The TUC talks had finished, with the NUM of course left high and dry, and as per fucking usual, the Labour party was nowhere to be seen. It was the seventies all over again. And while they were kissing Thatcher’s and Heseltine’s arses, Scargill and Mick McGahey could get in line to kiss Arthur’s too.
What a joke. The government were coming in hard, going after the union’s brass, persuading two blokes from Manton to take the NUM to court over what they’d have been told to say was an illegal ballot. This whole strike was illegal, according to Thatcher and her cronies. A helicopter had been chartered to serve a writ to Arthur Scargill at the Labour conference.
Rejoice, Maggie.
Rejoice.
It was a low blow going after the union’s brass, even a non-believer like Arthur could see that. So many families the NUM were supporting had nothing, really nothing, and the government still weren’t satisfied. Sons and husbands were getting their heads split open every morning, wives and daughters were supporting them and everybody else and people were still losing their bloody homes. No electric, no heating, having to pick loose coal-scraps from the spoil heaps to burn or flog any way you knew how. It wasn’t enough, no. Forcing folks back to work was the size of it. It was no wonder people were listening. In front of them was the Litten Path.
Arthur was almost halfway up it himself. His sulky wife had driven him a good way along. Shell was such a let-down. So she’d had a horrid do down in Sheffield◦– she’d been making out like she’d been born under a bad sign way before then. For Lawrence they had to make a go of it; she just wasn’t interested. Not in anything but herself. Every conversation Shell steered back to how she was feeling, the muck they’d been forced to eat for dinner that day, wondering what someone was saying about her in town. Arthur was constantly trying to make her feel better, cuddling her, kissing her and being told to leave off for his trouble. Give me a break. Gob full of catarrh. Carpeted into a strike you didn’t give a fuck about. It was like being back at school, being told to stand during the national fucking anthem. Told to shut up and say the Lord’s fucking Prayer. Arthur had never once kept his eyes shut during those incanted words. The teachers could try and make him as much as they liked, and they bloody well had done, but if the carrot hadn’t worked then why the hell should the stick?
Shell had done the yard recently, her little project, and that was something. Plus she was reading the books Arthur lent her. That was something, too. She’d started to come along on the visits to Lawrence as well, although reminders over how to behave were all she seemed capable of uttering. Don’t be out past curfew. Don’t do ’owt you shouldn’t. At least Arthur knew how to say sorry. At least he could relate to their angry son. He couldn’t understand why Shell had to be so damn pig-headed.
Or ignorant. As for another matter Shell hardly ever noticed the mounting Hate Mail, or was refusing to discuss it if she did. A one-track mind she had, a one-way street Arthur always had to be the one to do the reversing up. The only thing to grab Shell’s attention recently had been when he’d hinted at going back to work.
“You wouldn’t give in like that?” she’d said, the first true question she’d asked him in many weeks.
“I dunno.”
“Arthur?”
“I said, I dunno.”
“Whole of Litten’ll turn on us!”
That pretty face, so animated. She was lovely, Arthur couldn’t deny that, nor could he deny that the passion Shell brought to everything still got to him. He’d win her back, make her happy and get them out of this shithole once and for all, soon as he had the money. Maybe then Shell could be who she wanted. He’d given her a lengthy look then gone walking on the moor.
Autumn here we come. Sat on the settee with the lord of Threndle House, Arthur could almost hear his ancestors laughing. Clive fucking Swarsby still towed the smell of aftershave around. Spiced stuff, sort of like you got in Catholic churches when they swung the thurible. Sloshing that shit all over himself when he was supposed to be skint. Swarsby was just another liar. Lying is as much of a choice as cowardice.
“You’ve lost a few pounds, our kid,” said Arthur.
No reaction.
“Suit yourself.”
He lit a fag and smoked it though the scarf.
Swarsby dragged over the coffee table and dropped some papers on it. They were stapled together in the top left corner. “These might help,” he said, fixing Arthur with a flat stare. “Visual aids.”
Arthur tried to work out if he was being mocked, decided he was and logged the insult. “Let’s have at it then,” he said.
The first sheet was a photocopied image of the same thick-haired, heavy-set man as had been having dinner with Guiseley at the Savoy in the original set of photos.
“Recognise him?” Swarsby pointed at the face.
A gesture of agreement with the hands.
“This is our leverage.”
“Fat as fuck paddy.”
“Irishman is correct. It’s taken a while but I can finally confirm that this is not the kind of individual our mutual friend should be meeting with.”
“Guiseley reckons he’s invincible,” said Arthur. “What did you say he is again◦– a flaming duke?”
“A baronet, a peer and arrogant with it.”
It paid to be underestimated. Arthur amped up the ee-ba-gum. “Lad’s spit of us father-in-law o’er Leeds way,” he said, examining the photograph theatrically.
“His name is Martin Doran. He’s an intermediary of the Irish Republican Army…”
Jesus. Arthur cricked his neck.
“Or one of their subsidiaries, I’m not sure. Either way, he’s been introduced to Guiseley by this gentleman, here.”
Swarsby flipped the page and revealed a picture of a little man who could easily have been a jockey. Name of Sheehan, Swarsby said. “But it’s Doran we’re interested in. He’s the one who’ll help us apply our squeeze.”
Squeeze. Prick thought he was in some spy story. Arthur could barely keep a straight face as he said, “Reight, what ah’ll do is ring him up and say I’m wise to him. I’ll go, listen, kid. How much is that peerage worth? Few bob or nay, fucking tell us.”
The expression on Swarsby’s face was priceless. Arthur cackled and punched the jumped-up little toad on the arm◦– he knew exactly where to aim to make it go dead◦– and waited for him to continue. The politician just cleared his throat. The two of them were stuck together now, Arthur knew, and there on the wall was that vein of subsidence. It reached the ceiling thanks to the empty ventricle of Brantford pit. The damage had travelled right the way here, cracked all the way through.
He spent the rest of the afternoon celebrating. You could rely on the veteran miners from the welfare to shout you an ale: men like Henry Evans, a former lampman, a pithy celebration of old bones in braces and a grandad shirt. In exchange for a pint all you had to do was listen to the stories, over-cooked as they were, tales of giving up the bacon and egg shift for the two till ten, dashing in for last orders and getting so hammered you missed your shift the next day and had to soot your face up to fool the wife as to where you’d been.
Arthur had stories of his own: nicking the keys to the steel case set in concrete and having away with the morphine, getting at the youngsters with some old shotfiring cable in the showers that time. But there were more pressing matters at hand: namely, how to explain away Skegness. When he felt himself getting too pissed he made himself scarce, gave a screw of tobacco up to Henry then went home to paper it over with Shell.