by James Clarke
Arthur slipped out of bed. Not a peep from Shell, lying there, this stranger he’d elected wife. He glared at her form, then felt terrible. He mouthed an apology, dressed and put his shoes on, left the bedroom and the freezing house.
His mam’s front garden was silent and littered with decaying leaves. Nothing here was growing. It was all reduced to stalk, easy to snap, skeletal.
Helen had done very well for herself since Alec’s accident. This house was so much bigger than the old place, the fraught terrace of Arthur’s boyhood that had been laden with the smell of lard cooking, bread and dripping and lavender candles. The thinned upholstery of furniture had hosted decades of afternoon naps.
They used to go up Wolton Road washhouse when Arthur was little. It was his job to cart the laundry in the old pram. If he’d been good, his mam sometimes let him book a tub in the bathhouse. Sneaking next door, all but naked, Miss Starkey showing him where to go, her husband a pit deputy, she in white overalls that must never have been dry. Her prunish fingers ran the baths by turning the taps with the special key. Arthur always asked for his extra hot so he could have a proper soak, spending so long in the marvellous water that his mam had often to come and fetch him.
His wife was at it with his brother.
He gathered some chalky dirt from the flowerbeds, compacted it in his hand and chucked it at Lawrence’s window. It came back and blew all over him. Some went in his mouth.
He tried again, catching the glass with light stones until Lawrence’s head appeared speculatively out of the window.
“Kid?”
The head shot back inside.
“Please, Lawrence.”
No answer.
Arthur still wanted Shell. He didn’t know how to make her want him back.
“Oh, come on.”
Lawrence’s gentle brow, the boy’s fingers and nose, appeared at the window ledge.
“I’m in bed, Dad.”
“I’ll make it quick. I just wanted to explain, about yesterday . . .”
“Time is it?”
“Summat came up.”
“I knew you wouldn’t show.”
“I meant to, I promise.”
“Have you spoken to Mam?”
Talk? Arthur could barely look at Shell. And as for Het. He was some brother. This was some life.
“I want to make it up to you, kid. I thought we could go for a walk later. Have a chat, like . . .”
The expression on Lawrence’s face made Arthur cover his mouth.
“Oh, stop trying to make us feel guilty all the time, Dad!”
“I’m not!”
Arthur had been copping it since day one and although his son had ruined everything for himself at school, he could still be helped in some respects. Arthur could do something for the only person he had left. “I expect you’ll be busy wi’ that Swarsby lass,” he said, “but listen, this might not be the time or place, but, Lawrence, I’ve been meaning to tell you, well . . . I’ve heard stuff about this Evie girl an’ I think it’s only right I tell you what’s what.”
“Oh go home, Dad,” Lawrence said angrily, retreating and hauling the window down, leaving barely a gap.
Arthur sat on the path, wishing Sam was here. His brother could have been the ignited piece of coal wrapped in a newspaper, a hot cob to rekindle a life’s spent fire. There are so many ways to die and so few ways in which to live. The Litten Path was drawing in, a rent in the hills with the eyes of the wolfhound nearly up it. “Ask her about Guiseley, then,” Arthur called up at the house. “Ask that girl what she and that lord got up to down in London then.”
The window drew to, just above.
Arthur was able to thumb a lift from a milk dray. He didn’t know where he’d go but sitting among the crates he happened to drive past Chris Skelly, Gordon Lomas and Darren Roach. They must be on their way to a picket somewhere, and maybe that was the kind of release he needed.
He knocked on the driver’s window. The dray quickly slowed, Arthur jumping off and going after the others. Thanks to the street lamps, his reflection was clear against the wet tarmac and road markings. Arctic, it was. The zip on his coat was broken so he had to tug it about himself as he hollered at the lads to slow.
“Boys!”
Arthur met them at the bus shelter, where they said hellos, shared smokes and cupped hands around matches to guard against a moody wind and the beginnings of a light rain.
“You’re out early,” Gordon said.
“Just roaming about,” replied Arthur. “I needed the quiet.”
Chris Skelly nodded sympathetically. “Where you been hiding?” he said. “I were beginning to think you’d packed it all in.”
“So were I. Had to clear us head though, you know.”
“Fancy it tonight?” Chris clapped Arthur on the shoulder. “We’re off to fetch car.”
From his pocket, Arthur removed a bottle of juice he’d lifted from the milk dray, peeled the cap off and took a sip. It was tart, the bottle so cold it was uncomfortable to keep hold of. He didn’t need to say anything.
They slipped out of town and headed towards Tockholes Farm, where Chris had his car stashed. All the way there they walked in the grass on the hill-side of the drystone wall, so that when a vehicle came by they could duck, and arrived a short while later, safe and damp.
Fortunately there were spare towels in the boot and Gordon had a Thermos of tea, so they warmed a little on the drive to Kellworth. Quiet and weary, the miners listened to the rain dropping on the car. It sounded like someone was scattering tons of grit at them.
At Kellworth they were admitting strike breakers into the pit at staggered times, so the NUM had instructed its picketers to correspond their arrivals accordingly – morning till lunch. Arthur and the others were a part of the second or third wave of protesters that morning.
They pulled in a fair walk from Kellworth’s compound and navigated the tricky sump of sodden fields until they got to the scar of railway sidings cut into the pit itself. Five minutes or so down these tracks they heard a noise in the trees behind. They lay flat and tried to see over the embankment, spotting the flashing rods of many torches in the murk.
Police.
The percussive sound of boots did not stop or go away. The noise came closer, then closer still. Arthur and the others were forced to scrabble from the train tracks, heading through the field instead, in the direction of the pit’s rear. They quickly got caught in an obnoxious lake of thick black coal slurry six inches deep. They waded through the muck to the west of Kellworth. Shit-stinking, legs filthy, they eventually reached the outer wire fence that they could follow in the hope of getting closer to the picket.
The pit lights were huge and alien and the fence, made of interlinked and criss-crossed metal cord, created a blanket of tessellated diamonds that sent mesh shadows on to the face of each man. Arthur and the others edged single-file along the fence until they could see the picket stationed by the main gates, the police lines in darkness way ahead.
A group of officers were conversing with the lead picketers by the tea hut, its tarp and brazier lending the proceedings a rich, satanic glow. Behind this group were larger numbers of picketers and way more police. Hundreds on either side.
Arthur nudged up front with Chris. They couldn’t hear what was being said but voices were being raised. The lead police officer give a signal to some of his men to approach the tea hut. They did so, a small group carrying between them a large bucket. The men emptied the bucket over the picketers’ brazier, which left the detached floodlights in the pit compound the only remaining source of light.
Beneath these unforgiving beacons the picket was set upon and men were beaten and arrested in the patchy glare. Shouting. Fragments of violence. Everything got mixed up until Arthur couldn’t tell which side was bloody which.
He and Dar
ren wanted to pitch in immediately. Chris and Gordon wanted to wait for the scab vans and the rest of the picket to arrive. As they bickered, the clomp of boots and hooves got louder. A centipede of reinforcements was coming, aiming towards the carnival of violence playing out by Kellworth’s central gates.
This was followed by vehicles coming at the fracas, headlights blinding. Arthur broke free and ran towards the vans. He found a wedge of rock, and, imagining the lead vehicle was Het’s face, threw the rock and managed to pop a headlight.
Unfazed, the van hurtled though the space created by the police, straight into Kellworth Colliery. Another van zoomed behind that, a car and motorbikes, then it was the turn of the riot squad. Some headed into the pit and the rest manned the gates as they scraped shut. These men went to beat up the picketers, the melee left battling outside.
Arthur kept on with the rocks, managing to ping a couple more policemen before Gordon tackled him to the ground. He’d drawn the attention of some bobbies in nipple helmets, and they were heading this way. He and Gordon fled, Arthur’s mind emptying amid the singular imperative of escape. He was in the woods now, alone, reflecting on all that had happened since he first jumped the wall at Threndle House. You tried to solve one problem and created a whole set of others. The moths were out of the rug. They were everywhere.
Scaling an incline, he ran headlong into a fresh batch of policemen who were preparing to attack the miners. Arthur hopped it in the opposite direction, tripping and jarring his midriff on a tree stump. Swearing, he made for open country, running for home, a fitful sleep and the forthcoming by-election.
Sure enough, the Free Press was full of the election in the weeks that followed. The days Arthur hardly registered, the nights felt like they were centuries long. He took to waking in the early hours, staring at the back of Shell’s head, wondering if she’d have a face when she turned around again or if it’d just be her hair, no matter how many times he spun her. Smelling your wife’s clothes, watching her leave for work, following her through town and if you lost her, enquiring as to her whereabouts, always taking her account of where she’d been with a pinch of salt, a cocktail of fact and fiction, parallel lines that would always be the same distance apart, like you and her.
Shell had played billiards with Arthur’s head. His brother, too. Het even had the nerve to come round and offer to buy Arthur drinks one day down the welfare. Blood and treacle in a pint pot. Arthur nearly glassed Het where he sat as he was told that he should consider himself free, that he was off the hook for breaking into Threndle House in the spring. Benevolent fucking Het, condescending to tell Arthur it might have been a mistake forcing him on picket. Het even suggested it was high time Lawrence was brought home, tarried back to Water Street to cheer up the same woman who’d driven him away in the first place. The arrogance of the man, not realising for a moment that Arthur knew all about what had been going on between him and Shell. The two of them at it. His brother and his wife.
On the night of the by-election, Arthur ticked the box next to the name Clive Swarsby. This is what they got when they told him what to do. Course the Tory candidate was heckled at the announcements, booed, some obscure independents plus Labour and Jennings: Derek Shaw’s amanuensis, or whatever the piss he’d been while his old boss festered in office those thirty years, all of them finished above Swarsby.
Swarsby didn’t even seem surprised. From the moment he was sent to fight this seat he’d known he’d lose it. So he set his plan accordingly, fashioned his trap. Arthur helped, making the call to Bramwell Guiseley a few days before Litten cast its vote. He sent the package by secure delivery. He was only supposed to include the photos of the Irishman Doran but he shoved the ones of Evie in for good measure: the whole lot plus the contact details of the editor of every major newspaper in the country made for a compelling case. The accompanying letter invited Guiseley to the post-election gaudy at Threndle House, where he was to drop the money off, behind the same bins the moth rug had been left in a lifetime ago.
The drop-off couldn’t come soon enough because October had duffed the miners up and left them for dead. Fucking NACODS threw the towel in. Course they did. Bought off because everything could be bought – every single thing on planet earth – the NCB penning a blank cheque for the pit deputies and their under-officials. And now that the managers’ union weren’t coming on strike the effort was done for. It had all been for nothing, just as Arthur predicted.
The strike limped on, staggering into lethal November. In the space of three days, tasty pay-outs were offered to any miner who’d go back to work, and Labour leader Neil Kinnock stuck it in reverse, refusing to speak on his party’s behalf at the NUM rallies with Arthur Scargill.
Soon after that some youngsters died, picking coal for their families on a winter spoil heap. Three lads, aged fourteen and fifteen. Around that time the greenlight was also given by Thatcher’s government to slash the welfare for the striking families again. Arthur was reduced to grubbing for coal himself, filling compost sacks with shit-bits he could sell in the pubs to those with open fires. All you needed was a spade and a pickaxe for where the ground was frozen. He went on to watch the bank repossess David Cairns’ house, and, after hearing about Asa and the girls, found his old friend down the Grey Grebe and offered to look after him as had originally been agreed, a cut of the Guiseley money as soon as the pay-out came. Here me out, Asa. Here me out. Trying to apologise, only to be shoved over, told where to go and called a shammer in front of everyone.
But it was coming to an end. Five grand was on its way, Arthur’s half of ten. He could almost taste it. He kept visualising rocking home in the taxi, opening the door to Shell with his final surprise, one that’d work this time, win her back for good. He’d take her down the airport. Pack your bags, love, this is it. Have a gander at the travel brochure. Take your pick.
It had snowed the night before, only some of it sticking, frost holding the parts together at the high points, dampness accounting for the rest. Threndle House appeared in view, almost feudal, the last bastion of the vanguard glowing against a hillside that was leopard-printed with slush. The house itself was neat and tidy: no sign of the Litten Path as yet, that cartilage of shattered rock that had broken from the crag. But it was out there: Arthur could feel it.
The air was brittle and parched and the gate was wide open. Music played and there were fancy cars parked outside: Rovers and Mercs stationary as crouching dogs. Amber fairy lights wound along the house’s porch. A sweeping band of shifting hues stretched unbroken, miles above.
Arthur could hear the laughing guests. They were of no concern to him, all he had to do was collect his money from the side of the house and be on his way. His half of ten.
He didn’t have to creep but did so anyway. This was a mad thing to be getting on with: a miner’s lad from up Litten way, getting one over on the bigwigs from down south.
Here were the bins. Arthur lugged them aside. The ground was mossy and webbed with shit and leaves and the heat busted from him as he looked down.
Fuck.
Fuck, no.
There was nothing there.
. . .
He checked again.
Nothing was there.
. . .
Arthur knelt in the snow for a long time, then prowled the outskirts of Threndle House, checking for a holdall until he was sure the bastards had done him. It felt like someone else was walking this route, not him. His beard had dew in it. His hair was so much thicker since growing back after Shell chopped it all off. Never in a million years had anyone been gulled like this. Chilblains. Fondling. Shell kissing Het. Het kissing Shell. Her hands up that scar. Did Het make love with his glasses on? Shell’s tongue all over Arthur’s brother in his brother’s flat. Up in the woods. In Arthur’s bed. His wife and his brother in his bed.
No.
Arthur could see into the living room. Guiseley was acti
ng as if everything was fine. Everyone had ironic looks on their faces. Masks. The lot of them were a bunch of fucking masks.
Then he saw Lawrence.
The boy no longer wore jeans and a bobbled woollen sweater. He looked smart, Arthur’s son of such dense varieties who must have weighed no more than ten stone soaking wet. Lawrence had a rough smile, just like his mam, using the side of his mouth just like Shell did. He also had that same lack of eloquence that felt oddly verbose, that same talent for putting things. But Arthur was in there too. Lawrence had the same reluctance to comply as his doomed old man.
And that was it, wasn’t it? At the end of the day your child was as alone and corporeal as you were. You couldn’t protect them. Everything they went through, they went through because of you, simply down to the sheer fact of being brought into this world. Maybe they were better off deracinated. Arthur could have smashed the window and dragged Lawrence out. He could have done the same to Swarsby, any of them. But why wreck things for his son just because he’d run out of track? He thought for a moment that he could hear the blast charges of Brantford pit. He listened again. There was only the wind.
The next part was easy. Arthur headed into town to do what he should have done months ago. He knocked on the door of Clifford Briscoe, Brantford’s pit manager, and told him he wanted to go back to work.
19
Evie watched Lawrence emerge from the ironmongers. It was cold and her scarf smelt like peppermints. She blew against the cashmere, hot damp spreading across her face. Her first north winter and it was as cold as she’d expected. Mischief Night, not even November, the pavement ice pale and the Christmas lights suspended prematurely across the street in unlit colours.
Evie mimed a round of applause as Lawrence raised the glue tin above his head. He’d grown out that vicious skinhead and might even scrub up presentably for somebody one day.
She took his arm and headed towards the woods, where they were to meet Duncan. Her brother had gotten over the garden party better than she had. Right up to the faint Evie could recall, the flutes of champagne, the wisp of cigar and scotch fumes, acquisitive attitudes practically slathering off the walls.