The Forty-third Week
Monday 24 — Sunday 30 December 1984
Terry put down the phone. Terry sighed. Terry smiled. Terry clapped his hands –
The Union had regained partial control of the Dublin money. The sequestrators had admitted in court that they were having great problems getting to the miners’ money.
Terry stopped clapping. Terry stopped smiling –
Terry tried to remember what he had been doing before the phone rang –
Terry saw all the boxes stacked up in his office. The papers piled up on his desk. The empty cups on the windowsill. The aspirin bottles in the bin. The Denims outside. The Tweeds upstairs. The Red Guard downstairs –
Terry walked over to his jacket. Terry went to the right-hand pocket of his jacket. Terry needed an index card –
The phone rang again on his desk.
Terry walked back over. Terry picked it up. Click-click —
‘It’s Christmas time,’ sang the voice on the end. ‘There’s no need to be afraid —’
Terry sat down. Terry said, ‘What do you want, Clive?’
‘Let me guess,’ laughed Clive. ‘You’re Scrooge in the Union pantomime?’
Terry said, ‘I haven’t the time for this —’
‘Really?’ asked Clive. ‘But I’m the ghost of all our Christmases-yet-to-come —’
‘Fuck off,’ shouted Terry. ‘I’m going to hang up right —’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Clive. ‘I just wanted to say thank you. That’s all.’
‘For what?’ asked Terry.
‘For not saying anything,’ whispered Clive. ‘For being a pal. I owe you one.’
‘You owe me nothing,’ spat Terry. ‘Nothing. Now fuck off —’
‘Don’t be like that,’ said Clive. ‘We’re on the same side. Both want the same —’
Terry hung up. Terry stood up. Terry went back over to the pocket of his jacket –
The index cards were gone.
Terry closed his eyes. He saw the cards on the kitchen table. He opened his eyes. He saw the boxes and the papers. The cups and the bottles. Terry looked at his watch –
It was home time. Christmas time –
Terry locked up the office. Terry went down the stairs. Terry drove to his house –
On the radio. Again and again. Over and over, Do They Know It’s Christmas?
He opened the front door of his three-bedroom home in the suburbs of Sheffield. The lights were not on, his family not home –
Terry Winters couldn’t remember when he’d last seen Theresa and the children. They must have all gone down to Bath to stay with Theresa’s parents for the holidays. Terry had put all their presents under the Christmas tree ready for them, but they’d left them there under a coat of fallen pine needles and cold, dark lights.
Terry closed the front door. He stood his briefcase and the suitcases in the hall. He went into the front room. He walked over to the socket in the wall. He switched on the lights on the tree. He sat down on his sofa in the shadows of South Yorkshire, in the suburbs of Sheffield –
In the house with the lights flashing on and off, off and on, and nobody home –
It was Christmas Eve, 1984.
*
Neil Fontaine has made mistakes. Neil Fontaine has paid the price –
Now is the time to make things right. Now is the time to pay it all back.
Neil Fontaine makes calls. Neil Fontaine pays visits –
Pockets full of change and his little black book. Telephones and doorbells.
No one answers their phone. No one answers their door –
He kicks in doors. He tips up tables. He cracks heads. He breaks bones.
Nazi bones. Nazi heads. Nazi tables. Nazi doors –
East End pubs and West End bars. South London skins and North London toffs.
Neil Fontaine drives through the old years and the new. The sleet and the rain –
Now is the time. To make things right. Now is the time. To pay it all back –
Sick of the lies. Sick of the life. Sick of the death –
The severed head of his ex-wife in the boot of his car.
*
The President had been voted Man of the Year. The Prime Minister, Woman of the Year. But the Man of the Year was locked away in his office at the top of the monastery –
There were wolves at the gate, there were carrion circling overhead –
Now there were rats within the precinct walls –
The Militants were mutinying. The Militants were muttering about the President. The Militants moaning about his navigation. The very direction and course of the dispute. The lack of vision and initiative –
The Militants and the Moderates. The shots from both sides now.
So the Man of the Year stayed locked in his office during the hours of daylight. The television tuned to Ceefax and Oracle. The Shostakovich on loud, twenty-four hours. He wrote letters to the families of jailed miners. He told them how proud they should be of their fathers and sons. Their husbands and brothers. How he had nothing but admiration for these magnificent men who had fought to save their jobs, their pits and their communities –