The Litten Path

by James Clarke

  “Looks sore.”

  The feel of your wife’s fingers on your head. Her lovely, smooth fingers on your head.

  “You stand out, Arthur. Something about you attracts attention.”

  “I wish it didn’t.”

  “But you’re OK?”

  Eye contact.

  “We got chased down track, Shell. Had to split into threes. I must have walked a frigging mile to Chris Skelly’s car only he’d gone walkabout by the time we arrived so we had to make us way home on us own, Asa and me.”

  “An’ Het?”

  “What ’bout him?”

  “Just wonder.”

  “Well while I were hiding up a tree and half the others were getting chased onto the next bloody bus, sour puss were elsewhere. Fuck knows. I’ve had to thumb a lift wi’ some lad. Nineteen years of age, surface man up pit top. Not much older than our kid.”

  “Will be our kid in less than a year,” said Shell, with a hint of satisfaction. “He’s nearly old enough.”

  There was no way Lawrence was going down the pit.

  Sometimes after one of these tales Shell would nod on her way into the kitchen, ease up on the sighing for five minutes. Because it seemed to be working: finally she was coming round, which made the fact Arthur was against the strike burn more viciously in his guts. Because in his heart he was a scab, a strike breaker in all but the deed itself.

  He’d thought it over endlessly. He’d at one point even nearly told Shell he wanted to go back to work, be the first in Yorkshire to rebel against this fucking polarity once and for all.

  He’d been washing his face before bed. She’d accidentally walked in. That yellow bruise of Arthur’s shining luridly in the lather as he and Shell caught sight of one another in the mirror above the sink. Your wife with no make-up on, about to turn back the way she’d come but stopping once she realised you’d seen her. A sense of something, certain they’d just glimpsed in each other the very thing they’d once had but hadn’t spoken of in at least a decade.

  “One on your hip looks tight.”

  “It is a bit.”

  “You’d tell me if you’re hurt, though. You’d say.”

  “You know I would.”

  “Liniment’s in t’cabinet.”

  “Shell?”

  To see her, those lips; your sore hands in the water and a fucking moth on the fucking wall. Arthur didn’t care about the industry. He didn’t care.

  He tapped the countertop with a coin. Lack of foresight had sent him down the pits in the first place. Brantford had been the easier thing. All Arthur had to do was show willing and he’d gotten for himself a job; turning up at the office, enquiring of the woman in half-moon spectacles as to vacancies. She blew her nose and said to come back the following Monday.

  The induction was less than short and within one month Arthur had more money in his pocket than a seventeen-year-old had thought possible, and being able to project an idea of yourself to all and sundry whilst necking Dexamyl and chatting birds up had meant so much to him.

  Mainly it was inevitable. Just passes in English and History to his name and his father on at him all the time.

  Lads of Litten go down the pit. And over half of them better men than you.

  Which was at least part-true. Almost every lad at Litten Modern got a job down the pit, as did many women, and of course Hector did too. Fucking golden child had six years Brantford graft in him by the time Arthur went down that office. Het who he’d shot with a firework. Het who wouldn’t talk to him because he’d shown those magazines of Sam’s to their dad when he was off his head one night and Alec was going on at him like always about being useless.

  Easy to reflect on the breadcrumb trail. Starting down the pit, blowing your wage every week then meeting that girl you’d sort of liked one boring afternoon but had forgotten all about. It wasn’t hard for a lad Arthur’s age to be struck by Shell’s canny smile and open legs. He’d been persuaded into marrying her because everyone else expected it of him. Putting a kid in Shell had probably been the biggest mistake, because a son Arthur would inevitably love. He’d saddled himself with the house on the right-to-buy in 1980. It had made for added security with Lawrence attending the grammar school, and had quickly become an albatross – a pissing mortgage with only one way of paying it.

  The bloke was coming with the photos. It had taken Arthur just two years to sign away the next fifteen. Everyone needs coal. Everyone will always be wanting coal.

  Yeah right.

  Outside he stopped to watch the expensive TVs in the windows of the electronics shop. They were blaring the regional news, some weather report depicting skinny teens chucking themselves off a pier, star shapes plummeting into the water. Arthur stared at the screens for ages, thought about things, then hurried to look at the Swarsby photographs in peace.

  He chose a secluded part of Litten Hill: a combe hidden from the wind and prying eyes, a hollow where he might sit. Somewhere below, beyond the town, its terraces and its shopfronts, was his home, static and anchored by a family. Partially screening this view was a tier of silver birch. Flushed green, the trees looked like a queue of ragged men gazing past Arthur, ancient figures concerned with things far beyond his understanding. Things that didn’t concern him.

  It was a bright afternoon, the likes of which you never normally saw when working underground all day. The Codeine had dissolved to become a pleasant drag in Arthur’s veins, and the envelope in his hand was neither thick nor heavy. Sometimes it was good being on strike. He lay back and rested on his elbows. Tranquil clouds coasted by, great scooped whorls of clotted cream. The place reminded him of being a kid. He often spent the day up here with Sam, or down in Barnes’ Wood, at the elm tree, dressed in sweaters, scarves and hats, smoking singles they’d bought from the mini-mart before coming home to dinner and pudding – often a great pot of stewed pears that simmered like gold lava on the Primus ring.

  For some reason it was always winter in Arthur’s memory. Salted paths and shards of ice in the milk bottles when you went to collect them from the front step every morning. In Arthur’s mind Het was always cleaning his first car with a shammy leather as it stood on the cobbles. Mr Perfect with his Vauxhall Victor and a special place at the top of the house. Het always wore a hat, a deer stalker with the flaps lowered, knotted under his chin. He insisted it was to stem the cold but it seemed no coincidence that the flaps hid the hideous scar on his neck. Arthur was always grateful for those extra squares of padded cloth.

  On the day of The Mighty Atom, Mam’s lipstick had been purple and sticky-looking. She wore a striped apron and a flowery dress, one hand arched across her forehead, middle finger and thumb placed on either temple as she turned away from Arthur because she couldn’t stand the sight of him. Dad’s hair was always prudently combed, his shirt pressed and tucked, but that day he purposefully rolled his sleeves up so he could deliver the hammer blow to Arthur’s nose less than ten minutes after arriving home from the hospital. Blood running down your front while your equally culpable brother cowered nearby, wrongly thinking he’d be the next to get a whack from the old man.

  “That’s for what tha’s done to Hector.”

  “I didn’t mean it!”

  “Tha never does.”

  “You never think, lad.”

  “I’m sorry, Mam.”

  “Don’t cry. You’re a waste of space, Arthur.”

  “I’m not crying.”

  “You better not be. Not after what tha did.”

  The discordant colour of the meadow grass Het lay in, fireworks popping in the distance and everywhere the smell of cordite. Crack, crack while your mam watched your dad break your fucking nose. Bonfire Boy, the other kids took to calling Het, although Arthur fought anyone he ever heard say it.

  “Lawrence!”

  Arthur opened his eyes. The bloody Codeine
had nearly made him doze off. He sat up and tore open the envelope, spread it against the stooks of short grass, a stash of black and white Swarsby photographs, of which there were two distinct sets.

  The first was a series, a sequence concentrating on one subject: the man Arthur recognised from the framed photo collage at Threndle House. It was the handsome bugger who’d posed with Clive Swarsby in the dinner suit. In these new photos the man was older, clean shaven, hair slicked into a helmet of grey, although he’d lost none of that defiance Arthur first noted when he punched the photo collage all those nights ago, impact decimating the smug twat’s face.

  The guy was in London by the looks of it, eating in a restaurant with another bloke, then climbing into a black cab with this thick-haired, heavily-built sod. The second man was pale of complexion. He wore a sweater over a tartan shirt and a blazer over that. The two of them were going into a lovely old hotel, The Savoy.

  The second set of pictures were of the handsome man and a teenage girl who must have been about Lawrence’s age. She sported shoulder-length hair and wasn’t pretty by any stretch of the imagination. She was more beautiful, like a cliff.

  She had been photographed getting into a limo with the man, who touched her elbow as if pinching a corner of paper. There was certainly closeness between them.

  Certainly something.

  Her build was familiar, and gazing at her skin’s starkness reminded Arthur of the feeling he sometimes got when he was amid the stippled remoteness of the moorland, where the lapwings looped their acrobatics through the dense air, wielding the freedom of the tops.

  He stuffed the photos into his anorak. It seemed sensible to head home, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to see Shell again so soon after running out on her that morning, and now he’d just heard someone calling his son’s name beyond the thorns.

  It had to be his lad, so Arthur stood, and between the motion, the pain in his face and the Codeine, he staggered. Groaning, he made his way across the hill towards the voices.

  7

  It was a strange time. May was surrendering to June and the swallows were returning north. You could see them: tracers skimming low, chasing the afternoons into loft-spaces and empty farmhouses. The summer exams were coming, too, though Lawrence tried not to think about those. He hadn’t been to school in over two weeks and doubted he’d see another classroom again.

  The business with the pie continued. The school was up in arms: a pretty teacher hobbled by two yobs from the lower sets, Grundy the head-teacher as good saying it, peering over his Roman nose, practically welling up, thought Lawrence, looking back on things, facing him and Ryan Fenton from behind that desk.

  The air conditioning fan had turned on the ceiling, the breeze fluttering the post-it notes and the A1 pad balanced on its stand. Grundy went on and on. Lawrence had never really been in trouble before but he was a low achiever so it was obvious what Grundy thought. When asked what he’d to say for himself, Lawrence tried to explain what had happened, but was halted by Grundy’s raised hand. There was a visible wart on the head’s finger above where a wedding band should have been. Miss Potts had told him everything he needed to know.

  “It isn’t me you owe your apology to. And you realise how you sound, given that you ran from the scene?”

  There were filing cabinets, a brown carpet and certificates on the wall. There was an oil painting of Grundy in his gown, lopsided at one corner.

  “Don’t shrug at me.”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “I’ve seen boys like you. Lies prosper, don’t they? And what of your fathers, what do they do that they’d raise two sons who’d do a thing like this?”

  Grundy’s yellow eyes. He had that funny white spit that old blokes get at the corners of their mouths.

  “Well?”

  “Brantford, sir.”

  “Striking?”

  Lawrence nodded.

  Grundy’s face hardened. He pointed at Fenton.

  “Scrapper,” said Fenton.

  “Explain.”

  Fenton’s father worked for a company that dismantled and cleaned ovens and fryers from takeaways and restaurants that had gone bust. They turned the equipment round and sold it for a profit.

  “A grafter,” Grundy said with satisfaction, before addressing Lawrence. “I’ve seen your lot. Civil disobedience, attacking the police – it’s a disgrace! No wonder you’ve turned out the way you have. I’m thirty years a teacher and never have I seen an injury to a member of staff before. Never mind a woman.” He shook his head. “For Pete’s sake.”

  The boys stared at the floor.

  “But at least Fenton’s had the grace to stay . . . You, Newman, leaving others to clean the mess, thinking you’ve the run of it. Thinking you can do what you like. You’ll be the death of this country, fools like you.”

  There was a coffee ring scarring the varnish on Grundy’s desk. Lawrence studied its circumference as the old cunt steepled his fingers. It didn’t matter that Barry Fenton was a cash-in-hand man for a bent little outfit, that all he did was hose the grease off those cookers into a shallow trench so he could watch it burn; Lawrence was from rabble-rousing stock. You can’t wash grease down drains because it blocks them. You can’t burn fat without the risk of it getting out of control. Fenton was suspended and Lawrence expelled. Sons of bogeymen had no place at Fernside Grammar.

  “You’re lucky you’re not being reported to the Yorkshire constabulary. Miss Potts is refusing to press charges.”

  Since that afternoon it had been surprisingly easy for Lawrence to hide what had happened from his parents. Their phone had been cut off so Fernside had to rely on letters, and with the school situated over the borough line the notices and meeting requests were stamped with an identifying postal mark. The letters could be intercepted easily.

  Mam and Dad were clueless anyway. They’d hardly noticed the signs of Lawrence not being in school. Days became matters. Matters of staying out of sight and hoping nosey parkers wouldn’t grass. Lawrence knew his secret couldn’t keep, but until it broke the hassle of his parent’s discovering it was easily worth the trouble of keeping the truth from them. It was almost a way of testing them, to see if they thought to give a shit. How big the fuck-you could be when they found out his life had unravelled under their noses.

  “Lawrence!”

  Evie was calling: her voice had filled his summer. Swarsby days: growing older and feeling it, wood smoke and teenage secrets, Evie’s slender legs a set of tracks that only a password might part.

  “Where you taking us?” Lawrence heard her say. He’d take her everywhere if she’d only let him.

  “To the summit,” he replied. Since getting in with the Swarsbys, he was careful to speak properly. “There’s a great view from up on top.”

  Fucking Duncan was puffing away by Evie’s side, his sister who was apparently never out of breath. Evie was the type to make others wait rather than hurry herself and break a sweat.

  “This better be worth it,” she said, arms folded and shorts ending so high that her legs looked like those of a bird, some shallow wader in a lake.

  “It is, or don’t you believe me?”

  Evie produced a compact from her bag and examined her face. Her complexion had adjusted now that she spent time outdoors that she claimed would normally have been enjoyed at friends’ houses, or her room in London.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I said there’s a great view from up on top. Or do you not you believe me?”

  The little round case snapped shut. “You’re always banging on about something, Lawrence. If you’re not careful I’ll leave you behind and so will Seb.”

  Lawrence said, “Fine by me if you want to run ahead.”

  “Just hurry up.”

  She was only rude because she cared. Lawrence led the way. Since their first meeting he’d wai
ted for Evie daily at the tree cave. She visited after her lessons with her tutor – which she took at home – always with Duncan in tow, barely giving Lawrence the time of day if she could help it, although it was telling that she still came, her need for company as recognisable to Lawrence as his own face.

  “I’m tired, Lawrence,” Duncan said after they’d walked a little further. “I need a rest.”

  “Seb’s stopping.” Evie laughed. “Stop the press.”

  Duncan touched Lawrence’s elbow as he went to sit, hand lingering in that unbearably close manner of his. Evie sat too. She picked a dandelion clock and blew the hours of the day up to five. Lawrence hadn’t met many people in his life, yet the Swarsbys were like no other. One was as suspiciously playful as a once-mistreated cat, the other had eyes like puddles in the marl pits, who being around made you feel like a stranger had come and sat next to you on a nearly-emptied bus.

  “You’re always tired,” Lawrence said. He was forever wanting to prod Duncan to see what came out. He’d been the victim of cruelty so often that he never thought he’d impose it on anyone else, but supposed some people were just your targets. It was impossible to leave them be.

  “I like to take my time,” Duncan said.

  “That’s because you’re unfit.”

  “Where we’re from there’s better ways to kill your days than climbing hills,” said Evie. She had dandelion spores in her hair and the width of her thighs expanded as she knelt to commence work on a bird’s nest from dead leaves and grass.

  “What, like sitting on your backside? Sounds soft to me.”

  “There’s a difference between soft and civilised.”

  “You’re hardly civil.”

  Evie grinned.

  “Suppose your dad can afford to pay for you to sit about,” Lawrence said, encouraged. “He probably sacked the personal trainer.”

  “Not likely,” said Duncan. He was so wet, so willowy.