Although there had been plenty enough to say and always had been. Because people might like Arthur, they might find him relatable, laugh at his jokes and invite him out on the town… that didn’t mean for one second they had any idea what being around someone like that was actually like. Because all Het’s life the bookies had backed the other horse, and all Het’s life he couldn’t help but wonder how Arthur had got the sweet deal he had. For pity’s sake, if Het’s scars had been on his body, he wouldn’t have minded so much, but the face? You just couldn’t get away from it. The thing about scars is they don’t just scar your skin, they scar your confidence, too. Damn near take it away altogether.
Decades spent shying away from cameras. Often, just when Het thought he’d gotten used to how he looked, he’d catch sight of himself a certain way and be reminded all over again of the deformity splashing up his neck and jaw, punctuated by a full stop and a dash, scarified blotch marks on the chin and lip from where the larger bits of plastic had melted on him.
It was no wonder he was always losing his temper. Firework face, dry eyes that felt like they had sand beneath the lids, too much heaviness at the stomach and unwieldy hair he had to lash with wax to do anything with; he ran into the police and he hid himself. He pushed at the cops until he fell over and he got back up again because he was tall enough and he could manage it.
Thinking back to Water Street as you did so. Recalling the silence of your car, sat with your brother, wishing you could trade places with your nephew, because to watch the sleepy peace emanate from Shell; maybe she’d wake and see you, not your face, never that, but your outline, your strong, work-built, toil-hewn frame… Het fought for breath. The problem with things you couldn’t have was that you could have them if you really put your mind to it, and that made it so much worse. The front door of Arthur’s house had seemed to bow with all that resided on the other side of it. It was all Het could do to avoid shoulder-barging through it. Instead he’d shifted in his seat and peeled at the no smoking sticker plastered to the inside of his car window, an action which caught Arthur’s attention.
“You’ve a no smoking sign in your car,” Arthur said, “an’ you don’t even fuckin’ smoke.”
“I’m sorry?” Het said, when indeed he’d heard. He polished his glasses on the front of his shirt, his reflection way too visible in the lenses.
Arthur laughed. “I were just saying—”
“But you’ll join us on pickets. You’ll make it count.”
Arthur sighed, looked at his lap. “Fine, fuck off then,” he said, then exited the car, missing Het’s apology that was delivered to thin air.
“I’m sorry.”
It was no use. As the lights ticked on in the house, Het sped away, vowing to make a good egg of his brother, a man according to the terms set out for them when they were boys. No crying. No mucking about. Be as honest as the day is long and be good to your wife. Be good to the woman in your life. Het would do that. Do it for Shell. Make Arthur play ball just like he’d been made to all his life. Het Newman, eldest hero, told from day one that his brothers looked up to him, never mind whom he had to look up to. For who’s an eldest son with an abrupt father to turn to when it comes to the business of making your way in a world you don’t understand, in a life you didn’t ask for but were given anyway?
The police were so many, and such force. It took a certain kind of person to become a police officer. Some good, certainly. Something else too.
Het pushed and leaned into the ruck because they were them and he was him and that line was made to be crossed. A hand bashed his nose, blood trailing down his septum and reaching his mouth. The first lorry was trying to get through. It was nearly at the gates and would have gotten into the compound if it weren’t for the picketers. Chris Skelly was saying something but the scrum was too frantic and he was pushed from sight. Het could hardly breathe. Men upon men. Pushing the line and pushing it and the batons reaching in and striking you and pushing it and pushing it and hitting back if you can and pushing some more, trying to get to the lorries and with a yell unleashing that word.
Scab.
Men were being dragged out. Tall Het saw above everyone’s heads, these men dragged into the vans. Dogs barked on the outskirts of the ruck and the lights from the police cars flashed a febrile blue, for all the good that did. The day was warm. It was a pleasant afternoon in May. Normally Het would be finishing the early shift about now, off for his crossword and an ale down the welfare and maybe a turn around the dell where the alder leaves hissed and turned, catkins like tresses of hair, hanging ready for the wind to take. But not today. Not in these parts, in this England or in this life.
Feeling faint, he fought for space. Beyond him was the cab of the front lorry. In it sat a driver crossing another picket, a non-union man, probably getting double or triple wages for a job like this, bribed by the government because they wouldn’t stump up the cash to keep a few pits open but it didn’t matter what it cost to be rid of them.
The guy had a dark moustache and curly hair. He could have been any one of them, so Het beseeched him, on his mind all who were opposing him, everyone he knew and so many he didn’t. “Please stop your truck!” he cried. “Please stop your truck, you bloody idiot!”
The lorry crawled on.
Police reinforcements arrived to force the picket away, and as Het was driven from the pit gates along with everybody else, he despised the man in that lorry for thinking he was any different, for thinking he and the rest of the scabs wouldn’t be as for the chop as everybody else when the time came.
More sirens. Here in the midlands the sun seemed to hang deeper and burn with an intensity Het had never known before. It was a government masterstroke to split the industry on closures. They couldn’t divide the miners on wages◦– that had only united them in the past. They were doing it by allegiance instead. Shut a few pits◦– not all◦– stockpile as much British coal as possible then import extra from Poland, Australia and Colombia, break the miners’ support structures by tweaking the Social Security Act to reduce the welfare payments for the families of the men on strike, pay guns for hire like that driver, bribe anyone daft enough into rolling over by offering them early redundancy pay-outs and somehow keep the midlands working. Not forgetting the police: the nation’s forces had been mobilised into an enormous army.
In the crowd he had to admire it. He played football with Sandy Coates and Mick Halsall, the union reps at Brantford. He had their ear. They’d been to Silverwood, the regional strike HQ outside of Rotherham, and later told Het straight. “They’ve come back to do us,” said Mick. “After ’72 and ’74. They stitched us up to do us proper. But it’s Tyndale this week so you and that brother of yours get down wi’ rest of the lads an’ try an’ do some good.”
Four white vans screeched signatures into the gravel. Their doors ker-clunked and men burst out, this lot in riot gear. The wrecked car was burning and the smoke, the smoke, the smoke.
The squadron waded in, landing blow after blow until the picketers fell away and the rest of the lorries roared into the compound. It was the sort of thing Het saw on his programmes about the crusades, today’s skirmish tracing its lineage back to days when battles were won with swords and arrows rather than fists and stones, before bomber jackets and bovver boots; before bricks were thrown.