Shell went inside then returned with a scrap of paper grasped against her chest. “I saw an adviser at Job Centre,” she said quietly, refusing to let Het take the note. She held it up for him instead, displaying a phone number under the name of some meaningless college, decreed in cursive script.
As usual, something in her expression was lost on Het. “I thought you already had a job,” he said.
“Well, aye. But it’s had us thinking, why stop there,” Shell replied. She took a cigarette from its box and lit it, hand, box and lighter disappearing back into the stash under her armpit. “Why stop at all?”
Women shouldn’t smoke. It was uncouth and filthy. Het said “Tha’s spoke all over the borough◦– you’ve hardly stopped. Isn’t that. You know…”
Shell’s eyes did something magic. “Exactly,” she said. “An’ all the years before, nowt. Since I started on all this… you know, going on stage and that. Organising the kitchen an’ that, well, I’ve asked for details of a course.”
Het had the urge to say that his mam and thousands like her had never needed school and turned out fine. “Can tha put that out please?” he said, indicating Shell’s cig. “It’s going in my eyes.”
“I beg your pardon?”
She was frowning at him.
“…I’m chuffed, Shell… It’s dead great.”
“Do you really think so?” She had that measuring look now that made Het wonder if he’d been convincing enough, so he told her it was great again. That did it. Shell started whispering at him, never mind that it was all well and good for her, well and good for kids like Lawrence. What about a bloke a few years shy of his forty-fifth birthday? Het had only ever worked in one place. He was Imperial not Metric. He’d been one of the last people to do national service, remembered shillings and baths heated with kettle water. His dad and grandad had fought Britain’s wars and supported its posturing and now he’d been sacked, a supposed enemy of the very economy he’d spent his life helping to build, perusing plastic window wallets for unskilled factory jobs twenty miles away◦– most of them taken◦– and now listening to Shell explain herself away from him. Fifty percent of his life was gone and the rest was going with it.
He said for a flaming third time what great news it was. “Industrial Relations. Sounds promising.”
“Aye. Now listen cause I’ll only say this the once… but, well… it’s thanks to you, love. Making us go back. I’d never have thought I could apply for something like this.”
Het pretended he hadn’t heard. He was readying to make his excuses and hit the dell when the door opened.
“Well bon-fucking-jour.”
“Arthur.”
Shell stuffed the paper into her pinafore.
“Brother,” said Arthur. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
All teeth. All ornery swagger. Arthur wore a dinner-flecked t-shirt, a towel around his waist that stopped at the knees, and odd socks, one of which a little toe poked out of. His shins were noticeably wet and his damp, slag-coloured hair was towel-dried and at odds and ends with itself. Arthur had grown a raddled beard recently that almost disguised the blue mark on his face and the scar the knuckle-duster had given him: a line under the eye that made him look permanently exhausted.
“Well?” he said.
“Come to see us little brother.”
“Well I am blessed. Am I not blessed, Michelle?”
“Be nice, Art,” said Shell. There was a look of naughty amusement on her face that drove Het mad. He had never once been able to make her look like that.
“Down pub, if you’d join.”
“To recite another yard of us mistakes, I suppose.”
“The opposite, actually.”
Arthur looked suspicious, as well he might.
“My treat,” said Het.
“Well if you’re footing the bill then that sounds like a bobby dazzler plan.”
They sat under the lodge banners near the snooker table. Arthur drank at twice the pace of Het, nodding Slàinte, before each pint and raising his glass. Het played along but could only stretch to one more round of drinks so just came out with it about half an hour in.
“I want to talk about that night at big house.”
“Well, don’t be shy,” said Arthur, that famous late night air about him. “As I’m in a fine mood. Gratis pints will do that for a man.”
Het took a breath. He could not stop staring at the flatness of his beer.
“Been playing on us mind that perhaps I could have handled it better,” he said. “The other month. Forcing you on picket.”
Arthur kicked his legs out and crossed them.
“So I wanted to say sorry. Sorry, Art. There’s no need to keep at it, not if tha doesn’t want. I’ll not repeat a word of what you did.”
Het was practically shaking. He didn’t need to say he still expected Arthur to be on strike. That much was understood.
Arthur started to laugh, a sound that might have been jagged and slashing if it were visible. “Well, bugger me…”
“What?”
“You.”
“Me, what?”
“You know, Het, I don’t ever think I’ve heard you say sorry before.”
Sure he had. Course he had. Arthur was just forgetting because he amounted to one big apology himself.
“Aren’t you good?” said Arthur. “Letting us off.”
Het waited for his brother to say something else. Nothing was forthcoming. “That’s as well then,” he replied.
“Well indeed.”
The Lurcher over the way barked. It shivered, its sabre ribs and black lips all-too visible. Meanwhile the rain made a racket against the welfare windows. The ground at the bar was sodden, entrance floor slippery, mellow light flooding the snooker balls. Arthur’s roll-up made Het cough.
“I suspect tha’s heard—”
“What, that you’ve been given your marching orders?”
Het put down the beer mat he’d been tearing up and tried to compose a response.
“Sacked.” Arthur grinned. “An’ everybody knows.”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it exactly like that…”
“How else to put it?”
“It’s a mix-up, I’m appealing the decision.”
“You should have taken redundancy, or gone back to work. So should I, for that matter. Maybe I will now you’ve deigned to stop blackmailing us.”
“Arthur, you’re not… You’d go back?”
“Reckon they’d make it worth us while to get Brantford going again. Or I could work elsewhere. Markham or summat. Bet they’d take us.”
“You’d be a dead man.”
“We’re all dead men. Might as well get paid.” Bastard had that look, started going on about being sick of holding on. “What’s point?” said Arthur. “I’m on the verge of going down the butchers of an evening asking for the last bloody bones reserved for the dogs so my family’s got dinner. An’ all for a few pits I don’t fucking work at.”
But it wasn’t just that, it wouldn’t be just a few. Het was about to say so when Arthur cut him off. “Save it,” he went. “If the pits close, they close: I’ll do summat else. Eight months an’ no wage, thanks to you.” He pointed to his scarred face, his sorry hands. Het couldn’t deny it. “We’re nearly losing the house.”
“Well that’s your own fault for getting a mortgage◦– that’s the idea of the flaming things◦– scare you into working for fear of endin’ up homeless.”
Arthur had nothing to say to that because there was nothing to say. You couldn’t get around facts. Het pressed his point.
“Zero times zero equals zero, Art. We’ll not walk into another job. What jobs are there? Only jobs are at the pit. All round here it’s pit country. What they gonna do, comrade, build us some mystical new place of work?”