Durham Trilogy 03. Never Stand Alone

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  ‘Let’s have a night out,’ Lotty suggested, ‘just us lasses.’

  ‘Sounds expensive.’ Carol was cautious.

  ‘Well, I’ll invite them round here,’ Lotty said, undeterred. ‘Send Charlie out for the evening.’

  Carol was amazed at how many of them came. Among the sixteen were May and June, teasing each other mercilessly, Denise and her mother Evelyn, Maureen Savage and her daughter Angela who was pregnant, Lesley and Dot, Val who brought a huge flagon of wine and Joanne who came with her old neighbour Sheila.

  ‘She hasn’t been out since the Jubilee,’ Joanne teased, ‘so I said she had to come.’

  Denise put on her ‘Frankie Goes To Hollywood’ cassette and soon the room was throbbing with noise and laughter as they all swapped news.

  ‘How’s the course?’ Carol asked.

  ‘Brilliant,’ Denise enthused and talked nonstop about it for the next twenty minutes, her long earrings jangling as she moved her now close-cropped head of hair.

  Joanne had news of Kelly. She still visited Sid, although it caused friction with her husband, John.

  ‘It’s like fireworks between the pair of them when I go round,’ Joanne said. ‘It’s back to how they were before the baby - maybe worse. Mind, they both think the sun shines out of Sally Mary, so they’ll probably stick it out for her sake.’

  Carol was saddened to think Sid’s sacrifice had been an empty one. He had crossed the picket line for the sake of someone else’s daughter, only two weeks before the strike crumbled. But he would not be remembered for his months of solidarity or his arrest at the power station, he would be remembered as one of Brassbank’s scabs. Having known Sid for so long, she knew that he would be tortured by the shame of it for the rest of his life.

  The conversation turned to lighter things. They ended up with a sing-song like old times and promised each other they would do this more regularly. June became tearful. Her husband was odd-jobbing, part of the ‘black’ economy since being sacked.

  ‘I miss the times we had,’ she sobbed into May’s shoulder.

  ‘Haway, June man, you’ll shrink me blouse!’

  Joanne took June’s other arm and they marched her into the night, skidding in their high heels and giggling their way home under the frosty stars.

  Carol stayed on late, helping Lotty clear up. ‘Thanks a lot. We all had a good night.’

  Lotty smiled, but looked at her in concern.

  ‘Everything all right at home?’ she asked.

  Carol sighed. ‘As good as it’s ever going to be, I suppose. I just feel that sorry for Mick. He’s only in his early thirties and yet all he can look forward to is a lifetime of doing the odd bit of gardening for people. It’s so unfair.’

  Lotty put a hand on her arm. ‘I know, pet. But he’s got his health and he’s got you and Laura. I thank God for that. We’ll just have to hope things get better. Maybe after another year the management might relent.’

  Carol was filled with warmth at Lotty’s affectionate words. Whatever else had come out of the strike, she was grateful for the closeness with her mother-in-law. Their friendship was as strong as ever and no one could ever take that away from them.

  Then just as 1986 seemed to be passing without incident and most of the villagers were once more settled in their lives, Carol picked up disturbing rumours at the cafe that were circulating the village.

  ‘It’s about your dad,’ one woman from the pit canteen told her. ‘They say he’s retiring early.’

  Carol flushed with embarrassment that she was hearing such news from a woman she hardly knew.

  ‘Aye, and Granville House is going up for sale.’

  Carol was shocked to think her parents might be leaving Brassbank for good and she was surprised by how much she minded. There had been no contact between them for a year now and yet it hurt not to be told by them in person.

  After work she rushed round to Septimus Street to see if Charlie had any further news. She burst in to find Lotty in tears at the kitchen table, Charlie and Eddy standing beside her, at a loss as to how to comfort her.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter?’ Carol cried, rushing to Lotty’s side.

  The older woman could not speak, she was so overcome. Carol looked at the stony faces of the men.

  Finally it was Eddy who spoke. ‘There’s just been an announcement to the lads,’ he said hoarsely. ‘They want to close the pit.’

  Carol was stunned. ‘Never in the world!’

  ‘Aye,’ Charlie confirmed the terrible news. ‘They’re putting it in for review procedure. Unless there’s a miracle, Brassbank will close this summer.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The next weeks were ones of rumour and uncertainty. At first the village drew together again in their determination to fight the closure. Lotty and Carol re-formed the Women’s Group and after Easter they went every day to the pit gates with their banner and placards declaring. ‘Save Our Pit’ and ‘Coal Not Dole’.

  Carol watched her father driving in every day as he worked out his final month, but he never stopped to speak to her. She knew from the For Sale sign that Granville House still had no buyer. She wondered where they were intending going and almost rang on several occasions, but could not summon the courage. Laura had stopped asking about her grandparents, aware that to do so brought a sharp response from her parents. Carol wondered if they would contact her before they left and was bereft at the thought that they might not.

  Even communication with Simon had lapsed. He had rung at Christmas to wish them well and sent Laura a present but said it was difficult to get over to see them now that he was working in the south of the county. He and Kate had bought a place in Durham, far from the village, and Kate was expecting their first baby. As for Fay, Carol neither saw nor heard from her sister. She lived on in her isolated luxury in Brassy, ten minutes but a world away from Brassbank. So much had changed irrevocably in the past two years, Carol thought in bewilderment.

  There was a rally in the village with visiting speakers and the local media came to cover the event. After the coverage, Carol got an unexpected visitor.

  ‘Pete?’ she gasped on opening the door. She stood there foolishly.

  ‘Can I come in?’ he asked with a wary smile.

  Her heart began to hammer. Mick had just gone out on one of his walks and Laura was at school. She stood aside.

  ‘Course, come in.’

  She busied herself making coffee, while Pete sat down at the kitchen table.

  ‘I’ve been working in London since last year,’ he told her, ‘but I saw the piece on the news and decided to come up. I was wondering if there was anything I could do to help.’

  Carol glanced at him over the steaming kettle. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said quietly, ‘not unless you’ve got the ear of some energy minister.’ She pushed a mug of coffee into his hand. ‘We’re doing everything we can.’ She paused and looked at him. ‘Why have you come back after all this time, Pete?’ It was unsettling.

  He put down his coffee. ‘I wanted to see how you were - how things were around here.’

  ‘They’re OK. It’s hard on Mick not working. But me and Mick are fine.’ Carol wondered if she saw disappointment in his face. He looked so attractive sitting casually astride her kitchen chair. But she was not going to allow her old feelings for him to surface again. She must give him no cause for hope. ‘Whatever happens to the pit,’ she added, ‘we want to stay here and make the most of it. Brassbank’s our home. I hope it always will be.’

  Pete gave a wistful smile and nodded. ‘That makes it easier, then.’

  ‘Makes what easier?’ Carol asked.

  ‘Going abroad. I’ve been offered a contract with an Australian radio station.’

  Carol’s eyes widened. ‘Australia! By, you’ve done well.’

  Pete shrugged. ‘Not really, but it should be fun. My career here never really took off as I hoped. Doing all that stuff on the strike - no one really wanted to know. The plight of m
iners’ families wasn’t commercial enough, touched too many raw nerves.’ His smile was self-mocking. ‘But then you knew that.’

  ‘You tried and that’s what counts.’ Carol was generous. She bolted down her coffee. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to get to work. Then I’m on duty at the pit gates this evening.’

  Pete smiled broadly and took her hand. He kissed it. ‘You never give up, do you? I love you for that.’

  Carol withdrew her hand quickly, colouring at his words. ‘Off you go,’ she ordered briskly, ‘before the neighbours start talking.’

  They smiled at each other. She thought Pete was going to kiss her, so she stuck out a hand. He held it for a moment.

  ‘Bye, Carol.’

  ‘Ta-ra, Pete, and good luck in Australia.’

  He went and she tidied up quickly, wanting all trace of him gone. She still felt guilty about her weakness for him during the strike. Perhaps if things had been different and there’d been no Mick or Laura . . . Carol dismissed the daydream. With a twinge of regret she knew she was unlikely to see Pete again. Just as she was drying up the two mugs, Mick came back unexpectedly.

  He looked at her flushed guiltily and noticed the two coffee mugs.

  ‘I saw him leaving in his car,’ Mick said in a voice full of suspicion. Carol knew he had never trusted Pete Fletcher, had always been jealous of his interest in her and the Women’s Group. Perhaps there had been rumours circulating nearly two years ago about her and Pete.

  ‘He just called in, out of the blue. He’s going off to Australia. Got a job at a radio station. That’s why he came - to say goodbye.’ She could hear herself gabbling, like a teenager caught doing something illicit.

  Mick said nothing. He crossed the kitchen and picked up his haversack with the flask of tea and the corned beef sandwiches that he had forgotten.

  ‘Will you be back for tea?’ Carol asked, feeling wretched.

  ‘Aye,’ he answered stonily and was gone.

  After Ben Shannon retired there was extra pressure on the men to take redundancy. Large, attractive packages were being offered, but only if the men agreed to go now on management terms.

  ‘Look how they can find all this money in the industry for buying men off,’ Charlie railed, ‘but not for keeping the pit open!’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Lotty said for the umpteenth time, ‘after all the money they’ve poured into the pit recently. It’s a big modern super pit with decades of resources left. Why do they want to close it?’

  ‘We’re being punished for the strike, that’s why,’ Charlie said bitterly. ‘All that new machinery lying around in the yard unused, I think it’s just so the books won’t balance, so the accountants can call us “uneconomic”. We’ve flogged our guts out to increase production this past year, but what for? They’d rather import coal from countries that use child labour. What’s happening to our country?’

  Carol could see how upset he was but before she could think of something comforting to say, Eddy appeared in the open doorway. She had not seen much of him recently; he was obviously enjoying being back in his own flat again and resuming his bachelor life.

  ‘Well, bugger them all, I say!’ he grinned.

  ‘What are you looking so cock-a-hoop about?’ Lotty demanded.

  ‘I’ve decided to take redundancy,’ he announced.

  They gawped at him.

  ‘You’ve what?’ Charlie thundered.

  ‘Aye, and I’m going to throw a git big party at the taxpayers’ expense when I get me hands on it,’ he laughed.

  ‘We’re the taxpayers too, remember,’ Lotty snorted.

  But Charlie was furious. ‘Me own brother selling off his job before the pit’s even closed? I don’t believe it! Eddy man, that’s not just your job you’re selling when you take their redundancy money, it’s the next generation’s job. Can’t you see how you’re playing into their hands? They want us all to go without a fuss and not have the bother of finding us other jobs. But every redundancy taken is a job lost for someone else.’

  Eddy gave a slow handclap. ‘By, you’ll make a smashing preacher if you lose your job.’

  ‘Eddy!’ Lotty remonstrated.

  Charlie was purple in the face, but Eddy made an impatient gesture. ‘Haway, Charlie man, I’m your brother not your lodge meeting. I’ve had enough. The pit’s going to close any road. And I’m going to take some money and run. Have a bit fun after the last two years. I’m entitled to it, so why not?’

  Charlie gave him a blazing look and stormed past him. ‘I’m off to the allotment. I’ve nothing else to say to you,’ he shouted.

  ‘Good,’ Eddy shouted after him. ‘I didn’t want to buy you a drink, any road, you miserable bugger. I’ll go and celebrate and get pissed with someone else!’

  Lotty sighed when Charlie had gone. ‘Oh, Eddy. Did you have to stir him up like that?’

  Eddy gave her a strange look. ‘How else was I going to tell him?’ he asked. ‘Charlie, let’s gan for a pint - oh, and by the way, you’ll be pleased to hear I’ve thrown in the towel?’ He looked at them both for a long moment with a helpless expression.

  Carol saw his point. However he broke it to Charlie, his brother would feel let down. Eddy went before they could answer.

  By midsummer they knew they had lost the fight to keep Brassbank open. All their appeals and publicity were not enough. There was a flood of men taking redundancy while others chose to be deployed at the few pits still open in the area. Charlie had been offered a job in a pit forty miles away where there would be no pit bus to take him or collect him.

  ‘They want rid of the officials,’ he told Lotty, ‘but they’re not ganin’ to get rid of me so easily.’

  ‘But the travelling,’ Lotty was worried, ‘and after a long shift.’

  ‘It’s either that or we have to up sticks and move there,’ he said grimly.

  But they both knew that they were far too settled in Brassbank to move at their age, even if they could sell their small terrace house. And for how long would his job be secure at this faraway pit? Lotty wondered. As it was, Charlie was being demoted to datal worker and his pay at the old level would only be guaranteed for a year. She had restless nights agonising over whether they would not just be better off taking the redundancy he was due. But Charlie insisted he would travel and accepted the job.

  The week leading up to the closure was hard for everyone. Carol knew that Paul Dimarco was very worried about his business. It might be possible to recover from a year-long strike but not a permanent shutting down of the pit.

  Carol went about that week straining for the familiar sounds from the pithead and breathing in the smell of coal fires as if she could somehow make them last for ever. Brassbank was the pit. The pit was its heart. Carol felt physically sick to think how all their efforts to save it had been in vain. They had stretched themselves to the utmost, yet all the hard work and endeavour had not been enough. In a week’s time the pit would be closed and broken up, the shafts sealed off and their livelihoods buried for all time.

  The finality of it all was worse than the ending of the strike. She felt a huge burden of weariness and disillusionment which she could not shake off.

  Since Pete’s visit, Mick had spent every waking moment away from home. Carol had grown resentful of his disappearances when she had been so busy campaigning for the pit. But he no longer had an interest. She understood how difficult it was for him not being one of the miners there any more, yet she was disappointed that he did not help. After all, the whole village would suffer once it closed. It was as if he was so wrapped up in his own solitary world that he did not care.

  Sometimes he would return with a bag of coal and Carol knew he had been picking along the disused railway line. One afternoon she went up with a flask of tea for him and found him in the empty cutting.

  ‘You don’t have to pick coal any more, you know,’ she said impatiently.

  Mick seemed embarrassed that she had found him there. ‘It’s the only coal I
can pick,’ he answered shortly.

  Carol bit her lip. She had not meant to upset him.

  ‘It’s so lonely for you up here, that’s all I meant,’ she tried again.

  ‘I prefer to be on me own. Anyways, I don’t feel alone . . .’

  Carol saw him flush. ‘Grandda?’ she asked softly.

  He nodded. ‘Sometimes I can almost hear his cough and spit,’ he said bashfully.

  Carol’s heart went out to him, yet it was upsetting that he chose the company of ghosts over hers. ‘I don’t think it’s healthy for you being up here dwelling on the past like that. Why don’t you come down to the pit gates and take your turn? See a few old faces. It would do you good.’

  Mick gave her a bleak look. ‘I’ve done me fighting, Carol. I’ve been knocked back that many times . . .’

  ‘So have others,’ she replied. ‘If we all just gave up the fight, there’d be no point to life at all.’

  Mick looked away so that she did not see his eyes glisten. ‘It’s over, Carol,’ he said, his shoulders sagging with resignation. ‘As long as Brassbank stayed open I had a chance of being set back on. Not now. I’ll never work down the pit again. I’ve never wanted to do owt else, Carol, just work in the pit and provide for you and the bairn.’

  Carol’s heart felt leaden at his words; they were so final. She could not bear to be near him. She had come to find him for her own comfort, she realised, not his. But he had nothing of comfort to give. She yearned to put her arms round him and say things would get better, but she no longer believed that they would. Instead she turned from him swiftly.

  ‘I’m off to pick up Laura,’ she muttered and scrambled back over the dilapidated fence.

  Mick looked after her until she was out of sight. Only then did he allow himself the weakness of weeping.