“I can’t do it,” he said.
“OK.”
They snuck downstairs. Evie opened the front door. “Lawrence, I was meaning to say, about your dad…”
He stopped.
“Tell him from me, that they know who he is. Just tell him that.”
Unsure what she meant, he watched her go. Her form was caught in the twin headlights of the taxi. She was leaving his life as she had come into it, illuminated by the lights of a car.
The taxi drove away.
Lawrence could hear the guests in the living room, so thought he’d slip out of the house without them noticing. In the kitchen he found Lord Guiseley standing at the window: the hereditary peer and his profile. Precision had a smile for Lawrence over its shoulder.
“The miner’s boy.”
Lawrence foraged for his coat in the throng hanging from the hooks.
“Pup has left then, I take it?”
There it was. Lawrence put it on.
“I suppose she’s said a lot about me, but take it from someone who knows, there are some choices in life you wish you could unmake.” Guiseley turned back to the view, paused, then said. “Wait a moment, dear boy.”
Lawrence went to the postern door, stopping at the sound of Guiseley’s voice. The man was offering him an umbrella. “Here,” he said.
Lawrence didn’t move.
Guiseley always seemed to be smiling with his eyes. “My family owned Brantford once, you know. Probably employed a relative of yours at one time or another.”
“Daresay.”
“It’s a shame. All the closures the government’s planning. Far more than they’ve publicly said…”
Lawrence stepped out into the rain. Guiseley was eyeing him with deliberation.
“That got your attention,” Guiseley said. “Tomorrow I’m going to the colliery. I suspect it will be the last time I shall see it, if you follow my charitable meaning. Let us hope for winter sun. I have a vision of the view. One advantage to the industrial age has been the sunsets: the most magnificent vistas come from smog.”
“I could go papers about you.”
“You could try.”
Lawrence splashed to the gates. As he reached them, he turned back towards Threndle House. The gargoyle at its peak wasn’t grinning at those who entered, as he’d always thought.
It was weeping.
Smashed glass woke him later. He sat up at the sound of another crash. He could hear his dad’s voice, his mam in tears. It was five in the morning according to the bloody alarm clock.
He slung on his dressing gown, put on his slippers and went to face the disturbance in the living room. Lawrence found his mam chucking mugs at his dad, the floor coated in coloured bits of china. Shell was in her nightslip while Arthur was fully dressed and didn’t look like he’d slept.
“I’m only just home and already the two of you are at each other’s throats.”
Neither of them were listening. Shell threw one last mug, which bounced off Arthur’s cowering form, his unkempt figure looking more like a saturated heap than it did dad. The mug shattered on the ground with the rest of them.
Mam was in a right state. Moisture dribbled in brooks from her nose and eyes, meeting on her chin. “Your father,” she said. “Has decided to ruin us!”
“He’s not.”
“Tell him, Arthur!”
“Tell me what?”
Arthur couldn’t get a word in: Mam was too hysterical. Five in the morning, hysterical. Welcome home, son.
She said Arthur had told the bosses he was going to go back to work. She said he was going to scab.
Scab.
Shell tore the picture of Lawrence from the wall and threw it at Arthur. The frame was made of thick plastic so didn’t shatter. Lawrence stared at himself on the floor in his grammar school uniform.
More insults. Arthur was a crust of tissue on the face of the community. He was a leach. A scoundrel.
A scab.
Shell rushed across the room and began to slap Arthur’s shoulders and head. Lawrence had to pull her off. He had to force his mother on to the settee and pin her arms against her sides.
Scab, she kept saying, he’s scabbing, the energy leaving her body. She ended up sinking on to her front, against the cushions, spent, breathing heavily, before eventually sitting up again, both arms wrapped over her eyes, head against the backrest, crying.
Lawrence didn’t need to ask if it was true. His dad’s face was death itself. Coarse, haggard, Arthur spoke. “We’ll lose house otherwise.”
Lawrence sat on the settee next to his mam. “Oh, Dad.”
“It has to be done!” cried Arthur. “We’ve no choice.” Someone had to save the family, he said. With the bonus he was getting, he’d put food on the table. Proper food. He’d pay the mortgage. Pay the debts. Opting out of this tribal nightmare was the right thing to do.
Mam was really crying. “Oh aye,” she said. “The pay-out. His vulture money’s the right thing. Arthur Newman with the right thing. You’re a cheat is what you are, Arthur. A bloody traitor!”
“Aye,” Arthur croaked. “And how about that.”
Mam looked like she might spew. She bent down until her head touched her knees. She gripped her ankles, her shoulders heaving.
Lawrence went to the window. At either end of the street was a police cordon. Already the crowds were gathering there, and two police officers were at the front door. Out of the kitchen he could see men in the backings, too, a man in the bloody yard by the bloody coal shed.
“Dad, when word gets out about this…”
“To tell you the truth, lad, I’m past caring about the word.”
“Well what about us?”
Arthur’s voice sounded full of rubble. “Best pack a bag,” he said. “Both yous. Officers are on t’way. You’re to sheltered accommodation for the time being.”
Ever since they got the rug. Ever since then.
While Arthur left to get himself sorted, Lawrence went outside. There was a mob collecting at the end of Water Street, and they were starting to shout. He could see the sporadic flare of the sirens. He could hear the dogs.
“You all right, lad?” said a sympathetic voice, one of the bobbies guarding the house. He was a local copper, judging by that accent. “You’re best getting inside. The car’s on its way an’ it’ll not be pretty.”
The brilliant sun teemed into view, a shimmering locus of heatless chrome. People emerged from the houses. The neighbours were staring◦– Shell’s worst nightmare.
The clarion was set to emergency. Lawrence wasn’t sure if the scab bus was coming with it, how this sort of thing was arranged, but something official was definitely coming this way.
It was just one car in the end: a white Rover SD1 with its aerial twanging back and forth. The crowd at the end of the street totally lost it when they saw the car park outside the Newman house. Lawrence watched the people muddle and react, his dressing gown breaking open like an old cloak, the cold bouncing harmlessly off him, he felt that dazed.
Inside he called down his dad, who arrived in full work gear, in all his naiveté thinking he’d need it. There’d be thousands of picketers outside of Brantford pit by now. Brantford on their lips, Brantford on the brain, mining folk from all over Yorkshire, from all over the country, coming to protest Arthur Newman, the dirty scab.
Lawrence hugged his dad. “You sure about this?”
Arthur hugged him back, tight as anything. “Not really, no.”
He was shaking.
“I’ve an idea. They put you in the car, you get straight out again. Easy.”
“I wish it were.”
Mam tried to block the door when the two police officers arrived. One of them gently pushed her out of the way and held her by the shoulders.