The blond officer let go of the youngster, shoving him in the back so he could bend over and catch his breath. Scargill’s voice was at this point unintelligible. Everyone in the vicinity was facing this way.
Shell gripped her wrist but kept losing count of her pulse. The shortest of the four policemen stepped forward. He had stripes on his arm and a beard encircled his tight little grimace. “Someone better own up,” he said. “Or we’ll cordon the whole area and take the lot of yous in.”
No one responded. Shell picked the cameras out on the other side of the rally. She was about to whistle for their attention when Joyce caught her eye, shook her head and mouthed the word: No.
“I’ll give till five for someone to tell us what’s happened,” the bearded sergeant said.
No one spoke. The blond officer aimed his radio at his mouth. He twisted Shell’s assailant’s collar like a wet flannel.
Three.
Four.
The youngster’s nose bled. Serves him right for touching her up, thought Shell. Then again, these bastards were the police, the same police that had smashed her Arthur’s face in, and at the end of the day it was about direct action. Scargill would be proud and so would Het.
She hopped off the wall. “It were me,” she said. “It were my fault.”
“Right then,” the sergeant said, signalling for his men to come and take Shell. The third officer looked about ten years old, the fourth had an Adam’s apple that made him look like he’d swallowed a ping-pong ball. As they took Shell by either arm, the sergeant addressed the crowd. “I’m not having a few idiots disrupt a peaceful rally. Listen to your man, clap your hands and get yourselves home.” He turned to Shell. “And frankly, Miss, I’m surprised at you.”
He was little, probably soft as anything.
“Why’s that?” said Shell.
The policeman stopped.
“As I mean, you hardly know me.”
The sergeant came closer, podge nose practically grazing Shell’s cheek.
“What the fuck did you just say?”
Shell’s legs nearly went. These bastards had knocked her family about. They were ruining peoples’ lives. Stop and search every time she wanted to go anywhere. She took a deep breath. “I said, I don’t know how you’re surprised.”
The policeman lowered his voice further. Pantomime of it. Burl of it. “Have we a problem?”
“I were just saying—”
“You causing a disturbance?”
“You can see I’m not.”
“Jeff, is this one causing a disturbance?”
The blond officer laughed. “She’s a pest, Sarge. She can deny it all she likes.”
Shell knew all about pests, silken specks that incubated in your dreams and infested everything you knew. “I’m just pointing out the generalisation,” she said. “As I’m a woman, you’re surprised. What if I were defending myself? What if it were an accident?”
“Madam, I am telling you to calm down.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that? I’m perfectly calm.”
“If you don’t calm down, Miss. I will arrest you.”
Shell grit her teeth. She’d come this far. “Well that’s up to you,” she said, “but I hoped you’d at least see sense and let me try and explain what happened.”
It was as easy as that. Shell’s arms were cranked painfully behind her back, her name was taken and her rights read while they fitted the cuffs. The metal clicked and pinched, and then she found herself being led through the crowd. She could see Joyce disappear. Shell didn’t even have chance to shout after her, so quickly was she lost.
“Just goes to show,” she called out to the people around her, “It just goes to show what they’re really like.”
“Button it or we’ll do you for resisting arrest.”
“I’m coming willingly!”
“You’re coming how we say you are.”
As Shell was steered onward, a stranger appeared from the multitude and walked by her side. “Go quiet,” he told her. “Say nowt. South Yorks can be bastards when they get you on your own.”
“That’s enough,” said one of Shell’s escorts, shoving the stranger in the chest. The man held up both hands and backed away.
Shell kept her trap shut after that. She was brought towards a line of police transit vans parked outside a command point: a small marquee behind a Heras fence erected in abuttal with a Portakabin that had metal shutters covering its windows. She could hear laughter. Arthur Scargill was joking up on stage.
Joyce suddenly appeared, stepping into Shell’s path. “Officers please,” she said. “May I have a word?”
The policemen paused. Shell’s mouth was as dry as anything as Joyce began to speak, her plummy church manner made all the more convincing by her puritanical pudding-bowl of self-snipped hair. She was pale, tremendously so. “I’m afraid this woman’s not right in the head,” she said.
The officers laughed. “Back away, love. This is an arrest.”
Roughly, Joyce was ushered out of the way. The policemen frogmarched Shell on. Joyce hurried with them, pushing in front again, this time holding a hand before Shell’s captors as if she was herself an officer of the law, halting the traffic.
“Listen,” she said, “I can testify with absolute certainty that this woman is an incorrigible eccentric, and not responsible for her actions. Officers, please. What happened was an accident. I saw the whole thing.”
One of the policemen stepped towards Joyce with his hand on his baton, but Joyce stood her ground. “Really,” she said. “Let me introduce myself. My name is Joyce Stride and I am the chairlady of the L.W.A.P.C. Litten Woman against Pit Closures.”
“Hold on! Hold the fuck on.”
It was the blond policeman. He stomped over and shoved his truncheon directly under Joyce’s nose. A polished thing, sensual looking. His chalky fingers nestled in the grip.
“Say your name, please,” he said briskly. He could have been ex-military.
“I… why?”
“You lot and your questions. When you get an order from someone in uniform, you don’t say: Why, you say: Yes. Understand?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t you mean fucking yes?”
“Yes!”
“Yes fucking what?”
“Yes, officer.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” The man pointed his truncheon at Shell. “You, Mouth. Following?”
“Plain as day,” said Shell.
“Halle-fucking-lujah.” The truncheon whipped back towards Joyce, who, to her credit, didn’t cry out as the weapon stopped a centimetre from her eyeball. “Now, say your fucking name. Or are you refusing to tell an officer of the law your fucking name?”
“I just told you my name.”
The blond policeman pushed his truncheon hard against Joyce’s cheek, forcing her head sideways.
“It’s Joyce,” she said. “Joyce Stride.”
“Well done, Joyce Stride. Now who do you think you are, that you’d try to obstruct my colleagues in the engagement of their duties?”
“I… I am a member of the L.W.A.P.C, a friend of this woman, and I can assure you that she has done nothing wrong.”