Lawrence didn’t answer, he didn’t move.
“Those like you see the deep streaks. Blots on clean windows an’ even in the sunlight, sadness. It’s not all so bad. All of this will be a footnote one day, you’ll see.”
Lawrence had only a sense of what his gran meant, yet still nodded. Usually he couldn’t see through her Spitting Image face. Today was different. Smooth her cheeks out and also the forehead, reduce that nose of hers and those ears and the folded skin gathered like bedsheets around her neck, then add a bit of colour and there you had it: how she’d been when she was young. His gran believed in reincarnation, and Lawrence wondered, if she was right about all that, if she’d had the same face throughout all of her lives. She had once told him that people are born with their hands closed because they’re holding onto their new souls; that they die with them open because they’ve released their soul to the next body. Perhaps that’s why babies look like pensioners, he thought. He felt ancient himself, as if generations of his forebears were coursing through him to this day, long after they’d gone up the Litten Path.
“I don’t know if I feel any better,” he said. “Thinking that.”
Lawrence lay under his covers the following afternoon, remembering Orgreave. At the time he had worried he would never make it out of the shed he’d run to. Now he knew that in one form or another, he would always be trapped there.
More of a lean-to than anything, the shed had smelt of garden paint and wood preservative. He’d hid on a compost bag below a push-mower hanging from a nail. Powerless hours, every now and again peeking through the murky window at the crucible of Orgreave village: the eddying violence dragging anyone in who got too close.
Horses on the tarmac. Blokes dragged up the street by officers in double-breasted tunics. The boiler-suited officers were the worst. The others with their great round shields came a close second. Every person there had a sweat-marbled face, cop and picketer alike fighting through the bricks, the glass, the heat. The riot officers giving it that terrifying Zulu.
Landing that punch on Het had been almost worth it. Lawrence had tumbled down the hill and nearly fractured his collarbone, before retreating into the village where he found the shed, sneaking out later on when he thought it was safe. Two officers proved him wrong on that front. They charged him and knocked him to the ground. Kicked him and punched him. He’d thought he was going to be arrested but they left him alone once they realised how young he was. He’d ducked into a side passage and found three blokes there, hiding: Scottish lads who’d caught the coach south then the bus that morning from town. 15p to come and have a truncheon wrapped around your head. Bare-chested and bleeding, shirts nowhere to be found because they’d not had time to put them on when the cavalry charged. They’d never seen a shield unit deployed this way, nor those Orgreave horses, who had turned into foaming monsters rather than the trained sentinels they were supposed to be. Orgreave. Each man in that village snick promised never to trust a policeman after what they’d seen that day.
Orgreave.
Orgreave Lane.
Lawrence left the bed and was forcing on his shoes ready to go for a walk when he heard a knock on the door. It was Evie, dressed in a baggy leather jacket and a denim shirt, a yellow kerchief and sunglasses. Her hair was in a ponytail, this show-home girl of cryptic comments and casual flirtations.
He tried to shut the door on her but she stuck her foot in the gap.
“I’m saying it then,” she said.
“Sayin’ what?”
“Really, Lawrence?”
“Apologising means actually saying you’re sorry.”
She removed her sunglasses. Her eyelids were as green as they’d been the morning Lawrence first met her. “I’ve come to invite you to dinner,” she said. “So how’s that for an apology?”
“What dinner?”
“It’s the by-election tonight. We’re celebrating.”
Lawrence had completely forgotten. “I know what night it is,” he said. “What if I’ve plans?”
“We both know you don’t.”
“I could be busy.”
“Well if you are then you’ll never see me again,” said Evie, and cocked her head. There you go. She made it a few yards down the street before turning around to call back at him, “And I am sorry, OK? I’ll see you later.”
Lawrence watched her go and wanted to follow. He shut the door.
No question of not attending. He owed it to the last months of trying to have another crack at Evie. It was a long shot but you never knew. She was the one who’d come all this way, and dressed up, too. That had to count for something.
It was just that Evie was the only girl Lawrence had ever got anywhere with, and whenever he was with her he became so clumsy that his every limb might as well have been wrapped in duct tape, his tongue made out of that coir stuff you made doormats from. She must have realised. She must have seen.
Girls could have anyone they wanted, it was so easy for them. Lawrence wondered what the fabled terrain of post-virginity would be like when he reached it. He had a fantasy of returning to Fernside after he and Evie had done it. He wouldn’t have to say anything. Everyone would just know.
He went to the bog and had a cold bird bath in the sink, rinsing his armpits and squeezing the pimples on his shoulders and chest. Maybe he was wasting his time, considering the way Evie carried on. She wasn’t bothered about a charity case, a novelty act like him.
Although, to be fair, he had got some of the way. He’d kissed Evie. Held her close. So maybe she did care. Maybe she cared so much that she was saving herself so that when it happened it’d be dead special. Apparently girls did that. Lawrence used the last of the talcum powder. Most of it dappled the bathroom carpet.
In any case it was confusing, especially with Evie’s tactic of connecting then pulling away, making you feel like you’d done something wrong. That day at Conisborough Viaduct was a typical example. They’d taken the train to where Lawrence had visited one foggy morning with Arthur when he was a kid. Amazing, it had been. Twenty-one arches, brick caves of cloud, hundreds of feet of lattice girder spanning the River Don.
Both the Swarsbys were impressed. From the top of the viaduct, where the tracks used to be, they could see a changing valley, the approaches, the water necks and townships. They shared a bottle of brandy above Lawrence’s North of industrial vestments, spiritual fetters and battered walls.
When they’d had enough of the view they moved on to a sun-washed glade where a rope swing had been rigged above the water from the low-hanging branch of a tree. A great find. The river here was as golden as chip fat and above it the twitch of blue cord had been looped above the natural overhang. Lawrence and Evie took turns gripping the stick-handle knotted to the rope, and belted free above the water. Duncan sat on the bank because he wasn’t in the mood to get wet.
Run up, career out, let go. Once Lawrence and Evie went at the same time, hanging onto a portion of the handle each, their damp torsos bumping against one another before they dropped into the river. It might have been one of the best days of Lawrence’s life. He didn’t know if that meant he’d led a sheltered existence, or what. There was just something about being the one to show others a special place that made the moment stick in the memory, gave it meaning.
While Duncan slept a little later, Lawrence and Evie sat on the bank to dry off, smoking some of the grass Evie had managed to get hold of. Although admitting it was against his instinct, Lawrence confessed he’d never tried weed before, and was thrilled when Evie said he was handling it well for a first timer. Enjoying the roving buzz of the grass, he’d imagined the trains carrying coal over the great disused viaduct: a clockwork kind of enchantment trundling over the Don and Dearne, a memory of the barracking passage of industry, the slippage of time.