He’d been folding leaflets, collecting them in a pile and wrapping them with elastic, and now he stared at his uncle. Het was speechless. A girl was there too, her Barbie legs resting in Lawrence’s lap. She wore a hard-to-describe expression. This was a hot-potato friend if ever Het saw one. Tough to hold. Easily lost.
“Het,” said Lawrence.
Het managed to laugh, a terse laugh, more a blast of air than anything. He might as well have come on crutches with a cap in his hand. He wondered if the girl knew what type she was. He guessed she did: he could see it in her manner, her ready mouth. He could feel the dark lad staring at him, so cocked his head. No, he wasn’t Lawrence’s dad, and that was just tough.
Het selected a leaflet from the table. The fire in the hearth popped and made his clothes steam. “Working hard, I see.”
“Just lending a hand.”
Het pinched the bridge of his nose under his misted glasses. “Mind if I sit?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re one of them now.”
“Just helping my friends.”
“Promoting that lot.”
The dark boy piped up. “Dad needs all the friends he can get at the moment.”
“It’s backs to the wall time all right,” said the girl drolly. “Who knew the locals would go on strike as soon as that back-bencher’s ticker stopped?”
Het ignored her. Derek Shaw had been a proud leader of this community for thirty years, and who was this Swarsby that he’d enlist a daft-as-a-brush kid like Lawrence to his cause? There’d not been a rally nor a meeting for this campaign, and no wonder. Even if by some miracle Swarsby were to win, he’d be one of those distant representatives who never answered a letter and only visited the constituency once a year for harvest festival or some such. Het tried to smile at Lawrence. No smile came.
“I’m surprised Dad’s bothering to make a go of it all,” the girl added, then, as if she and Het were friends, said, “Are those coal scars on your wrist?”
“I need a word, Lawrence. In private.”
Lawrence looked to the girl as if asking permission. For some reason Het thought of the pink heat of the coke ovens.
“Anything you want to say to me, Hector, you can say in front of Evie.”
This Evie didn’t bother to conceal her glee. Out of the corner of his eye, Het could see the dark lad shaking his head. He also knew what Het had recognised: Evie was destined for a destruction of her own making.
Het just came out with it. He wanted Lawrence to go home, speak to his mam. “She misses you, lad. Won’t you think on it?”
“Oh Lawrence,” the Swarsby boy said. “Have you not a care for those who raised you?”
The posh little poof◦– though Het didn’t say it◦– had a point. As Lawrence blushed, it was all Het could do to keep from saying listen to this imp. But Lawrence was embarrassed enough as it was and it wouldn’t do to attract further attention to it.
“Your mam loves you. Whole family. An’ you’ve a place down Brantford…”
“Oh, Het, for once just shut it!”
Both Swarsbys were taken aback. So was Het. There was a lot going on in Lawrence’s face as he said, “To be honest, I hardly know this guy.”
Het beckoned with every finger. “Come on, we’re leaving.”
Lawrence looked as wild and red as a horsefly sting. He didn’t move, so Het addressed the Swarsbys. “Where’s your father? I’d like a word please.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?”
“On the contrary, Miss. I think it’s a damn good idea.”
“Really? Because as far as I can see you’re trespassing on private property, despite being asked to leave. And if you don’t go this instant we’ll be calling the police.”
That was all Het needed. He implored Lawrence one more time, with his eyes, as close as he’d ever get to begging.
The kid kept on stacking his leaflets.
18
FOR A SUPERSTITIOUS man Arthur was desperately short on luck. He was born short of it. Had to be. Like most people he had rituals to preserve good fortune. He never opened a brolly indoors, he kept a forelock from Lawrence’s first haircut and he covered the mirrors in the house during storms to keep the lightning from getting in. He used to do that, anyway. He was constantly on the lookout for black cats.
And still it was all going to shit. His first family outing in months and Clive Swarsby had chosen today to get in touch. Talk about bad luck. This was the kind of timing that saw championships lost in the dying seconds.
Weeks checking the Free Press, checking it every Thursday when it came out. There was to be no word from Swarsby until the end of August, but Arthur still hadn’t been able to keep from checking the paper and now it was nearly the start of September.
It was lucky he’d even seen it earlier. On the way to pick Lawrence up, he’d stopped at the newsagent’s for matches and realised the new edition had been out since yesterday. Crouching near the door at the bottom shelf of the aisle, Arthur licked his finger and leafed through the copy on top of the stack. He swore to see it. Made the other customers look. There was the ad: a cleaning job at Threndle House, contact listed as Guiseley: the instruction he’d been waiting for. There can have been few people who’d waited this keenly to make a call.
He borrowed a pen from the shopkeeper, scrawled the number on his palm and went to the phone-box around the corner. The tone purred once he’d jabbed the sticky metal keys. A cardboard tray of cold gravy and chips were on the kind of floor that was cold all year round, the knowledge someone had pissed in here recently preying on him.
Eventually Swarsby answered. “Hello?”
“I’m calling about the cleaner ad?”
Silence.
“I’m the right man for the job?”
That was what he was supposed to say.
“The advert’s been out over twenty-four hours,” said Swarsby tersely.
Arthur smiled, opening the phone-box door and booting the chips out all over the pavement. “I had a lot on.”
“I’ve had a huge number of calls about the position.”
“Look are we meeting or what?”
“What the hell do you think?”
“Time?” Arthur crossed his fingers. “I had plans today.”
“Well, you’d better reschedule. Be here in an hour.”
The line went dead.
No bloody way to contact home and no time to head to Wolton to catch Shell and tell her he wouldn’t make Skegness. Arthur double-checked the bakery, left a message with Gaskell to say something had come up, then went to the phone again and used what change he had to try and get in touch with Lawrence.
His mam’s phone rang and rang. He tried it a couple more times. All that chat for nothing, greasing Lawrence into spending the morrow with his parents, swearing there’d be no mention of school or the pit. The things you did to make the peace. After the pub, Arthur had walked Lawrence to the cottage bought with the compensation money bought with his father’s death. The house reeked permanently of mildew and brown paper. It had a picture of Arthur and his brothers positioned on the sill in a constant suntrap. ‘Well done,’ his mam mouthed at him from the top stair. Where was she now? Arthur held on until he heard the no-answer tone bleeping down the line then smashed the bastard receiver back into its bastard cradle. There was nothing else to be done. He’d take his family on a real holiday after this. He’d take them on two.