The Litten Path

by James Clarke

  Halfway up the field a camera crew arrived. A blue camera with a stumpy robotic lens, pointing at them. “Steve, get this . . . get the guy’s blood.”

  The furred boom hoisted, the TV crew ignoring Lawrence, filming tall Het, his hair out of kilt, glasses midway down his nose. They filmed Bob: rusty bloodstain marking his face, limping badly.

  The crew stalked backwards, filming. It wasn’t far to the village end of the field, the only exits an embankment with an acute plunge down to the railway tracks, and the packed bridge leading into the village. Lawrence led the way towards the bridge. There was an immense jam of people there but it seemed a better option than the hill, especially now that he and Het were supporting the dazed Bob.

  But the shield units were coming and the horse-torn grass, the din around and the gulf inside. It was the complacency of it all, the efficiency, and so what if Lawrence was suddenly gripping the TV boom? He wrenched the pole, which came out of the sound man’s hands easily enough. The guy was young, blonde, ginger. What did it matter? Lawrence hit him in the face, hard enough to make him stagger.

  “No!” cried Het.

  Lawrence grabbed hold of the camera. It was heavy, shockingly so, which gave it momentum, even if you couldn’t throw it very far. He launched the camera and sent it rolling in the grass.

  The third man, the director or whoever it was, stood there. Lawrence punched him too. He didn’t know why. He did it anyway. The fucker gawped at him, cakehole open, stumbling onto his knees with a bust red lip. See you later.

  Then Het was on him. “Get off!” Lawrence protested, fighting free, shoving his uncle and punching him in the chest as hard as he could. God, it hurt.

  Bob, the shiny sidekick, waded in. Lawrence shoved him to the ground as well. “Don’t fucking touch me!” he cried, and Het was begging him to calm down but it was way too late for that.

  “Am I one of you then, Het? Am I one of you?”

  Lawrence ran towards the embankment and hurried down it, only it was steep. Jesus, it was steep.

  He nearly fell.

  He did fall.

  He rolled.

  He rolled again.

  It was OK. Grass in his mouth, he lurched, stumbling towards the chippings and shale of the railway tracks. He could feel the stones and then the metal underfoot as he steadied himself on the rails and panted, facing back the way he’d come. He could see Het at the hill’s crest, pausing with madness bubbling behind him. Noise was everywhere. Noise of it. From the top of the embankment hundreds of people were flowing downhill. Before they got to him, Lawrence bolted over the ridge and into Orgreave village. It was still early in the morning and he was his father’s son, he was a Newman.

  14

  By the light of a Davy lamp lit by a match, the cavern in the hill glows. It’s a pot, really, a haunt of biscuity rock. Odd drawings are etched up the cave’s walls and globs of paint colour the sand from where you’ve painted your model soldiers from World War Two, and there’s toy Messerschmitt’s and Spitfires, a dismantled Meccano set. When the time comes you exit on hand and knee, stretch to however tall you are then notice the sky’s vanishing point has merged with the high ground, and above you are stars, many punch holes blazing fiercely in the galaxy. Soon it’ll be the traipse home to the snick of the key in the latch, catching sight of the moon, God’s fingernail, Mam calls it, as you peer over Sam, his window beaming, no curtains to quieten it. The moon is always falling, it never hits the earth. Until one day it breaks orbit, picks up speed and comes down in a ball of fire.

  Arthur’s eyes clicked open. He was wide awake almost straight away. His shallow breaths grew deeper and yes, Shell was lying by his side. He didn’t dare to touch her. He knew better than to try.

  He would always be the one to do the seeking. When he’d wanted to trap off with his wife in the past he was obliged to rub against her and head inland if she’d only allow it. Why should things be any different now? He was only just returned from what had been the almightiest doghouse of his marriage.

  There was no other way of putting it, he had bargained his way back into the bed. Guilted Shell, for which he was certain now that she was grateful. Because after those first few aloof nights, Shell came close now when Arthur was under the covers, and no surer a sign could there be to signal that things were getting better.

  It almost reminded him of when they’d first started courting, easing into bed to be welcomed by that drowsy arm of hers, brought up close before his raging body warmth drove her away again.

  “You’re a radiator, Arthur. You generate heat.”

  Shell was always saying how boiling he was. She’d said it again only the other night. “I forgot about that. You running on high.”

  She had no idea how much saying that had meant to him.

  None of this was an accident. After Lawrence left home that day Arthur played his hand as best he could. “What did he mean by that?” he’d said.

  “Nothing.”

  “I said what did he mean, Shell?”

  “What are you on about, Arthur?” Shell called from her hiding place out on the landing. She was trying to play dumb, which of course meant she was lying. The door handle. Her frightened face. Arthur speaking in the over-controlled tone of someone managing badly. “Lawrence said, ‘Not the only thing Het sorts, is it.”

  “He didn’t say that.”

  “I heard it in our room, don’t know how you didn’t out here, Shell.”

  Shell mumbled something about not knowing. Screwing her eyes tight, she headed to the bedroom, collecting strewn clothes and fetching them downstairs in the laundry basket. Arthur followed, waiting for her to empty the washing machine, which was last year’s birthday present, and barely a word of thanks had it got.

  Next she bustled into the yard, scene of the bloodiest haircut Arthur had ever been given. His hair was finally starting to look normal, but the face, he could forget about the face for the time being.

  “I’m going nowhere till you explain what he meant,” he said, to which Shell might have looked exhausted. It seemed as if that’s how she would have looked when Arthur replayed the conversation in his head again over the following weeks.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sakes, I don’t know.”

  “But you can see what were hinted. You can see that.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Stop saying that!”

  The clothes and sheets were pegged on the line like costumes the day after Halloween. “So what am I to think?” said Arthur. “First this, then Lawrence. Where will he go?”

  “He might not have run away if you hadn’t blundered in the way you did.”

  “First Newman to go to a grammar in I don’t know how long.”

  “I didn’t say a word in front of him.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  The sound of things picked up and put back down again. Always with the heavy breaths, the hurrying to be getting on with something. They were going the long way around the isosceles triangle, all right, but Arthur would get it out of her.

  He didn’t leave it. He picked at the shore of his wife, picked at Shell, stone by stone, her only break the hour he afforded her when he went round to his mother’s to see if Lawrence was okay, although the boy wouldn’t speak to him. Arthur stopped in at Het’s on the way home (‘I swear to God, we haven’t. Swear on Dad’s ghost and the rest there’s nowt to it!’) before stomping back, bleeding, finding Shell hadn’t the nerve to flee, which was her all over. Back until she cracked. Yes, she spent time with Het. Yes, she knew things were said. Not by her though. Nor him. Rather it was the busybodies: Know-it-all A and Sideways-look B, nattering in your ear while sharpening a pig sticker behind your back.

  “And has he touched you?” said Arthur. “Promise me.”

  “What?”

  “You’d tell me.”

 
“If we?”

  He nodded with great difficulty.

  Shell started to cry.

  And maybe it was the easy melody of the past playing Arthur false, but he could never once remember his missus doing that. He went to hold Shell, and she sank so hard against him that he nearly staggered.

  Where a torch has once been lit, a remnant will always be. Arthur put his mouth to Shell’s forehead and wished he could go back in time. He wished so many things. There are restless spirits surrounding each of us. They grope and hold us captive. He was his wife’s prisoner too.

  “What’s wrong, darling?” he finally said, all those unfathomable looks he’d been getting beginning to make an awful kind of sense. A patch of damp was spreading from where Shell’s face rested on the pocket of his shirt.

  “It’s just been a bad morning,” she said.

  “Tell me about it,” Arthur replied in a glib tone that Shell missed, which was so unlike her. In so many ways she was like a forgotten language to him now, New Testament Greek.

  Next Arthur was led into the living room where for once not a moth flew as Shell told him about her arrest for breaching the peace in Sheffield that morning. Arthur stood there, blinking dumbly while his wife told him about being taken to the police cells. Shell was a proud woman with not a mark against her name, and the police had done that to her. They’d locked her up, threatened her with the riot act. A life sentence Shell could have got and Arthur hadn’t been there.

  She had been strip-searched. Pig hands all over her. The police had removed her clothing, bit by bit, checked her thoroughly for what they knew wasn’t there. The methodical nature of so personal an invasion was one of the most difficult things Arthur had ever had to hear.

  Because Shell had been defiled. First her mouth and then the pen torch shone against her throat. Then under her tongue, on her teeth and gums. They’d also checked her shoes, removing the inner soles before handing them back to her, telling her to get a fucking move on and slide them back in again. Jacket off. T-shirt off. Chin up. Standing topless in her jeans and trainers while some officer wearing latex fucking gloves checked underneath her breasts. You can put that top back on now, Mrs Newman. Then once you’ve done that can you hand over them trousers? Nothing there. Now turn around, drop them knickers and squat.

  A good few nights since then.

  A long few days.

  Arthur had laid up in the spare room until he found his mettle, insisting on joining Shell in the marital bed. Within a week of reminding Shell he was the husband and if nothing was going on between her and his brother, she’d to prove it, Arthur was permanently restored to the bedroom, even making love to Shell on a couple of occasions. Or perhaps it was just fucking. After all, a long-married pair can commit to the solitary act as they can’t with their child in the house, until it becomes something they almost don’t have to think about, and few things are more impersonal than thoughtless sex in the dark.

  Everyone goes on about the eyes but it’s the lips that can’t lie. Arthur was tempted to turn the lamp on so he could check on Shell’s mouth, to see if it was relaxed or not. Because her kisses had felt staged. And where did she go to, his wife? Why could he never get to her? Was her loving him an act of charity? When had a vital component departed from their marriage?

  He cricked his neck and swung his legs to the floor, feeling the sweet bobbles of the carpet under his feet. The room was awash with peace. As if Shell and he were collaborating, breathing in tandem.

  He entered his son’s room and bore witness to the mute sadness of the empty bed. Behind the curtain, on the sill, were the stacks of magazines Arthur was looking for. Beanos and Dandys, a few footie mags that were as yellow as pre-war foolscap and fuzzy to the touch. Arthur selected a wedge of comics and couldn’t resist putting his nose to the pages. They smelled like badly-dried woollen blankets, the insides of a pencil case. A forgotten something, perhaps, that had taken a weathering in a local park.

  In the kitchen his feet stuck to the vinyl. The room felt bizarre as rooms often do at night. The groan of pipes and contracting woodwork. The mass of the airing cupboard describing shadows in which a burglar might hide. Someone like him.

  Arthur set to work with the very scissors that had separated him from his hair in the spring. He cut letters one at a time from the straplines of the magazines and glued them with a Pritt-Stick to a sheet of paper torn from the tablet in Lawrence’s desk drawer. The message was for Clive Swarsby, and when it was completed it was wiped clean of fingerprints and the next day popped in an envelope.

  Asa kept the car running while the letter disappeared into the box affixed to the gates of Threndle House. For the attention of Clive Swarsby, it said, because it wouldn’t do for young Evelyn to open any funny-looking note, discovering that it was for her that her father was being told to hand over three grand. Arthur had some morals.

  The photos were dog-eared now, a thumbprint captured on every bottom right corner from where they’d been pored over several times a day. Arthur’s personal mark that caught the daylight, caught the sun.

  It had taken him long enough to work out what he had. Eliminating scenarios, chalking off what you knew. For Clive Swarsby had left the negatives undeveloped. These were far from sentimental snaps; they were evidence.

  But of what?

  Of who, more like. A friend. An acquaintance, probably a lot of things, seeing as this man was with Clive Swarsby’s daughter, then with another man, too.

  Every picture suggested intimacy, visible closeness. The hand on the small of Evie’s back. That elbow pinch.

  Then there were Evie’s clothes. In the photo she wore a braided chain outside of a designer V-neck T-shirt over growing A-cup breasts. She was adoring of the older man’s profile, fawning while he stared at something out of shot, all statuesque, the perv. And there he was with another man, two fat-heads knocking their fat skulls together in a fat café. It was the same again in a restaurant, the two laughing into their pâté, then later, under the awning of the Savoy.

  The Savoy.

  Everything pointed towards Swarsby having dirt on this man.

  Now Arthur had it too.

  He made his way to his mother’s. He was getting fit as a flea walking everywhere, which was one of the few advantages of being skint. Picket money went on the bare essentials, snap was taken care of at the welfare while Shell’s wage was devoured by the mortgage and the swollen coffers of their friend the good old YEB, though they were behind on both sets of payments. With the strike raging and the overdues mounting – Hate Mail, Arthur had taken to calling it – there was no choice other than to get this Swarsby racket off the ground.

  He arrived at the slate path. He hated coming here. Once, just ten minutes up the road, he had seen his older brother’s boot striking their father’s face. Arthur dragged Sam off beneath the burgeoned mop heads of a neighbouring hydrangea, and Sam bit him, the incisors of the person you were closest to in the world indenting your wrist. That was what you got for spilling the beans. That was what Arthur deserved, all those years ago.

  Mam answered the door. It was difficult, her old person’s big nose and ears, the punctured slashes through which her earrings hung. Her liver spots were like crop circles of butterscotch spattering her hands and neck.

  “Arthur,” she said, looking blank. She must have forgotten what he was here for: another stab at solving the perpetual problem of his son.

  He nodded.

  “What a way to greet tha mother.”

  “Morning, Mam.”

  “Now he says it. Shut door, you’re allowing a draft.”

  There was no wind whatsoever. “I’m here for Lawrence,” said Arthur.

  “Your little walk.”

  “Could you send him down please?”

  “Will you not—”

  “Mam.”

  The old dear slunk awa
y with the same guilty eyes she’d had after phoning the police on Sam. The same eyes that were absent when she let Arthur’s dad break his fucking nose.

  Lawrence appeared. Funny how time can blur someone. Arthur leant on the door and said, “How we doing then?”

  “Good, yeah.”

  “Cracking day for it.”

  “Is it?”

  “See for yourself,” Arthur said, spreading both arms but feeling hurt. Lawrence just shrugged. It had as good as happened overnight, this growing up, and it would likely be as quick in the reverse. Coming to the end of your life just as your child was beginning theirs. Somehow it just didn’t seem fair.

  He took Lawrence to the Ogden. The indolent river had taken on a syrupy glaze thanks to the shards of summer sun. As the two of them picked their way through the wood, a tawny owl called, emitting its rich, billowing thread. Arthur stopped at the sound, put his fists together, thumb against thumb, and blew into the gap between them, mimicking the owl’s song. After a moment the bird duly called back. Lawrence smiled.

  They sat together on a bed of rock, a chthonic door of industrial-looking grey.

  “Why am I here, Dad?”

  “I want you to tell me about this Swarsby lass.”

  “And here’s me thinking you were going to ask us home.”

  “That goes without saying,” Arthur said.

  “How come?”

  “Because you’re old enough to make up your own mind.”

  “No, why do you want to know about Evie is what I mean . . .”

  Lawrence began to construct a tower of pebbles. He built it up then knocked it down. Repeated the action. Meanwhile, Arthur bided his time. It was important to be careful around the lad. At least with his cheek healed and the mask gone, he could convey a truer honesty. A tender welt remained on his face and his eye was still foxed with purple, although Arthur didn’t mind the eye so much. Black eyes have a certain appeal. They aren’t called shiners for nothing.