The one stroke of good fortune in that bleak week was an industrial dispute that hit the ferries between Belfast and the other British ports. Vital parts of future DMC-12s were stranded in containers on the Liverpool dockside.
That was the reason they went with when they made the announcement of the three-day week. They were thinking of the press, of course, but they were thinking of the workers too: no point lowering morale any further (‘Are things really that bad that the money’s run out after a couple of weeks’ snow?’). If their luck held, by the time the ferry strike ended the thaw would already have set in, or like DeLorean said, Her Majesty’s government would have realised exactly what was at stake.
*
‘Eleven hundred redundancies,’ Don said. It was the end of the second three-day week and he had just returned from yet another round of talks in London. (Randall had not been invited to a single one of them.) He still had on his overcoat and scarf when he convened a meeting of the management in the boardroom, or bunker as a few of those present had taken to referring to that windowless box. His face was ashen. ‘Eleven hundred redundancies, with immediate effect.’
‘How are we going to do that?’ Randall asked. Not ‘why’ any more. Sales back home had appeared briefly to be rallying, despite the whiteout, before nosediving again.
‘Lottery,’ said Stylianides. ‘Section by section. It’s the only way. Imagine you are turning down the volume on your record player’ — he demonstrated with forefinger and thumb — ‘there is less coming out but the balance remains the same.’ The man could probably have struck the cheery note in a terminal-illness prognosis. To be honest, he said, the computer could probably make the selection for them, and Randall was guiltily glad not to have to have a hand in it.
*
Liz was running late: hold-ups on all the main roads, the sort of start-of-the-week, main-road hold-ups that cities the world over were prone to, rather than any more sinister local difficulty. There were jams too on the way in the gates (one of the reasons why she preferred to get in early), though the horns being sounded now were simply the prelude to a wave, or a ribald comment through a side window wound down for that express purpose.
She was still thinking, a little diffusely, as she entered the assembly shop, about how people here could adapt to pretty much anything, when she started to clock individuals passing her, coming from the lockers, with letters in their hands.
‘What’s the betting this is us back to a full week?’ one fella was saying as he worked his finger under the gummed flap, and Liz had barely time to wonder why in that case not everybody was carrying a letter before she turned the corner to her own locker.
‘What the fuck?’
It was Amanda. An envelope lay torn on the floor at her feet. The letter, in her right fist, shook.
‘They’re fucking laying me off.’ The fist tightened, the letter shook harder. ‘They’re fucking laying me off. I moved my whole fucking family here. I took my lasses out of school, away from all their friends. I risked my fucking life, everyone back home told me: “You’re risking your fucking life, girl.”’
She narrowed her eyes at Liz.
‘It’s because I’m English, in’t it?’
But by then there were shouts, and curses, from all quarters.
‘I don’t think it’s just you,’ Liz said, and glancing over her shoulder saw TC holding an envelope in his hand. Poor fella looked as though he was about to throw up.
‘Oh, TC,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry.’
TC blinked. His cheeks bulged and his lips twitched. God, he wasn’t really going to be sick, was he? The words came out in a rush. ‘It’s not mine, Liz, it’s yours.’
*
She had no idea who was leading it, but there was a movement — a swell — in the direction of the administration block (it was becoming traditional with them), those with and those without letters caught up in it alike. The managers (as was traditional with them) had got wind of their approach. They were waiting in a line, Randall one of the middle three with Don Lander and Myron Stylianides. He looked as bad as TC, near, but she thought in his case it was maybe fear. There was no Gardiner from wages, with his inexhaustible supply of pens, to call on this time. He had every right to be scared.
Without warning a hail of objects flew through the air from the front of the crowd. The managers to a man flinched or outright ducked before they realised that they were threatened by nothing more lethal than letters of dismissal, balled up.
There was a sound then, long, drawn-out — yeeeee-ow — composed of equal parts contempt and delight at their display of cowardice.
If they hadn’t sensed it already her fellow workers knew for certain now who occupied the moral high ground.
‘You told us this was different.’ Liz recognised Anto’s voice, somewhere to her left. ‘We’re no better off than if we’d been standing on the street corner waiting on the ganger to pick us.’
Don Lander tried several times to speak, but was shouted down. Randall though did manage eventually to make himself heard.
‘Give Mr Lander a chance,’ he said. ‘He did everything he could the past few weeks to make sure this didn’t happen. He will do everything he can in the next few to make sure these lay-offs are only temporary…’
He stopped. It was a moment before Liz realised the reason was that she had her hand up — out in fact, arm rigid, fingers splayed. ‘Seriously, how are we expected to trust anything you say?’
A round of applause at this.
He held her eye. She held his longer.
‘I am — all of us here are — part of this too, you know,’ he said, to anyone it seemed but her.
*
Randall was half expecting someone to shout out and ask if they were all in this together, then which of the managers had got redundancy letters today. No sooner had he finished speaking, though, than the workers seemed to arrive at a collective and unspoken decision to turn their backs on him, on Lander, Stylianides, the lot of them, and walk the other way.
*
The television cameras were waiting at the gates, reporters jamming microphones under the noses of workers as they walked out, trying to get a comment. Liz dipped her head as she passed, remembering how she had watched John DeLorean those years ago on that knackered TV while serving up the dinner: ‘two thousand jobs in eighteen months…’
What she was doing now, she knew, letting hair fall across her face like that, she was hiding from herself.
She caught a bus the whole way into town and for reasons that made no sense even to her killed the time until she normally finished work, the last hour of it in the Bodega on Callender Street, where she ordered, of all things, a schooner of sherry. Speciality of the house, the writing on the board above the bar said. It was special enough that she had another two before fighting with the security turnstile at the bottom of the street to reach the bus stop home. Fucking, fucking, useless thing.
She came into the house by the back door. Robert and the boys were in the living room, waiting on the Dinner Fairy. She must have swayed. Robert went to get up. She set the letter on the arm of his chair. ‘Don’t say a word, any of you,’ she warned and went straight up the stairs to her room, got into bed, shoes and all still on her, and pulled the covers right up over her head.
Only then did she give in and cry.
The week after the redundancies the news crews were back at the factory gates reporting that the remaining workforce had been put on a one-day week.
Liz recognised the hunted look in the eyes of the workers as they passed the cameras. All those carefully calculated HP plans; all those mortgages taken out. Those holidays destined to remain dreams.