Unfazed, the van hurtled though the space created by the police, straight into Kellworth Colliery. Another van zoomed behind that, a car and motorbikes, then it was the turn of the riot squad. Some headed into the pit and the rest manned the gates as they scraped shut. These men went to beat up the picketers, the melee left battling outside.
Arthur kept on with the rocks, managing to ping a couple more policemen before Gordon tackled him to the ground. He’d drawn the attention of some bobbies in nipple helmets, and they were heading this way. He and Gordon fled, Arthur’s mind emptying amid the singular imperative of escape. He was in the woods now, alone, reflecting on all that had happened since he first jumped the wall at Threndle House. You tried to solve one problem and created a whole set of others. The moths were out of the rug. They were everywhere.
Scaling an incline, he ran headlong into a fresh batch of policemen who were preparing to attack the miners. Arthur hopped it in the opposite direction, tripping and jarring his midriff on a tree stump. Swearing, he made for open country, running for home, a fitful sleep and the forthcoming by-election.
Sure enough, the Free Press was full of the election in the weeks that followed. The days Arthur hardly registered, the nights felt like they were centuries long. He took to waking in the early hours, staring at the back of Shell’s head, wondering if she’d have a face when she turned around again or if it’d just be her hair, no matter how many times he spun her. Smelling your wife’s clothes, watching her leave for work, following her through town and if you lost her, enquiring as to her whereabouts, always taking her account of where she’d been with a pinch of salt, a cocktail of fact and fiction, parallel lines that would always be the same distance apart, like you and her.
Shell had played billiards with Arthur’s head. His brother, too. Het even had the nerve to come round and offer to buy Arthur drinks one day down the welfare. Blood and treacle in a pint pot. Arthur nearly glassed Het where he sat as he was told that he should consider himself free, that he was off the hook for breaking into Threndle House in the spring. Benevolent fucking Het, condescending to tell Arthur it might have been a mistake forcing him on picket. Het even suggested it was high time Lawrence was brought home, tarried back to Water Street to cheer up the same woman who’d driven him away in the first place. The arrogance of the man, not realising for a moment that Arthur knew all about what had been going on between him and Shell. The two of them at it. His brother and his wife.
On the night of the by-election, Arthur ticked the box next to the name Clive Swarsby. This is what they got when they told him what to do. Course the Tory candidate was heckled at the announcements, booed, some obscure independents plus Labour and Jennings: Derek Shaw’s amanuensis, or whatever the piss he’d been while his old boss festered in office those thirty years, all of them finished above Swarsby.
Swarsby didn’t even seem surprised. From the moment he was sent to fight this seat he’d known he’d lose it. So he set his plan accordingly, fashioned his trap. Arthur helped, making the call to Bramwell Guiseley a few days before Litten cast its vote. He sent the package by secure delivery. He was only supposed to include the photos of the Irishman Doran but he shoved the ones of Evie in for good measure: the whole lot plus the contact details of the editor of every major newspaper in the country made for a compelling case. The accompanying letter invited Guiseley to the post-election gaudy at Threndle House, where he was to drop the money off, behind the same bins the moth rug had been left in a lifetime ago.
The drop-off couldn’t come soon enough because October had duffed the miners up and left them for dead. Fucking NACODS threw the towel in. Course they did. Bought off because everything could be bought◦– every single thing on planet earth◦– the NCB penning a blank cheque for the pit deputies and their under-officials. And now that the managers’ union weren’t coming on strike the effort was done for. It had all been for nothing, just as Arthur predicted.
The strike limped on, staggering into lethal November. In the space of three days, tasty pay-outs were offered to any miner who’d go back to work, and Labour leader Neil Kinnock stuck it in reverse, refusing to speak on his party’s behalf at the NUM rallies with Arthur Scargill.
Soon after that some youngsters died, picking coal for their families on a winter spoil heap. Three lads, aged fourteen and fifteen. Around that time the greenlight was also given by Thatcher’s government to slash the welfare for the striking families again. Arthur was reduced to grubbing for coal himself, filling compost sacks with shit-bits he could sell in the pubs to those with open fires. All you needed was a spade and a pickaxe for where the ground was frozen. He went on to watch the bank repossess David Cairns’ house, and, after hearing about Asa and the girls, found his old friend down the Grey Grebe and offered to look after him as had originally been agreed, a cut of the Guiseley money as soon as the pay-out came. Here me out, Asa. Here me out. Trying to apologise, only to be shoved over, told where to go and called a shammer in front of everyone.
But it was coming to an end. Five grand was on its way, Arthur’s half of ten. He could almost taste it. He kept visualising rocking home in the taxi, opening the door to Shell with his final surprise, one that’d work this time, win her back for good. He’d take her down the airport. Pack your bags, love, this is it. Have a gander at the travel brochure. Take your pick.
It had snowed the night before, only some of it sticking, frost holding the parts together at the high points, dampness accounting for the rest. Threndle House appeared in view, almost feudal, the last bastion of the vanguard glowing against a hillside that was leopard-printed with slush. The house itself was neat and tidy: no sign of the Litten Path as yet, that cartilage of shattered rock that had broken from the crag. But it was out there: Arthur could feel it.
The air was brittle and parched and the gate was wide open. Music played and there were fancy cars parked outside: Rovers and Mercs stationary as crouching dogs. Amber fairy lights wound along the house’s porch. A sweeping band of shifting hues stretched unbroken, miles above.
Arthur could hear the laughing guests. They were of no concern to him, all he had to do was collect his money from the side of the house and be on his way. His half of ten.
He didn’t have to creep but did so anyway. This was a mad thing to be getting on with: a miner’s lad from up Litten way, getting one over on the bigwigs from down south.
Here were the bins. Arthur lugged them aside. The ground was mossy and webbed with shit and leaves and the heat busted from him as he looked down.
Fuck.
Fuck, no.
There was nothing there.
…
He checked again.
Nothing was there.
…
Arthur knelt in the snow for a long time, then prowled the outskirts of Threndle House, checking for a holdall until he was sure the bastards had done him. It felt like someone else was walking this route, not him. His beard had dew in it. His hair was so much thicker since growing back after Shell chopped it all off. Never in a million years had anyone been gulled like this. Chilblains. Fondling. Shell kissing Het. Het kissing Shell. Her hands up that scar. Did Het make love with his glasses on? Shell’s tongue all over Arthur’s brother in his brother’s flat. Up in the woods. In Arthur’s bed. His wife and his brother in his bed.
No.
Arthur could see into the living room. Guiseley was acting as if everything was fine. Everyone had ironic looks on their faces. Masks. The lot of them were a bunch of fucking masks.