He said, “So I can put in a word for you, reight, get you a job. Course it won’t be now◦– for obvious reasons. But after, when all this is over, and it will be, mark my words, kid… we’ll be going back to work. You could come for a chat then. Think of these weeks as a last hurrah. Hang out wi’ your mates. Sit in’t sun. Then I’ll take tha down Brantford so you can see how it feels. You know us Newmans have always been miners, Lawrence. Every one.”
“Every one?”
Hold the look. Don’t back down. Sam had never gotten as far as the pit, as Lawrence well knew.
“Every one,” said Het.
Lawrence didn’t reply. He looked frightened, the silly lad.
“All I’m sayin’ is a chap like you can make management within five to eight year.”
“Eight years?”
“Less… if you’re lucky.”
The kid was bottling up like usual. “Somehow I doubt that,” he said.
“Who you trying to kid, grammar brain like yours. Your mam’s always saying.”
“No I’ve not, an’ I don’t know where you’ve got her saying that from. Though I bet she tells you all sorts, you and her…”
It was lucky there was food to concentrate on. Arthur must have said something. It was mortifying to think of Lawrence grading the design upon design, the muck rake and compost of the affair Hector had been having in his head with the lad’s mother for the last decade and a half.
Seize it. Seize the rope.
“Listen, I dunno what you mean by that…” Het said.
“I even heard her,” Lawrence said, voice freighted with feeling. “Having a go at Dad, saying I know how to get inside peoples’ heads and say what I have to, just like him. She thought I couldn’t hear her. She said new school won’t change a jot. She just said what were a lad like me going to do wi’ a grammar education in the first place? She always knew it. Always knew I were for the pit.”
Het’s mam placed her hands on Lawrence’s shoulders. They were wrought things, fragile as bird’s wings.
“Dad said I can do what I want. He said Mam weren’t being fair. She just went, ‘What’s fair got to do with it.’
Shell hadn’t pulled her punches◦– Het admired that. When you were soft on errant lads you ended up with men like Arthur. He carried his empty bowl to the sink while his mam gave the boy a flaming cuddle. On the sill below the steamed glass were jam jars filled with soil. The shoots of baby sunflowers poked optimistically out of them. The last time Het had seen Shell she’d told him about the family tree Arthur had planted. She’d been so scornful of the gift, but Het’s mind had striven for the maple, as it did now. He envisioned a tremendous thing, red-leaved, helicopter blade branches. Newman lore spoke of goblins living in the whorled boles of such specimens. Button milk bastards that peeled the bark away like it was cellophane, climbed out at night and stole from you. If you came across a horse spooked at night, it was said the goblins had ridden it across the fields, visited the land of death.
Helen was still talking. “Newmans have always been pit men. And tha father never wanted it neither,” she said. “Although it did our Arthur more good than he’ll dare admit. And tha’s so much of him in thee, Lawrence. Really there is.”
“He’s a useless bastard.”
Het strode over and clipped Lawrence around the head. “Don’t talk about your father like that.”
“What I’m saying,” Helen went on. She always knew when not to say if she disagreed. “Is Brantford could be the best place for you, for time being, anyroad. Pits are where young men make ’emselves. Always have been.”
Lawrence was so thin. Het had seen him coming out of the bathroom only the other day: he had a pigeon chest that looked like a nose from certain angles. Add to that a tendency to goggle or shrink, and you had to feel for the boy. He had been made a pawn of. He would always be the one to pay the price.
Het said, “Your gran’s right.”
“I am, love. So listen. Tha uncle’s away to Orgreave today. Why don’t you go wi’ him?”
“Hang on a sec…” said Het, only for the ferocious look his mother gave him to shock him quiet. Had Arthur spoken to her too?
“Make a day of it. See what’s what.”
Het tried again. “Mam, it’s really not the place for him…”
“Oh but tha’ll keep an eye out, Hector. You said it yourself, it’s a quiet do. You might even have a laugh. What does tha say, Lawrence?”
Het was sure he could hear the wind filtering through the leaves of the maple.
13
THE MAXI NAVIGATED the quiet streets. Lawrence rested his head against the front passenger window. The morning was really with them, its sun bled upon its stone, its birds went about their business and there was a glow through the mixture of trees. You could hardly ask for better weather. The air smelled almost sweet.
Pulling in outside the Grey Grebe Hotel, Uncle Het tooted the car’s horn at a large man in a flat cap and a younger man in a Sheffield Wednesday shirt with hair straggling all over his shoulders. This was Bob and Darren Roach, Het explained, a couple of Brantford miners.
“Tardiness is ungodliness,” Bob said through the open window, scratching the hair under his cap. “Everyone else has gone.”
“I were held up,” said Het, nodding accusingly at Lawrence. “My nephew.”
Lawrence couldn’t be bothered to defend himself. He shook hands with either Roach and slumped in his seat while they clambered into the car. The two men smelled of sweat and the pub. They were of that Irish blood that spawns pale and hairy, hard-drinking types.
“I’ve a youngster trying to have me sunburnt,” complained Bob, showing off the damp blotch on the back of his grey t-shirt. “It’s frying out there, lad.”
Lawrence didn’t know what he was supposed to say. Bob was wheezing a typical fucking pit cough. They were typically fucking indignant about everything, men Bob’s age.
“I suspect you’ll have found ways to pass the time, Robert,” said Het, smirking along with Darren, who was miming ‘drink’ at him.
“Oh, aye,” said Darren with a wink. “Give you time to work on that tan an’ all, didn’t it, Dad.”
“Least now no one’ll think us a scab.” Bob chuckled. “Pale-skinned buggers.”
With the lorries due at eight, Het drove above the speed limit rather than his usual granny-pace. After about a mile Bob said to Lawrence, “You’ll be for Brantford then?”
“Thinking of it.”
“Your grandad’d be chuffed.”
Het was such a milquetoast, and a secretive one at that. He appeared to be concentrating on the road but Lawrence could tell he was listening in. So although he couldn’t deny that it was a nice idea, making his grandad proud, Lawrence didn’t answer Bob.
Darren leant forward. “What about today then, you ready for t’scrap?”
“Don’t know about no scrap.”
Het broke in. “Lad’s been dying to come on picket.”
“I’ve not.”
“He wants to make a difference. See us at it.” Het laughed his firm, fake laugh. “This is our Arthur’s lad.”
The Roaches exchanged a look.
It was another fifteen, twenty minutes’ drive to the coke plant. There were hardly any police about. They received not so much as a single stop or second glance all the way there, which was strange, because, as far as Lawrence knew, it had been pitched battles right the way through May, the police doing whatever they could to stop the pickets. Now there was nothing. He supposed this was yet another thing that his uncle was completely wrong about.