“Comrade.”
Another of those white-gold insects was on Arthur’s sleeve. Het watched him crush it under his thumb. Arthur, making out like everything was everybody else’s fault. Arthur, acting like Het was some bully beyond a man trying to do right by everyone.
“Whole point of a union is if there’s a problem in one bit of the chain, it’s organised so the whole chain stops.” Het coughed, losing track of his old spiel. He touched his brother’s arm. “Do you not see… ?”
Arthur was no longer bothering to hide his disgust. Able to finally see that he was being goaded, Het’s voice rose. “And another thing I want to say is… I want to have a chat with you about Lawrence.”
There was no laughter on that potted wreck now. “What about my lad?” Arthur practically spat.
“It’s just… Look, I think it’s high time he was home wi’ his mam, don’t you? You need to do summat about it.”
Arthur necked the last of his beer, picked up Het’s glass and began to drink that, too. He had weak, bovine eyes, jellied balls that saw nothing the way you did. The space between those front teeth could hold a cocktail stick. It had been one of Arthur’s party tricks in happier times.
“Oh, you do, do you.”
Het snatched his pint back, spilling a load. “Shell’s upset. And you must—”
Now it was Arthur’s turn to raise his voice. “Oh right, well, when’ve you been seeing her then?”
Het steadied himself, still seated, first and second fingers on the ruins of the beermat. “Just in the bakery, like… I stopped in.”
“An’ what you doing buying bread from my wife?”
“Oh, here we go.”
Arthur started putting on his coat. “Don’t you think to give me one of your sermons after the way you carried on wi’ Sam. After taking my son to that thresher up Orgreave. That’s right, he told us. An’ I’ll tell Shell an’ all if you mention that fucking do at t’big house one more time. An’ while I’m on the subject of my wife, you’ve never put the puppy eyes down for her, from day one I’ve had to watch it, bloody shameless, you are, an’ she’s not interested. So get under wi’ the idea once an’ for all or I’ll bloody flatten yer!”
Het would like to see him try. “If you won’t speak to Lawrence, Arthur, I will.”
“He thinks you’re as much of as tosser as I do.”
“Scabbing bastard!”
Het swept Arthur’s tobacco off the table.
“Stay away from my family, Het. I’m serious.”
Het was already on his way out of the welfare door.
Straight over.
A crow cawed. Het could never work out how they didn’t get sore throats. Forget Arthur, he was striding the Heap Road looking for Shell’s son. Mam had said the lad was putting up posters for the by-election campaign, which had surprised Het. There had been so much going on recently that he’d completely forgotten about the impending vote. How Lawrence had got in touch with Neil Jennings and the Labour team, he didn’t know. But at this rate they’d have him in the union yet.
Swelling with pride, Het climbed the lower bluff for a better view. With a host of chimneyed connections spread in front, Litten looked like a toy town. It was drizzling; Het pushed the damp hair from his eyes. The violence and splendour of the hilltop wasn’t far, with its scars of rock and uneven outcrops with certain endings.
A car cruised by.
Another.
It was chucking it down. Het spotted something through the prism of rain, so clambered across to it: a poster by a drystone wall. Perhaps Lawrence would be ahead with his paste bucket, brolly and brush.
The poster was stuck to some chipboard, the first in a series tied to every other lamppost along the road. Het approached it, removing his glasses and wiping the lenses on the thighs of his jeans. The poster’s edges were freshly glued, the paste still gloopy. It wasn’t for Jennings and Labour at all; it was for Clive Swarsby and the Conservatives.
All Het’s strength nearly left him. He bent double, then after a long while, straightened up, sighing at Litten. On the other side of the valley was Threndle House, a burrow of smoke emanating from its chimney. One of the lights clicked off and on again. It was as if the mansion had just winked at him.
It took twenty minutes to get there. Pressing the buzzer on the gate, Het wasn’t exactly sure what he’d say to these damn people, but he’d think of something.
He hadn’t been here in months, and in daylight, not in years. He could smell burning. Autumn was always like this, the most sentimental season◦– even in the wet, that blue smoke smell, the discordance of leaves trapped in the gaps between park railings, the memory of having your lamp checked before escaping for your shift down in the safe warm balm of the ceaseless earth.
There was no answer so Het walked around the property, peeping over the wall where he could. The mansion was actually pretty dilapidated and maybe that was fitting because as far as Het could see, the fires of a cosy Britain were stoked in places like this. Here was a living manifestation of the English fantasy of church bells, jolly spinsters and sunsets edging over country clubhouses. Here was an England that had never really existed outside of dreams and fiction. All that golly gosh, picnic hampers, tweed, brown leather and gingham, spaniels and yachts and steam trains, mulberry bushes, initialled hankies and kids in boater hats. It was no wonder a politician lived here. The house embodied the sorts of ideas they could publicly aspire to whilst laying waste to the organised working class.
Het returned to the gate and gripped one of the bars, causing some of the paint to come away and leave rusted orange wounds behind on the metal. He knew this was a daft idea but he was going to do it anyway: make a gift to Shell of her wayward son.
He stepped on the bottom-most iron helix but as he set all his weight on the gate, it swung open with him standing on it. The thing hadn’t been locked in the flaming first place.
The wide front door had one of those un-buffed brass knockers and no one to answer it. Het had better luck at the postern entrance, his call answered first-time by a boy Lawrence’s age: a young man, really; dark-haired and keen.
Het didn’t recognise him. “Evening,” he said. “Name’s Het.”
“Hello.”
“It’s about…” Het stopped. “I’m here…” He stopped again. “Fancy me not getting us words out. Any chance a lad’s here? Your age, name of Lawrence. I know it’s odd me askin’.”
The sensitive boy’s face was in flux. He began to laugh, not loudly, or at Het; more as if he’d remembered something funny. His top teeth found his bottom lip and he said, “Why, yes, come inside. You must be Lawrence’s father.”
Het didn’t set the boy straight. He stepped into the house and wiped his boots on the steel mat. He had been shown into a scullery. Its tiled floor was chequered and an old-fashioned drying rack was suspended from the ceiling by a pulley system. White clothing draped over that and there was a sink and a washing machine and a dryer. An ironing board was propped tipsily in the corner.
Het was led down a wood-panelled corridor. The boy hadn’t introduced himself; he’d just snapped his fingers, not a question asked. He did glance back a few times, probably to see if Het found it a bit of chuff coming to a place like this. Het wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.
Promptly a door was opened and voices could be heard on the other side. Het was taken into what turned out to be an auxiliary living room, tucked away from the main parts of the house: an old servants’ quarters, perhaps. Lawrence was sitting by a kindly-looking fire.