Chapter 6
Ron Ritchie is having none of it. He is jabbing a practiced finger at a copy of his lease. He knows it looks good—it always does—but Ron can feel his finger shaking, and the lease shaking. He waves the lease in the air to hide the shakes. His voice has lost none of its power, though.
“Now, here’s a quote. And it’s your words, Mr. Ventham, not my words. ‘Coopers Chase Holding Investments reserve the right to develop further residential possibilities on the site, in consultation with current residents.’”
Ron’s big frame hints at the physical power he must once have had. The chassis is all still there, like a bull-nosed truck rusting in a field. His face, wide and open, is ready at a second’s notice to be outraged or incredulous, or whatever else might be required. Whatever might help.
“That’s what this is,” says Ian Ventham, as if talking to a child. “This is the consultation meeting. You’re the residents. Consult all you like, for the next twenty minutes.”
Ventham sits at a trestle table at the front of the residents’ lounge.
He is teak-tanned and relaxed, with his sunglasses pushed up over his 1980s catalog-model hair.
He is wearing an expensive polo shirt and a watch so large it might as well be a clock.
He looks like he smells great, but you wouldn’t really want to get close enough to find out for sure.
Ventham is flanked by a woman about fifteen years his junior, and by a tattooed man in an AC/DC T-shirt, scrolling through his phone.
The woman is the development architect, and the tattooed man is Tony Curran.
Ron has seen Curran around, has heard about him too.
Ibrahim is writing down every word that’s said, as Ron continues to jab in Ventham’s direction.
“I’m not falling for that old bull, Ventham. This ain’t a consultation, it’s an ambush.”
Joyce decides to chip in. “You tell him, Ron.”
Ron fully intends to.
“Thanks, Joyce. You’re calling it the Woodlands, even though you’re cutting down all the trees.
That’s rich, old son. You’ve got your nice little computer pictures, all done up, sun shining, fluffy clouds, little ducks swimming on ponds.
You can prove anything with computers, son; we wanted to see a proper scale model. With model trees and little people.”
This gets a ripple of applause. A lot of people had wanted to see a scale model, but according to Ian Ventham that just wasn’t how things were done these days.
Ron continues. “And you’ve chosen—deliberately chosen—a woman architect, so I won’t be allowed to shout.”
“You are shouting though, Ron,” says Elizabeth, reading a newspaper, two seats away.
“Don’t you tell me when I’m shouting, Elizabeth,” shouts Ron. “This geezer’ll know when I’m shouting. Look at him, dressed up like Tony Blair. Why don’t you bomb the Iraqis while you’re at it, Ventham?”
“Good line,” thinks Ron, as Ibrahim dutifully writes it down for the record.
Back in the days when he was in the papers, they called him Red Ron, though everyone was Red something in those days.
Ron’s picture was rarely in the papers without the caption “Talks between the two sides collapsed late last night.” A veteran of picket lines and police cells, of blacklegs, blacklists, and bust-ups, of slow-downs and sit-ins, of wildcat strikes and walkouts, Ron had been there, warming his hands over a brazier, with the old gang at the British Leyland car factory.
He had seen firsthand the demise of the dockers.
He had picketed the Wapping newspaper plant, as he witnessed the victory of Rupert Murdoch and the collapse of the printers.
Ron had led the Kent miners up the A1, and had been arrested at Orgreave Pit as the final resistance of the coal industry was crushed.
In fact, a man less indefatigable than Ron might have considered himself a jinx.
But that’s the fate of the underdog, and Ron simply loved to be the underdog.
If he ever found himself in a situation where he wasn’t the underdog, he would twist and turn and shake that situation until he had convinced everyone that he was.
But Ron had always practiced what he had preached.
He had always quietly helped anyone who had needed a leg up, needed a few extra quid at Christmas, needed a suit or a solicitor for court.
Anyone who, for any reason, had needed a champion had always been safe in Ron’s tattooed arms.
The tattoos are fading now, the hands are shaking, but the fire still burns.
“You know where you can shove this lease, don’t you, Ventham?”
“Feel free to enlighten me,” says Ian Ventham.
Ron then starts to make a point about Donald Trump, but loses his thread.
Ibrahim places a hand on his elbow. Ron nods the nod of a man whose work here is done, and he sits, knees cracking like gunshots.
He’s happy. And he notices his shakes have stopped, just for the moment.
Back in the fight. There’s nothing like it.