by James Clarke
Arthur started putting on his coat. “Don’t you think to give me one of your sermons after the way you carried on wi’ Sam. After taking my son to that thresher up Orgreave. That’s right, he told us. An’ I’ll tell Shell an’ all if you mention that fucking do at t’big house one more time. An’ while I’m on the subject of my wife, you’ve never put the puppy eyes down for her, from day one I’ve had to watch it, bloody shameless, you are, an’ she’s not interested. So get under wi’ the idea once an’ for all or I’ll bloody flatten yer!”
Het would like to see him try. “If you won’t speak to Lawrence, Arthur, I will.”
“He thinks you’re as much of as tosser as I do.”
“Scabbing bastard!”
Het swept Arthur’s tobacco off the table.
“Stay away from my family, Het. I’m serious.”
Het was already on his way out of the welfare door.
Straight over.
A crow cawed. Het could never work out how they didn’t get sore throats. Forget Arthur, he was striding the Heap Road looking for Shell’s son. Mam had said the lad was putting up posters for the by-election campaign, which had surprised Het. There had been so much going on recently that he’d completely forgotten about the impending vote. How Lawrence had got in touch with Neil Jennings and the Labour team, he didn’t know. But at this rate they’d have him in the union yet.
Swelling with pride, Het climbed the lower bluff for a better view. With a host of chimneyed connections spread in front, Litten looked like a toy town. It was drizzling; Het pushed the damp hair from his eyes. The violence and splendour of the hilltop wasn’t far, with its scars of rock and uneven outcrops with certain endings.
A car cruised by.
Another.
It was chucking it down. Het spotted something through the prism of rain, so clambered across to it: a poster by a drystone wall. Perhaps Lawrence would be ahead with his paste bucket, brolly and brush.
The poster was stuck to some chipboard, the first in a series tied to every other lamppost along the road. Het approached it, removing his glasses and wiping the lenses on the thighs of his jeans. The poster’s edges were freshly glued, the paste still gloopy. It wasn’t for Jennings and Labour at all; it was for Clive Swarsby and the Conservatives.
All Het’s strength nearly left him. He bent double, then after a long while, straightened up, sighing at Litten. On the other side of the valley was Threndle House, a burrow of smoke emanating from its chimney. One of the lights clicked off and on again. It was as if the mansion had just winked at him.
It took twenty minutes to get there. Pressing the buzzer on the gate, Het wasn’t exactly sure what he’d say to these damn people, but he’d think of something.
He hadn’t been here in months, and in daylight, not in years. He could smell burning. Autumn was always like this, the most sentimental season – even in the wet, that blue smoke smell, the discordance of leaves trapped in the gaps between park railings, the memory of having your lamp checked before escaping for your shift down in the safe warm balm of the ceaseless earth.
There was no answer so Het walked around the property, peeping over the wall where he could. The mansion was actually pretty dilapidated and maybe that was fitting because as far as Het could see, the fires of a cosy Britain were stoked in places like this. Here was a living manifestation of the English fantasy of church bells, jolly spinsters and sunsets edging over country clubhouses. Here was an England that had never really existed outside of dreams and fiction. All that golly gosh, picnic hampers, tweed, brown leather and gingham, spaniels and yachts and steam trains, mulberry bushes, initialled hankies and kids in boater hats. It was no wonder a politician lived here. The house embodied the sorts of ideas they could publicly aspire to whilst laying waste to the organised working class.
Het returned to the gate and gripped one of the bars, causing some of the paint to come away and leave rusted orange wounds behind on the metal. He knew this was a daft idea but he was going to do it anyway: make a gift to Shell of her wayward son.
He stepped on the bottom-most iron helix but as he set all his weight on the gate, it swung open with him standing on it. The thing hadn’t been locked in the flaming first place.
The wide front door had one of those un-buffed brass knockers and no one to answer it. Het had better luck at the postern entrance, his call answered first-time by a boy Lawrence’s age: a young man, really; dark-haired and keen.
Het didn’t recognise him. “Evening,” he said. “Name’s Het.”
“Hello.”
“It’s about . . .” Het stopped. “I’m here . . .” He stopped again. “Fancy me not getting us words out. Any chance a lad’s here? Your age, name of Lawrence. I know it’s odd me askin’.”
The sensitive boy’s face was in flux. He began to laugh, not loudly, or at Het; more as if he’d remembered something funny. His top teeth found his bottom lip and he said, “Why, yes, come inside. You must be Lawrence’s father.”
Het didn’t set the boy straight. He stepped into the house and wiped his boots on the steel mat. He had been shown into a scullery. Its tiled floor was chequered and an old-fashioned drying rack was suspended from the ceiling by a pulley system. White clothing draped over that and there was a sink and a washing machine and a dryer. An ironing board was propped tipsily in the corner.
Het was led down a wood-panelled corridor. The boy hadn’t introduced himself; he’d just snapped his fingers, not a question asked. He did glance back a few times, probably to see if Het found it a bit of chuff coming to a place like this. Het wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.
Promptly a door was opened and voices could be heard on the other side. Het was taken into what turned out to be an auxiliary living room, tucked away from the main parts of the house: an old servants’ quarters, perhaps. Lawrence was sitting by a kindly-looking fire.
He’d been folding leaflets, collecting them in a pile and wrapping them with elastic, and now he stared at his uncle. Het was speechless. A girl was there too, her Barbie legs resting in Lawrence’s lap. She wore a hard-to-describe expression. This was a hot-potato friend if ever Het saw one. Tough to hold. Easily lost.
“Het,” said Lawrence.
Het managed to laugh, a terse laugh, more a blast of air than anything. He might as well have come on crutches with a cap in his hand. He wondered if the girl knew what type she was. He guessed she did: he could see it in her manner, her ready mouth. He could feel the dark lad staring at him, so cocked his head. No, he wasn’t Lawrence’s dad, and that was just tough.
Het selected a leaflet from the table. The fire in the hearth popped and made his clothes steam. “Working hard, I see.”
“Just lending a hand.”
Het pinched the bridge of his nose under his misted glasses. “Mind if I sit?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re one of them now.”
“Just helping my friends.”
“Promoting that lot.”
The dark boy piped up. “Dad needs all the friends he can get at the moment.”
“It’s backs to the wall time all right,” said the girl drolly. “Who knew the locals would go on strike as soon as that back-bencher’s ticker stopped?”
Het ignored her. Derek Shaw had been a proud leader of this community for thirty years, and who was this Swarsby that he’d enlist a daft-as-a-brush kid like Lawrence to his cause? There’d not been a rally nor a meeting for this campaign, and no wonder. Even if by some miracle Swarsby were to win, he’d be one of those distant representatives who never answered a letter and only visited the constituency once a year for harvest festival or some such. Het tried to smile at Lawrence. No smile came.
“I’m surprised Dad’s bothering to make a go of it all,” the girl added, then, as if she and Het were friends, said, “Are those coal scars on your wrist?”
“I need a word, Lawrence. In private.”
Lawrence looked to the girl as if asking permission. For some reason Het thought of the pink heat of the coke ovens.
“Anything you want to say to me, Hector, you can say in front of Evie.”
This Evie didn’t bother to conceal her glee. Out of the corner of his eye, Het could see the dark lad shaking his head. He also knew what Het had recognised: Evie was destined for a destruction of her own making.
Het just came out with it. He wanted Lawrence to go home, speak to his mam. “She misses you, lad. Won’t you think on it?”
“Oh Lawrence,” the Swarsby boy said. “Have you not a care for those who raised you?”
The posh little poof – though Het didn’t say it – had a point. As Lawrence blushed, it was all Het could do to keep from saying listen to this imp. But Lawrence was embarrassed enough as it was and it wouldn’t do to attract further attention to it.
“Your mam loves you. Whole family. An’ you’ve a place down Brantford . . .”
“Oh, Het, for once just shut it!”
Both Swarsbys were taken aback. So was Het. There was a lot going on in Lawrence’s face as he said, “To be honest, I hardly know this guy.”
Het beckoned with every finger. “Come on, we’re leaving.”
Lawrence looked as wild and red as a horsefly sting. He didn’t move, so Het addressed the Swarsbys. “Where’s your father? I’d like a word please.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?”
“On the contrary, Miss. I think it’s a damn good idea.”
“Really? Because as far as I can see you’re trespassing on private property, despite being asked to leave. And if you don’t go this instant we’ll be calling the police.”
That was all Het needed. He implored Lawrence one more time, with his eyes, as close as he’d ever get to begging.
The kid kept on stacking his leaflets.
18
For a superstitious man Arthur was desperately short on luck. He was born short of it. Had to be. Like most people he had rituals to preserve good fortune. He never opened a brolly indoors, he kept a forelock from Lawrence’s first haircut and he covered the mirrors in the house during storms to keep the lightning from getting in. He used to do that, anyway. He was constantly on the lookout for black cats.
And still it was all going to shit. His first family outing in months and Clive Swarsby had chosen today to get in touch. Talk about bad luck. This was the kind of timing that saw championships lost in the dying seconds.
Weeks checking the Free Press, checking it every Thursday when it came out. There was to be no word from Swarsby until the end of August, but Arthur still hadn’t been able to keep from checking the paper and now it was nearly the start of September.
It was lucky he’d even seen it earlier. On the way to pick Lawrence up, he’d stopped at the newsagent’s for matches and realised the new edition had been out since yesterday. Crouching near the door at the bottom shelf of the aisle, Arthur licked his finger and leafed through the copy on top of the stack. He swore to see it. Made the other customers look. There was the ad: a cleaning job at Threndle House, contact listed as Guiseley: the instruction he’d been waiting for. There can have been few people who’d waited this keenly to make a call.
He borrowed a pen from the shopkeeper, scrawled the number on his palm and went to the phone-box around the corner. The tone purred once he’d jabbed the sticky metal keys. A cardboard tray of cold gravy and chips were on the kind of floor that was cold all year round, the knowledge someone had pissed in here recently preying on him.
Eventually Swarsby answered. “Hello?”
“I’m calling about the cleaner ad?”
Silence.
“I’m the right man for the job?”
That was what he was supposed to say.
“The advert’s been out over twenty-four hours,” said Swarsby tersely.
Arthur smiled, opening the phone-box door and booting the chips out all over the pavement. “I had a lot on.”
“I’ve had a huge number of calls about the position.”
“Look are we meeting or what?”
“What the hell do you think?”
“Time?” Arthur crossed his fingers. “I had plans today.”
“Well, you’d better reschedule. Be here in an hour.”
The line went dead.
No bloody way to contact home and no time to head to Wolton to catch Shell and tell her he wouldn’t make Skegness. Arthur double-checked the bakery, left a message with Gaskell to say something had come up, then went to the phone again and used what change he had to try and get in touch with Lawrence.
His mam’s phone rang and rang. He tried it a couple more times. All that chat for nothing, greasing Lawrence into spending the morrow with his parents, swearing there’d be no mention of school or the pit. The things you did to make the peace. After the pub, Arthur had walked Lawrence to the cottage bought with the compensation money bought with his father’s death. The house reeked permanently of mildew and brown paper. It had a picture of Arthur and his brothers positioned on the sill in a constant suntrap. ‘Well done,’ his mam mouthed at him from the top stair. Where was she now? Arthur held on until he heard the no-answer tone bleeping down the line then smashed the bastard receiver back into its bastard cradle. There was nothing else to be done. He’d take his family on a real holiday after this. He’d take them on two.
He took the municipal bus as far as he could towards Flintwicks because it was spitting with rain, then walked the rest of the way. He still found Threndle House imposing. Its dinted gargoyle leered from its gritstone perch, weathered by time and hunched by design. Shaded, ear to ear.
Arthur’s shoes made shredding noises in the asphalt chippings as he went to put his hand on the nearest wall and feel the chill of its architecture. To the side of the property was a gorgeous old Jaguar XJS. Although he couldn’t drive, Arthur cupped his hands on the windows and peered longingly at the dashboard, the wooden-topped gearstick, the gliding binnacle. A couple of minutes later he was at the back of the house letting himself in via the tradesman’s entrance. Every window was turbid. Shadow was everywhere.
The Swarsbys kept their coats and things in the scullery leading from the trade door. Arthur removed a scarf from a hook and wrapped it about his face. The Swarsby children must be absent or he wouldn’t have been summoned here like this. He followed the sound of an empty sequence being picked out on a piano, all the way to the living room where he found Clive Swarsby waiting for him.
Through the glass beyond Swarsby, the garden was gossamer with mist. The politician was garbed in a lemon-coloured shirt and grey slacks, looking far more comfortable than the last time Arthur had seen him. Arthur seated himself in the nearest chair and tightened the scarf over his face.
“You can take that off for a start,” said Swarsby.
“I’ll keep it on, ta.”
“It’s cashmere.”
And wool was wool. Arthur’s smile became a chuckle as Swarsby shut the fallboard over the piano, causing its wires to chime. The guy had that skull blubber that overweight bald or balding men get, a head-roll of flesh rearing up from the neck that tempts you to reach out and pinch it.
He’d done just that in June, pointing the cricket bat at Swarsby to make him stay put. Out had come Arthur’s hand, surprisingly steady, given what it was up to, pincering the soft back of Clive’s head between finger and thumb. He dropped the bent photographs of the man’s daughter on his desk.
“These are what you want me to pay for?” Swarsby eventually said, leaning back in his chair, in the process knocking the calico blinds that were strung along the window.
“Or we send ’em to papers.”
Swarsby let out a derisive burst of air. Pfffft. So Arthur struck the desk with
the bat, leaving a huge dent in its bevelled edge.
Swarsby cowered. “But I don’t have anything!”
Arthur clouted the desk again, accidentally striking the lightbulb. Glass tinkered everywhere, raining over the three men.
Sound travels brilliantly in wooden-floored rooms. A kinetic energy sluiced through Arthur, and he had to take a moment to steady himself. This was surreal as it got. Swarsby’s aftershave was pungent, and the study walls seemed as porridge-coloured as Arthur’s life felt half the time. Dig deep for the miners. Arthur had Asa take hold of Swarsby’s chair while he went to town on the filing cabinets. Useless manila folders were ransacked, discarded documents floating about the room like feathers loosened from a pillowcase until the Swarsby bank statements surfaced, which, lo and behold, proved there were no savings. The family were living at Threndle House rent-free.
Still, there had to be cash, credit cards or assets. Something. Arthur was about to say so when Asa pulled him into the corridor.
“Fucking what?” said Arthur.
“It in’t working.”
“No way we’re leaving empty-handed.”
“We’ve been too long already, what if someone comes?”
Arthur wasn’t sure. He had a mind to set the whole of Threndle House ablaze. He batted Asa’s arm away and re-entered the study, Asa trying to grab him.
“Arthur!”
Swarsby tentatively rose from his chair. “Arthur?” he said, “Arthur . . . this house isn’t mine. You do know that?”
“But you’ve all this!” cried Arthur, whacking the desk for a third time. “He’s having us on, it’s his favourite thing. You must have summat, where’s the jewellery, the fucking cash? I’ll take that bloody jag off your hands, shall I?”
Swarsby was practically hyperventilating as he waved the photos at Arthur.
“Think,” he managed to say. “Why would I have these if not for the same reasons as you?”
Arthur lowered the bat. He was drawn to, fascinated by, Clive Swarsby’s breached iris, where a mysterious concourse had been created by the oil spill of his pupil. It was like a poker player’s tell, only in-built, permanent: the bluffer’s mark. And Asa must have seen it too. He swatted the pictures from Swarsby’s hand, produced his NUM badge from his pocket and set it on the knackered desk. “All them families,” Asa said. “All them jobs.”