9
WELL THIS WAS certainly different, buzzing in a loose convoy down the A1 towards Sheffield, in the front seat next to Joyce Stride, of all people. A few other girls were in the back, boards between their knees, handwritten slogans on sticks and collection buckets gaping in the footwells. Shell had her finger pressed against the A to Z to stop it wobbling on her leg, pressuring the kinked channels meshing colourfully across both pages. She murmured odd place names as the carriageway flashed by outside. Tilts, Blaxton and Hickleton. Levitt Hagg, Micklebring and Maltby.
“Regarding the issue of the name,” Joyce was saying. She was a stuffy sort who could be found making comments at the back of the welfare on Friday nights. “I think it’s worth noting that Barnsley ladies are the B.W.A.P.C. And I think it’d make us sound more official if we came up with something similar.”
“What’s that stand for again?” said Shell.
Joyce tutted. “Barnsley Woman against Pit Closures.”
Shell tutted back.
“Womankind it must mean.”
“Get off wi’ you. I always said they were odd in Barnsley, an’ no wonder if there’s only one set of tits to go round all them blokes.”
“Shell!”
“Oh give over, Joyce. You’re a hair splitter yourself, half the time. Climb off your soapbox and have a laugh.”
Joyce had a sickly face. It was her veins, they were so prominent that on a cold day she could have been sculpted out of blue cheese. Today her neck was strained, tortoise-like, with nerves. It was because they’d taken her husband’s crappy hatchback without permission. Although Jed Stride was a public milksop who’d hardly give Joyce the grief she was expecting for taking the car, she was practically in bits over it. Shell angled the oblong mirror in the sun guard but none of the others thought to meet her eye in it.
“I’ve said before,” she said. “I’m not against giving ourselves a name. Fact is I think it’s a good idea. But we’ll have to come up with something better than B.W.A.P.C. Hardly rolls off the tongue now, does it. I’ll get my thinking cap on, come up with something snappy.”
Olive Butterworth, cramped in the middle of the back seat, piped up. “As long as it’s better than Scargill’s Slags, I’ll be happy. That’s what police called us at the rally. Never damped us spirits, mind.”
Motherly, currant-bun Olive had attended the big All Women’s do earlier that month and wouldn’t stop going on about it. Pretending not to hear, Shell made a show of changing the radio station. Scritti Politti were more like it. She turned in her seat and winked back at Jan.
“I’ll just be glad when all this is over,” said Joyce, shaking the fringe of her mushroom haircut from her eyes. “I’ve better ways to spend my weekends than begging for loose change.”
“And there were me thinking you were enjoying a day out with your mates,” said Olive, nudging Linda Parkes, who’d fallen asleep. Linda stirred, sounding like she’d a mouthful of glue. Olive giggled and so did Shell, covering her mouth with one hand.
Joyce said, “Why should I value that? I must live half a mile from the lot of you. I can pop round any time I like.”
“Assuming we let you in,” said Shell.
“I could come admire that carpet of yours while I’m at it, Michelle.”
“An feel the back of my hand an’ all if you like.”
“Girls,” simpered Olive, winding down the window. “You’re hardly being ladylike.”
Joyce got all huffy. “Try telling her that.”
Olive’s ginger hair blew prettily about her face. A pattern of corny badges were pinned up the front of her cardigan, which, though buttoned up, failed to conceal her pronounced belly. She went, “You needn’t worry, Joyce. Jed won’t mind you taking car.”
“I’m just not supposed to. Not on us own.”
Other people’s marriages irritated Shell, perhaps because she was in the throes of one herself. Skinny Joyce and her beige life. She was only allowed to sit in the front seat when there were no other men in the car, only drank white wine when she and Jed went out. A lifetime of rearranging the cushions and pillows, weeding the patio and doing the Wordsearch in the Mail because the Crossword was too hard. Green Gartside was singing absolute, absolute, and Shell couldn’t keep her feet from moving.
She leant over and clapped the poor cow’s knee. “Don’t worry, flower. I’ll enlighten Jed if he says ’owt. I mean heaven’s sake, he’ll get the message if we can’t hand him his food-parcel come Monday. He’ll shut his trap then, the silly fool. The prickly bugger.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“What do you reckon?”
“It’s always a question to a question with you, isn’t it, Michelle?”
“Well how else would you like me to be?”
The rest of the journey drifted by, the sky a blur of cirrus, cat’s eyes punctuating the asphalt. It felt stirring to leave the borough. Needed and on a mission, older than she’d ever been, younger than she’d be again, Shell was in such a good mood that she didn’t even criticise Joyce’s parking as they pulled in horrendously on a residential side street outside of Sheffield centre.
They walked into town, Olive wittering on about how they were like chartists and suffragettes, nurses in the Crimea. Shell stuffed her hands in her pockets. She had never thought about it like that.
Soon they’d be on Queen Street. Shell had been on quite a few marches and stood on the line outside Brantford she didn’t know how many times, but had never been anywhere like this without Het. Course it was no fly picket; it was still the coal board’s office in the belly of the country, and no one could predict anything in times like this. Arthur had been injured only yesterday. It was just like him to get himself hurt. No doubt he’d be up on the moor today, mard-arsing through the brindle and whinstone.
While his brother was off picketing Selcroft. Het would have set off before sunrise today. Nearly every day the men were picketing in Notts. Shell had been there herself at the start of the strike, seen the good side of the dispute, the honest talk, debate, one day witnessing her Arthur, out of all the men there, convincing the front driver in a retinue of lorries to turn around. It had brought that old flush back to the pair of them. The two of them had understood one another again.
Then things went mad. The NCB obtained their injunction to stop any miner picketing outside of his own county, and every region was cordoned off by the police, sandbags stationed to prevent any more of the strike’s floodwater getting in.
They must have had Maggie on the run, because the bitch threw the kitchen sink at it. The entire country was now encircled by sirens, a circuit board of blue, men no one knew from Adam given dispensation to do whatever they bloody… Arthur’s face. His poor, swollen face.
“Shell?”
Little blonde Jan was pointing down the street with her rose-tattooed arm. Shell had been so engrossed in thought that she hadn’t noticed the voices, the women’s voices: a chanted song.
It gave her the jitters. A huge procession was herding towards an even bigger crowd, the whole lot marching towards the town centre. Shell’s instinct was always to scoff, but as she and the others joined with the masses, the looks on everyone’s faces stopped her short. People were so buoyant. They were alive. She’d barely noticed it was summer before today, yet here the mood highlighted the weather, or maybe vice versa. Shell lifted her face to regard the same firm warmth that washed the slates and the lichen on the mortar between the bricks. 1984 was heating up, showing off its dazzling shark’s teeth.