It was hard not to think that in the middle of more conflict that this is how it would always be. It had been a year of bleached bones, where every day had been reduced to what felt like varying stages of confrontation, relationships boiled down to nothing. Lawrence washed daily in the shower. He drank the searing water that rained into his mouth.
The lorries must be coming◦– this didn’t feel real. Het’s scarred lower lip moved as he chanted quietly along with the rest of the picket. This squaddie-looking interloper had necked Lawrence’s mother with that mouth. Maybe it was gravity Shell saw in Het, because you strove for what you didn’t have as much as for what you couldn’t. Even at sixteen, Lawrence understood that much.
Everyone was pushing towards the gates, blocked by that dense wave of policemen. A merry here we go, football chant repeated, over and again. Lawrence began to chant, too. Words could boil up in him, even if he didn’t know whether he meant them or not.
“I didn’t think there’d be so many,” Het said. He looked worried, apologetic. “Stay close, lad. We’ll stay where we are, keep hung back.”
“You must’ve told me that five times now.”
“Aye, well take another look at them gates, they’ve directed the whole picket to this field. We’ve to be careful.”
His arm slipped over Lawrence’s shoulder, across the chest. Holding his tongue, Lawrence went on tip-toes, staggering as even Het was barged forward by the picket’s urgency.
Ahead was the grime-coated edifice of mighty Orgreave. Darren Roach piled into the crowd and was swallowed up. A hundred men must have been in that section alone; a younger set in their twenties and thirties. Darren and this lot aimed for the riot police, who were a short way beyond, brandishing shields. This force stretched lengthwise as far as Lawrence could see, deeper still. A plastic horizon. Tasked domes winking in the sun.
Now Het and Bob had their voices raised. It felt safer here amongst the second or third division of the picket. Het even smiled, perhaps not sensing what Lawrence could: the untethering visible on people’s faces, those faces topped with callow-looking hair.
“Lorries are yet to arrive. Five minutes I make it,” Het said.
“Where they coming from?”
“Behind all that lot, then back out the same way. Down the road up side of the plant.”
“Never seen this many police.”
“Nor this many picket. This is it, Lawrence. This is how much we care about one another.”
When Lawrence didn’t nod, Het gave him a big, important nod and said “Can you not see now who you are?”
Lawrence wanted to shake his head. He disliked, could never handle direct questions like that. Though thankfully Het wasn’t waiting for an answer.
“You’re a part of this community. Working folk, fighting to make a living.”
That arm was searching again◦– Lawrence swerved out of its way. He found it pathetic, absorbing your job until it became all there was about you, your every virtue bound in it.
“Pits aren’t just a career,” Het said. “They’re a sense of self and that alone is worth its tonnage. A man defines himself by what he does. Show us one person on our side of this field not proud of his job, his history and where he comes from.”
“Me.”
“This is what makes them them,” Het said. He was getting animated now, casting an eye over the crowd. “They think we can’t see it. Think they can say a multi-million pound industry’s past it. Selby super-pit’s most modern in t’world, and they’ve just spent a fortune at Gascoigne Wood. This is about us, lad. They can’t stand us.”
Blunderbuss though he was, Het might have a point. Why should Lawrence resist this ready-made life? Sixteen and going on sixty, he had never worked in the pit or ever wanted to, but he couldn’t deny his roots or who his people were. In a sense their voice was his voice, and in a sense it had been waiting for him to listen to it his whole life. Its shades had fought through before. Defensive things said in heated moments that felt at the time as if they’d come from the mouth of some other person, words Lawrence recognised later as his own, deeply his, his duty to say all along, feelings that might have been making their way towards him for centuries. Maybe some words were yours before you ever thought to say them. Maybe finding your way towards them was what growing up was. Lawrence shut his eyes and sought the sun. Because maybe everyone had a role to fill and it was best to waste no time filling it, because sooner or later it would end up filling you.
“Lorry push,” said Bob. “Give it what for, lad. Here they come.”
The convoy was inaudible above the crowd. Lawrence saw it, the armed escort. Each fabled truck was empty, heavy in a motorcade with not a scratch on it. The mobile pickets en-route must have failed, or perhaps they hadn’t bothered to stop the trucks at all. Rather they were here now. It seemed as if every miner in the country was here today. Lawrence could see the front driver wearing protective goggles. And as the grille of the man’s truck revealed itself in all its glorious detail, the entire tophill of Orgreave went fucking mad.
The glaze of that first windshield, those cute round headlights, were lost in the crowd’s tide. Lawrence went with the push. Impossible not to. The picket hit the police. Here we go. There had never been a crush like it. Crack. Men butted against police shields, the whole picket at work. Lawrence struggled to breathe. Even this far back it was tough. So many people. So many at it.
Lawrence tried to stay upright, he tried to think. There was so much noise. So many bodies. Stink and din, thrill of it. Adrenaline zoned his focus. He managed to pick Het out, turning the air blue. His fucking uncle who never swore.
Lawrence gave it some, too, and that felt good.
The police line held steadfast in spite of the picket’s numbers. Kicked-up summer dust, smack of fear and spray of spit. Shouting, shouting, shouting. Then some curious shapes appeared, an enormity that surged above the lock-hold up front. An unnatural movement drawing into view as if storm clouds had gathered above the human landscape.
“Hoss,” Uncle Het said, eyes as wide as 50ps.
“Hoss!”
The police line split, and from it, as if emerging from the surface of a lake, burst the muzzles and powerful haunches of many horses, tons of mounted force entering the morning and making its charge into the protest.
People started running. Oh God. Horses chased the crowd. Oh shit.
They were destriers. Their riders wore white helmets. They carried sticks and transparent shields. Het was calling; Lawrence tried to get there. He and Bob retreated back the way they’d come, neither able to go faster than those in front would allow.
Each horse was huge and Bob was too slow. Lawrence grabbed his arm. It felt like burger meat. Bob was telling him he was a good lad. Thanks for helping. Wheezing away.
“Het!”
His uncle turned back. Het must have been the only one going that direction. Horses gunned at people. Officers struck people, herding whatever came into their path.
Het arrived to help Lawrence and Bob through the crowd, which had thinned now in retreat. They were no longer the pursued. The cantering had slowed as the horses began to return to the cokeworks. Black tarmac became yellow grass. A sweat runnel creased down Lawrence’s face.