brought reward, that no Pritchard accepted charity.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘What d’you mean, no?’

  ‘Nice of you to offer. We’ll not be needing handouts.’

  Mary batted a hand at her. She had a kitten’s spiky playfulness. ‘Bollocks to handouts. Worked hard to raise the money, we did. Solidarity, this is. Not bloody famine relief!’

  Helen set the bag down, feeling churlish. ‘Fancy a tea?’

  Mary shook her head. ‘Got half a dozen deliveries before dark, cariad.’

  ‘So, the food parcel—?’

  ‘Us women got organised,’ Mary said. ‘Needed to, what wi’ the big freeze.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Courts seized South Wales NUM’s bank accounts. Squeezing us every which way, the bastards. So we been rattling cans outside the shops in Bryn Tawel. Collected way more’n expected. We’re starting a soup kitchen down the Stute. Got big plans: jumble sales, fundraiser shows. You’d be welcome to help out.’

  She made it sound normal. As though the Stute wasn’t hostile turf. As though Debbie and her cronies kept a welcome for the scab’s girl. And yet – was this her chance to show them, to prove to all of them, and to herself, that she belonged?

  Mary watched her closely. ‘You’re one of us, now, bach. Angie made sure of it, insisting on you an’ Scrapper getting married. Knows her onions, that one. Anyone gives you chops, you send ’em to Mary Power. I’ll set the buggers straight. That goes for our Debbie, an’ all.’

  She was so riled up that Helen had to laugh.

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ***

  Scrapper reacted better than she expected. She told him as they were walking up the track above the village towards the barn. A breeze rustled through the clumps of hogweed, sun-bleached seed heads whispering as they passed.

  ‘It’s only exams,’ Scrapper kicked a loose stone up the path.

  ‘I’ve stuffed up, Scrap.’

  He kicked the stone a second time. ‘We’ll be fine.’

  The barn loomed ahead, long shadow puddled on the patchy grass. Slashes of paint scarred its corrugated iron walls. The graffiti read Death To Scabs. Helen shuddered. But the barn was not their hideaway now. Other people came here. She was married now, had a room of her own. There was no need for them to sneak up here, lay their jackets on the dusty, vicious hay and breathe in cobwebs and mice droppings and engine lube. Part of her missed those days, even so. Despite the trouble from her dad, things felt simpler back then.

  Scrapper clambered onto the stone drinking trough set into the brow of the hill. The basin was empty, water dried away, leaving a powdery green stain. She perched next to him and watched the swallows wheel and turn, black outlines against a sky in flames. Seen from above, Ystrad looked tired and used. The brick terraces were smudged with coal dust, back lawns brown from too much sun.

  Below the village, the colliery buildings stood out like scar tissue against the valley floor. The land around the pit was ripped and torn, rail tracks like catgut on a wound. Ystrad was so small beneath that blazing sky. A pinprick of a place. She leaned her head against Scrapper’s shoulder and gazed down at the winding tower. So still. So silent. As though the huge wheels would never turn again.

  ‘If you weren’t a miner, Scrap, what would you do?’

  He paused. ‘You’ll think it’s daft.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Mr Probert said I oughta write.’

  ‘What d’you mean, write?’

  No one made a living writing. No one from the coalfield. One more thing that wasn’t for the likes of them, if only for want of proof that such a thing was possible.

  He blushed. ‘I know it’s daft. But years back, Probert sent a poem I wrote to the Herald. Won a Valentine’s Day competition, got it published.’

  A Valentine. To Debbie Power, no doubt. Bloody woman.

  ‘Will you write a poem about us, Scrap?’

  He planted a kiss on her cheekbone.

  ‘One day, sure. Why not?’

  — 8 —

  Gwyn came down to breakfast to find Carol pressed up against the front door, one eye fixed to the spyhole he had fitted at the weekend.

  ‘Back, are they, the coven?’

  But Carol didn’t answer. She fled into the kitchen, shutting the door behind her. He took her place at the door. One of his better ideas, putting in a spyhole. His family couldn’t be too careful. He squinted, adjusting his gaze to the fisheye view of the road. Sure enough, there they were; his fan club. Four grim-faced women, dressed in black like witches. Trouble, Stubble, Goyle and Bubble, he called them: Dewi’s wife Mary, the vicar’s whiskery missus Shirley, hatchet-faced Chrissie Hobson and a pretty young thing with chestnut curls. He wouldn’t kick the girl out of bed. Too bad about the rest. There every day, lately, the women in black, stood in haloes of morning sunlight. They started coming after Orgreave, after he convinced his two lads to come back in. Two so far, but time would tell. The women knew that too. Small wonder they were riled.

  They waited for him every weekday morning, stood outside his gate with their arms crossed, until he left the house. Carol had him call the police that first morning. Had him summon poor old Johnny Boots. Fair play to the village bobby, he came straight up. Huffed and puffed up the hill to speak to the women.

  A fat lot of good that did.

  ‘There’s no law stops a woman standing outside her house, passing time of day with her neighbours,’ the copper said.

  ‘No law to stop a bunch of women intimidating an honest citizen?’

  Johnny turned back to the women. ‘You been intimidating Gwyn Pritchard, ladies?’

  The young girl spoke for the group. ‘Some of the lads were talking about taking a pop at him,’ she said. ‘But we’ve told them no one’s to touch the
scabs, or harass their families or wreck their property. The strike is a political dispute. Picketing is how we protest.’

  The brass-neck of the girl.

  ‘D’you hear that? She called me a scab. That’s slander, for starters.’

  Johnny pulled him aside, his tubby face slick with sweat. ‘Sounds to me like these women are the reason you’ve not had rocks through your windows or been given a good seeing-to. Reckon you should be grateful. There’s scabs in South Wales not been so lucky.’

  Gwyn glared at the bobby. ‘Who the fuck you calling a scab?’

  And there they were, yet again. He turned the key in the new five-lever mortice lock, yanked open the door.

  ‘Morning, you lot,’ he called. ‘Lovely day for it. Fetch you a cuppa?’

  The women glared at him, didn’t answer.

  ‘Yell if you change your minds, ladies.’

  He shut the door, pleased with himself. That was them told. Ladies. If that rabble were ladies, he was Dennis Thatcher. Getting too assertive by half, the country’s females. The strike must be struggling if the lodge had to send out the wives and daughters to play rent-a-mob outside decent people’s houses. To corner a man in his own home.

  Carol sat at the kitchen table slouched over a mug of tea. Her pink dressing gown highlighted the shadows around her eyes. His tea and toast were ready, for once, but his wife’s hunched misery put him right off food.

  He took his mug out to the back garden. Stood on the patio, let the morning air cool his cheeks. The scent of his sweet peas floated on the breeze. He breathed deeper, tried to ease the knots in his lungs. Something caught. Some kind of blockage that threatened to choke him. He doubled over, dizzy and wheezing. Set down his mug and waited for it pass. By the time he returned to the kitchen, his wife was gone. Gone back to bed, knowing her. She did that often, lately. It struck him that she hadn’t spoken to him. She had nothing much to say for herself at all, lately, his wife. She’d been sulking since that business up at Orgreave. Sat rigid in her armchair as they watched the fighting replayed on the evening news, Scargill’s stormtroopers taking the hiding they deserved. She watched the whole thing, fists clenched. Flinched a little, every time a truncheon fell.