“Bored,” said Asa Scanlan.
“You’re always bored.”
Asa leaned over and opened the door. He was a compassionate and volatile man with a big round head and a bob in the bridge of his nose; his cheeks were bristled and his arms were taut. “Frame yourself,” he said, revving the Fiesta’s engine.
There was the waiting seat and there was waiting wood, and here was the open door. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” said Arthur, climbing into the car.
“Got any cigs?”
“I said you’re a sight for sore eyes, Moonface.”
Asa braked in the middle of the road. “What’d I say about calling us that?”
“Calling you what?”
“Does tha want a lift or what?”
Asa was so easy. Arthur switched on the pilot light and made a silly face under it that was murder on his broken cheek. Thankfully it was enough to get Asa chuckling.
“Just don’t call us that, all right?” said Asa.
“What, Moonface?”
“Funny.” Asa set off again. “Face is the last thing you can chat on wi’.”
Arthur passed Asa the tobacco and thumped him on the arm. His old friend spoke the language of assent ninety percent of the time. He was all go on thens and why nots and you’re not wrongs, but you could rile him into a no when you had a mind to. Winding Asa Scanlan up was as easy as setting a mousetrap off with a pencil.
They drove on a bit. “I’m sorry, love,” Arthur eventually said.
“You’re all right, lass. Thought you’d be on t’march today.”
“Not fit for service,” Arthur said, pointing at the mask still covering a portion of his face. “And if you must know, I’m out looking for me lad.”
Asa changed gear. “Why, where’s he gone?”
“He’s gone and got himself in hot water.”
“Well how’s he done that then?”
“What’s this, Spanish Inquisition?”
The sun reached its zenith as Barnes’ Wood disappeared behind the Fiesta. The truth was that between picketing and not forgiving being dropped in it with Shell, Arthur hadn’t a clue what was going on with his son. It was high time that was remedied. Skipping school and knocking around with a maniac: the boy was out of control. The bewildered look on his face when Arthur found him with that girl yesterday beggared belief. Lawrence hadn’t been able to believe that his old man had showed up, seeming to forget that Arthur had been young himself once, and had in fact been a seasoned skiver in his day. And although Arthur didn’t condone missing school◦– there’d be words on that◦– didn’t Lawrence know not to hang around town afterwards? It was common sense. As, for that matter, was not standing like a lemon while your girlfriend kicked your dad in the fucking balls.
Arthur gobbled another four codeine and felt the Swarsby photographs in his pocket. They were his only copies. He’d been too scared to put them down in case he lost them.
They were soon near the Brantford side of town, not far from Threndle House.
“What march you on about anyway?” Arthur said.
“Sheffield. Jan’s there with your Shell and a few others.”
“Oh, right.”
“Tha didn’t know?”
“Course I bloody did.”
There was nothing to do except drive. Without work, a picket or any money, aimlessness was what life often boiled down to these days. Arthur semi-watched for Lawrence while Asa drove. The day’s heat was in ascension. They coasted along the textured, marked road, past the rec, pausing at the lights next to the bus stand where the night bus still picked people up on their way home from The Bluenote most weekends.
“Many’s the eve spent swaying at that stop,” said Arthur fondly, turning to watch the metal post, wonky in its cement foot. Takeaway boxes spilled from the mouth of the bin strapped to it.
The bin’s jumbled outline faded as they drove. “When we were lads,” said Asa, and Arthur smiled. So many evenings had begun with the two of them sat on opposite sides of the 273, heading straight from their shift to the welfare then hitting The Bluenote, an old club that had swollen banks of lights next to the mobile disco, and a dancefloor filled almost exclusively with girls.
Upon arrival Arthur always went straight to the bogs to take the black socks off the outsides of his shoes◦– he had to disguise his scruffs somehow◦– then pushed back through the crowd to find the shitfaced Asa. In those days the candlewax floor had just been replaced by the hard material that made your feet stick, and the club turn sang in their own accent. Three to four hours on the piss then home to Shell, rubbing the corduroy of her spine. “Your hands are freezing,” she’d say.
“You look so bloody good, love.”
“It’s the light fooling you.”
So what if it was? Sometimes Arthur’s mouth wouldn’t feel like his own as he kissed his wife’s neck, as he sank to her lower regions, the coarse nature of her legs. Sometimes it could have been anyone in bed with him. He could have been anyone himself, a perfect stranger to Shell. Their curtains were often lit from the street below, each flower of the fabric’s print assuming new life the harder you squinted at it. Altered roses. Living foliage.
“Leathered in the Bluenote.” Asa laughed. They were driving towards the Grey Grebe by then. “Bloody Nora. You on that lamppost.” He adjusted his weight in his chair. “One handed pull-up’s from t’top.”
“Them birds were having kittens,” said Arthur.
“Bugger me, what were their names again?”
They turned the corner. The two of them had been friends since they were first partnered up at Brantford. A couple of years older than Arthur, Asa started at the pit after it held a recruitment drive across the borough. The management bussed lads in from the local schools and impressed them with the machinery, the struts, joists, coke houses and brick houses, the various ovens and stories of the spoil pile that lit up every now and again thanks to overzealous piling, combustible pouches of air trapped all too dangerously.
Mining life was known for this kind of unpredictability as much as it was known for its sense of community, and that, coupled with the prospect of rising wages and a house paid for by the coal board, appealed to lads like Asa who were done with school the minute they got there and anxious to start tucking into their lives.
Asa put his name down for a job that day and six months later was working with Arthur on the fetch and carry. Typical new starters, their first duty was salvaging scrap down the Grafton Belt, a spent seam of coal in one of the oldest Brantford districts beneath Litten. Their job was to scoot around retrieving what was left down there, ‘On the wood’ or ‘on the metal’, depending what you were after that day, barely able to see a few yards ahead, collecting the shite left behind by old crews, pre and post war, in times when it was almost as muggy above ground as it was below, before the clean air act stopped the atmosphere on the streets from feeling like a willow curtain you could part with your hands. Like a brattice partition, even. The controller of the gas.
Lads the same age who labour together can get close in a matter of days. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re alike. Asa’s eyes were without curiosity. They were passages into a mind occupied by the sporting pinks, the weekend and the next morning and not much else. His friendship with Arthur was subterranean. Patina of dust over their lamp glass as they shared their snap. Some people are chucked together, others are drawn. When Arthur and Shell Newman met Asa and Janice Scanlan, Arthur was wildly jealous. There were no bottomless lakes in the Scanlans’ marriage. There were no dreams of wolves or plague doctors or past lives. Meeting the other couple had made him realise for the first time that the simplistic measure was the better yardstick. That the Newmans had saddled themselves by reading meaning into everything.