by James Clarke
One day she and Duncan had gone to spy on the miners and their families queuing for their meals at the welfare. It was surprising how chipper everybody seemed. The news outlets reported dawn raids by pillaging miners, hoodlums damaging public property and carrying out violent raids on the police, causing trouble both in the centre of the country and its extremities. Yet they were just people; Evie knew that now. She had also realised that there were twin planes of reality in this country, and the closer you looked the more blatant their divergence seemed to be. She swooped upon a platter of food then helped herself to more champagne. Ahead was a marquee and in front of that was an ice sculpture of a hand with a torch. It was the Conservative herald.
Feeling sick, she went to find the others. How easy it was to be alone in a packed place, stumbling between rooms without belonging. Evie tried the indoor and outdoor bars, eventually finding Duncan at the edge of the dancefloor in the marquee. He was deep in conversation with Felix and Tony Dallas, so Evie lingered at his shoulder and tried to listen in, gaining neither a word of acknowledgment nor an opportunity to speak. She was privy only to the sound of Duran Duran. A man in a dinner suit and a woman in blue were the only people dancing. They moved together, all hips, and began to kiss with tongues. Evie watched them until the song had finished, then went in search of Clem.
She couldn’t find her friend anywhere, so knocked back another couple of drinks and people-watched before leaving the enclosed area and heading to the main grounds. There she could smoke and think in private.
Exiting via a side gate, Evie shed her heels and walked, barefoot, which felt pleasant, then dropped to the ground and slumped against a corner where a laburnum-covered pergola protruded from the wall.
A mellow mat of grass rolled ahead. So did the tree line, and in front of that was an unyielding sallow mark that could have been a lake. The smoke purled from Evie’s lips, the grateful smoke, and the sky above formed an overcast roof.
She was about to wander further into the garden when she heard a noise coming from the gloom. Being outdoors was making her feel very drunk, but she could just about see a figure standing a few yards away, almost hidden by a net of branches. Maybe it was Clem.
Evie made her way towards the pale shape until she could recognise the unmistakable contours of Clemmie’s face. “I’ve been looking for you . . .” she began, but stopped as she noticed Clem’s dress tumbling in corrugations over the sides of her legs, and a man’s head nodding between the space there.
Clem’s mouth was slack. Her eyes finally focused upon Evie, who stood but two steps away. Nobody spoke. The chasm of Clem’s mouth became huge as her hand wrenched the crouching man’s hair. He gripped both her thighs; Clem’s teeth were clear, bared at Evie now, as, still watching her, she bent to kiss the man, fingers fanning the back of his skull. Evie could make out the face. It was Archie Wethered.
She hurried to re-join the party, fighting a sob and unable to explain quite why. She could see her mother’s beehive hair standing out in sharp relief against the ice sculpture. Glazed, Evie felt glazed. She helped herself to another drink and drank another to chase that, which steadied her. Fizz always went down so bloody easily.
Her mother was chatting to a man. Dark of complexion, he was recognisable from the business pages, some party or other: one of those easy, old-money types who brushed thinning hair over bald spots and drank more than they ate because they were secretly making sure their man-boobs didn’t get any bigger.
“Evie!” said her mother. “Evie, meet Harry. Harry, this is my daughter, Evelyn,” Fiona said.
“Great to meet you,” the man drawled, liquid. “How lovely.”
He had an amused face, a louche posture, and Bram was nowhere to be seen. Evie would slip behind her lover when she saw him. She would drop a hand in his pocket and grab him where he couldn’t wriggle free.
“Evie?”
“Hi. Sorry. S’good to meet you,” she said. “Who’s this, young man? Tell us what y’do.”
“I’m in property, mainly,” Harry said.
Evie hiccuped. “I’ve just finished school.”
Fiona’s cheeks were thoroughly rouged, but Evie could still see them colouring. She gave her mother a desperate smile disguised as a sneer, then wiped her nose with the back of her hand, knocking her chin with the shoes she was still holding. They clopped against one another, left and right.
Harry said, “Your mother tells me you’ve been staying in Yorkshire.”
“Yes, and frankly, it’s fu—”
“Evelyn! Please excuse my daughter, Harry.”
The man’s hand alighted on Fiona’s waist.
“Sent north . . . I did ask to stay. Y’would, wouldn’t you?” said Evie. “Ask for help.”
Fiona was doing that wobbly-head, tongue-stuffed-behind-her-bottom-lip thing.
Evie said, “But Mummy sent me to a warzone.”
Fiona forced a laugh, mouth opening so wide that Evie was surprised bats didn’t fly out of it. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
Harry’s papery eyelids narrowed. “Ah, you mean the strike. An unpleasant business.”
“Unnecessary, too,” said Fiona.
“If you ask me, Keith Joseph had the right idea,” whispered Harry.
Fiona set a hand on Harry’s arm, then touched her chest.
“Y’should meet a friend of mine an’ tell him that,” Evie said.
Harry craned to see across the room. “Is he here?”
“It’s not his scene.”
“But a warzone?” Fiona raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to have to back that one up, Evie.”
“Put it this way, now I know what a Black Maria is.”
They both tilted their heads in approval.
“This one’s come home familiar with all sorts of earthy language,” Fiona said. “My son is more realistic, probably too realistic for his own good. But Evelyn . . .” – she shook her head – “. . .has always been more impressionable.”
“Surely not,” said Harry, and smiled at Evie, who parted her lips and showed him her flat, welcoming tongue.
“I’d say she’s more like her mother,” said Harry, raising his drink.
Evie wanted to put her head through the nearest pane of glass. She made a noise. She wasn’t sure how it sounded, as if she was tickled, perhaps. In any case it summoned Fiona’s hand to her wrist. Snapping tight, the nails dug in.
“My daughter is drunk.”
“It’s an occasion for drinking,” said Harry kindly.
A large plant was visible to Evie’s left, a maple in a copper pot. There was a wonderful purple tinge to its leaves, which were like emblems. “What’s that tree?” she said. “There’s one like it on Litten Hill.”
“What is she talking about?” said Fiona. “A friend of mine was like this at Ascot this year. Delusional with drink, she was. Babbling.”
“Ascot?” said Evie, perking up.
“Why don’t you have some water?”
Fiona summoned a waiter, who arrived with a platter from which Evie swiped another glass of wine and downed it.
Ascot. Of course.
“How were the races, Mummy?”
Fiona snatched the empty wine glass. “You’ve had more than enough.”
“You’re quite right.”
“She’s delirious.”
All of them laughed. Fixed races and duff tips. Fascinators and top hats and carnations for all.
“I confess I was fibbing when I said Harry’s name is just Harry,” said Fiona. “Would you mind if I told her, Harry? It’s such a grand title.”
“Oh, not at all,” said Harry, clearly delighted.
“Evelyn, you won’t have realised it but you and I are now in the company of—”
“Viscount Digby Alexander Halifax the fourth,” said a voice.
“Bram!”
“How’re you doing, Harry?”
The rest of the conversation was lost upon Evie. Bram seemed to stand at ten feet tall, and his eyelashes were like tarantula legs. Evie thoughts seemed to multiply in size. She could do nothing as she felt Bram’s arm slither around her waist.
“Hello, Pup.”
His voice. Evie’s vision was swallowed. She was in the charnel house and the outdoor light had gone all wrong, becoming indistinct, yet piercing, while her mother, Harry and Bram and indeed every other guest seemed to distort and solidify until they weren’t really people at all, but waxworks, malformed, beset by radiation, perhaps. Melted mannequins.
Then they weren’t waxworks at all. They were simply an image of waxworks, a life-size photograph of waxworks that behaved as if it had been held over an enormous flame. The image’s silver nitrate bubbled, pock-holes opening, corners furling inward. Evie couldn’t tell who was speaking. There was only Bram and that hysterical phosphorescent glare. She stumbled backwards and heard her name as she knocked a glass from someone’s hand in a bid to steady herself on the ice sculpture. Evie just had time to think how cold the herald was as she buckled in the shingle, the sculpture toppling from its plinth and shattering on the ground. As chips and splinters of ice skittered across the path, those wonderful orbs of light strung above the garden party winked out, one by one.
Then there was nothing.
PART THREE
A Deeper Prospect, and Rugged Scenes
16
There was his domino, old snake eyes. Shell wouldn’t touch it, that pair of ones. She’d been in the green soap-scented parlour when Arthur first got the tattoo done and would not forget the look on Alec’s face when he saw it. They’d been daft enough to go round for tea, and Alec had spotted it poking from under the sleeve of Arthur’s t-shirt as he helped wash up. “Does tha know about this?” he’d said, all batty-eyed, presenting Arthur’s shoulder to Shell as if he owned it.
“Michelle?”
Course it had been her idea. A joke at first, then a dare. Arthur never backed away from a dare. They were the domino, him and her, two black spots for two bound hearts, made of bone, or on a good day, ivory.
“I couldn’t resist,” Shell had said, drawing Arthur close the next street over, breathing against his sideburn.
“Tha never can.”
Worth it in them days. Back in the flat she’d rubbed Germolene on the domino while Arthur told her how he felt. Rarely did she say it back. Love was to be understood rather than declared. I mean, Shell often thought, just who are you trying to convince, always saying the words to me?
The India ink was faded now. Autumn and so very wet out. Shell had to crack a window – she was always roasting with Arthur lying next to her. She rose, tip-toed across the room and fiddled with the catch. Through the window gap, rain. It sounded like thawing ice. Daylight the colour of puddle water seeped around the edges of the blinds, and now that Shell was back in the bed, Arthur wheezed away, his chest so pale you could practically see the organ beating in it. This tobacco man, her husband. After lying awake for a long while, Shell went downstairs to make the tea.
At the kitchen table Shell rubbed the sleep from her eyes with the sleeve of her dressing gown. It had taken her son’s departure for her to realise once and for all that the chemistry of her marriage was gone. That what she and Arthur had been left with was an uneasy replica.
Even before the rug fiasco Shell had been measuring how things were against how things used to be. She knew that the past has a tendency to appear easy, and that looking back too fondly upon it was dangerous. That had never made it any easier not to do so.
Then had come Het. Shell pined for those heady first weeks of the strike. Discreet days, threading her arm through his when no one else was looking, when he wasn’t expecting it, that beat of their smiles meeting: the shyness of things between them being at their thinnest.
She was cheating on Arthur then, she knew. She had taken to phoning Het up to see what he was doing – that you didn’t do as a married woman – went with him for the free dinner at the community centre in Strepley, saying it was so they could talk when really it was so they could be alone. She’d even let Het take her to his personal spots: the alder dell, his flat, painted only the year before, the detail of Het’s bad decorating job obvious: the paint paralysed in pleats down the wall to the extent that Shell could have picked them off if she had a mind to. She’d chided him about cleaning the place, then been taken out in his car, having a go at driving the bloody thing, stalling it before nearly hitting a telegraph pole. No wonder Het got carried away that night in the bakery.
It had taken Lawrence’s rebuke to make Shell realise, as much to herself as anyone else, how she was being. She was some kind of woman. How she could hold her head up when she was as bad a hypocrite as that, taking her family to task the way she’d done, carrying on the way she had? She’d darted away from Het, let Arthur harry her into giving him another chance. It was the right thing to do, the correct thing, and might even have given her some peace of mind if the quiet moments weren’t when the volume in her head was turned up the loudest.
She slapped a moth. The noise wouldn’t stir Arthur, who’d risen at four am to get to the Kellworth picket for six. Shell washed the dead insect down the sink, gave the room a spray with the repellent she kept handy these days, then took her tea to the door so she could watch the rain fall on the yard step. She loved this time of year: its scent, the colours. But Arthur was waiting, so as soon as her cup was drained she’d go to him like she was supposed to. For you could make yourself ill on solitary mornings, letting yourself wonder and wish.
He was in one of his spacy moods when she woke him a little later. Bearded, hair messy and face bloated with sleep, Arthur sat in his t-shirt and underpants, hand absently resting on Shell’s wrist. She was aware of its weight, the closeness, wanted to shrug him off and did so.
He didn’t register.
Noon, no breakfast, Nescafé instead. They were out of food, the weekly parcel due, so they both smoked – she’d stopped hiding it – and enjoyed the silence. Shell had learned to stop pestering Arthur, for the things on his mind were likely the same as those on hers, and she was sick of thinking her own thoughts, let alone discussing them.
Six months of this and now Christmas was coming. Six months without a full-time wage. The NUM had misjudged it calling everyone to strike as early as they had. You don’t enter into action in spring, you do it in winter when the country needs coal. The idiots had leapt at Thatcher’s provocation like a dog after a ball, and now that the government hadn’t backed down, people hadn’t even two sticks to rub together at an important time of year. No end of this in sight. Bored witless, Shell had spent the last few afternoons pulling the weeds from the bottom of the wall in the yard and between the stone flags, scrubbing the outside of the coal shed and doing the house’s outside windows as well. Of an evening she’d been working her way through Arthur’s poetry anthology. Verse that had seemed daft to her at school now unsettled her with its relevance. Life was tactile these days as it had never been before.
Bored, bored, bored and poor, poor, poor. The record player and telly had gone the way of the washing machine, and, only the other day, Shell had taken the bus into Rotherham to pawn her mother’s silverware and china. There wasn’t much to look at in the house now, just a whole lot of nothing. Shell wished she’d never pushed to swap the range for the electric fireplace. Piss take it was these days, unusable.
Least they still had the gas. They could ignite the hobs to heat the kitchen for the time being, do a bath. Shell had the bakery’s rota memorised. She’d begged all the shifts she could, knew when she was on, how much she’d get and when she’d get it. It wasn’t going to be enough to cover the mortgage, which was badly in arrears.
“How were last night?” she asked Arthur. She still liked to hear
the stories; she was a sucker for heroics, bravery’s groupie.
“Shite.”
The customary response, although Shell was sure Arthur wasn’t tempted to scab anymore. Even he wasn’t mad enough for that.
A handful of scabs had somehow been persuaded back to work in Yorkshire. Those two at Silverwood arriving with coats over their heads every day now. Through the gates the bastards went, presumably to sit around indoors while thousands of their colleagues and at least the same number again from across the country went ballistic outside. It was hardly an option for Arthur to follow suit. He kept saying he was picketing to avenge Shell’s honour, never mind the fact that she didn’t like to think of it having been taken from her in the first place.
The contusions pasted across his knuckles looked like eczema and there was a phlegmy just-woke burr to his voice. “Got lift to Kellworth for early picket,” he said.
“Wi’ Asa?”
“You know not wi’ Asa.”
“All right,” said Shell. “No need to rip my head off.”
Arthur glanced at her sideways. “Sorry,” he said. “I partnered up wi’ Gordon and a few others. David from over the road an’ Alan Hopkins who were my chargeman when I first worked Grafton Belt. We lucked out for once, got near fire for a warm. Right under the tarp on the settee. Played a bit of brag for matchsticks.”
“Sounds alreight.”
“Were till we’d to move on. Police had been tipped off so most of us went up picketing Woodthorpe instead. That’s why I were grateful for the extra pair of socks, love.”
Shell also used to pack extras for Het, back in April with its showers. He never had the nerve to pat her on the knee as Arthur had just done. Het was happy to be thought of rather than seeing it as Shell’s duty to save him the effort of thinking for himself.