‘But you don’t sell the bloody silver to do it –
‘I told her straight, “Lie down with dogs, Hilda, and you’ll get up with fleas —”
‘But you see, the problem with most people is that they think they’re immortal. That life is an inexhaustible well. But, in truth, everything happens only a certain number of times and a very small number really. How many more times will we remember a certain afternoon in our childhood? A former friend we have not seen for many years? How many more times will we watch the full moon rise? Perhaps ten? Maybe not that. Yet it all seems endless. Bloody endless. Butnot to menlike us,David.Not to us–
‘Men who have seen slaughter. Felt fear. Tasted terror —’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Men like us know some things are simply not for sale.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The General watches the Mechanic. The General nods. The General smiles –
The sun sets late and long over Lock Linnhe.
The General pours more malts. The General pats the Mechanic on his back –
The full moon rises before it wanes.
The General says, ‘There really is only one solution to this problem.’
Martin
and me, then? Go on, just you and me? But they just laugh and charge at me. Four of them — Me thinking, Stay on your feet, Martin. Stay on your fucking feet — But I go straight over with first two bloody punches. Fucking hell, I think. It’s hammer time for me — Wham. Bam. Thank you, ma’am — They keep on belting me with fucking truncheons. Battering me, they are. Fucking leathering me — This one saying over and over, Get up and fucking walk, cunt! Get up and fucking walk! Then van must have come and they sling us in back — Keith on one seat. Hands full of teeth and gums — Me on other. Blood everywhere — Pig van sets off, then stops again. Doors open and they only go and sling in Chris — Fucking mess and all. Right proud, they are, all pigs. Chris being big lad he is — Head busted open. They’re still hitting him as van sets off again — You’re fucked, you three, they tell us. Having you for riot — I didn’t bloody do anything, Chris says. I were just stood there — Shut it, Haystacks, they say. Belt him one again — He can’t even get up on seat. Just lies there between their boots — I keep it shut. More worried about Keith. He’s not right, you can tell. He needs a fucking hospital — I look out back. Looks like Laughton Common. Think maybe they’re taking us to Dinnington. But then van turns off. Down a lane onto Common — Fucking hell, I think. No police stations down here. No fucking hospitals, either — Nothing. No one — Begin to think this is it. End of road. Van stops. Doors open — They say, Get out, you fucking scum. Bastards — I get out first. I’ve got Keith by arm. Chris behind us — Middle of fucking nowhere. Just fields and stuff. Light now — Two coppers grab each of us. By us hair. By us throats — Pin us up by some fence posts. Top of this banking — Then Big Cheese gets out of front of van. He walks over to us — I can tell he’s worried about Keith and all. Has a good look in his gob — It’s like fucking Nicaragua, this. They’ll rape us and shoot us and stick us in this fucking ditch — But then Brass turns to me. He says, Open your mouth. I look him in his eyes. I open my mouth. He looks inside. He says, Right, shut it. He goes over to Chris. He says same. He does same. Chris says, I want to go home now. Brass looks at three of us. Brass shakes his head. He says, Go on Queen’s Highway again today and I’ll have fucking lot of you. Then he looks at his lads. He smiles. He gives them nod — Fucking bastards kick us down banking into ditch. Fuck off in their van — Bastards. Bastards. Fucking, fucking bastards — I lie there in that ditch and I want to scream at sky, I do — Fuck me. I wish them dead. I wish her dead. Her and every fucking cunt that ever voted for her — I get up off ground. I look round — Keith face down in ditch. Chris caught on some barbed wire — I turn Keith over. I wipe his face with my hand — Keith, Keith, I say. Come on, lad. Let’s have you up and home. He shakes his head. He’s still got his eyes closed. Come on, I say. We’ve got to get off — But he just shakes his head again. I try to prop him up against side of ditch — Then I go over to get Chris off wire. He’s in a bad way and all — His face and hands all cut. Head split open. Nothing left of his bloody coat — He says, Our Val’s going to kill us — She’s not, I say. Don’t be daft. Takes about five minute to get him free of that barbed wire. Then I say, Give us a hand with Keith, will you? What we going to do? he asks. Where we going to go? Nearer Dinnington now, I say. Go down their Welfare. Use their telephone. Let your Val know where you are. His Margaret. Try to get hold of Pete. Then find someone to give us a lift to a bloody hospital. Chris nods. He walks over to where Keith is. He’s got his eyes open now. I say, Back in land of living, are we? Keith shakes his head. He says, That what you call this place, is it? Come on, I say. Shut up and get up — He just looks at me, though. Into my eyes — He says, Know who fucking scab is, don’t you? Day 210. I still can’t believe it’s him. I know fucking bloke — I like him. I drink with him — He can be tight. He can be moody. He can be a bit of a slack bastard. Bit of a moaner — But he’s not a fucking scab. Not the Geoff Brine I fucking know — Just can’t believe it’s him. I go over there. I want to see him with my own two eyes. I want to talk to him. To ask
The Thirty-first Week
Monday 1 — Sunday 7 October 1984
The President loved Blackpool. The Illuminations. The trams. The Tower. The rock –
The Winter Gardens. The Conference. The Heroes’ Welcome. The full support –
‘— we are witnessing not the Fascism of Hitler or Mussolini, nor the military dictatorship of a Pinochet or Franco, but the creation of a sort of controlled democracy, a sort of top-hatted Fascism, a mixture of Thatcher’s Victorian values and modernistic techniques. An Orwellian Big Sister-ism where the workers are kept as they believe in their proper place — at the bottom of the heap. This is very much the ugly face of Conservatism which tramples on the more responsible values of the one-nation Macmillanites —’
Most of all the President loved to see their leader suffer. The Welsh Windbag. His face as red as his hair. The man who had described the President as the labour movement’s equivalent of a First World War general. The President loved to see him suffer as he listened –
‘— this Conference pays tribute to the historic struggle of the miners in 1984. This Conference deplores the total dishonesty of the Conservative government’s determination to attack the National Union of Mineworkers and the whole trade union movement by repressive legislation and an unprecedented and wholesale operation involving unlawful actions of the police, organized violence against the miners, their picket lines, and their communities by means of an unconstitutional and nationally controlled police force —’