The Litten Path E-Book

James Clarke

• Herausgeber: Salt
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 504

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The Litten Path is a sweeping debut that provides an intimate view of the miners' strike of 1984 as it unfolds through the eyes of two families on either side of the struggle. The Litten Path is a novel of the strike as much as about the strike, knitting the intense emotional and political terrain of the famous dispute with the stark landscape of a small town in South Yorkshire. Written in a tough yet lyrical northern vernacular, The Litten Path is grimly honest and tender, comic and painful, a story of the clash between the urban and the rural, class frictions and the pressures of family. It is about what happens when a decision is made, when one cannot turn back.

Leseprobe

THE LITTEN PATH

by 

JAMES CLARKE

SYNOPSIS

March, 1984. Britain’s miners face political opposition. Soon, the State will confront them, violent forces will be unleashed and the country will change forever.

The Newmans have enough on their plate without a strike to contend with. Arthur hates working at the pit, his unhappy wife, Shell, doesn’t know what she wants and their lonely son Lawrence has no say in anything – especially a late night mission to Threndle House, home of disgraced politician Clive Swarsby and his two mysterious children. When Lawrence and Arthur take an abandoned rug from the house, their family is plunged into crisis. Then there is the small matter of the pickets . . .

Taking in controversial events such as the Battle of Orgreave, The Litten Path is an exceptional debut set against the sunless landscapes of a country now lost in time. Grimly honest and tender, tough and lyrical, comic and painful, it is about class friction, the clash between the urban and the rural. It is about what happens when a decision is made, when one cannot turn back.

PRAISE FOR THIS BOOK

‘Bristling and inventive, brilliant and important – an outstanding debut.’ —JOE STRETCH

The Litten Path 

James Clarke grew up in the Rossendale Valley, Lancashire. The Litten Path is his first novel.

For my brother Chris. Everyone still misses you.

‘. . . And you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.’

MARGARET THATCHER

PART ONE

The Causeway to the Moor

1

His dad was squatting by the bed directing the Anglepoise into his face. Through the glare Lawrence could smell fresh outdoors, cigarettes masked badly with peppermints.

“What?” he said.

“Said wake up.”

He turned away from the bother but his eyes were so scrunched that he misjudged the distance and clumped his head against the wall. Cold stucco. He bit the inside of his cheek and kept his mouth shut.

“Kid.”

Movement. Then what sounded like his homework being blundered off the desk. When his blanket was peeled back, Lawrence yanked it towards his neck again and hissed “Jesus” over his shoulder.

“Not him.”

“You’re funny.”

“Not as funny as this.”

The blanket was torn away entirely.

“Shit, what’d you—”

Arthur’s rough palm smothered Lawrence’s mouth. Those beer lips were always so clumsy against the ear.

“Quiet. An’ watch your lip. Your mother didn’t raise a bloody yob.”

Even the gentlest moments could turn against you. A minute ago Arthur’s outline had been dimly lit between the doorway and the landing. Now this. Lawrence finished his sentence anyway. His curses emerged as muffled nonsense.

“Calm it.”

He prised Arthur’s bastard hand off. No one else had a dad like this, the human equivalent to a poke in the eye.

“Am calm.”

“But not quiet.”

“What do youwant, Dad?” Lawrence clamped either shoulder and tucked his legs in until he resembled the shape of a question mark.

“I’ve a job for you, but you need to keep it down.”

Dad’s grin rictus was like always. Lawrence had a similar face, except his wasn’t as grey and there was no blot on his cheek that drew the eye. A pit wound that coal dust had seeped into, tattooing the slash-mark blue.

“Dad.”

“I know, kid. But I’ll make it worth your while.”

A handful of coins landed on the mattress: warm coppers strewn next to Lawrence’s torso that was as hairless as a baby’s kneecap. Worth getting up for, he supposed.

“Time is it?” he said, sitting up. He’d been sacked from his paper round and needed the money. Sixteen and skint. Gristle, bone and bags under the eyes.

Arthur laughed. “Wrong question.”

“Kind of job?”

“Special ops. Now get some clothes on and meet us downstairs.”

Ten minutes later they were crunching along the strip path around the back of their house on Water Street. It was late February and the moon was monstrous. It undermined the sodium road lamp flickering on the corner ahead.

“Summat about a carpet?”

“Bloody rug I said.”

“Right.”

“Cracking rug it is.”

“Right.”

“You listening?”

Fucking carpet. Never mind all the cloak and dagger business, a bribe in the offing meant Lawrence’s mam wouldn’t be allowed to find out about all this. Lawrence stumbled in a clutch of weeds, not that Arthur noticed.

When they reached the road they headed north, the opposite direction to Litten centre. Litten was a pit village that called itself a town. Its angled streets were crammed a hill or two away from the rest of South Yorkshire. Factories and works studded every outskirt, chimneys burst out of the ground like raised middle fingers and the clouds of pumped smog were caught still in the daylight. Litten was tired pubs with stone troughs outside that they used for watering the sheep back in the day. It was the odd scrat of grass at the end of your row, an arcade under a metal awning, a roundabout, too many traffic lights, charity shops and an old bandstand in the centre where the brass band from Brantford pit still flogged the dead horse every other weekend.

And still Arthur smiled. His hair looked static-charged against the unreal glow of the street.

“What d’you mean a rug, anyway?” said Lawrence.

“What do you mean, what do you mean?”

“Well, really a rug?”

“Course.”

“Then why this hour?” His Casio said half two.

“As this is the only time we can get it.”

“But it’s freezing, Dad—”

“Bloody hell, you’ve a coat, and you’re always whining about early bed. I thought you’d be up for this.”

“I am.”

“Well stop acting the fairy then.”

They walked on. The sky could have been indigo, purple, black, as they advanced deeper into the sticks. A steeper incline and visible breath. When Arthur put his hand on his shoulder, Lawrence let it stay.

“Could at least say where you’re taking us.”

“So you know Threndle House, right?”

Lawrence began to say no.

“Course you do.”

“Big place?”

“Where Brantfords lived.”

“Aye, what about it?

“Well that’s where we’re off.”

Lawrence stopped in his tracks. “It’s a mile off!”

“Come on, kid, I did say this were Special Ops.”

It was always so funny. Lawrence began to head back the way they’d come, no longer the eternal boy, adding for good measure that there was nothing special about these ops.

“Wait,” said his dad, grasping him by the elbow, his voice so many things; pick your bloody adjective. “I need your help, kid. Them muscles.”

“What muscles?” Lawrence was being led back towards Threndle House.

“Well, these for a start,” said Arthur.

“Get off, Dad, God’s sakes.”

“Look, I’d not ask other than it’s for your mam.”

Now they were getting to it. There had been a lot of overtime in the run up to Christmas, and on Shell’s orders Arthur had taken on all that he could get. He’d described to Lawrence the great mound of coal collecting outside of Brantford pit. Perceptible from the road, the pile had to be climbed over on the way in: an immense blackness the men could look at from way upon the gantry.

With his tongue, Lawrence touched his top lip, where hair had started to grow. These were the deep hours, when the bobbins and the sprockets of the mind squeaked. “Why always me?” he said, surprised by the whine in his voice.

“Because.”

“You always say that, Dad. There must be a mate or—”

“There’s no one,” said Arthur. “There is no one.”

It took them the best part of an hour to get there, but eventually they reached a grand stone building that loomed like a mural at the end of the road. This was Threndle House, and Lawrence was being pushed to it by his father’s hand.

A five-foot wall protected the house from the public. Detached and remote, it was a large property, though still smaller than Lawrence remembered.

“Knows exactly who it is,” said Arthur, hauling himself up the wall. “Kind of what I like about the place.”

For once Lawrence’s dad was right. Threndle House made up in grandeur what it lacked in size. “Watch out or someone’ll see you,” said Arthur, nodding in the front door’s direction. “Swarsbys are on holiday.”

“Doesn’t answer my question.”

“You didn’t ask a question.”

Lawrence took the hand offered and was dragged up the wall.

“Just trust us,” said Arthur. “They’re not in.”

They sat kicking their heels against the brickwork. Threndle House would have been shrouded were it not for the silver light draping over everything. The place was thick, almost sullen in shape. Across the lawn you could see mullioned windows and doors, curlicues of metalwork and masonry along the roof. Roughly on top of all that was a gherkin. Gargoyle, probably. Though Lawrence couldn’t quite be sure from such a distance.

Arthur produced a canteen from his anorak and removed the lid. It was a dented old thing that his own father, Alec Newman, twenty years’ coal dust in the lungs, used to keep hot vodka blackcurrant in. Lawrence’s grandad was a Shotfirer. He set charges in bore holes and detonated them to make headway in the pit. One morning after a blast failed, Alec went to check the line for a problem in the circuit, only the young man he was training wasn’t the brightest spark; he tested the detonation key the moment the connection was repaired. The canteen was the only surviving thing they found left buried in the debris.

“Have a drink,” said Arthur.

Lawrence accepted the canteen, smelled it, handed it back.

Arthur screwed down the cap, looking like he was the one being put upon. “See, wi’ what’s going on at minute—”

“Wi’ pits?”

“What else would I be on about?”

“Well, I—”

“Ever hear of a rhetorical question, kid?”

Lawrence puffed his cheeks.

“Manvers are striking over snap times, I heard, and . . .” Arthur adopted his daftest, poshest voice. ‘The lady’s not for turning.’

Lawrence couldn’t help but laugh.

“So I daresay summat’s up. They’ve been chipping at us wages long enough.”

The canteen sloshed. It spent most of its time in Arthur’s back pocket. Your dad home after his shift for a processed cheese butty, washing it down with some spirit that turned you full-on fruit-loop.

“Union’s after donations. They’ve had everyone out postin’ leaflets. I ended up volunteering.”

“Good of you,” Lawrence said.

“I’m all heart.”

They both laughed this time. Arthur had made no secret of falling into the job. Slaving to heat everyone’s baths, was a stock phrase in the Newman house. Powering Sunday pissing dinner for the neighbours was another. One of three sons clumsily named after three ancient heroes, he and Uncle Hector travelled daily in the pit cages, miles underground to the districts of Brantford, treading the same routes as before and deeper still. Vaster aspects of coal, hotter tunnels to work in. The third brother, Samson, hadn’t been so lucky, but he was never spoken of. Sam was an awkward discussion no one wanted to have, a picture in the living room of a Teddy boy with a monobrow.

“Weren’t like I had much choice,” said Arthur. “Het’s been saying I won’t do my bit. No way were I about to give him chance to lord it over me like usual.”

He turned and gobbed over his shoulder. Uncle Het still lived in town. Lawrence saw him and his dad exchange a look when they came across one another from time to time, but the two didn’t really speak. He longed for someone to exchange looks of his own with. His breath clouded into the empty space in front.

“You should see him with his hair all slicked. Thinks he’s AJ bloody Cook, I swear.”

“Who the hell’s that?”

Arthur clicked his tongue. “Point is I’d to get involved or have Het and the others to contend wi’. Leaflets seemed an easy enough job.”

“So they’ve had you round posh end?”

“Fat chance. Flintwicks Estate. Not far, is it? After us round I’ve stopped here. Which leads us to this evening.”

“Were gonna say.”

Lawrence’s dad dug him in the ribs.

“You’d better not have dragged us out of bed ’cause this is the only time you can dump them leaflets, Dad.”

“That might come later,” admitted Arthur, showing off a batch of undelivered papers. “Like I said, I’m more interested in what’s round back here. Want another drink?”

Lawrence hadn’t even had any in the first place. The mansion glowed madly, lit special where it wasn’t black and total.

He shook his head.

“Suit yourself,” said Arthur, then dropped off the wall into the garden.

They stole across the lawn. At the front of the house a tree coiled towards the gables, lending texture to the place like some kind of beard. The tree reached the gutter running under what was in fact a gargoyle, its stone face wet with moonlight: a demon grinning down on Lawrence’s dad.

“You said Swarsbys.”

“Aye, Tory,” said Arthur. “Saggy-titted wet lettuce, here for by-election, God help him. Naturally he’s buggered off skiing the minute he got here.”

“I seen that in the paper.”

Splashed all over the Free Press. Derek Shaw, the Labour incumbent for Litten Borough, had suffered a heart attack, so his seat had been thrown open, the Conservatives deciding to contest it. Clive Swarsby was the man they’d sent, only he’d disappeared straight to France on holiday. Lawrence remembered the man in black and white, a skiing politician; the news had made the nationals, a cartoon in one paper of a large-featured, buck-toothed ghoul careering down a mountain with a trail of pound notes streaming behind it in the snow.

“So you thought you’d bob round?” he said.

Arthur looked thoughtful. “Not sure. To be poetic I suppose seeing the house were like stumbling into someone else’s head, except for a minute it were my head, not some dream. The sky surrounding were all lit. I couldn’t go past wi’out looking. I said to myself: why not? He’s the one who thinks he can decide what’s good for everyone. Why shouldn’t the likes of me come see what he’s about?”

“That’s a yes then,” said Lawrence, under his breath.

“So I jumped grounds, had a look and found this. What d’you reckon?”

A long shape was sticking out of one of the bins. So this was the rug. Even poking out of the rubbish it was taller than Lawrence. It could have been a damaged piece of industrial equipment, bent in the middle and having to be propped against the wall to keep from falling on someone. Lawrence felt its coarseness, a fox barking somewhere the moment his fingers grazed the fabric.

“Well?” said his dad.

“I think it’s in the bin.”

“Aye, well a twat like Swarsby doesn’t know the value of ’owt. Mark my words, kid, this is a find.”

Consider them marked. The off-white moon was a curdled penny. Lawrence didn’t know. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Oh, shut it – quick scrub and it’ll be reight. If this doesn’t cheer your mam, nowt will.”

“Then what?

“How do you mean and then what?”

It took them a long time to carry it home, a pair of midnight bailiffs, each holding one end of a repossession. They skittered the bins and dotted the rubbish as they dragged the rug out into the open, but the commotion drew no attention and when Lawrence got back from school the next day, he and his dad laid it in the living room whilst his mam was out doing the shopping.

“Turkish,” said his dad, on his knees, smoothing the ricks from the surface that now covered the entire floor. The rug’s pattern was like a jigsaw, and studying its compact spread made Lawrence think of the sea at Bridlington Beach, where he’d visited as a boy, the moment he swam too far out and realised his mam couldn’t see him anymore.

“We’ve done well here,” said Arthur.

“Suppose.”

“Do you not think so?”

. . . The salt water up your nose. The dread line where the horizon met the sky . . .

Dad started going over the story again. They’d saved up, bought the rug out of town and blah blah. They had to tell Mam something. She’d never accept a stolen gift and a cast off she couldn’t help but look down on. Words Lawrence knew to be true, though the fact they had to be kept secret and couldn’t be spoken in front of her made them feel like lies.

When his mam finally walked through the door, Lawrence stood well away from his dad. Shell Newman had a frank, open face that tended to hang, but as she saw the rug for the first time, her lips pinched. She wasn’t one for taking promptly to acts of kindness.

“What’s this?” she said.

“Present, love.”

“Kind of present?”

“What do you think?” Arthur beamed. “You can thank the overtime.”

Shell chewed a strand of hair broken free from her ponytail. “Didn’t think there were any.”

“Well there were.”

“Right.”

“Serious, love.”

“Aren’t you always?” Shell caught Lawrence’s eye. “Oh, I don’t know.”

“Chap were on his hols,” said Arthur. “It were last one and he wanted rid.”

Lawrence had to admire his father’s gall.

“Suppose it’s a nice pattern though, isn’t it, kiddo?” There was the slightest lilt to his mother’s voice, and in this moment, seeing her not daring to like her gift, Lawrence realised that although he hadn’t a clue what the future held for him the last thing he ever wanted was what his mam had.

“Yeah,” he said, bringing his mug of tea to his mouth and wrinkling the bridge of his nose so it would look like he was smiling.

“Then it’s a keeper,” his mam replied brightly. “Thanks, both yous, I’m touched, proud, actually. You’ve worked hard and it’s a nice thought. Really, it is.”

Arthur looked about ready to click his heels. He aimed a kiss at his wife’s cheek but the oblivious Shell turned away and left him puckering at thin air. That was all it took to send Lawrence into the kitchen. He clanked his empty mug by the sink and watched the rigid strings of sleet slanting against the window.

Two weeks later and a wardrobe opened, several tiny moths flying out of it. Truancy was an easy enough trick, especially on Fridays. Arthur was on six till twos so up at five and gone for half past, whilst Mam was on her visit to lay flowers on Grandad’s grave and chat to Granny Kelly in the care home. Lawrence had gone along with her in the past but by this stage it seemed pointless. Last memories sent rolling down the pinball drain, Granny Kelly didn’t recognise anyone anymore. By now the Topaz stud in her engagement ring would be getting knocked by Shell’s unpainted fingernails. By now, Asa Scanlan’s Fiesta would have grumbled through town and deposited Arthur at Brantford pit.

Lawrence grabbed the basics from the wardrobe: a pair of shorts, his slippers and a cable-knit sweater. Another moth settled on the door as he closed it. He put his finger on the insect and left a glittery brown smear on a sticker of Mel Sterland.

Downstairs he flicked on the telly. It was March and TVAM was on. He noticed his sweater had finally lost that cloying, second-hand smell as he dragged the neck hole over his head, the thought interrupted by a sharp sound in the cloth and a peculiar give in the fabric.

He tugged the sweater off and held it to the light. There was a large tear under one arm and, elsewhere, sunshine gleamed through it in a series of unnatural pin-pricks. He flopped, bare-chested, onto the settee. Another moth was nearby: he swatted it. He’d lost count of how many he’d killed recently. They were paltry things, barely seeming to move and when they did flying so gently towards the nearest source of light that all you had to do was clap them from the air, or crush them against whatever they were crawling on.

He concentrated on the people on the screen. Some wore NUM badges, most dark colours. Under their soupy sky, each one of them seemed to resemble his father. The protesters rushed into the police, jamming against a fence where a man in a donkey jacket stood. There was a crush as the fence collapsed, people flooding the screen and trying not to stand on the man. The crowd heaved over him, rushing like oil into an oxbow lake.

The camera cut away, straight to an image of a pit, a pit as mucky and confusing as the workings under the bonnet of a car. Headgear spun against the day. Trucks and footprints and smog pipes and bilge pumps, cabins and coke ovens, work yards and brick-yards, girders and timber; equipment, equipment, equipment.

Lawrence almost expected to see Uncle Het barking at someone, neck streaked by that scar of his that looked like a cross-section of salami. The screen emptied. It focused on a close-up of an exhaust, then the car itself, a yellow bug crawling along a road that trickled over the moor, heading south. Lawrence supposed that was where everybody off the telly went: up the Litten Path.

He switched off the TV and sat back, tugging at the rug’s tassels with his toes. They’d had people round to admire the damn thing the weekend before, where it had made a welcome distraction from the pit dispute, which was the inevitable main topic of conversation. Arthur for one was against striking. “What good’s taking action on someone else’s behalf,” he said, “cutting us nose off to spite another lad’s face?” which was one of his brasher statements, holding court, as was his custom, causing a stir on an afternoon of chicken drumsticks and paper plates.

Lawrence didn’t know whether he agreed or disagreed with his father. He no longer bothered to enter into meaningful discussions with endless men like him and the other heavy-arsed loudmouths in the room. Pissed in the afternoon with their sideburns in need of a trim, vigorously mantled cheeks and noses with snowflakes of blood vessels burst in them, banging on about variety performances or cars or ways of doing things in days gone by, when everything was harder fought for and therefore more genuine.

Another grey Sunday. Mam cracked out the china she’d lifted from Granny Kelly’s when she first took ill, and stood behind the settee rubbing Arthur’s neck while he talked up the luxury under everyone’s feet. Accepting the rug had given Shell such a lift that Lawrence found himself having to make the best of a gathering he’d no one to invite to, answering the same questions about school, giving the same shrug when asked what he was going to do when he left, head dipping when told how much he’d grown, how handsome he was when he knew he wasn’t good looking.

The Sunday ladies drank Babycham, the men bitters, canisters of brown ale that went flat once poured into the plastic cups. Lawrence’s hair was combed in the middle like it was ten years ago, as he helped show off the rug and an antique carriage clock to everybody. The clock was another of Arthur’s gifts, and so deep had it put him in Shell’s good books that he was allowed to smoke indoors, although Lawrence’s mam was so busy finishing the cupcakes that she forgot to put out ashtrays.

Arthur tapped fag ash into his hand while detailing the clock’s story. A win on the dogs had seen its purchase. “Last minute, like,” he said. “I thought I’d use the winnings for another summat for the wife. You’re chuffed aren’t you, love?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“My wife. My only keeper.”

Eye contact was to be avoided, it seemed. Arthur emptied his hand into the plant pot then hurried to the kitchen to be loud and overly helpful instead. He could be seen pouring crisps into the plastic bowl on the worktop, sorting drinks and peering into the sink’s plughole, staring as if it was some kind of vortex.

In the lounge Lawrence pushed his finger through the chewed hole under the sweater’s arm. It had all felt so artificial. The out-of-date fruitcake that was ‘still OK’, the fig rolls the Scanlans brought and Gordon Lomas’ hyah-hyah laugh and bald fucking head. Everyone wore pastel or beige, the women criticised Princess Diana and the blokes gathered in ribald groups. The afternoon peaked when Lawrence went to the kitchen to fetch more pop and caught his parents in there, touching one another.

But what alternative? Protest and cry fake? His mam would kill him. This was Yorkshire. Far better to keep quiet than be thought soft. Far better to sit back and enjoy the sausage rolls.

The sweater’s tear was now so much bigger that he might as well have done with it. He tugged at its edges until he’d ripped the garment apart completely.

Satisfying to at least ruin something.

Another moth flew past. Lawrence tried to get it, missed. He tried again and slapped the coffee table where it landed, the impact rattling the windowpane.

He looked around the room. On the armchair were moths. The electric fireplace, moths. On the ornaments, the TV and the lampshade.

He went upstairs to check his wardrobe and found more holes in the clothes hanging in there. The culprits crawled over the desk and all four walls. Lawrence swatted all of those that he could see then carried his clothes outdoors, slinging them over the washing line by the brazier Arthur used to burn the litter people threw over their fence, and the leaves shed by the sycamores stooping over their yard. Lawrence would light a fire to smoke the bastards out. Bonfires did for midges; he’d fumigate the moths from his clothes the same way.

But not before he combed the rest of his room, checking under the single bed pushed against the wall, vacuuming the steps of floor space then changing the bedding. Still no nest. Just crawling or flying insects that were crushed as fast as he came across them.

Next he tackled his parents’ room. This was not a place to be entered lightly, not because his parents were especially private people, but because being in their personal space made you feel like you had somehow wandered into their brains. This room was where Mam and Dad became Shell and Arthur, the parts of them Lawrence knew nothing of, ever so close to being revealed. Medicine, lingerie, letters, receipts, private heirlooms, belly-button fluff and toenail clippings. All of it told their secret, human story.

Lawrence only dared search their wardrobe, although it was the same state of affairs in there as in his. He left every item hanging – Mam would hit the roof if she knew he’d been touching their stuff – taking the trouble to vacuum the carpet then the landing, spraying enough air freshener in the bathroom to choke any living thing to death.

Downstairs he took out more moths and cleaned the stains they’d left on the walls by spitting on the hem of his t-shirt and using it as a makeshift cloth. The kitchen was all round edges, vinyl floor and Formica surfaces, its cupboards so packed and regularly used that the chances of a hidden nest were slim. Lawrence went to the living room to check in there instead.

The rug was like a stagnant sea. Lawrence vacuumed its exposed sections until he reached the settee with its fringe that tickled the floor. He lifted the heavy piece of furniture with one hand and went to push the vacuum underneath it with the other, but as he bent to see what he was doing, he noticed a papery movement lurking within the shadows.

The settee thunked to the floor. Lawrence stumbled onto his arse, the vacuum sucking a few rug tassels up and making a desperate noise. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Lawrence lifted the settee again and saw the hysterical gathering beneath it. The congregation and the shift. The antennae and the wing.

He dragged the settee into the middle of the room. Revealed where he’d shifted it were thousands of moths, writhing and crawling over one another. ‘He slid the armchair out and found a lot more where that had been, then lifting the rug he found maggots: cream-coloured puddles of insects squirming in the dust, half-caught by the clumps of hair and the dirt and . . .

“Kiddo?”

Some voices could cut through anything. Lawrence switched the vacuum off, not daring to turn as he heard his mother’s keys clattering on the floor. His belly was after gold in the gymnastics and still he had the rug’s corner in his hand.

“Mam.”

The lines of Shell’s face were tight, her mouth an O-shape. She let out a moan of disgust, so soft it could almost have been a squeal.

It made Lawrence let go of the rug, which slapped to the ground, its force creating a ripple that sent a plague of moths flickering into the air. The insects rose and engulfed the living room. They glittered like dust motes in the sunshine streaming through the big window.

“Jesus!” Shell cried, slamming the door to protect the upstairs and swiping at Lawrence. Her nails caught his nape hair as he tried to escape, as she dragged him into the yard along with a wooden chair from the kitchen. Lawrence kept trying to speak. He kept saying her name.

Mam.

Mam.

“Get your clothes off and sit on that bloody chair!” Shell shrieked.

Lawrence did as he was told while his mam removed her denim jacket and wrapped it around her face, tying the arms at the rear of her head. She marched back into the house and opened a window, a plume of moths erupting from the gap as Lawrence listened to her talking to someone on the front desk at Brantford.

“Tell him his wife’s on t’phone,” said Shell, “and I don’t care if shift’s about to wash, I want him home, A-S-A-bloody-P!”

Soon Arthur returned, stepping from a taxi in his boiler suit and boots. Lawrence had stripped to his Y-fronts by then. He squinted towards the unbearable sun as his father took one look at the rug, rolled up and smoking in the brazier, spread each hand and said, “Well, obviously. Obviously . . .”

Mam’s chin was tucked into her throat.

“She knows, Dad,” blurted Lawrence.

Arthur stared.

“I said she knows.”

“You told her?”

“I had to.”

“You told her.”

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“You never think, do you? About anything.”

Lawrence wiped his streaming eyes. He’d slipped his trainers back on because his feet were cold. He liked the way the maroon laces weaved in and out through their dirty eyelets: interlinked and criss-crossed; over and under; the over and the under and the . . .

“Jesus, Shell, I got it . . . I got in a deal!”

That dull sound again.

“The truth, Arthur. For once the bloody truth.”

Lawrence’s father looked like he might bolt, but he was cowed by the faces in the neighbouring windows, which were themselves bloated and paled by the glass. There were no escapes in knotty little working communities like Litten.

“All right,” he said.

“Did you not hear her, Dad? If you just say what happened . . .”

Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose. “Lawrence,” he said. “I’m tired of hearing your voice.”

He sat on the ground.

“It were all from skip.”

Mam’s chin lifted. Her chest heaved. “How do you mean skip?”

“Frigging bin, all right! From nice place, Threndle House.”

“Rug?”

“Course rug.”

“Clock too?”

Arthur nodded. The rug had really taken. Its busy flames sounded almost like water running into a bathtub. They licked the air, noxious and declarative, the burned fabric terribly sour-smelling.

“They were both in good nick, like. I mean you saw ’em, Shell.”

“My husband the thief.”

“I thought it might make a change. I thought it might cheer you up.”

“Everything costs summat.”

“Think I don’t know that?”

“It’s made a show of us in front of everyone!”

Mam’s bottom lip practically touched her nose. With a visible effort, she controlled herself. “Lower your heads,” she said. “Pair of yous.”

“Why?” said Lawrence. His dad still wouldn’t look at him.

“Just do it,” Mam said. “As I need to check.”

“For what?”

“Infection,” Mam spat. She strode forward and grabbed Lawrence by his head.

2

It felt good to be alone.

Shell sat in the kitchen staring at the light. On the counter was Arthur’s dinner: a can of spaghetti hoops set next to a plate of thawing fish fingers and chips. The frozen food landing on the china plate as she emptied it from its packet an hour ago had been the only sound in the house, and since then she had sat.

The familiar whirr of the airing cupboard. Shell had found the note after putting the food out. It said to wait a while, come meet them at Litten Hill. Arthur had specified to come at ‘tea time’ which might have sounded fine but Shell hadn’t been able to work out when was best to leave, and realised it was so typically unspecific an instruction that she could barely give voice to her frustration.

She’d waited on the lip of the bath, firing tepid soap suds down her naked back. She’d waited in the bedroom, towel-drying her hair and letting it hang, and now she waited in the kitchen with her husband’s dinner defrosting by her side. The hulking sky spread robustly outside the painted-shut kitchen window.

She made a final patrol of the house. The smell of disinfectant and bleach hugged everything. It was over a couple of weeks since she’d burned the gifts, but vividly Shell recalled the bubbling of the carriage clock, its varnish peeling like skin from a lesion in a fingerprint. Dying time becoming visible through that strange ripple in perspective that heat causes.

The rug took longer to disappear. Shell left Lawrence alone while she went to the garage to fetch the petrol. She’d expected him to have scarpered when she returned, or at least to be pulling his clothes on, but he’d stayed where he was, her son, desolate in underpants and trainers.

She’d emptied the jerry can and tossed the match and as the rug took flame, saw how ashamed Lawrence was, although whether it was for infesting their home, being in thrall to his useless dad, bunking off school or being a party to lying and embarrassing her in front of the whole town, Shell wasn’t sure. He was probably just upset at being caught out. The second liar in a house of liars – you’d think he’d been dragged up.

Together they watched the rug burn. Shell thought she’d seen the moths ablaze, rising like scraps of confetti. Again she couldn’t be sure. Perhaps dead moths were what she wanted to see. Those itinerant specks of insignificance symbolising the things that plagued her home, all the things that bothered her; the things that weighed her down.

Although burning the rug hadn’t ended the infestation, because every day since Shell had vacuumed. Every day she had polished and prodded the crannies with the duster. She had washed the settee covers and the curtains and she had sprayed all the surfaces until they ran slick with detergent, but the insects clung on as stubbornly to things as she did.

There was one now, fluttering towards the light. Shell went for it, missed. Those two were waiting; she didn’t want to join them. Lawrence, that teen. Arthur, that husband. It was hard to know how to deal with them. She had nothing much to say to either one.

Especially Lawrence. An accidental birth, was there any other kind? So she hadn’t breastfed him and maybe that was why they weren’t close. His pincer lips made her sore so she’d used formula milk and become callous with the bottle. Lawrence gorged himself like a little piglet. Shell had watched the milk dribble down his double-chin.

Although she knew she was being irrational, it niggled Shell, not breastfeeding her son. It niggled her every time he puked after he’d been fed, and the memories of how it was always Arthur who rose at night to quell the baby’s tears, Arthur who boiled the nappies clean in the saucepan while Shell could only think of shouting to make Lawrence stop crying rather than burp him, take him for a walk or have a bash at a lullaby, all that niggled her, too.

And she wondered about herself, why she behaved this way. Never playing dress-up. Never doing drawing with Lawrence or telling him stories, failing to coax him from his shyness the way the other women did with their children. Things just never occurred to Shell, and going back to crouch in front of her son in the playground, putting her hands on his shoulders and saying, ‘Don’t worry, you go play,’ felt like too much of a climb-down once she’d realised her mistake.

Probably Lawrence thought about this stuff too.

She hunted for her jacket, scaling the stairs and carefully avoiding the scrub marks staining the wall. Her house felt that cheap sometimes. The mounted ornamental plates Arthur bought from the car boot sale, the minibar he’d insisted on in the living room, with its platter for mixing the drinks, all of it made Shell cringe.

Boss-eyed walls. Lightweight doors. Shell entered the spare room and looked at the blow-up bed, which was semi-deflated. There was her jacket lying next to it. Arthur had taken the spare change from her pockets.

She swept downstairs, forcing her arms through the sleeves and that bastard from her head. She’d cut Arthur’s bloody hair off the other week. Had to. Fingers like crabs’ legs along his and Lawrence’s scalps. As soon as she found the moth in Lawrence’s hair, she’d crumbled the thing to nothing. There had been no choice but to react after what her family had done, and by that logic if she was going to react in the first place it was better to do it thoroughly if she was going to do it at all. Liars and cheats needed telling.

Gripped by what you might call a fugue, Shell took the kitchen scissors to the main bit of Lawrence’s fringe where the moth had been. She disposed of the hair in the brazier then promptly found more hidden moths, snipping where they had been too.

After that she cut the lot off, using the razor while she was at it. She’d get that scalp smooth-bald rather than pie-bald, give Lawrence a head like a light bulb rather than a globe where the stubble formed into misshapen continents, reminders of what she couldn’t quite remove with the scissors. Arthur was next; Shell wasn’t nearly so gentle, snapping at his hair, focusing in particular on the grey strands shaped like zigs of electric wire, while Arthur stared churlishly at the limp and sooty clothing strung along the washing line. A solitary red tear had dribbled down his forehead.

Shell locked the front door. Yes, she remembered Litten. She remembered her youth, making her way down this same route, glistening today, some parts still cobbled, past the allotments with its plots and its vista of plants and bamboo canes, its benches and sheds, the rectangles of soil looking like recently filled-in graves.

She sparked a fag, sucked as much nicotine back as she could. She’d never been a drinker; she’d always smoked. She liked the kick of it. She liked forcing the fumes out of each nostril. Arthur thought she’d quit long ago. She hadn’t. Shell felt like she’d been a smoker long before she ever tried it. Her grandparents had smoked; her dad, Lee – pomade in the hair and Sinatra down the pub – he’d smoked; so did her mother. Shell had always liked the smell. Taking up the habit felt so natural. There is such a thing as fate; it’s called being pre-disposed.

She thought of herself at sixteen, poring over those exercise books, maths problems squished as nonsensically as dead ants on the page. Pointless, all of it. Shell had snuck down the shop to buy something to take her mind off things, and there met a lanky streak of piss with a bicycle, leaning against a wall with a roll-up sticking out of his yap. The youngster seemed to think he knew absolutely everything, and although there was the odd sideways look, he showed no real interest in Shell, which intrigued her all the more.

Because she wasn’t beautiful. She knew that and was fine with it. Beautiful girls were never taken seriously. They weren’t grounded. They rarely developed wit or clever tricks. And in any case who needs looks when you’ve sex appeal? Shell was clear-eyed: she knew her face was too plump, like an over-filled water balloon, still blokes wanted her. That made it all right.

She had worn the boy down until he offered her the ride she’d hoped for from the start. Astride the saddle with her legs splayed, her groin clenched the leather, her fingernails sunk deep into Arthur Newman’s cardigan as he stood on the pedals and clattered them down the rec. It had beaten revision. Shell smoked her first cigarette that day and put her tongue so far down Arthur’s throat that he had to pull away and splutter. When she was young Shell was as shy as Lawrence in many respects, but sex or the promise of it always drew her out into the open. Nothing else was important then, not school, family or the prospect of what she’d one day do. All there was, was living and music and boys, in particular that ambivalent lad who’d promised to call on her the first chance he got, whom, as it turned out, she wouldn’t speak to again for another six years. Waking up with the world to look forward to, that was Shell Newman’s girlhood, and was anything better than being young when you felt as past it as she did?

The wind was beginning to snap as Shell approached Litten Hill. She made her way up the slope, an inhospitable bluff with no grass to speak of, more an abundance of scruff and fern. She pushed through the lengthening sward, ignoring the underwood’s snags, following a path taken recently, she assumed, by her hairless husband and son.

She’d never been one for exercise but walked a lot and was naturally hardy, so made good time. She emerged from the scrub and found herself on the summit. Below her the broken woods spread until they reached the borders of the town. A bird glided low, casting no shadow so deeply was the dying light imprisoned by the clouds.

Voices. Shell pursued them, catching her denims on a bramble. Crouching to untangle herself, she spotted the twin domes belonging to her husband and son, who at times felt more like kith to her than they did kin.

They were bent over a sapling whose red leaves emerged from the bin bag in which its roots had been wrapped. Shell was out of their line of sight, yet close enough to hear their voices carried by the wind.

“You might as well start digging,” Arthur said.

“Here?” said Lawrence.

“Course bloody there.”

Lawrence knelt gingerly on the ground, which made Shell smile. “Dirty earth,” he said, prising a clump of field out and holding it above his head. Shell could see him prodding the muddy roots, the soil presumably showering onto his trousers, because Arthur was saying “Watch them pants or your mam’ll go spare. You know what she’s like at the mo—”

He stopped himself.

Shell’s smile faded.

“Just be careful, will you.”

“Whatever you say.” Lawrence stabbed the trowel into the ground. Winter was over but the North didn’t seem to have registered it yet. The stubborn breeze blew. Shell would have abolished the wind if she could.

She buttoned her jacket at the collar. Arthur, smoking a roll-up, wore an anorak; Lawrence, digging away, was dressed in a parka. Each sported a newly shaven head, warped skulls accentuating open-car-door ears. They must be freezing, Shell thought.

When the hole was big enough Arthur dragged the sapling to it. The sheltered sun had dropped rapidly in the sky and the streetlamps in town and the boxy farmhouses scattered about the hills had begun to emit a bleak, spectral glow.

“Nice leaves them, Dad.”

“Soon as I saw it, I knew it were ours.”

“Where’d you get it?”

Arthur readied the sapling, missing its bin liner floating off in Shell’s direction. Shell stuck a foot out and trapped it, picked it up and stuffed it in her pocket.

Her husband used the trowel to cut around the perimeter of the pot, then began to prise the sapling free with its stem, careful to protect the root ball. He sometimes showed a similar tenderness to Lawrence, and could be careful when he wanted to be. It was one of the first things Shell had ever liked about him.

“Never mind that,” he said.

Removing the sapling had caused some damage to the pot so Arthur tore away the broken section and chucked it, the shape frisbeeing past Shell and jamming in the ground. The root ball began to crumble in his hands.

“Shit.”

“It weren’t?”

“Pipe down. This needs to be in ground by time she gets here.”

“You better not have nicked it, Dad.”

“You what?”

“Nowt.”

“Go see if she’s bloody coming.”

Lawrence trotted down the scarp. While he was gone, Shell saw Arthur drop the sapling into the hole and heft the earth in. There was no sunset. There was only the space between the daylight and the darkness.

Lawrence returned. “She’s not here.”

“Aye, well when she is, make sure you put on a show of it. It’s for all of us is this. Wish I had a bloody camera.”

Bastard would need far more than a camera.

Arthur firmed the sapling in with his boot heel while Lawrence stood a yard or two away, clicking his fingers. Shell knew her husband sometimes found it difficult to look at their son; that thinking too deeply about fatherhood sometimes made Arthur feel like he was going to fall over. She could see it in the way he stamped at the maple’s base now, so decided to put him out of his misery.

“What’s big surprise then?” she said, marching over.

The pair started.

“How long you been there for?” Arthur said.

“Just arrived.”

“Right on schedule.”

“Well, you did say tea time.”

Lawrence pointed at the sapling, a reedy juvenile that bent midway and sent its branches into parts. “He’s got us this,” he said.

Arthur reached for Shell’s hand. “A family tree.”

“Right.”

“Maple.”

“For us do you mean?”

“Course us. We’ll watch it grow. When we need somewhere to think, we’ll come here. It’ll watch over us, Shell. Symbolic, like.”

Shell took her hand back.

Arthur said, “Lawrence and me planted it.”

“I can see that.”

“So what do you reckon?”

“Reckon it’s a nice idea.”

“And?”

“An’ what?”

“Well don’t you want to give it a once over?”

“I am doing, Arthur. It’s a tree.”

“Oh, but it’s more than that, love. It’s—”

“So where’d you get it?” Shell said. This was such a pathetic plan. A try-hard thing to do.

“Bought it.”

“Where from?”

“Threndle House,” said Lawrence, quietly.

“Eh? No,” insisted Arthur.

“Did you?” Shell said. “Because if you did—”

“I didn’t, love—”

“Cause if you did, Arthur . . .” Shell’s guts bunched. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t have.

“Look, I thought it’d be summat,” said Arthur. “Cause we need summat.”

“And it is.”

“Exactly.” Shell’s husband moved closer.

“But it doesn’t change much, does it?” Shell said, making a point of not looking at Arthur and noticing Lawrence doing the same. “An’ don’t you think there’s bigger things afoot this evening? As they’ll likely be calling it tonight.”

“Oh come on, love. Cause you’ve no idea—”

“I’ve no idea?”

“No, I mean can we not just think about summat other than the bloody strike for five minutes,” said Arthur. “I just wanted to do summat nice. Not only for us, but for Het and Sam and —”

“Uncle Sam?” said Lawrence. “We don’t even know where he went.”

“Yeah, well . . .” said Arthur feebly.

“Or what happened.”

“Don’t you bloody start!”

Shell intervened. Better for the boy to hear about his uncle when the time was right. Some loyalties remained. Pity scars covering what had healed badly.

She said, “Look, it’s another nice idea, Arthur. Like I said . . .”

“But, love—”

“But tea’s on. And Lawrence is cold.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. And it’s getting dark.”

There was no denying that. Shell took her son by the arm and began to steer him down the hill. Arthur stayed where he was. His head resembled an un-cracked egg.

“Coming or what?” Shell called back; then, when Arthur didn’t reply, said “Ballot, Art. Don’t forget.”

He didn’t reply: he simply tugged a leaf from his tree, and the sadness of the act nearly made Shell run over and throw her arms around him. “I’ll see you later then,” she called, leaving her husband to become a silhouette. The surrounding countryside was cloaked in blue and a slit of moon glimmered over everything. Shell now knew that somewhere beyond the muddle of homes and lives below her, beyond the ballot, even, was the richness of Threndle House and a hole in the back garden betraying where Arthur had stolen that tree.

Back home, she flicked on the telly; there was nothing worth watching except the news. Shell could stand no more clips of Jack Taylor, so thought about calling a friend, Jan maybe. Then again she wasn’t sure she could face anyone. She preferred to do her fretting in private. Tonight was the perfect night for that.

She switched the telly off, and from across the room caught sight of her reflection in the dormant screen, recalling the second time she’d seen Arthur, all those years after she first kissed him down the rec, the two of them leant against one of the concrete posts that held the fence up.

He’d been at The Masons. Older, of course, still appealing. His elbow sported a damp patch and his leather jacket hung on a barstool by his arse. The young Arthur had that loose, knowing expression Shell once mistook for confidence: a manner she now knew was born of a detachment akin to panic, like an animal hiding in the hay at the back of its cage at the zoo.

“Remember me?” she’d said.

“Oh, heck.”

“You said you’d be in touch.”

“Summat came up.”

“For six years?”

“How you doing, love?”

“Don’t change bloody subject.”

“Let’s get you a drink.”

“He doesn’t even remember my name.”

“I’m not daft, Shell. See, I remember that smile an’ all.”

“Tell us summat I don’t know.”

“Drink?”

“Can tha afford it?”

“Two beers please, pal.”

“What gives impression beer’s my drink?”

“A man can tell.”

“Oh, aye?”

“What you doing with yourself these days then, love?”

“Keeping myself amused.”

“I’m down pit.”

“Quelle surprise.”

Shell could spit to think of herself. Daft and curly bobbed, all half-closed vowels and hoop earrings, pissed-up then coaxed into a knee-trembler by the bins while the band played, married before she even knew what was right for her.

She’d been pregnant so it had seemed like a good idea, and in many ways it had been. Not now. The morning after the wedding, Shell awoke with such a sore throat after all the cigarettes she’d smoked at the reception that she ordered milk with her breakfast at the Grey Grebe Hotel to soothe it. Arthur had borrowed a neighbour’s scooter – a wedding favour, he claimed – to chauffeur her. They’d had fried eggs, his hand heavy in her lap while she played with his long hair and frowned at the ring he’d bound her with: a pale band of silver with a stone in it. She’d split her yolks and ate as daintily as she could. The milk furred in a moustache on her lip.

It was getting on for eight, still early. Shell took out an old photo album, searching for the parts of herself that had been lost or irreversibly altered. The album was leather bound and had cream padded pages and a date written in biro on the inside front cover that made her feel old.

She tried to skip the nuptial pictures but inevitably ended up stopping on one: Arthur captured in his brown tux, that yellow tie she’d picked out for him. Booze-grizzled and gap-toothed. Those dated pork-chop sideburns, remember them?

Such a kid. Secret smile. Shell’s eyes were shadowed blue and her blustered face was all styled-up. She’d worn droplet earrings that her gran had bestowed. Hiding behind the veil she’d felt so mysterious, covered by a perforated cloth that now reminded her of the net curtains hanging in the fucking kitchen.

More pictures. Lawrence when he was a baby. What a fidget, frantic clapping. It made Shell feel uneasy, thinking of that, and she wasn’t sure why. She closed the book and went to the window-sill. Her cigarettes were buried in their hiding place in the tissue box. She lit one up out of the back door and had just about finished it when she heard footsteps coming along the backs.

“Shell?”

“Who’s asking?”

“It’s Het.”

Shell stopped herself from touching her hair. A moth buzzed past and broke for freedom.

“Arthur’s broth—”

“I know who you are, daft bastard.”

She still couldn’t see him.

“So is he in?” Het said.

“Who?”

“Tha knows who.”

“Why?”

“Because he weren’t out for ballot, and don’t you go making excuses for him.”

“Well don’t you go telling me what to do on my own doorstep.”

Het’s voice rose, or perhaps he’d come closer to the house. “Most important night in years and he can’t be bothered to show his face. Is he in or what, Shell?”

“No he’s not and this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“And you his wife.”

Shell’s fist caused the door chain to rattle. She stepped into the yard and said “Het you can either come in or leave off because I’m not standing in the cold while you mither me for something I know nothing of.”

Silence followed, the sound of gravel. Shell was about to head back indoors when the latch on the gate clicked and Het faltered into view. He was taller, more broad-shouldered and terse-faced than Arthur. Between his black donkey jacket, his dark hair and the night, Het looked stained by the coal he helped cut from the earth most days. A rubbery burn had scarred part of his neck and jaw and the left tip of his mouth. He touched the scar, as he often did when he was nervous. His hair was slicked to one side, Shell noticed, and that suited him. Everything suited Het.

“Sorry, love. It’s just—”

Shell chucked away her dog-end. “Don’t need to tell me what Arthur’s like.”

“I know that. I do.”

“An’ there’s no excuse for talking to me the way you just did.”

Het made to turn. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right.”

“Oh, shut up. How are you anyway, stranger?”

“Not bad,” ventured Het. “Well, been better . . . in all honesty.”

In the kitchen she made them tea. Black with one sugar for him, strong with lots of milk for her. The teaspoon clinked against the plate of Arthur’s by now completely defrosted dinner.

“How did it go?” Shell said, knowing the answer, and when Het told her the strike was going ahead, said she was glad. Het accepted his drink and blew it cooler, causing the puckered stain on his neck to stretch. Shell was disappointed when he didn’t ask why she was glad, because she wasn’t really.

“Sorry for just turning up out the blue like this.”

“You’re all right. Not seen you for an age.”

It had been a long time. Their unfamiliar reflection was reminder enough of that. Caught within the frame of the window, they could have been in a painting: two people with china mugs, one balancing her chair on two legs, the other interlocking his fingers on the table. Het drank his tea. Shell drank hers.

“Good job it were you at the door,” Het said. “I might have cracked him one.”

“Wouldn’t have been first time.”

Het chuckled and emptied the tea into his mouth. It must have been scalding. “You’ve no idea where he might be?”

“Why do you wanna know?” said Shell, her initial surprise at Het’s appearance giving way to her suspicious nature.

“Just do.”

“Aye, but since when do you ever pop round for a chat?”

She went to the biscuit barrel, opened it and found nothing inside.

“Already said. He weren’t at ballot.”

“Aye well our Arthur never turns up to half union shite. And let’s face it, he’d skip his own funeral if he could.”

“Ah, Shell . . .”

“What?”

Het was smiling. Shell sat in the chair closest to him.

“Nothing, really. You just reminded me of what me mam used to say: there’s two kinds of people you don’t need to worry about if you’ve not seen them in an age. Those you can’t forget, and those who never change.”

“An’ which am I?”

“Oh, bit of both.”

Het’s knuckles were terrific things, like bolts, and Shell was surprised at her urge to reach out and touch them. She pinched her thigh under the table and said, “Well, believe it or not, I have changed. Unlike some.” She finally succumbed and touched her hair. “Once upon a time I’d have dragged from you what you wanted wi’ Arthur. Now I’m not bothered.”

She counted to five in her head.

“I just need to know he’s on board with everything,” Het said.

“What for?” asked Shell, suppressing a smile. “They’re only closing a few pits.”

“Serious?”

Casual shrug.

“Well if twenty thousand jobs is a few I’d hate to think what a lot is. And what about Cortonwood?” Het began picking at the skin around his fingernails. “Perfectly good pit is Cortonwood.”

Shell glanced over the table. Het looked unbelievably weary.

“I just don’t understand it,” he said.

“TV said only Yorkshire’s voted yes.”

“Rest’ll follow.”

“They’ve changed welfare.”

“Union’ll sort it.”

“Frigging union.”

“There’s power in a union,” said Het. “That’s why I’m here, ’cause this is important. I need to make sure our kid’s up for it, Shell, as if my own brother’s not . . . Well, it doesn’t exactly bode well, does it?”

“Never had you pegged as superstitious.”

“What I’m saying is if we can get everyone on board we’ll be fine. Six weeks and done, tops.”

Shell had never seen Het like this. She hadn’t seen him in years, really, not since she’d gotten married. Het and Arthur had fallen out after Sam was sent to borstal for putting their father in hospital. And who had Shell been to say anything? She was new to the family, just another woman with an opinion.

Het continued. “They’ll back down if everyone stands up,” he said, “they’d have to. Shutting working mines, it’s a deliberate attempt to provoke us. If a pit’s not exhausted or unsafe, it can’t be shut, let alone wi’out union say so.”

“Sounds like they can and not much anyone can do about it.”

“There flaming is.”