“Doesn’t answer my question.”
“You didn’t ask a question.”
Lawrence took the hand offered and was dragged up the wall.
“Just trust us,” said Arthur. “They’re not in.”
They sat kicking their heels against the brickwork. Threndle House would have been shrouded were it not for the silver light draping over everything. The place was thick, almost sullen in shape. Across the lawn you could see mullioned windows and doors, curlicues of metalwork and masonry along the roof. Roughly on top of all that was a gherkin. Gargoyle, probably. Though Lawrence couldn’t quite be sure from such a distance.
Arthur produced a canteen from his anorak and removed the lid. It was a dented old thing that his own father, Alec Newman, twenty years’ coal dust in the lungs, used to keep hot vodka blackcurrant in. Lawrence’s grandad was a Shotfirer. He set charges in bore holes and detonated them to make headway in the pit. One morning after a blast failed, Alec went to check the line for a problem in the circuit, only the young man he was training wasn’t the brightest spark; he tested the detonation key the moment the connection was repaired. The canteen was the only surviving thing they found left buried in the debris.
“Have a drink,” said Arthur.
Lawrence accepted the canteen, smelled it, handed it back.
Arthur screwed down the cap, looking like he was the one being put upon. “See, wi’ what’s going on at minute—”
“Wi’ pits?”
“What else would I be on about?”
“Well, I—”
“Ever hear of a rhetorical question, kid?”
Lawrence puffed his cheeks.
“Manvers are striking over snap times, I heard, and…” Arthur adopted his daftest, poshest voice. ‘The lady’s not for turning.’
Lawrence couldn’t help but laugh.
“So I daresay summat’s up. They’ve been chipping at us wages long enough.”
The canteen sloshed. It spent most of its time in Arthur’s back pocket. Your dad home after his shift for a processed cheese butty, washing it down with some spirit that turned you full-on fruit-loop.
“Union’s after donations. They’ve had everyone out postin’ leaflets. I ended up volunteering.”
“Good of you,” Lawrence said.
“I’m all heart.”
They both laughed this time. Arthur had made no secret of falling into the job. Slaving to heat everyone’s baths, was a stock phrase in the Newman house. Powering Sunday pissing dinner for the neighbours was another. One of three sons clumsily named after three ancient heroes, he and Uncle Hector travelled daily in the pit cages, miles underground to the districts of Brantford, treading the same routes as before and deeper still. Vaster aspects of coal, hotter tunnels to work in. The third brother, Samson, hadn’t been so lucky, but he was never spoken of. Sam was an awkward discussion no one wanted to have, a picture in the living room of a Teddy boy with a monobrow.
“Weren’t like I had much choice,” said Arthur. “Het’s been saying I won’t do my bit. No way were I about to give him chance to lord it over me like usual.”
He turned and gobbed over his shoulder. Uncle Het still lived in town. Lawrence saw him and his dad exchange a look when they came across one another from time to time, but the two didn’t really speak. He longed for someone to exchange looks of his own with. His breath clouded into the empty space in front.
“You should see him with his hair all slicked. Thinks he’s AJ bloody Cook, I swear.”
“Who the hell’s that?”
Arthur clicked his tongue. “Point is I’d to get involved or have Het and the others to contend wi’. Leaflets seemed an easy enough job.”
“So they’ve had you round posh end?”
“Fat chance. Flintwicks Estate. Not far, is it? After us round I’ve stopped here. Which leads us to this evening.”
“Were gonna say.”
Lawrence’s dad dug him in the ribs.
“You’d better not have dragged us out of bed ’cause this is the only time you can dump them leaflets, Dad.”
“That might come later,” admitted Arthur, showing off a batch of undelivered papers. “Like I said, I’m more interested in what’s round back here. Want another drink?”
Lawrence hadn’t even had any in the first place. The mansion glowed madly, lit special where it wasn’t black and total.
He shook his head.
“Suit yourself,” said Arthur, then dropped off the wall into the garden.
They stole across the lawn. At the front of the house a tree coiled towards the gables, lending texture to the place like some kind of beard. The tree reached the gutter running under what was in fact a gargoyle, its stone face wet with moonlight: a demon grinning down on Lawrence’s dad.
“You said Swarsbys.”
“Aye, Tory,” said Arthur. “Saggy-titted wet lettuce, here for by-election, God help him. Naturally he’s buggered off skiing the minute he got here.”
“I seen that in the paper.”
Splashed all over the Free Press. Derek Shaw, the Labour incumbent for Litten Borough, had suffered a heart attack, so his seat had been thrown open, the Conservatives deciding to contest it. Clive Swarsby was the man they’d sent, only he’d disappeared straight to France on holiday. Lawrence remembered the man in black and white, a skiing politician; the news had made the nationals, a cartoon in one paper of a large-featured, buck-toothed ghoul careering down a mountain with a trail of pound notes streaming behind it in the snow.
“So you thought you’d bob round?” he said.
Arthur looked thoughtful. “Not sure. To be poetic I suppose seeing the house were like stumbling into someone else’s head, except for a minute it were my head, not some dream. The sky surrounding were all lit. I couldn’t go past wi’out looking. I said to myself: why not? He’s the one who thinks he can decide what’s good for everyone. Why shouldn’t the likes of me come see what he’s about?”
“That’s a yes then,” said Lawrence, under his breath.
“So I jumped grounds, had a look and found this. What d’you reckon?”
A long shape was sticking out of one of the bins. So this was the rug. Even poking out of the rubbish it was taller than Lawrence. It could have been a damaged piece of industrial equipment, bent in the middle and having to be propped against the wall to keep from falling on someone. Lawrence felt its coarseness, a fox barking somewhere the moment his fingers grazed the fabric.
“Well?” said his dad.
“I think it’s in the bin.”
“Aye, well a twat like Swarsby doesn’t know the value of ’owt. Mark my words, kid, this is a find.”
Consider them marked. The off-white moon was a curdled penny. Lawrence didn’t know. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Oh, shut it◦– quick scrub and it’ll be reight. If this doesn’t cheer your mam, nowt will.”
“Then what?
“How do you mean and then what?”
It took them a long time to carry it home, a pair of midnight bailiffs, each holding one end of a repossession. They skittered the bins and dotted the rubbish as they dragged the rug out into the open, but the commotion drew no attention and when Lawrence got back from school the next day, he and his dad laid it in the living room whilst his mam was out doing the shopping.
“Turkish,” said his dad, on his knees, smoothing the ricks from the surface that now covered the entire floor. The rug’s pattern was like a jigsaw, and studying its compact spread made Lawrence think of the sea at Bridlington Beach, where he’d visited as a boy, the moment he swam too far out and realised his mam couldn’t see him anymore.