Born Under Punches Read online

  ‘You took your time,’ she said huffily.

  ‘Business, pet. Took longer than I expected.’ He put the key in the ignition. ‘One more stop, then we can go and have some fun.’

  ‘What kind of fun?’ Suzy asked, tongue teasing out between her smiling lips.

  He flashed his special smile, the one she could never stay mad with for too long. ‘Anything you like,’ he said.

  He started the car up and they drove off, garage blaring as they went.

  It was nearly one o’clock when Louise heard the noise. Like a hand grenade tossed up the quiet close, the car drummed ’n’ bassed its way up the street and stopped to disgorge its passenger in front of Louise’s house.

  She was awake. She had tried to sleep, but couldn’t.

  The front door opened and closed quietly, the footsteps light on the stairs. Suzanne wasn’t doing that out of consideration for the rest of the household, Louise knew from bitter experience; she was trying to avoid a fight.

  Louise heard the car pull away, the soft click of Suzanne’s bedroom door, then silence. She lay in the dark, flat on her back, staring at the ceiling. Beside her, Keith was snoring lightly, his back to her.

  Something would have to be done, she thought. Things can’t go on like this.

  Louise sighed, kept staring at the ceiling. It was going to be another long night.

  5. Then

  because, make no mistake, this is not just a labour dispute. What we are witnessing in the mining towns and villages around the country is the premeditated, systematic destruction of working-class communities and the deliberate silencing of the right to any legitimate voice of dissent or protest. This is being done by a cruel and oppressive government who only seek to plunder the country and line the pockets of themselves and their cronies, led by a dictatorial dominatrix who will use all the powers of government to destroy opposition, from changing or ignoring laws to removing rights and civil liberties as it suits her.

  The typewriter clacked, the argument grew: thoughts to fingers to keys to ribbon to letters to words to sentences to paragraphs. Larkin wrote speedily: fingers punching, mouth forming and following words, forehead creased, eyes slitted behind National Health tortoiseshells. Energy fizzed, focused down his arms. Fingers fed the machine. Black Uhuru on the stereo: ‘What Is Life?’. This is life, thought Larkin. Life like it should be. Like it shouldn’t be. Like it is.

  Thatcher and her boot boys are trying to change today into tomorrow using hatred and fear. And we have to fight back. Or we’ll lose more than a strike.

  Ping. Paragraph over. He batted the carriage to the next line, stretched, looked out of the window.

  Argument halted.

  He was on the first floor, his table/desk in the bay affording him a view of the street. Down below, the inhabitants of Fenham were going about their day, their lives. An ordinary, urban street in Newcastle. Real lives, real people. The view energized Larkin.

  He had it and he knew it. The heat of an impassioned, subjective heart wrapped around an objective, chip-of-ice core. A writer’s heart. And he knew how to use it.

  He sighed, flexed his fingers. His mind and gaze returned to the work in front of him. His fingers soon followed.

  Argument resumed.

  The record ended; he didn’t get up to change it. The room was alive with the angry staccato of the typewriter, back-grounded by the electrostatic hum of the stereo.

  Sound of a door opening and closing downstairs. Footsteps on the stairs. The flat door opened. Larkin raised his arm in greeting, kept typing with the other.

  ‘’Lo,’ he shouted distractedly, not turning round.

  A sigh behind him, a bag being placed down, someone moving towards him.

  Charlotte swung her head round in front of his, coming between Larkin and the typewriter, her hair falling, covering the words.

  ‘Kiss, please,’ she demanded poutily. ‘Attention, please. Charlotte’s had a busy day.’

  Larkin tried to hide his irritation at being interrupted, bent forward and kissed her on the lips. She opened her mouth, sliding her tongue into his. Larkin tried not to respond but, work or no work, he had to kiss her back.

  Her mouth was warm, soft and yielding. Her tongue insistent. She smelt of Poison. He began to feel a heat slowly building inside him. Charlotte sensed this and pulled away. She smiled. There was a note of triumph in the smile: I’ve managed to come between Stephen Larkin and his precious work.

  ‘Don’t want you too distracted,’ she said, straightening up. ‘We’re going out tonight, remember?’

  ‘I’ve got this to finish,’ Larkin replied, slightly annoyed at allowing himself to be interrupted, piqued that Charlotte had scored a pyrrhic point. ‘Then I’ve got to drop it off with Bob tonight.’

  Her voice rose a little. ‘But we’re meeting Claire and David. Francesca’s at eight, remember?’

  Larkin had remembered. Claire and David. She, a pretty, vacant airhead from a gormlessly moneyed family, he a maliciously snide Thatcherite whom Larkin had often threatened to deck after a few pints. He dismissed her, he hated him. Law students, trainee barristers. No wonder the country was so fucked up, he thought.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ he said.

  Charlotte looked at him. ‘Look, I know you don’t get on with David. He just likes to wind people up. Take no notice. It’s just his way.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Try to like them, please, Stephen. They are my friends.’

  ‘Yeah.’ The typewriter began to clack again. ‘Well, I’ve got this to finish first, then I’ve got to drop it off. Then we’ll meet them.’

  ‘But that’ll make us late!’

  Larkin stopped writing, turned to face her. ‘This is my work, Charlotte. This is what I do for a living.’

  ‘This piece isn’t even going to be published.’

  ‘No, but if they like this then I’m in. I’ve got a mainstream audience.’ He looked at her straight in the eye. ‘And they’re paying me for it.’

  She held his gaze for a second, then exited to the kitchen.

  Argument resumed.

  They have allies too, influential ones: media magnates suck up to Thatcher. She lets them build their expansionist empires in return for free publicity. Same with big businesses. If there’s one thing she loves more than the subjugation of the populace it’s naked, aggressive capitalism. Which also leads to the subjugation of the populace. All enforced by the police. Oh, yes, after Orgreave we can be in no doubt about whose side the police are on.

  And where’s the Labour Party in all this? Defeated. Humiliated. Demoralized and fighting among themselves. They’re supposed to be leading the opposition, fighting against her, but they’ve let us down. They’ve got too many problems of their own. They’re scared to challenge her.

  So against this evil bunch, the miners must find new allies in this struggle. And we must help them because they can’t fight alone.

  A glass of wine appeared on the desk.

  He looked up. ‘Thanks.’

  She looked back at him. Her eyes held unreadable emotions, but her tone had softened slightly.

  ‘Please, Stephen. I hate being late. And this dinner’s important to me.’

  Larkin looked at her. Blonde hair kept long and fringed, subtly but well made up, stylish clothes making only a passing concession to her current student status: long black pleated skirt, white silk blouse, brocaded waistcoat, boots, beautiful face, eyes of startling arctic-blue sky. Larkin again felt something stir inside him. He knew what.

  ‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ he said.

  Argument suspended.

  ‘Good. And take those ridiculous glasses off.’

  ‘They’re for writing,’ Larkin replied.

  ‘They’ve got plain glass in them.’ She spoke as if explaining this to a four-year-old.

  ‘So?’ Larkin sounded hurt and defensive. ‘They focus my mind. Elevate my work. Sharpen my thinking.’

  ‘Bollocks. You we
ar them so you can look like Morrissey.’

  ‘Oh, fuck off. No, I don’t,’ said Larkin, hurt. ‘It’s because …’

  ‘Stephen? I was joking.’

  She smiled. He sighed.

  ‘Ha fuckin’ ha.’

  She turned away with another unreadable look on her face, crossed to the stereo and changed the record. The needle dropped to the vinyl, hisses and scratches, then ‘Perfect Skin’ by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions kicked in. Charlotte crossed to the sofa, took a textbook from her bag and began to read. Larkin took a hefty mouthful of wine, resumed his argument.

  Take, for instance, Coldwell colliery, just outside Newcastle in Northumberland. The pit itself is one of the most profitable in the region, if not the country. It’s got a strong workforce and a good history of productivity. But it’s been earmarked for closure. Naturally, the workers are fighting back. So why is it being closed down? Simple. Politics. They’re taking power away from the regions, centralizing it in Whitehall, taking it back themselves. If we’ve got no job or nothing to hold them to ransom with, we’ve got no voice. Plus we’re Geordies. We’re working class. We’ve got a strong local tradition of socialism and union membership. We’ve got our own opinions. So that makes us a threat. That makes us the enemy. The enemy within. So we have to be disposed of.

  Both Larkin and Charlotte loved the Rattlesnakes album. Their taste in music was one of the few things they had in common. Charlotte, middle class, star pupil at her private school, was in the middle of the third year of a law degree at Newcastle University. Great things were expected of her. Larkin, on the other hand, was the son of a bus mechanic and defiantly working class. He had attended university for two terms before deciding it could teach him nothing he didn’t already know. He had dropped out, becoming first a face about town then a chronicler of the faces about town. Journalism followed, and his polemical articles in left-field, underground magazines mixing fiercely left-wing politics with his love of indie bands attracted a loyal readership among the young and the disenfranchised and, lately, the attention of the mainstream. The piece he was writing on the miners’ strike was going to be his first for a mainstream newspaper. His AOR/FM piece as he liked to regard it.

  The fact that Charlotte and Larkin had stayed together so long surprised everyone, not least Charlotte and Larkin. There was a deep, tempestuous love between them, a primally intense attraction of opposites, that bound them tight. A relationship that held no half measures, that was, like everything else in their lives, all or nothing.

  The people of Coldwell, and indeed all the communities under threat, desperately need not just our help but our compassion and our anger at what is being done. We need – all of us – to be made aware of what the stakes are in this conflict, and we must be prepared to fight alongside them if need be. Like the prophet said, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. If you’re not with us, you’re against us.

  Think about it. If we let them defeat the miners, who is going to be next?

  Larkin pulled the paper from the typewriter, took his glasses off, stretched, rubbed his eyes. Argument concluded.

  ‘Finished,’ he said.

  A non-committal grunt came from the sofa.

  ‘Wanna read it?’

  Charlotte took it from him, eye-scanned the pages. ‘Is this your mainstream piece?’ There was faint humour in Charlotte’s voice.

  Larkin felt himself redden slightly. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I don’t think many will agree with you.’ She put it down. ‘I’d love to read it now, but we’re not going to have time. I’ll read it when it’s published. Just make sure they pay you for it.’

  Larkin felt his anger rising, the kind of heat only Charlotte knew how to kindle. They both knew which buttons to press with each other.

  ‘Is that all that matters to you? Who’s paying?’

  Charlotte looked up. It was her turn to redden. ‘Money’s important, Stephen. You don’t do this for love.’

  ‘My work’s about more than just money, Charlotte, you know it is!’

  Charlotte stood up, glass in hand, face so close that once again Larkin could smell her Poison. Between them, Lloyd Cole sang about how he would believe in anything that would get him what he wanted, get him off his knees.

  ‘Save the world, Stephen, by all means. Just make sure you get paid for it.’

  Before he could open his mouth to argue, she put the glass to her lips, tipped her head back, drank the wine down. Larkin watched as her tiny Adam’s apple moved delicately back and forth, up and down with each mouthful.

  Once the glass had been drained, she removed it from her lips, eyes remaining locked with Larkin’s. A small amount of red wine trickled slowly from the side of her mouth towards her chin. She caught it with her thumb, moved the trail back towards her mouth and slowly licked the juice from it with her tongue.

  Larkin felt the anger of moments earlier being displaced by a different kind of heat.

  Charlotte was aware of the change in him. She smiled, her blue eyes alive with cold heat. ‘I’m going to take a bath,’ she said, her voice still low. ‘That’s where I’ll be if you want me.’

  She turned, walked towards the bathroom.

  Larkin, his erection rising, watched her go. He drained his wineglass and followed.

  ‘Forest Fire’ faded out and side one of the record came to an end with a soft click as the needle returned to its original position. From the bathroom could be heard the sound of running water, splashing. In the front room, the insistent electromagnetic hum of the stereo charged the air.

  ‘Aw, fuck,’ said Dougie Howden. ‘That’s aall we need.’

  Beside him, Mick Hutton sighed, shook his head, worried. The faint clatter of pots and pans being washed, dried and put away came from downstairs accompanied by female voices. The soup kitchen was closing down for the night.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ asked Dougie.

  ‘Aye, I’m sure,’ the man at the other end of the table said. ‘Our Iris’s cousin works for Northumbria police. He telt ’er.’

  Dougie sat back, letting the information sink in. He was a big man, muscle flirting with fat, wearing an old, dark suit, an open-necked shirt and a frown. His hair, grey and grizzly, was unsuccessfully slicked back from his forehead, his moustache nicotine-yellow. He looked at least ten years older than his fifty-two years.

  Next to him, Mick Hutton was both younger and smaller. Wearing a knitted tank top over a short-sleeved polo shirt and chinos, with hair cut into a fledgling mullet, he wore his worry on the surface. His eyes looked hunted and haunted, while his wiry frame contained a nervous energy that suggested either a life of intravenous coffee intake or coping with too many responsibilities while living hand to mouth.

  The other striking miners sat around the table in the upstairs room in the Miners’ Welfare Hall. They drank with stoic intensity from mugs of tea and fugged the room up with cigarette smoke, using it as a smokescreen to hide their fear from each other. They were hard men, solid men. Scared men.

  ‘Well,’ said one of the men, his throat tightened from something more than nicotine, ‘we knew it was ganna happen. Just a question of when.’

  The others nodded grimly, grunted their assent.

  ‘What we ganna do?’ asked Mick, his voice untempered fear.

  Dougie sighed, shook his head. He knew the men were waiting for him to speak to them. For them.

  ‘I kna’ what we should do.’

  They all turned to the source of the voice. Dean Plessey, twenty years old. Extreme left-winger, extremely angry. The rest of the table groaned inwardly, bracing themselves for assault.

  ‘And what’s that, Dean?’ asked Dougie patiently.

  ‘Fight the bastards! Take it to them. The scabs an’ the cops. We fight them when they try to bus them in, then we find out who they are an’ where they’re from, an’ take it to them.’ Dean rose from his chair. ‘Same with the cops. Those smug cunts are laughin’ at us. Ta
untin’ us. Well, we’ll show them. We’ll find out who they are, where they live. They won’t look so smug when we torch their cars an’ houses, will they?’

  ‘Dean, man, yer talkin’ shite …’

  ‘Naw, he’s not, man. Listen to ’im …’

  The room descended into chaos as voices were raised, passionate opinions vented. The debate was hectic and heated, the fear in the room carrying the men beyond the boundaries of what would normally be suggested.

  Order had to return, thought Dougie. A sense of perspective be restored. Someone has to hold them together. He stood up.

  ‘All right, all right …’ He spoke loudly, firmly, the natural authority in his voice moving like a knife through the men’s raised voices, cutting their arguments down to silence.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘This is ganna get us nowhere.’ He turned to Dean. ‘Yes, Dean, we need to fight. But we’ve got to be clear what we’re fightin’ for. We’re not ganna go round torchin’ them, even if they are coppers.’

  He looked around the table. Dean was silent, eyes glaring, but he backed down. From the looks Dougie got from some of the other men, it seemed as if they shared Dean’s opinions.

  ‘Look, lads, let’s be reasonable about this,’ said Dougie, placating but firm. ‘Let’s study wor options, talk them through.’

  He waited until he had the men’s full attention, then continued: ‘Now, we’ve known the scabs were comin’. For ages we’ve known that. An’ I know that doesn’t make it any easier. But what we have to do now is organize. We get in touch with the local executive. Get them to bus in pickets from Yorkshire, Lancashire and Nott’n’hamshire. We helped them, they’ll help us. They’ll wanna show solidarity. Then we get Terry Collier, our MP, to make a fuss. He’s no problem, he’ll make his mouth go.’

  ‘Aye, he’ll talk, but there’ll be nee action,’ said one disgruntled voice from the table. Others agreed.

  ‘Aye, well,’ said Dougie. ‘He does what he can. He’s a good Labour man.’ He gave a small smile. ‘But he’s also a politician. So don’t expect too much.’