“What’s he want wi’ all this palaver?” she’d said, shaking her head.
Fuck the pits, Arthur nearly said. “I’ve no idea.”
Over a month on the lilo. A month of being side-stepped. Shell’s first ever job and she was using it to avoid him. Flour-stained trousers, lingering down the welfare, being vindictive. Nothing was good enough, not even the maple tree that had been as nice a thing as Arthur could think to buy Shell to say sorry for the business with the rug. Even going on fly picket hadn’t been enough to please her. At least at first it hadn’t. As soon as she found out he’d put his name down she’d strode home and interrupted him in the yard.
“Were you going to tell us?”
“Tell you what?”
“You know fine well, Arthur.”
He’d put down his bloody book. “I thought I’d do my bit. Same as you.”
“Right the way up to this you were saying what’s point in going on strike. Now you’re all for helping.”
“So?”
“So what’s new?”
Unable to confess the truth, Arthur watched Shell, the wind tickling his naked scalp. Never mind that, love. Never mind the way you made me look.
“Just reckon there’s no point being a bit on strike,” he said.
“You all over the country?”
“I can freeze my bollocks off in t’midlands as good as I can here.”
“You’ve heard what it’s getting like…”
“Worried, Shell?”
“Am I heck.”
“Bloody sounds like you are.”
“Why on earth should I be worried? It’ll be good for you. If anything, I’m glad.”
That had blown her off the scent.
“It’s paid work at least.”
“Quid a picket. Crack out the bunting.”
You had to laugh. Some were getting it in the neck from their wives for not working. Not Arthur. Meeting at three in the bloody morning at the welfare or the pub, arriving at whatever godforsaken pit it was this time for some argy-bargy with the police, then home to an iceberg he had hopes of thawing. “So how were it?” Shell had taken to asking, and whether it was or was not, Arthur would always tell her it was shite. He hated being Het’s lapdog and his wife would be easier to keep a hold of if she felt sorry for him. It had come to this.
A typical example:
“Where to today?”
“Broscombe.”
“Shite?”
“Messy.”
“Tell us.”
And so he’d explain.
“What they’ve started doing is letting a few cars through the roadblocks to find out where we’re headed. Then they hit us there later. Happened today, love, they charged us. Didn’t think they would. Don’t always. Sometimes they just bang their shields to scare you, provoke a reaction so they can make arrests. They like telling us what they’re making, eighty a day, some of them, whatever it is. Five hundred a week I’ve heard some get. Bold as buggery, fifty of ’em giving you shit-eye, rubbing it in about their new furniture and new carpets and tellies while we’ve not two sticks to rub together. Crowing about what they’re getting at our expense. They’re cold, love. Really they are.”
The way Shell breathed.
“Anyroad, before scabs come this time one of the lads must have said summat back to ’em. Or maybe he said summat first, I’m not sure. Either way, it doesn’t take much for pigs to come down on you like a ton of bricks. They flew at us. I fought back, tha knows me. One of the lads even put through one of the windows on their van. It was one of the old ones. Rest had cages fitted. Got a bit hairy.”
“Looks sore.”
The feel of your wife’s fingers on your head. Her lovely, smooth fingers on your head.
“You stand out, Arthur. Something about you attracts attention.”
“I wish it didn’t.”
“But you’re OK?”
Eye contact.
“We got chased down track, Shell. Had to split into threes. I must have walked a frigging mile to Chris Skelly’s car only he’d gone walkabout by the time we arrived so we had to make us way home on us own, Asa and me.”
“An’ Het?”
“What ’bout him?”
“Just wonder.”
“Well while I were hiding up a tree and half the others were getting chased onto the next bloody bus, sour puss were elsewhere. Fuck knows. I’ve had to thumb a lift wi’ some lad. Nineteen years of age, surface man up pit top. Not much older than our kid.”
“Will be our kid in less than a year,” said Shell, with a hint of satisfaction. “He’s nearly old enough.”
There was no way Lawrence was going down the pit.
Sometimes after one of these tales Shell would nod on her way into the kitchen, ease up on the sighing for five minutes. Because it seemed to be working: finally she was coming round, which made the fact Arthur was against the strike burn more viciously in his guts. Because in his heart he was a scab, a strike breaker in all but the deed itself.
He’d thought it over endlessly. He’d at one point even nearly told Shell he wanted to go back to work, be the first in Yorkshire to rebel against this fucking polarity once and for all.
He’d been washing his face before bed. She’d accidentally walked in. That yellow bruise of Arthur’s shining luridly in the lather as he and Shell caught sight of one another in the mirror above the sink. Your wife with no make-up on, about to turn back the way she’d come but stopping once she realised you’d seen her. A sense of something, certain they’d just glimpsed in each other the very thing they’d once had but hadn’t spoken of in at least a decade.
“One on your hip looks tight.”
“It is a bit.”
“You’d tell me if you’re hurt, though. You’d say.”
“You know I would.”
“Liniment’s in t’cabinet.”
“Shell?”
To see her, those lips; your sore hands in the water and a fucking moth on the fucking wall. Arthur didn’t care about the industry. He didn’t care.
He tapped the countertop with a coin. Lack of foresight had sent him down the pits in the first place. Brantford had been the easier thing. All Arthur had to do was show willing and he’d gotten for himself a job; turning up at the office, enquiring of the woman in half-moon spectacles as to vacancies. She blew her nose and said to come back the following Monday.
The induction was less than short and within one month Arthur had more money in his pocket than a seventeen-year-old had thought possible, and being able to project an idea of yourself to all and sundry whilst necking Dexamyl and chatting birds up had meant so much to him.
Mainly it was inevitable. Just passes in English and History to his name and his father on at him all the time.
Lads of Litten go down the pit. And over half of them better men than you.
Which was at least part-true. Almost every lad at Litten Modern got a job down the pit, as did many women, and of course Hector did too. Fucking golden child had six years Brantford graft in him by the time Arthur went down that office. Het who he’d shot with a firework. Het who wouldn’t talk to him because he’d shown those magazines of Sam’s to their dad when he was off his head one night and Alec was going on at him like always about being useless.
Easy to reflect on the breadcrumb trail. Starting down the pit, blowing your wage every week then meeting that girl you’d sort of liked one boring afternoon but had forgotten all about. It wasn’t hard for a lad Arthur’s age to be struck by Shell’s canny smile and open legs. He’d been persuaded into marrying her because everyone else expected it of him. Putting a kid in Shell had probably been the biggest mistake, because a son Arthur would inevitably love. He’d saddled himself with the house on the right-to-buy in 1980. It had made for added security with Lawrence attending the grammar school, and had quickly become an albatross◦– a pissing mortgage with only one way of paying it.