Durham Trilogy 03. Never Stand Alone

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘At least Brassbank’s nearly solid,’ Mick said. ‘There’s still only a handful going in.’

  Carol thought sadly of Dan and Linda. They had not seen them since Mick’s arrest. Linda had never even brought Calvin back to see Lotty; they had quite cut themselves off. Carol knew that Lotty was deeply wounded by the family split, but her life was with Charlie and there was little she could do to heal the rift after all these months. Even Denise, Linda’s best friend since childhood, did not know where Linda was living. She had gone once to look for her at the old flat in Whittledene Rise but found it occupied by someone else. It was obvious neither Dan nor Linda wished to be traced while the strike continued.

  Unexpectedly, the next day, Sid came rushing round in a panic.

  ‘They’re taking Kelly into hospital. She’s got high blood pressure and they’re worried about the baby.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, if you like,’ Carol offered. ‘Mick can meet Laura from school.’

  Sid accepted with relief. ‘I don’t like hospitals and all that.’

  They saw Kelly briefly in a side ward, before she was taken away for tests.

  ‘I’ll come back and see her tomorrow,’ Carol promised Sid.

  But early the next morning, Sid rang to say that Kelly had gone into labour during the night and the baby had been born six weeks prematurely.

  ‘She’s in special care,’ Sid told Carol. ‘Kelly’ll stay in with her till we see . . .’ His voice broke off.

  ‘If she’s a fighter like you, she’ll be just fine,’ Carol assured him, then remembered that the baby was not Sid’s. ‘What’s she called?’

  ‘Sally Mary, after Kelly’s mam,’ Sid said proudly. ‘She’s that small but she’s a little picture. Perfect...’ he was overcome and Carol rang off quickly, saying she would visit soon.

  It was a couple of days later that she and Joanne went to visit the maternity wing in Whittledene hospital, promising Laura that she could go the next time. They found Kelly sitting beside Sally’s incubator gazing at her baby.

  ‘She’s lovely,’ Carol said with tears in her eyes, staring at the tiny crinkled infant wearing a knitted doll’s hat. Her arms and legs were long and thin, with delicate miniature fingers and toes. She looked too fragile to touch. Joanne was full of wonder too.

  ‘This is from the Women’s Group for my special niece,’ Joanne smiled, handing Kelly a small parcel.

  Kelly seemed embarrassed, but opened it to find a bundle of baby clothes knitted from unravelled old jumpers that they had been working on since Christmas.

  ‘Looks like they won’t fit her till the summer,’ Carol laughed.

  ‘Ta very much,’ Kelly mumbled and then started to cry.

  Carol gave her a hug. ‘You don’t know whether to sing or cry for the first few days, do you?’

  ‘And my brother’s on cloud nine,’ Joanne laughed. ‘You’ve made him really happy.’

  Carol glanced at Kelly, knowing she must be thinking how this was really Vic’s daughter. How difficult had it been for her to carry on the pretence? Carol wondered.

  ‘Carol,’ Kelly sniffed. ‘Do you know . . ?’

  ‘What?’

  Kelly shook her head. ‘Oh, nothing. Just thanks.’

  Carol regretted that she was not on her own with Kelly so that she could have spoken of what troubled her. She was obviously inhibited by having Sid’s sister there.

  They chatted about the birth for a few minutes and then Kelly said she wanted to go for a bath.

  ‘It’s great round here - hot water whenever you want it. And the food’s smashing.’ Suddenly Kelly was her old animated self and Carol felt a touch jealous.

  ‘I’ll bring me sponge next time,’ she joked.

  Kelly hurried away without replying.

  Carol was holding a meeting at her house to discuss a fundraising social. There was more need for food parcels than ever. Mick and Eddy had gone round to see Sid and take him down to The Ship for a pint as they had not celebrated Sally Mary’s arrival yet.

  May had brought a bag of broken biscuits and Joanne some of John’s homemade rhubarb wine saved for a special occasion.

  ‘Well, we can all have a sip to toast young Sally Mary,’ Joanne said.

  After a glass each, everyone was chatting merrily and laughing at the week’s troubles. Carol described her visit to see the new baby and how pleased Kelly had been with their knitting.

  ‘It cheers everyone up having a new bairn around, doesn’t it?’ June declared.

  Suddenly they were startled by the door swinging open and Mick and Eddy stamping in, drenched from the rain.

  ‘Boots, lads,’ Lotty shouted.

  But Carol could see from Mick’s face that he was in no mood for teasing.

  ‘Whatever’s wrong?’ she asked, getting up.

  ‘It’s Sid,’ Mick said, struggling to speak.

  ‘What’s happened to him?’ Joanne asked in alarm.

  Eddy explained. ‘He wasn’t there when we went round. So we went round to Ted’s to see if he knew where he was. Sid was there. He was just leaving.’

  ‘For the hospital?’ Joanne asked, puzzled.

  Eddy shook his head. ‘To go on night shift.’

  There was a stunned silence in the room. Then it erupted.

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Not Sid! He’d stay out for ever!’

  ‘It’s that Kelly’s driven him back.’

  ‘And after all we’ve done for them!’

  Carol went to Mick. ‘But he’s stuck out for so long. Why is he doing this now?’

  Eddy spoke quietly, while the remonstrations went on around them. ‘Said he’s done it for the baby. He won’t bring Kelly and the bairn back to no heating and no food. He’s had enough.’

  ‘We’ve all had enough,’ Carol snapped. ‘But we would’ve supported them, Sid knows that.’

  ‘The baby’s changed all that, it seems,’ Eddy answered tiredly.

  Carol was filled with guilt. It was she who had persuaded Kelly to stay with Sid and pretend the baby was his. Now Mick’s staunchest friend was prepared to cut himself off from them all and betray them for the sake of a daughter who was not his. Carol felt sick with disgust at Sid and Kelly for their weakness and at herself for allowing the charade. Should she tell Sid about Vic being the father in order to bring him back on strike? she wondered wildly. But that would be to shatter lives further. Suddenly, Carol realised Mick could have told Sid himself but had not. Mick had spared his friend that humiliation, but at what a cost! Sid had crossed the line. The damage was already done; she saw that in the haunted look on Mick’s face.

  ‘He was me marra, Carol,’ Mick said, still in shock. ‘Me best marra. I’d have done anything for him.’ Carol put her arms round him, wishing she could protect him from this deepest of hurts. But she felt him stiffen. ‘And now he’s a scab. He spat the word out as if it poisoned him. Joanne, hearing the venom in his voice, buried her face in her hands in shame and wept.

  Things changed after that night. Mick was even more determined to fight on with the majority of the Brassbank men. But there was a hardness about him that had not been there before, grown out of the bitterness he felt at Sid’s betrayal. It was far worse than anything he had felt for Dan, Carol knew, and it seemed to eat away at him.

  They soldiered on, but none of the Women’s Group went to see Kelly. Carol wanted to go but felt it would be too disloyal to Mick. Sometimes she wondered if news had filtered back to Victor about his child and whether he knew of the havoc he had caused. She imagined he would not care.

  News on the strike was bleak. After the recent talks broke down, there were appeals for mass pickets because of the fear of more returning to work. And by the end of February there were angry scenes again at Brassbank pit gates as the police battled to bring in the scabs.

  Then rumours began of an orderly return to work. Mick went off to the lodge meeting where a vote was to be taken on whether to continue to strike. Carol waited nervous
ly for his return, but he came back buoyant that their pit had voted to stay out.

  Charlie went off to the delegates’ meeting in Sheffield the first weekend in March. Carol and Mick watched the TV for news. There were angry scenes outside the NUM headquarters when the delegates emerged. They had voted by 91 to 89 for a return to work, despite the determination of pits like Brassbank to carry on.

  Carol and Mick sat in disbelief. The reporter was telling them the strike was over. The miners’ leaders had capitulated. There would be no amnesty for sacked miners. Thatcher was claiming it as a ‘famous victory’.

  ‘It can’t be true,’ Carol said, stunned. ‘The media have got it wrong again, they must have!’

  Mick said nothing, just bowed his head as if someone had punched him unconscious. They sat there for an age, while Laura played with Puddles, unaware of the crisis. The telephone rang, but neither of them answered it. It went silent. Laura looked at them in surprise.

  ‘Have you gone deaf?’ she asked, grinning cheekily.

  Carol looked at her daughter through a blur of tears. A whole year of suffering for nothing! She wanted to feel anger, to lash out at the people who had done this to them. She wanted to feel pain, grief, pity, to cry out her hurt - anything that indicated she was still alive, still felt something. But she felt nothing. Carol sat there, unable to speak, unable to put her arms round her husband to comfort him as she had done so often, unable to smile at her daughter and pull her over for a cuddle.

  There was just emptiness, a gaping nothingness in her heart. And it was the most terrifying feeling she had ever experienced.

  Charlie returned with instructions from the delegates’ conference to advise an orderly return to work. Carol knew he had not voted to end the strike and the duty of telling them all to march back was a painful one. She had never seen him so subdued. He escaped to his allotment for most of Monday, the day before the march back to work.

  ‘We’ll make it a proud march back,’ Lotty declared. ‘We’ll all be there to support you. The world will see that we’re not broken - we’ll have our heads held high!’

  Carol wished she could summon the same fighting spirit but was too overwhelmed by the anti-climax of it all. She thought of Sid and the others who had returned just two weeks earlier amid such hatred and wondered if they regretted their decision now.

  That night she held on to Mick tightly. Only then did a strange relief come over her. Tomorrow the long strike would be over and the men would be back at work. They could at least begin to pay off their debts and life could get back to some semblance of normality.

  ‘Oh, the group had planned such a party for the end of the strike,’ Carol sighed. ‘We’ve been dreaming of this day all year, but now there’s nothing to celebrate.’

  ‘We just have to look ahead,’ Mick murmured. He kissed her tenderly. ‘It’ll be strange going back underground after so long. Though what it’ll be like now . . .’

  Carol knew he was thinking of Sid. If there were families like the Todds and Shannons who still did not speak to each other because of enmities created in the 1926 lockout, she shuddered to think of what the legacy of this bitter year might be.

  ‘Hold me,’ she whispered.

  That night they made love with a tender desperation, trying to blot out the world beyond their cold bedroom. At least she had Mick, Carol thought as they held each other tight and drifted into sleep; she would always have Mick.

  They gathered in a wet dawn. Hundreds of them were ranked behind the colliery band and the proud scarlet banner depicting former union leaders and their lodge motto, ‘Never Stand Alone’. The Women’s Group walked beside them up the pit lane under their own flag, in solidarity with the men. Carol noticed how the muddy ground still bore the hoof marks of the mounted police who had protected the convoys of scabs in recent days.

  The lane looked stark and bare in the grey light; the ditches churned up and stripped of the thorny trees that had given the pickets some shelter in the early days. But the band thumped out their stirring music and there were smiles of pride as well as tears on the faces of those who marched.

  Mick was up at the front, holding one of the banner poles, and Carol thought how just a year ago she could not have dreamed of her husband getting so involved in the struggle. But then neither could she have imagined how committed she had become. Being involved in the Women’s Group had been like stepping into a new world for so many of them. They had travelled the country, stood up and spoken in front of halls full of strangers, run committees, handled large amounts of money, organised massive food relief every week and catered for hundreds every day in the cramped Welfare kitchen. They had learned so much without even realising it, Carol thought.

  She could not imagine the group breaking up and the women just returning to their domestic lives like before. She dreaded such an outcome. She determined that they must keep in touch and find new projects. There would still be a need for food parcels during this next month, she thought as she marched forward with Lotty and Joanne beside her. They still had a job to do.

  Villagers lined the road clapping them as they marched past and the children cheered them and ran ahead. At the pit gates the band played ‘Gresford’ and they all stood together, thinking about the many men they knew who had worked at Brassbank in the past. Carol saw tears on Lotty’s face and knew she thought of Grandda Bowman. She squeezed the older woman’s hand and found Lotty hanging on to her tightly. She wondered if Charlie thought of his own father, excluded from this same pit and dying young.

  It was as if in that moment the thoughts of all of them rose and mingled with the emotional music. And under a pewter sky, massed together on the spot where Mick had been arrested, they stood as one family. They were united in their sorrow and disappointment, yet proud in defeat. Carol, watching the faces around her, knew that few regretted what they had done. In a strange way, she would not have missed this year for anything, despite its sacrifices. They had come much closer to each other than ever before. Lotty had often likened it to the spirit of the war.

  Something special had happened here in Brassbank this last year that no politicians or Coal Board accountants could measure, and Carol was glad that she had been a part of it. Looking at Mick holding the lodge banner aloft with such pride, she felt a huge lump constrict her throat and the tears came at last.

  Chapter Thirty

  After the men filed through the pit gates, Carol and her friends walked their children to school. It was comforting to chat together and have others around her. Nevertheless, anxiety began to mount in her at the uncertainty of what would happen now. It was like the nagging feeling she got recently when she woke in the night for no reason and began to sweat with worry without knowing why.

  ‘You all right, Carol?’ Joanne asked her in concern.

  Carol nodded.

  ‘Well, you don’t look it,’ May was forthright. ‘You should get yourself home for some sleep - you look washed out.’

  But Carol shrugged it off and went home via Lotty’s. Her mother-in-law was mending a pair of Charlie’s trousers.

  ‘Haven’t had time to do this till now,’ Lotty smiled in pleasure at her appearance. She put down her sewing. ‘Let’s be wicked and make ourselves some tea. I’m feeling at a loss this morning.’

  They sat and drank tea in the kitchen for an hour. Carol was thinking it was about time she stirred herself to go home and do something, when they heard the sound of heavy boots crossing the back yard. The two women looked at each other in alarm; the men could not be back already.

  Charlie and Mick walked in. They stood in silence looking at the women.

  Lotty said, ‘What in the world’s happened?’

  Mick glanced away from Carol. ‘We’ve been sacked,’ he said in a dead voice.

  ‘Charlie?’ Lotty gasped, her hands flying to her mouth.

  ‘It’s true,’ he nodded grimly, waving papers at them. ‘Gross misconduct.’

  ‘For what?’ Lotty demanded.<
br />
  ‘For standing up on the picket line, of course, and getting a criminal record,’ Charlie growled.

  ‘Let’s see that,’ Lotty said, seizing the letters from her husband, as if she did not believe him. She picked up her reading glasses.

  Carol stared at Mick. She could think of nothing to say. This was her worst nightmare, the fear that had been lurking in the back of her mind.

  Lotty’s hands dropped into her lap in defeat. She handed the letters across to Carol without a word. Carol scanned the letter of dismissal and gasped. They had been signed by her father. A cold rage seized her. He was not going to do this to them, not after everything else they had endured!

  ‘I’ve got to gan back up there to represent the other lads,’ Charlie said resignedly. ‘Marty Dillon’s been suspended till his court case is heard. Frankie Hurt’s been sacked too.’

  ‘Oh, poor June!’ Lotty said in distress.

  Charlie made towards the door. ‘I’m coming with you,’ Carol told him, jumping up.

  ‘What for?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘To give me dad an earful, that’s what!’ Carol declared.

  Mick spoke for the first time. ‘That won’t help us. And I’ll not have you making a fool of yourself to your father - not on my behalf.’

  But Carol could not stay there and do nothing. She was at the limits of her endurance and this news was the final blow. She picked up her worn jacket and ran out. Not waiting to see if the others followed, she headed down the lane towards the pit.

  At the gates she demanded to be let in to see the manager. There was a lot of activity in the pit yard and it was still heavily policed. She was told to go away.

  ‘Then I’ll stop here till he comes out,’ she replied.

  They turned their backs and ignored her. Carol stood around in the cold, damp air, growing angrier by the minute. She watched the picket hut being demolished and every sign of the strike being swept away in a morning. Even the brazier the pickets had huddled round was tossed into a skip still smouldering. Charlie appeared and went back into the pit yard, telling her to get off home. But Carol could not bear to return and face Mick. She had no words of comfort left, only a deep, burning fury.