Shell had been spot-on before: he had decided to come to Skegness when he saw her name on the welfare list, taking a punt on Lawrence being too far gone, too grown-up and too angry for the trip, and Arthur being, well, Arthur. Het registered and hoped none of them would see.
It was easy, lingering out of sight until you were convinced Shell was alone, then boarding the coach while she was in the WMC. The practiced expression Het wore for when she sat next to him went completely unnoticed. You couldn’t second guess her. The quickest, bluntest mouth he had ever known had been practically silent up to this point.
Talking now though, wasn’t she. Het answered Shell’s call. He was ready to say the words. About that husband of yours… well, it was me who had him picketing in March. So ask me how Arthur turned considerate, Shell. I’ll tell you why.
But how to put it? She was so fragile. Her head resting on his shoulder all the way here had told him that much. Surrounded by witnesses, too. Shell must have known what people would say, she did it anyway. All those weeks wondering how she felt. Couldn’t phone or go round. Wrote a letter and binned it. Wrote another and binned that too.
Shell was grinning, curls blown about everywhere. It was unfair how drawn to her Het was. He kept thinking about those rats, their tang, the sea’s undercurrent. They were omens, and this terrified Het. He tried not to let Shell see how shaken he was. He did a good job of it, too, because as he arrived and stood before her, she gazed at him and said, “Can it not wait,” when he tried to tell her about Arthur.
He’d expected nothing, so got everything. Shell took his hand and totally levelled him with it. Her nipple grew bold under his fingers, and she touched his scar.
No one touched his scar.
In that moment Het belonged to his brother’s wife. She could have torn his heart from his eye socket for all he cared.
All there was to be done, it was all to be done. Het let himself be guided to the towels. The windbreaker was driven into the sand, and beneath it, to the sound of rippling canvas, he kissed Shell for the first time. He was a virgin in that he’d never made love to anyone he cared about. A virgin in that he’d never gone with someone spoken for. The sand was rough and damp and there was a great lurch in Het’s guts as he removed Shell’s pants and slid them down to her ankles. Accelerate into the bend. The overbearing jangle of his belt buckle. The rapid moments of a cumbersome morning. The pair of their bodies clicked.
Millions of damp craters began to appear in the beach. Rain pelleted Het and Shell’s bodies, the back of Het’s head, Shell’s face. Het felt hideous and wistful. They’d hardly finished being together and already they had to separate. He patted sand from himself, went to do the same to Shell, then thought better of it: it was too fraternal a gesture. Plus the wind had started to blow east and everyone knows that means there’s been a change in luck.
Shell re-packed the bag. She was already acting weird, so Het tried to put his arms around her.
“We shouldn’t have done that,” she said, rubbing her wrist as if she’d been stung.
“We had to.”
“Were wrong.”
“Couldn’t be helped and you know it.”
Her palm was on her forehead, the other hand flat on top of that. “We’ve to get back.”
“I’ll come wi’ you.”
“People might see.”
“We’ve all afternoon —”
“You might, Het. I’m taking train.”
She wouldn’t let him help her with the bags. Het watched her leave then once she’d gone, went to where everyone from the beach was hurrying to escape the heavy weather. Alone, Het watched the whitecaps come and go, before heading to the arcade to dry off. The coach wasn’t leaving for a couple of hours yet anyway.
He spent the rest of the day thinking. Orgreave refused to be forgotten. Losing Lawrence and having to go after him that day rated as one of the scariest moments of Het’s life. It had been madness amid those Rotherham houses. Tons of horse, dog and foot soldier coming at you down residential streets. Bob Roach insisted on coming to look for Lawrence and got clattered a second time for his trouble. The police tried not to go for your head in case it showed, in case they did damage they couldn’t take back. A snatch squad hauled Bob topside.
Het had taken cover in a garden before escaping into a snick between two houses. From there he saw more beatings than he thought possible. The police went absolutely mad and Lawrence was nowhere to be seen. Back home and frantic, he journeyed to his mother’s, but the kid wasn’t there either. Banshee tyres screeched around the corner of Water Street next, but no one was in at Shell’s, thank God. Welfare, no. Streets, no, and the woods, where Sam and Arthur used to exclude him? Forget it.
He even tried the police station. Hospitals. Nothing. Arriving home and thinking: Sack it, I’ll head back to Orgreave. He’d known what he was in for and damn well got it. The Catcliffe end was full of bleeding men, The Plough car park was like the aftermath of a warzone. It was civil war when you thought about it, though, wasn’t it? Civil war.
That horrid jog tophill. There had been relative calm after the push of the short shield units into the village, police and picketer alike recharging their batteries; only Arthur Scargill went and got himself arrested and sent the entire afternoon up the Litten Path. The usual bombardment ensued. You name it, all of it was hurled at the police. Savage heat pumped from a watery sun and horses, horses, horses.
The cavalry had attacked the picket and forced it into Orgreave village and the nearby industrial estate for the worst carnage of the day. It was all over the place by the time Het arrived for his second serving, going man-to-man, describing Lawrence to anyone who’d listen: as futile gesture as there could have been. With Orgreave Lane blocked by chaos, Het was forced down that rotten slope again, making the acute journey to the train tracks, practically in tears. His was no rebel heart. If anything had happened to her son, Shell would never have let it go. He had no choice at all that flaming day.
That was a few months ago, nearly three. Lawrence turned up later that evening and acted as if nothing had gone on, ruthlessly shrugging Het off when he tried to hug him and see if he was all right. Kid was bloody Arthur mark two.
Since then Het’s savings had been drained and to top that, as a condition of his bail, he was banned from picketing so couldn’t get his fly money anymore. There was what the union could offer◦– it wasn’t much. With the government mounting a challenge against the legality of the strike, pursuing the NUM’s brass in court, it was dead broke. The priority had to be local families. Therefore Het relied on the soup kitchen for his snap and his wits for everything else. His flat had mostly emptied, the valuable commodities gone.
He’d tried to find work. He’d done the pubs and gone out of town to speak to building companies, services. Nothing doing. He’d even left a card in the newsagent’s offering his services as a handyman at a knock-down rate, receiving not a call, just a few comments when it was brought up in the food queue come Friday.
Naturally he told anyone who wanted to repeat what they’d said to step outside. They might act like he’d forgotten who he was and what he did, but Het was the same Het he’d always been. He was, had been and always would be a miner.
His craft certificate was proof enough of that. It was mounted upon a nail on the wall next to a picture of the queen and a photo of his mam and dad cutting their wedding cake. Below it had been Dad’s wireless. Het still had the TV but was never in the mood to watch it. The programmes seemed trivial now and the news, well, Thatcher was right for once when she said the violence was disfiguring their screens. Het would never have thought the media such liars. If it was two hundred picketers to eight hundred police, you could guarantee the news would tell the world it had been two hundred each. That headline in The Sun after Orgreave was a disgrace. The BBC claimed it was the miners who’d charged first.