Bill put a finger to his lips again. His ear and then his eye. ‘Patience, Comrade.’
Terry sat back in the passenger seat and Terry waited. He watched. He listened –
He switched on the radio. Switched it off again. On again. Off again. He listened –
‘There can be no forgiveness.’
He listened and he heard whispers. He heard echoes –
‘No forgiveness.’
He sat forward again. Whispers and echoes. Echoes and shouts –
He stared out through the windscreen into the dark. Shouts and screams. Swords –
Swords and shields. Sticks and stones. Horses and dogs. Blood and bones –
The armies of the dead awoken, arisen for one last battle –
The windscreen of the Granada lit by a massive explosion –
The road. The hedges. The trees –
Fire illuminating the night. The fog now smoke. Blue lights and red –
Terry shook Bill’s arm. Shook it and shook it. Bill opened his eyes –
‘Where are we?’ shouted Terry. ‘Where is this place?’
‘The start and the end of it all,’ said Bill. ‘Brampton Bierlow. Cortonwood.’
‘But what’s going on?’ screamed Terry Winters. ‘What’s happening? What is it?’
‘It’s the end of the world,’ laughed Bill Reed. ‘The end of all our worlds.’
Martin
bloody right — I remember when we first come here. Folk had stories about him even then — That Union were building him a mansion with a big electric fence. Pack of dogs to guard him — That he got all his cars as rewards from Czechs or Soviets. For his spying and agitation — Load of lies even then. Even then — Thing I remember most, though, is what they used to call tenners round here: Arthur Scargills — That’s what miners called ten-quid notes in South Yorkshire. Because no bugger had ever bloody seen one till Good King Arthur came along — Day 251. I can’t sleep. I can’t close my eyes — Petrol bombs. Burnt-out cars and buses. Huts and Portakabins on fire. Blazing barricades. Houses evacuated. Transit vans with armour fitted special to them. Horses and dogs out — Like something you saw on news from Northern Ireland. From Bogside — Never thought I’d live to see anything like it here. Not here in England. Not in South Yorkshire. Not at fucking Cortonwood, of all bloody places — I just can’t believe some of things I saw. Here in my own country, with my own eyes — Lads trapped in playground of Brampton Infants, raining bricks down on coppers as coppers leather anyone they could get their fucking shields and bloody truncheons on. Mothers and their little kiddies trying to make their way inside school for assembly time. Kiddies crying and shitting themselves. Head-teacher out there in playground appealing to both pickets and police to pack it in. No one listening to her — Broke your heart, it did. To see it happen here — Happening everywhere else, though. Happened to us, like — Bloody shock, though, when Pete had opened up envelope and said it was Cortonwood. Someone told him to fuck off. Not to joke about thing like that. Pete said it wasn’t a joke. He wished it bloody were. But it isn’t. It isn’t a joke — It’s war. Fucking war this time. For real — World War bloody Three, that’s what it looked like — Thick fog. Pitch black. Fires and barricades up everywhere — Never seen so many bottles and bricks thrown. Bus shelter going. Lamp-posts going. Methodist chapel wall. Road running with milk from milk float lads have hijacked — Battle of Brampton Bierlow, in shadow of Cortonwood Colliery. That’s what it was — Three thousand of us. Least two thousand of them, easy — All this for just one bloody scab. Just one bloody scab and he’s a fucking foreigner — Transferred him in special, like. Cortonwood lads have hung a stuffed dummy from a gallows above Alamo — This is for scabs, sign said round its neck. That was all last Friday. That was bad enough — Today’s Monday. This is worse — Six of them now. Six fucking scabs back at Cortonwood. Unbelievable — Keith reckons half of them are pigs — Hope they are. But in my heart, I know they’re not. Know they’re fucking scabs. Makes me rage inside. Makes me boil. Does same for everybody — Tension’s immense. Immense — Real fucking fury there is now. But it’s hopeless. Thousands of police. Thousands of them — Horses. Dogs. Vans. Shields — Beat all that lot and there’d still be another thousand more waiting up side-roads. Parked up in a lay-by with their radios on. Thousand more just waiting for bloody word, champing at bit. Just once I’d like us to turn up and it be only us and scabs — Us and ours. Not so we could give them any hammer — Just so we could talk to them. Talk sense back into them — Tell them how they’ve kicked us all in teeth. Stabbed us all in back. Broke our fucking hearts — But it’s hopeless. Fucking hopeless — This is worse than Orgreave. Like a last, final war really has been declared on both sides — No more prisoners. Just us and them — Folk nothing but a number now. Just another bloody body. Fucking cannon fodder. Fight to finish, they keep saying — But there’s no finish. Because it just goes on and on and on — Last man standing job. To victor spoils, winner take all — Right across South Yorkshire: Bentley. Dinnington. Dodworth. Frickley. Hickleton. Maltby — Right across whole area. Breaks your heart, it does — Trampled and truncheoned. Bitten and beaten. Bricked and stoned — Your trampled, truncheoned, bitten, beaten, bricked and stoned bloody heart. Day 255. Two young brothers died coal picking at Goldthorpe. Names were Paul and Darren. Paul was fifteen,
The Thirty-seventh Week
Monday 12 — Sunday 18 November 1984
The Jew and Neil Fontaine are spending a dirty weekend away. The Jew flies first class. Neil Fontaine back in economy. Heathrow to Dublin for the Union’s not-so-secret stash. The money has been traced. Sheffield to the Isle of Man. The money has been tracked. From the Isle of Man to Dublin. The money has been found. The money has been frozen. Three million pounds of the Union’s money. But the Union has appealed to have it freed. The Jew worries about the Irish High Court. The Jew worries the Union might even win. The money escape. The money evaporate. So the Jew flies in to wine the Irish solicitors. To dine the English sequestrates. The Jew has large amounts of donated cash to flash. Neil Fontaine leaves the Jew up to his tricks. Neil Fontaine goes out to make movies. Dirty home movies. He visits the judge at his nice family home in a nice part of town. The judge grants the injunctions against the NUM. The judge swears not to lift them. Neil Fontaine drives back to the Jew’s Dublin hotel. The Jew has retired early upstairs. Downstairs Neil Fontaine doesn’t sleep. He locks the door. Puts a chair against the door, TV and radio on loud. Neil Fontaine dislikes Dublin. Dislikes Ireland. Dislikes the Irish. Both the South and the North. Catholic and Protestant. Two states only. Drunk or hungry. The Taigs in the North the worst. Drunk and hungry. The worst three years of a bad life. These are some of the things he tells himself to stay awake in Ireland. To stop sleep fall. The dirty dreams descend. Neil Fontaine doesn’t sleep in Ireland. Doesn’t close his eyes. He sits up in his chair and watches the coalfields burn on TV.
*
Everyone sat in silence while Terry Winters swept the Conference Room for bugs again. Terry had bought the bug detector out of his own money from a mail-order surveillance catalogue. It had arrived today. Terry planned to sweep the entire building. Every office. He also wanted to do Huddersfield Road. The President was impressed. Not Paul –
‘Had a duster and brush with you,’ he said. ‘Kill two birds with one stone.’