‘So who do you fancy for the next Labour loser then, Jonno?’
‘The next leader?’
Susannah’s eyelids popped as to say she meant what she said.
‘It’s got to be Kinnock.’
‘Ah. It’d be nice for him to have a proper job at last.’
Get knotted, thought John. He had first heard Neil Kinnock on the radio in the week before the election, addressing a crowd in South Wales, hoarsely and yet with no little rhetorical fire. Kinnock was a miner’s son, and John was sure he heard the plangent cadence of a pulpiteer to boot.
At Embankment the tumultuous scale of the day became clear amid a mounting din of shouts and whistles. All around were vociferous men, women, children and babies, vividly disparate banners and emblems – AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS, NICARAGUAN SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN, JAMES CONNOLLY SOCIETY – but above all a multitude of painted doves and rainbows heralding peace. John had never seen so many dark-skinned people in the flesh, and tried not to stare. On the fringes of the teeming congregation were stalls purveying badges and flags, booklets and pamphlets. John was drifting toward the reading matter when a hawkish skinhead in a purple Harrington stepped into his way, waving a wad of newssheets.
‘Socialist Worker, pal?’
‘I won’t, if you don’t mind, thanks.’
‘Your loss, pal.’
He came to a fold-out table tended by a girl with sloe eyes, a bolt in one nostril and a sheaf of vermilion hair. He inspected her wares – no doves or rainbows here, just angry splashes of red. Straight Left, Burning Questions. The girl smiled sleepily at him, and so he fished out some coins. On his return Susannah eyed him archly. ‘You’re in there, I think, Jonno.’ She snatched the pamphlet. ‘Tsk. Communist Party nonsense.’
Paul took an interest. ‘Aye, that’s the Marxist-Leninist faction but. They split, see.’
Susannah snorted. ‘Over what? Something that happened in 1920?’
‘Whey, you sneer all you want, Suzie,’ Paul smiled impishly, to John’s delight. ‘But it’s very important to make the right analysis. You should give it a try yer’sel.’
From set-off it took the marchers two hours just to step and shuffle halfway along the envisaged route through the city. The slow progress assumed a permanence, yet the vehemence of the crowd had its own momentum, and whenever this flagged there came a rallying cry of sorts – someone with a bullhorn or klaxon, or the first line of a song. As they approached Victoria John espied that sloe-eyed pamphlet vendor stepping hither and thither a short distance ahead, urging Burning Questions onto fellow marchers. He was daring himself to sidle closer to her when the Socialist Worker skinhead hoved into view at her flank, gesturing unpleasantly to the girl and her would-be customers.
‘Don’t be swallowin’ anything off of these fucking middle-class Stalinists.’
‘Oh yeah,’ she riposted. ‘Says the Trot wanker.’
The skin seized her arm, she shoved at him, and – to John’s outrage – he shoved her back. John felt his feet taking him forward into the affray. But a second skinhead had come on the scene and was already restraining his bristly friend, seizing him by the chest as his arms flailed the air. Too late John saw a sharp elbow rising to clout him in the nose. Static burst behind his eyes, he staggered and fell to the tarmac.
Strange hands tugged him to his feet, some grey-bearded bloke and his wife in a blue bobble-hat. Now Susannah had her fingers on his face – ‘Let us see, Jonno’ – and Paul was fending off someone whose apology was unaccepted. ‘Let’s get him offside,’ Paul was urging, then they were levering him apart from the hubbub, the parade passing by. They ducked into a pub, darkened in the late afternoon, strikingly quiet, wainscoted and divided into nooks by partitions of frosted glass. John was plonked in a corner while Susannah purchased drinks, in spite of Paul’s protests.
Musical female laughter drifted from a neighbouring nook. John found himself staring at the handsome youngish couple sat there, he wreathed in smoke, she running fingers through flaxen hair, an evident intimacy he thought very enviable. He glanced aside only to see Paul’s attention similarly diverted.
‘That fella, I know him. Martin Pallister. Teaches politics at Newcastle Uni.’
‘How do you know him?’
If there was an insult in Susannah’s tone, Paul didn’t rise to it. ‘He does summer schools and that, weekend courses for union lads. Listen, I might gan and say hello.’
‘Let’s all of us,’ Susannah decided. ‘No point just nursing the casualty.’ They took up their glasses and trooped behind Paul.
‘Martin?’
A fleeting wince. ‘Aye?’
‘Paul Todd? I was in with your lot at Redhills last summer?’
‘Oh aye, Paul. How’re you keeping, son?’
‘Canny. Did you come down for the march the day then, eh?’
‘Aye, sort of. But I got thirsty, man.’ Pallister grinned. ‘You bunked off an’ all?’
‘Well, the lad here got a bash in the face off of some Trot.’
Pallister’s gaze fell on John. ‘So you did. Poor kid. Well, now you’ve earned your combat stripes.’
Even as they drew up stools John was certain Pallister’s manner wished them gone. The girl at his side he introduced as Polly, and the corners of her mouth flickered, but her throaty chuckle had been silenced by the invasion. As Paul tried to engage Pallister, John made a discreet inspection of the man. His build was compactly sportsmanlike, his eyes very blue, and he was fine-planed of jawline and cheekbone. He wore a jacket of black corduroy over a half-buttoned grey shirt, a silver chain at his throat, his crow-black hair spiked on top but shaggy at the nape, more befitting a rock’n’roller than a college lecturer. Clearly his nose had been broken once upon a time, yet it added some useful rough to his good looks. Engrossed in this admiration, John suddenly saw those blue eyes turn on him anew.
‘You still a bit glakey there, son? So what did you do to earn the smack?’
Paul leapt in, as if perched in the front row of a tutorial. ‘He got between some Trot skin giving out to a little Commie lass for being middle-class.’
Pallister sniffed. ‘Not a bad analysis. Mine wouldn’t be much different.’ He reached for his packet of Silk Cut, set squarely on the table beneath a distressed silver Zippo. Paul produced papers and pouch from his pocket and began to craft a roll-up, his eyes never leaving his hero.
‘CND’s a sweet idea,’ Pallister exhaled. ‘But there’s nee real politics to it. ‘“Give peace a chance”, aye, right. But they’ll never achieve owt. End of the day? They’re in bed with Labour. Meaning they’ll take whatever a Labour government gives them. Meaning nowt.’
Susannah wrinkled her nose. ‘What “Labour government” would that be?’ Pallister flicked a wry eye in her direction, and she seemed pleased. ‘Sorry, but you want to mind your language too, my little brother’s red-hot Labour.’
‘Christian Socialist,’ John corrected her, feeling it was time he imposed himself properly on the symposium.
‘Dear me how,’ said Pallister, breathing another blue cloud. ‘That’s called an oxymoron, son. You can’t absolve the rich of their sins by holy water.’
John made a face. ‘That’s not what Christian Socialism’s about, it means –’
‘I teach this stuff, sunshine.’ Pallister wore a slight grimace of his own. ‘For a living. So I think I know what I’m saying.’
‘Well, then you’ll know the Bible made as many socialists as Marx ever did. I mean, the churches are what Labour was founded on.’
‘Oh, Labour, aye – Labour’s a party of preachers alright. All the churchy types sign up there. I’m talking socialism, kidder.’ John was confused, Pallister jabbing his lit cigarette as if to skewer a stray and offensive argument. ‘Look, you’ve gotta know your history when you say “Christian Socialism”. It was a proper movement, eighteen-nineties –’
‘I know,’ John blurted, keen to be profligate with his learning. ‘F. D. Maurice, the
small band of brothers.’
Pallister paused, his stare a shade darker. ‘Oh, you know all that, do you? And do you know what they achieved? Nowt. Just a load of dog-collars sniffin’ round the East End of London. Missionaries, y’knaa? Reckoned they’d sort out the proles. But the working class was organising itself, see. It wasn’t in need of sermons.’ He stubbed the cigarette pointedly. ‘So aye, you’re right, the Church gave Labour a start. But Labour outgrew the Church. We all outgrow it, don’t we? You will too. I bloody hope you do.’
John could feel the burn of Susannah’s thin smile in his peripheral vision.
‘You don’t give Labour much credit, do you?’
‘I’ve not forgot what they’re like in power. Divvint get us started.’
Susannah leaned in. ‘Exactly. What’s Thatcher doing that Callaghan wouldn’t have loved to? If he’d had the bottle?’
‘Well,’ Pallister chuckled, ‘to be fair – I don’t know if he’d have sent men to the Malvinas to fight for a rock and some seagulls.’
‘I’m sure he wouldn’t. Then where would we have been? Kowtowing to Argie fascists? No, that was true leadership.’
‘Blimey, where’s your tin hat, love? Is it under your chair there?’
‘Sorry, flower, am I a bit too tough for you?’
‘Not at all, pet. I just never met one of your lot before. Hail the blessed Margaret, eh?’
John studied his sister and Pallister as they glared at one another. However guiltily, he relished seeing Susannah take a turn in the lions’ den. He was conscious, too, of how silent the delicious Polly had been throughout these charged exchanges.
Susannah emitted a short laugh. ‘You make me laugh, your lot.’
‘My lot?’
She had plucked up Pallister’s cigarette packet, defying his raised eyebrows, and drawn out a smoke. ‘You lefties. Talking like you’re for all the good things, and against all the bad things, and it all got decided ages ago. What you’re actually saying is utter shit.’ She had coaxed the Zippo into flame, and she lit and drew, a little clumsily. ‘I mean, what do you think politicians are for? It’s just a job, man. Governments aren’t there to make everything sweetness and light. They’re not Jesus Christ and his bloody disciples.’
Pallister looked to have recovered his cocksureness. ‘Well, me and the Reverend here might see it different,’ he said, winking at John, who suddenly saw a certain appeal in the man’s rather louche assurance. Then Pallister seemed to dismiss the altercation with a flick of the wrist. ‘So listen, Paul, what’s the good word then? Are the miners going out this year or not?’
Todd, startled, mustered a shrug. ‘Whey, everybody reckons we’ll get shafted on the pay round, but, I dunno – wouldn’t be the best time for it.’
‘There’s never a good time, son.’
‘Aye, well, if we do strike then it won’t be much to look at, I don’t reckon. I doubt we’ll even need pickets. I mean, everybody feels the same. Y’knaa Durham, it’s middle-of-the-road, always has been.’
Pallister scowled. ‘That’s weak analysis, that, man. Naw, I reckon you’ll have a battle this time. Scargill’s not Joe Gormley. He’ll not get the engineers out to help him neither. Used to be the miners went out if the nurses weren’t getting. You’ll not ever see that again. Proper fight brewing now.’
‘Ha,’ Susannah enunciated crisply. ‘And where’ll you be when it starts?’
Her effrontery must have kindled some defiance in silent Polly, for she stroked a deft hand over Pallister’s on the tabletop. ‘Quite. Macho man.’
Pallister recoiled, a little too sharply. ‘I’m not talking … punch-ups, man. Revolutionary politics aren’t just about violence. It’s about people united, pushing in the same direction. That’s the power of it.’ He leaned back in his seat, his grin reinstated. ‘Saying that – a bit violence can go a long way.’
‘Revolutions,’ Susannah sniffed, ‘aren’t started by a lot of big talk down the pub.’
‘Actually, bonny lass,’ said Pallister, winking again at John over the rim of his glass, ‘I think you’ll find there’s a few went off in just that very manner.’
Paul set down his drained pint. ‘Another, eh?’
Polly, though, was collecting her belongings. ‘Martin, I’m off.’
‘Don’t go, c’mon, stop on.’
‘Nice to meet you,’ she said to the table, lightly and devoid of sincerity. Pallister laid a hand on her but she shrugged it aside and pushed her way out of the double doors to the street. In the abashed silence that followed, Pallister rubbed the grain of his stubble.
‘You headed back north tonight, Martin?’ Paul tried, finally.
‘Nah, I’m stopping over. Least I thought I was.’ Pallister’s grin had revived. ‘I might end up out in the kennel. Look, I’d best get on.’ He rose and swept up his smoking apparatus. ‘Cheerio, Paul. Nice to meet you, sunshine.’ He patted John’s shoulder. ‘Bye then, Mrs T,’ he fired gratuitously at Susannah. Then he hustled out into the greying afternoon.
‘Some bloke, isn’t he?’ Paul clucked his tongue.
‘Seemed like the standard lefty lout to me,’ offered Susannah.
‘Some of that,’ John murmured, ‘was for your benefit, I thought.’
Witheringly Susannah beheld her brother. ‘Oh Jonno, pay attention, will you? Quite apart from that poor cow sat with him – he was wearing a wedding ring.’ And she leaned back in her chair, lip curling, the imperious effect undermined but slightly by one more pop-eyed blink.
*
For some months after his day-trip John would, in idle moments, toy with the fancy that he might once more run into Martin Pallister and his lovely girlfriend. He saw himself performing more capably in the cut-and-thrust next time. But it was not to be. Nor did Paul Todd make good a cheery pledge to ring him up. And yet, one day in the late summer of the following year, they met again.
John had taken the bus to Newcastle in search of a small token to offer at a family dinner in honour of his father’s promotion to Chief Supervisor, Durham Region. Anew Montego was in the offing, and for Bill there would be no more knocking on the doors of old gadgies. Such was the largesse of the newly privatised ‘British Telecom’. Thankful news in all, though to John the home front was of receding significance, for within the month he was due to take up a college place on the south-east coast.
Headed for Eldon Square, the enclosed shopping complex of gaudy arcades that squatted and snaked through the centre of the city, he dawdled down Blackett Street toward the familiar mooring of the Earl Grey Monument, its fluted stone column soaring a hundred feet from a fat plinth set on a base itself taller than a man. To one side a small assembly was in progress, two dozen bodies shuffling in close proximity. John came closer. Collection tins were being rattled.
‘Support the miners there. Support the striking miners …’
The most voluble of the collectors was a handsomely aged sort, wearing a black donkey jacket over dungarees, his good head of greying hair swept back and piled up like some 1950s Teddy boy. Then the man raised and flexed his right arm, and John saw first a void at the end of his coat sleeve, then – for it protruded only slightly – the metal split-hook of an amputee.
A squall of audio feedback rent the air, and heads turned toward the foot of the Monument. There, a lean and beak-nosed lad, wearing a loose-necked tee-shirt with the legend NEITHER WASHINGTON NOR MOSCOW, was unravelling a microphone from a PA and amp adorned with peeling decal stickers. BAUHAUS, THEATRE OF HATE, SOUTHERN DEATH CULT.
Hello, Paul, thought John, you’ve had a haircut.
‘How do, I’m Paul Todd, Durham Mechanics NUM –’
Paul thrust the microphone apart from him momentarily, allowed feedback to crackle and abate, then glanced down nervily at a handwritten page.
‘I’m gunna just say a few words, about the strike, why we need your support. You’ve all seen the Tory press bang on about Scargill and ballots, cos that’s all they know how. But we�
�re in agreement, and we always have been. This is a straight fight. The lines have been drawn, aye?’
He didn’t read eloquently, John decided, and his whole demeanour seemed glad of the amplification. But he surely had conviction.
‘The other day I was down Wearmouth. Aye, it’s got as bad as that.’ A ripple of supportive laughter. John joined on to its tail. ‘We saw a pair of scabs driven through the gates into that pit at maniac speed. Like pop stars. Proud of themselves, eh? And, right enough, we’ll not forget their names, or their faces neither, I’ll promise you that.’
This elicited a shower of applause and a raucous hoot. John glanced over to see the Teddy boy cheering as he applauded, banging his left fist onto his right shoulder and chest. A proud sort of gesture, thought John, like some Politburo bigwig applauding the October parade.
A pair of police officers in summery shirtsleeves had drifted into John’s field of vision from the corner of Pilgrim Street and were standing at a meaningful distance, stock-still amid passing shoppers. One now folded his arms. John was unnerved. True, they possibly seemed a scruffy lot, loitering so near to Berry’s the jeweller and the day’s peaceable commerce.
Meanwhile, someone near to his shoulder was unhappy. A brawny black-bearded man was jabbing the air, heckling Paul. ‘See when all this started? Youse lot were talking big about mass action, rank and file, all this. Then you slink off and we don’t hear a shaggin’ word out of you’s, not for months.’
John did not look for Paul Todd’s reaction, his eyes fixed on the two police officers as they started to take purposeful steps toward the assembly.
*
The one-armed man had his good hand on Paul’s back, seeming to steer him apart and away from the fray. John dogged their steps down Pilgrim Street until close enough to tap on Paul’s shoulder, and was met with a hard look that relented with recognition. Paul introduced ‘Joe Pallister’ and John thrust out his right hand, then cursed himself for the worst kind of idiot. But Mr Pallister put out his good left, twisted, grasped John’s dangling right and shook heartily in topsy-turvy fashion.
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