“Shite.”
The customary response, although Shell was sure Arthur wasn’t tempted to scab anymore. Even he wasn’t mad enough for that.
A handful of scabs had somehow been persuaded back to work in Yorkshire. Those two at Silverwood arriving with coats over their heads every day now. Through the gates the bastards went, presumably to sit around indoors while thousands of their colleagues and at least the same number again from across the country went ballistic outside. It was hardly an option for Arthur to follow suit. He kept saying he was picketing to avenge Shell’s honour, never mind the fact that she didn’t like to think of it having been taken from her in the first place.
The contusions pasted across his knuckles looked like eczema and there was a phlegmy just-woke burr to his voice. “Got lift to Kellworth for early picket,” he said.
“Wi’ Asa?”
“You know not wi’ Asa.”
“All right,” said Shell. “No need to rip my head off.”
Arthur glanced at her sideways. “Sorry,” he said. “I partnered up wi’ Gordon and a few others. David from over the road an’ Alan Hopkins who were my chargeman when I first worked Grafton Belt. We lucked out for once, got near fire for a warm. Right under the tarp on the settee. Played a bit of brag for matchsticks.”
“Sounds alreight.”
“Were till we’d to move on. Police had been tipped off so most of us went up picketing Woodthorpe instead. That’s why I were grateful for the extra pair of socks, love.”
Shell also used to pack extras for Het, back in April with its showers. He never had the nerve to pat her on the knee as Arthur had just done. Het was happy to be thought of rather than seeing it as Shell’s duty to save him the effort of thinking for himself.
“Many police?” she said, washing the mugs under the tap with her finger. There was a huge dispatch force billeted past Strepley, not far from Fernside Grammar. Each bobby there was on a pocketful of twenties a day, Hertfordshire police in this case. Since they’d managed to persuade those scabs at Silverwood and elsewhere◦– Allerton and Brodsworth were two pits that sprang to mind◦– various billets like this had been stationed across the county now that the whole of Yorkshire had exploded.
“I’ll give you one guess,” said Arthur.
Shell didn’t need to guess. How much must it be costing the government to subject its people to this? No one around here had voted for them, yet they were the ones picking up the tab. They said Thatcher was the daughter of a grocer. Well, Shell couldn’t walk home with her own groceries these days without being pulled over by the police. Where you going? What you doing? Who you married to and where is he?
The bloody law with its bloody hands on her bloody hips, spinning her this way and that. There were stories about the dispatch forces. Only last month, in Armthorpe, there’d been hundreds of their vehicles stashed in the pit grounds, and quite rightly there had been a picket to try and stop it, only for the protesters to be charged, chased into town. You’d have thought that’d be the end of it but no, the police descended on the picketers, attacking them wherever they found them. Any householder who tried to help out was set upon, their home besieged, smashed up, civilians dragged to the vans along with the picketers, pulled through their own gardens, chucked down, beaten and detained. They said it was seven policemen to every prisoner. Armour, truncheons, the lot. Horses in front rooms. Dogs on the lawn. Saliva on the footstool and fat bastards in uniform stepping on Nanna’s hot water bottle.
Straight after that the police held a victory march through Armthorpe centre, half those responsible for the carnage dressed in boiler suits with no ID numbers, just as had been at Orgreave that day. There, the most violent had been dressed the same, a brutal lot, more army than police, like them in Belfast got. One minute Maggie was parading all over the Falklands, sinking her ships. The next she was giving the same treatment to her own people. Truly, these were strange times Shell was living in.
Arthur said, “Considering there were supposed to have been a tip-off at Kellworth, there were a hell of a lot at Woodthorpe an’ all. Whole set of police waiting at the bridge to Settle Lane. We’ve ended up running a mile or so back to try and get to the pit another way. Still pitch dark, love, lot of rain about. Here, mind fetching us another of them?”
Shell put a second pan of water on the hob. There was another moth. She opened the drawer to fetch a fresh teaspoon and saw the kitchen scissors, which took her back to the fetid rug and the fatty smell of its burning that day. Why did every memory become such a stone in her shoe?
“You keep your head down, don’t you?”
Arthur glanced at her. “Aye can’t have more than one of us wi’ form in cells. Lawrence’ll never come back.”
Not even realising he’d put his foot in it, Shell’s husband carried on as brazenly as a bluebottle. “We went through the forest instead. Mad in there, it were, we could see only ten yards in front, if that. We’ve come to the compound and bumped into another lot on picket who’ve had the same idea. They were waiting outside engine house when we found ’em, so that made a good few of us waiting for this sergeant to move on.
“We had to wait till he’d passed on his patrol, stripes on his arm, right here, clear as day he were that close, Shell, only Gordon’s taken his time in the woods, he’s slipped on his way to meet us and made a noise. Sergeant turns his head, blows his whistle. Next thing we know there’s a gang of forty coppers in riot gear coming our way. There were nowt to do but hold us hands up. They’ve had us rounded up in a circle and marched down the pit exit. Anyone lagging got an hiding, those that were making good pace an’ all for that matter. Then just as we’ve got near the main road, another load arrived. Bloody trap it were. Half the lads legged it into the car park only it were that dark and wet you could hardly see where you were going. They ran straight into a third squadron waiting wi’ batons. I managed to run the other way. No chance of going back to help bloody rest.”
He came with her for something to do. The welfare was full of the latest breakdown in peace talks. Things had been nearly sorted in July before Thatcher intervened, demanding the coal board toughen its stance, thus ruining any chance of a resolution. Two months on and no surprises. The Trade Union Congress had backfired so there was no chance of a general strike anymore, no coordinated support from the other unions that might have turned the tide. And now the dockers were back at work the ports were open, which was all the government were really bothered about. Winter was on its way. People said Thatcher had ordered millions of pounds worth of candles.
Shell left Arthur having a game of snooker and went to join the queue for the food parcels. The rented truck had visited that day: SOGAT were responsible for this latest regional donation. The NUM had been given a hundred grand at the start of August, and all over the county it had been feeding folk. Though, when that was totted up, it came, per Yorkshire miner, to less than two pound a family.
Shell stopped on the way for a nosey in the kitchen. Her peering through the serving hatch alerted Olive Butterworth to her presence. Olive was pouring water into Styrofoam cups arranged across a tray like an army of model soldiers. She wore a Litten Lady t-shirt that must have shrunk in the wash, Shell was tempted to say, as she tried to see what soup was brewing in the vat.
“Shell,” Olive cooed, blocking the hatch. She wore a ton of badges. She had been speaking at some of the local meetings, brandishing her puce son Matthew, who, if Olive had her way, was destined to become the latest in a line of fitters, the next generation of Brantford Butterworths. Easy to picture Smug-Arse’s bottom lip wobbling while she garnered all the applause. Palsied and quick, Olive’s eyes teary, the epicanthic robes of worthiness that at all times she draped herself in, plain to see.