“No!” cried Het.
Lawrence grabbed hold of the camera. It was heavy, shockingly so, which gave it momentum, even if you couldn’t throw it very far. He launched the camera and sent it rolling in the grass.
The third man, the director or whoever it was, stood there. Lawrence punched him too. He didn’t know why. He did it anyway. The fucker gawped at him, cakehole open, stumbling onto his knees with a bust red lip. See you later.
Then Het was on him. “Get off!” Lawrence protested, fighting free, shoving his uncle and punching him in the chest as hard as he could. God, it hurt.
Bob, the shiny sidekick, waded in. Lawrence shoved him to the ground as well. “Don’t fucking touch me!” he cried, and Het was begging him to calm down but it was way too late for that.
“Am I one of you then, Het? Am I one of you?”
Lawrence ran towards the embankment and hurried down it, only it was steep. Jesus, it was steep.
He nearly fell.
He did fall.
He rolled.
He rolled again.
It was OK. Grass in his mouth, he lurched, stumbling towards the chippings and shale of the railway tracks. He could feel the stones and then the metal underfoot as he steadied himself on the rails and panted, facing back the way he’d come. He could see Het at the hill’s crest, pausing with madness bubbling behind him. Noise was everywhere. Noise of it. From the top of the embankment hundreds of people were flowing downhill. Before they got to him, Lawrence bolted over the ridge and into Orgreave village. It was still early in the morning and he was his father’s son, he was a Newman.
14
BY THE LIGHT of a Davy lamp lit by a match, the cavern in the hill glows. It’s a pot, really, a haunt of biscuity rock. Odd drawings are etched up the cave’s walls and globs of paint colour the sand from where you’ve painted your model soldiers from World War Two, and there’s toy Messerschmitt’s and Spitfires, a dismantled Meccano set. When the time comes you exit on hand and knee, stretch to however tall you are then notice the sky’s vanishing point has merged with the high ground, and above you are stars, many punch holes blazing fiercely in the galaxy. Soon it’ll be the traipse home to the snick of the key in the latch, catching sight of the moon, God’s fingernail, Mam calls it, as you peer over Sam, his window beaming, no curtains to quieten it. The moon is always falling, it never hits the earth. Until one day it breaks orbit, picks up speed and comes down in a ball of fire.
Arthur’s eyes clicked open. He was wide awake almost straight away. His shallow breaths grew deeper and yes, Shell was lying by his side. He didn’t dare to touch her. He knew better than to try.
He would always be the one to do the seeking. When he’d wanted to trap off with his wife in the past he was obliged to rub against her and head inland if she’d only allow it. Why should things be any different now? He was only just returned from what had been the almightiest doghouse of his marriage.
There was no other way of putting it, he had bargained his way back into the bed. Guilted Shell, for which he was certain now that she was grateful. Because after those first few aloof nights, Shell came close now when Arthur was under the covers, and no surer a sign could there be to signal that things were getting better.
It almost reminded him of when they’d first started courting, easing into bed to be welcomed by that drowsy arm of hers, brought up close before his raging body warmth drove her away again.
“You’re a radiator, Arthur. You generate heat.”
Shell was always saying how boiling he was. She’d said it again only the other night. “I forgot about that. You running on high.”
She had no idea how much saying that had meant to him.
None of this was an accident. After Lawrence left home that day Arthur played his hand as best he could. “What did he mean by that?” he’d said.
“Nothing.”
“I said what did he mean, Shell?”
“What are you on about, Arthur?” Shell called from her hiding place out on the landing. She was trying to play dumb, which of course meant she was lying. The door handle. Her frightened face. Arthur speaking in the over-controlled tone of someone managing badly. “Lawrence said, ‘Not the only thing Het sorts, is it.”
“He didn’t say that.”
“I heard it in our room, don’t know how you didn’t out here, Shell.”
Shell mumbled something about not knowing. Screwing her eyes tight, she headed to the bedroom, collecting strewn clothes and fetching them downstairs in the laundry basket. Arthur followed, waiting for her to empty the washing machine, which was last year’s birthday present, and barely a word of thanks had it got.
Next she bustled into the yard, scene of the bloodiest haircut Arthur had ever been given. His hair was finally starting to look normal, but the face, he could forget about the face for the time being.
“I’m going nowhere till you explain what he meant,” he said, to which Shell might have looked exhausted. It seemed as if that’s how she would have looked when Arthur replayed the conversation in his head again over the following weeks.
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes, I don’t know.”
“But you can see what were hinted. You can see that.”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop saying that!”
The clothes and sheets were pegged on the line like costumes the day after Halloween. “So what am I to think?” said Arthur. “First this, then Lawrence. Where will he go?”
“He might not have run away if you hadn’t blundered in the way you did.”
“First Newman to go to a grammar in I don’t know how long.”
“I didn’t say a word in front of him.”
“You didn’t have to.”
The sound of things picked up and put back down again. Always with the heavy breaths, the hurrying to be getting on with something. They were going the long way around the isosceles triangle, all right, but Arthur would get it out of her.
He didn’t leave it. He picked at the shore of his wife, picked at Shell, stone by stone, her only break the hour he afforded her when he went round to his mother’s to see if Lawrence was okay, although the boy wouldn’t speak to him. Arthur stopped in at Het’s on the way home (‘I swear to God, we haven’t. Swear on Dad’s ghost and the rest there’s nowt to it!’) before stomping back, bleeding, finding Shell hadn’t the nerve to flee, which was her all over. Back until she cracked. Yes, she spent time with Het. Yes, she knew things were said. Not by her though. Nor him. Rather it was the busybodies: Know-it-all A and Sideways-look B, nattering in your ear while sharpening a pig sticker behind your back.
“And has he touched you?” said Arthur. “Promise me.”
“What?”
“You’d tell me.”
“If we?”
He nodded with great difficulty.
Shell started to cry.
And maybe it was the easy melody of the past playing Arthur false, but he could never once remember his missus doing that. He went to hold Shell, and she sank so hard against him that he nearly staggered.
Where a torch has once been lit, a remnant will always be. Arthur put his mouth to Shell’s forehead and wished he could go back in time. He wished so many things. There are restless spirits surrounding each of us. They grope and hold us captive. He was his wife’s prisoner too.