by James Clarke
A few other guests had arrived to break things up, to none of whom Lawrence was introduced. An alderman and his jowly wife from Hoy-on-wold, another two Conservative councillors from the borough and their spouses. Lawrence sat next to Evie, who seemed to have lost the will to speak and barely touched her food. He asked her if everything was all right. She said it was fine. From time to time, glancing up the table, he noticed her and Guiseley catch each other’s eye. He wasn’t sure if it was a smile he saw, or if he’d imagined it.
After everyone completed their main course, Clive tinkled his plate with his fork and stood with his glass raised, the claret glowing in the light, his lips bruised a dim purple as if he’d been drinking something totally different to everyone else.
“These have been a few strange months, and not just in this fold, but all over the country, generally, and though it hasn’t been easy, not for any of us.” He glanced at Lawrence. “I know that as a party and a people we have the right amount of grist for the mill. It’s certainly been a difficult time for many of us, but now that the ward for the borough has been selected . . . by its able populace.” Clive flashed that plummy smile. “So my family and I shall be retreating to whence we came.” He raised his chin in triumph and faced Guiseley directly. “And with my return to London and active party service imminent, I am reminded of some of the bard’s lines, that seem fitting, indeed, for the occasion:
‘The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day. Now spurs the lated traveller apace, to gain the timely inn.’”
“Macbeth,” whispered Evie, pushing away her plate.
“So as I, the lated traveller,” her father continued, “safely return to the timely inn, my friends, I would like to thank you all for coming. You are all so very dear, and more than welcome to visit us in the south. Hear, hear.”
“Hear, hear,” repeated everyone, even Guiseley.
As the guests resumed their seats Evie left the table without excusing herself. Noticing her brimming eyes, Lawrence untucked his napkin from his collar, set it on the table and went after her.
He had never been this far into Threndle House. It was exactly the disappointment he had been led to believe it was. The parched weft of the carpet and the faded walls said everything. It would be mad to live in, though, this place, to live a dream of something, just as his father had once said to him. That was true enough. This was Threndle House, not so much a bad dream as an old dream, one where you were stuck and couldn’t control what was going on around you. All you could do was fail to run.
Lawrence searched for Evie, trying every room until he found her packing a bag on a double bed. A suitcase was open and clothes of all kinds were littered over the floor. Outside, through the window, were shapes. A gothic outline of this weather-beaten land.
“Is it seeing him again?”
“It’s everything. If I have to listen to their . . . sophistry anymore, I’ll scream.”
“And that Guiseley. Bloody hell.”
“They didn’t say he was going to be here. He was once so . . . God, Lawrence . . .” She sat on the bed. “I can’t even describe it.”
“Duncan just said he were your boyfriend. I didn’t expect him to be a fucking pensioner.”
“Oh grow up.”
“You never said you were leaving either! Were you just going to go without saying anything? I thought . . .”
“That’s why I invited you, to apologise. I honestly didn’t realise what you were going through.”
Look at her, so unused to penitence. It still grated on Lawrence, Evie’s presumptions. She had lived her whole life with no idea, all because she came from a different neck of the woods to him. All because somewhere along the way one of Evie’s ancestors had stumbled upon a better opportunity than one of his.
It was no use going over it all again. “What’s that tosser even doing here anyway?” said Lawrence. “If Duncan knows what happened, doesn’t your dad as well?”
“They invited him,” Evie said tearfully. “They’ve made some deal. Duncan said a man like that is better to keep in your pocket than set against you.”
Lawrence was too shy to comfort her now. He could picture her big affair, the excitement in all its heaving moments and leatherette permutations. For all her spike and meanness, Evie was as vulnerable as any other young person. She had been joyridden.
“But why?” he said.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well where will you go?”
“As long as it’s away from them, I don’t care.”
Lawrence glanced at her shyly. “How about the moon?”
Evie dried her eyes. “I’ll buy a caravan.”
“The moon in a caravan.” Lawrence liked the sound of that. “I’ll come with you,” he said.
“We’ll go up the Litten Path.”
“That’s it.”
“I’ve ordered a taxi,” said Evie, shutting her luggage.
“I wish I’d had one of them when I ran away.”
The two of them hugged, about as close as Lawrence would ever get.
“What will you do?” asked Evie.
“Get a job, I reckon.”
“You don’t . . . Oh, Lawrence, why don’t you come with me?” She showed off Clive’s Mastercard. Her mascara was blotchy and the wind was really racing outside. It was to be a cavernous winter in this land of theirs.
Lawrence hadn’t the words. Thoughts of his mother intruded, the cage she’d built for herself that for years she’d been too frightened to leave. He understood not just the cage now, but Shell. Litten too. What would he do if he wasn’t here? Who would he be? When you weighed it up, surely you were better off where you belonged, rather than aimless with someone who didn’t care for you other than as a friend?
“I can’t do it,” he said.
“OK.”
They snuck downstairs. Evie opened the front door. “Lawrence, I was meaning to say, about your dad . . .”
He stopped.
“Tell him from me, that they know who he is. Just tell him that.”
Unsure what she meant, he watched her go. Her form was caught in the twin headlights of the taxi. She was leaving his life as she had come into it, illuminated by the lights of a car.
The taxi drove away.
Lawrence could hear the guests in the living room, so thought he’d slip out of the house without them noticing. In the kitchen he found Lord Guiseley standing at the window: the hereditary peer and his profile. Precision had a smile for Lawrence over its shoulder.
“The miner’s boy.”
Lawrence foraged for his coat in the throng hanging from the hooks.
“Pup has left then, I take it?”
There it was. Lawrence put it on.
“I suppose she’s said a lot about me, but take it from someone who knows, there are some choices in life you wish you could unmake.” Guiseley turned back to the view, paused, then said. “Wait a moment, dear boy.”
Lawrence went to the postern door, stopping at the sound of Guiseley’s voice. The man was offering him an umbrella. “Here,” he said.
Lawrence didn’t move.
Guiseley always seemed to be smiling with his eyes. “My family owned Brantford once, you know. Probably employed a relative of yours at one time or another.”
“Daresay.”
“It’s a shame. All the closures the government’s planning. Far more than they’ve publicly said . . .”
Lawrence stepped out into the rain. Guiseley was eyeing him with deliberation.
“That got your attention,” Guiseley said. “Tomorrow I’m going to the colliery. I suspect it will be the last time I shall see it, if you follow my charitable meaning. Let us hope for winter sun. I have a vision of the view. One advantage to the industrial age has been the sunsets: the most magnificent vistas come from s
mog.”
“I could go papers about you.”
“You could try.”
Lawrence splashed to the gates. As he reached them, he turned back towards Threndle House. The gargoyle at its peak wasn’t grinning at those who entered, as he’d always thought.
It was weeping.
Smashed glass woke him later. He sat up at the sound of another crash. He could hear his dad’s voice, his mam in tears. It was five in the morning according to the bloody alarm clock.
He slung on his dressing gown, put on his slippers and went to face the disturbance in the living room. Lawrence found his mam chucking mugs at his dad, the floor coated in coloured bits of china. Shell was in her nightslip while Arthur was fully dressed and didn’t look like he’d slept.
“I’m only just home and already the two of you are at each other’s throats.”
Neither of them were listening. Shell threw one last mug, which bounced off Arthur’s cowering form, his unkempt figure looking more like a saturated heap than it did dad. The mug shattered on the ground with the rest of them.
Mam was in a right state. Moisture dribbled in brooks from her nose and eyes, meeting on her chin. “Your father,” she said. “Has decided to ruin us!”
“He’s not.”
“Tell him, Arthur!”
“Tell me what?”
Arthur couldn’t get a word in: Mam was too hysterical. Five in the morning, hysterical. Welcome home, son.
She said Arthur had told the bosses he was going to go back to work. She said he was going to scab.
Scab.
Shell tore the picture of Lawrence from the wall and threw it at Arthur. The frame was made of thick plastic so didn’t shatter. Lawrence stared at himself on the floor in his grammar school uniform.
More insults. Arthur was a crust of tissue on the face of the community. He was a leach. A scoundrel.
A scab.
Shell rushed across the room and began to slap Arthur’s shoulders and head. Lawrence had to pull her off. He had to force his mother on to the settee and pin her arms against her sides.
Scab, she kept saying, he’s scabbing, the energy leaving her body. She ended up sinking on to her front, against the cushions, spent, breathing heavily, before eventually sitting up again, both arms wrapped over her eyes, head against the backrest, crying.
Lawrence didn’t need to ask if it was true. His dad’s face was death itself. Coarse, haggard, Arthur spoke. “We’ll lose house otherwise.”
Lawrence sat on the settee next to his mam. “Oh, Dad.”
“It has to be done!” cried Arthur. “We’ve no choice.” Someone had to save the family, he said. With the bonus he was getting, he’d put food on the table. Proper food. He’d pay the mortgage. Pay the debts. Opting out of this tribal nightmare was the right thing to do.
Mam was really crying. “Oh aye,” she said. “The pay-out. His vulture money’s the right thing. Arthur Newman with the right thing. You’re a cheat is what you are, Arthur. A bloody traitor!”
“Aye,” Arthur croaked. “And how about that.”
Mam looked like she might spew. She bent down until her head touched her knees. She gripped her ankles, her shoulders heaving.
Lawrence went to the window. At either end of the street was a police cordon. Already the crowds were gathering there, and two police officers were at the front door. Out of the kitchen he could see men in the backings, too, a man in the bloody yard by the bloody coal shed.
“Dad, when word gets out about this . . .”
“To tell you the truth, lad, I’m past caring about the word.”
“Well what about us?”
Arthur’s voice sounded full of rubble. “Best pack a bag,” he said. “Both yous. Officers are on t’way. You’re to sheltered accommodation for the time being.”
Ever since they got the rug. Ever since then.
While Arthur left to get himself sorted, Lawrence went outside. There was a mob collecting at the end of Water Street, and they were starting to shout. He could see the sporadic flare of the sirens. He could hear the dogs.
“You all right, lad?” said a sympathetic voice, one of the bobbies guarding the house. He was a local copper, judging by that accent. “You’re best getting inside. The car’s on its way an’ it’ll not be pretty.”
The brilliant sun teemed into view, a shimmering locus of heatless chrome. People emerged from the houses. The neighbours were staring – Shell’s worst nightmare.
The clarion was set to emergency. Lawrence wasn’t sure if the scab bus was coming with it, how this sort of thing was arranged, but something official was definitely coming this way.
It was just one car in the end: a white Rover SD1 with its aerial twanging back and forth. The crowd at the end of the street totally lost it when they saw the car park outside the Newman house. Lawrence watched the people muddle and react, his dressing gown breaking open like an old cloak, the cold bouncing harmlessly off him, he felt that dazed.
Inside he called down his dad, who arrived in full work gear, in all his naiveté thinking he’d need it. There’d be thousands of picketers outside of Brantford pit by now. Brantford on their lips, Brantford on the brain, mining folk from all over Yorkshire, from all over the country, coming to protest Arthur Newman, the dirty scab.
Lawrence hugged his dad. “You sure about this?”
Arthur hugged him back, tight as anything. “Not really, no.”
He was shaking.
“I’ve an idea. They put you in the car, you get straight out again. Easy.”
“I wish it were.”
Mam tried to block the door when the two police officers arrived. One of them gently pushed her out of the way and held her by the shoulders.
“You ready, Art?” the second said.
“Have to be, don’t I.”
A few people had managed to break through the cordon and were running towards the house, pursued by more police officers. It was Asa and Janice Scanlan and the Roaches. And there was Uncle Het.
Lawrence’s mam fought free of the policeman. She was in the doorway with a face on her.
Go on, Mam.
She prepared to halt Arthur, even though she ought never to attempt a thing like that, because you could pluck every leaf from an oak tree, but at the end of the day they would always grow back in exactly the same demented shape. The police readied the blanket to put over Arthur’s head. Shell was blocking the path. “This is a picket!” she cried. “It’s my wages gone to the union these months, so by my count that’s me a paid-up member. This . . .” She indicated the limits of the doorway. “Is an official picket, Arthur, right here, and I am asking you as your wife, friend and comrade, not to cross it!”
It almost worked. Arthur found his courage and tried to turn back but the policemen threw the blanket over his head before he could utter a word. Lawrence watched the police wrestle Mam out of the way and speed Dad out of the front door.
A second later Arthur was in the back of the police car. The siren kicked into life and the car blasted him away down Water Street via a space cleared by force through the horde. If the land-speed record could have been set between fifty and sixty miles an hour down a hundred yards of terraced house, that car would have broken it. People tried to stop it. Then it was gone.
Lawrence ran upstairs and threw on some clothes. The moment he came back downstairs Uncle Het arrived, bursting through the front door. “Family,” he was saying, “This is my family.”
Shell ran to him and collapsed into his arms.
Lawrence left them to it. A couple more police officers had entered the house by then; he managed to slip past them. Water Street was a blur. Lines of police had surrounded the place. Eggs and mud bombs soared. They hit the houses and bounced off the slate roofs. Lawrence heard the smash as next door’s front window was hit by a rock
.
“Scab!” went the challenge. “Newman, Scabs!”
Down the road he ran, dodging the outstretched arms of a policeman, evading everyone. Someone tried to punch him as he pushed through. He was far too quick to for that.
Lawrence was on his way through Litten.
Edge of town.
Out of town.
And there it was, the late road. The watery run-down usually made this stretch of ground a bog, but after last night it had been frozen into crunchy ripples. Lawrence’s weight didn’t alter those shapes. Foot after foot, he struggled up the black frost until it became snow, dunes of powdery white. Now he was at the bottom of the hill. He could see the abandoned Land Rover ahead, which today was as good as a box of ice. He went to it, touched it. The ice crystals on his fingertips entered his mouth.
It had been a year of moments and culminations and now Lawrence was at the infertile part. This area was of nothingness, ice. He made his way as best he could, getting away from himself, at long last, slipping away. Higher ground. Peak ground. Snow-logged. At long last Lawrence could see what continually brought his father to this place. This was not the woodland; it was something far more final than that. He hurried into the untameable space. He knew now that the small world he had been born into had disappeared. His feet shed any hindrance, so too did his legs. He was navigating a crushed and buried land, making his way towards the sheer fell, and he would not stop, he would not look back until he had reached the summit. He could feel the elemental force running through him. And he would keep going until he was fused with it, and with the light. And again and again with the light.
Acknowledgements
Total thanks to my family and to dearest Lizzy for all their understanding and support whilst I worked on the book. Thanks to Chris and Jen Hamilton-Emery at Salt for having faith and publishing me, and thanks, too, to Linda Bennett for her thoughtful editorial suggestions. Also, a quick nod to everyone at The Manchester Writing School at MMU, where this book was written, particularly Carys Bray, who provided invaluable steerage for the book in its earliest incarnations, and Joe Stretch, who supervised me as I wrote the bulk of the draft. You really helped me pin the voice down. Finally, sincere thanks to Nick Royle, who has been readily available for advice and support over the years. It was Nick’s prose workshops that I attended way back in 2007, the feedback I received making me realise that maybe I could do this one day if I actually pulled my finger out and applied myself.