Chapter 9
‘Where’s our Les?’ Mum came into the kitchen, switched on the kettle and reached for the breadbin.
I was always fascinated how Mum cut and buttered bread, buttering the face of the brown dense loaf first, before cutting it off.
No Mothers Pride white sliced bread in our house, as was the norm on most working-class Yorkshire tables.
Certainly, whenever I’d gone round for tea at a school friend’s or to my Aunty Sandra’s, there’d inevitably be the big squashy red-and-white striped packeted loaf of flabby dough on the table.
But Dad had always made our family’s dark rye bread, the bread he’d grown up with in Warsaw, rolling up his sleeves in the kitchen and getting stuck into the huge earthenware bread crock.
He said he found it cathartic; it helped him to relax after being buried underground for up to eight hours a day.
And, while Les now insisted on having white sliced bread in the house for his pack-up down the mine, Mum and I remained loyal to Dad’s delicious baking.
‘Already left for the picket line,’ I said, buttering my own slice of toast and adding Dad’s homemade plum jam.
The little larder off the kitchen was always full of his preserves, as well as, in season, the cabbage, potatoes and onions he grew on his allotment.
They were particularly welcome now, with four adults in the house to feed and no money, apart from what I was earning at NUM headquarters, coming in.
Mum and Dad had some savings and the mortgage on our little terraced house was about paid off.
As a family, we were a lot better off than most people round here, particularly those with young families to feed and rent to find every week, and Dad would, often as not, leave the house with carrier bags of his dirt-encrusted veg to share with other striking miners.
The wives, I knew, were grateful. They told me so when I called in at The Alamo, the little – but growing – meeting place down at the end of the unofficially – but aptly – named Pit Lane.
This meeting place for the miners had started with a couple of old comfy chairs brought over presumably by someone fed up of actually standing on the picket line, then progressed to wooden cabins where the men could retreat if it rained, as well as make a brew.
With the strike now into its second month, and with no end in sight, the camp had grown, with more chairs, an actual sofa and a couple of tables all overlooked by the big red-and-white official placard stating:
STOP!
OFFICIAL NUM PICKET!
‘Aren’t you enjoying work, love?’ Mum brought me round from staring mindlessly out through the kitchen door and into the back garden.
With Dad not working, he’d been spending a lot of time not only up at the allotment but also in the garden itself.
I’d not really been taking in the scarlet peonies, the pink rhododendron and the beautiful lilac as such, but for some reason was thinking of Theo Mandeville – probably because today would have been Fliss’s twenty-first birthday.
And, whenever I thought of Fliss, my thoughts automatically moved on to Theo.
Fliss, I’m sure, would have been partying for Britain this evening, if only she’d still been alive.
I hoped she was partying with the angels and then tutted at my daft thoughts: if she was anywhere out of this world, she’d be knocking back Bulmers and having a ball with some devilish imps she’d befriended.
‘Sorry?’ I turned to Mum.
‘Away with the fairies, love. Where were you? Are you missing being back in Leeds with all your university friends? It’d have been Fliss’s birthday today, wouldn’t it? Same day as our Sandra’s.’
I nodded, turning back to the garden, unable to get thoughts of both Fliss and Theo out of my head.
If she’d managed to pin Theo down, got him as her boyfriend as she’d so wanted, would that have stopped Fliss signing up with the escort agency?
Selling her body – because that’s what it amounted to – for money to buy all those beautiful clothes and bags.
Or, now knowing more about Fliss than I ever did when she was actually alive, was it all about the chase and, once she’d snared Theo, would she have been off to pastures new, leaving Theo broken-hearted?
Did Theo Mandeville actually have a heart?
I wasn’t convinced. Entitled? Definitely.
Arrogant? Maybe. He hadn’t even remembered my name.
What I did recall was his anger as he strode past me in our Leeds house, demanding to know what the hell was going on.
What I’d been telling the police. But then I remembered his concern for my cold hands, him giving me his gloves: I’d still got them, in the drawer by my bed along with the kitchen towel he’d torn off the roll and passed over as I cried about Fliss.
Mum walked over, patting my arm. ‘I’m still not convinced it was a good idea for your dad to get this job for you, Anna, you know. Especially how everything’s turned out.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ I said, patting her own arm back. ‘Right at the coalface of history? Blimey, if this doesn’t help me with my final assessments next year, I don’t know what will.’
‘Yes, but are you enjoying it?’ Mum wasn’t letting it go. ‘Not too boring?’
‘Well, yes, the office work is pretty mundane. You know, stuffing envelopes and answering the phone and making tea for the men in charge. Always men, isn’t it?’
When Mum didn’t reply, but simply smiled, I went on, ‘I mean, you don’t see blokes making the tea and being sent out to buy the custard creams.’
‘It’s ’cos they’re all down t’pit, love.
’ She paused and sniffed. ‘Well, usually they are, anyhow. Let’s just hope after all this, there’s still a pit to go down.
’ Mum laughed then, nudging me in the ribs.
‘Hey, and I don’t think that woman in charge at Number 10 would agree with you about it always being men. ’
‘Right, got to go.’ I reached for my cardigan.
‘Don’t think you’ll need that, love,’ Mum said, gazing out of the door at the cerulean sky.
‘Still April, but looks like we might be in for a good summer. They say it’s going to be another scorcher like 1976.
’ She drained her mug of tea and then said, almost slyly, ‘So, how’s it going with yonder young man? ’
‘Yonder young man?’ I laughed at that. ‘You mean John?’
‘Aye. He’s a bit of a catch, isn’t he? Foreigner round here o’ course.’
‘Foreigner? Mum, he’s from Nottingham.’ I grinned over at her. ‘And who are you to criticise foreigners? You married a Pole, for heaven’s sake.’
‘I wasn’t criticising. Just asking. So, John Dyson? A bit of a catch then, I reckon. White-collar worker? You don’t get many a them to the pound, round here. And with a degree? Ready to take over from the main man at some point?’
‘I don’t think the main man is going anywhere at the moment.’ I smiled.
‘Yes, but do you like him?’
‘Who?’ I was playing for time; I knew exactly who Mum was referring to.
She tutted. ‘Hey, you daft beggar. Get off with you – and don’t forget that pack-up I made for you.’
I walked the half-mile distance from our house on the edge of the village, down the lane towards the road where the NUM headquarters was situated and where the organisation of the continued strike action was under the control of the union.
I waved at the men gathered at The Alamo, receiving a couple of wolf whistles as I walked, as well as several good-natured, ‘’Ey up, loves,’ from the older men.
Being Joe Piasecki’s daughter, as well as working for the union, did give me some kind of credentials and I knew I enjoyed the attention from the men.
The scruffy wooden cabins and plethora of battered chairs and sofas always reminded me of the bonfires we’d built and guarded ready for lighting on 5 November, chumping for old chairs, wood, anything combustible – and probably some not – during the previous week’s half-term holiday.
As I neared my workplace, I made myself focus on Mum’s questions about John Dyson and the man himself, the man – boy – bloke – I’d been seeing for a month or so.
John had arrived in Rothersley, working for the union, almost as soon as Margaret Thatcher had announced back in March her intention to close myriad pits.
He was intense, determined, what my dad called ‘going places’ and he’d apparently – according to John himself – fallen in love with me the minute he’d spotted me in the office.
I so wanted to be in love, had tried so hard to convince myself that I was in love with John Dyson, but knew I wasn’t being fair either to him or me.
Two months into our courtship as Mum called it – going out with I called it – shagging, my brother, Les, smirked when I stayed over at John’s flat in the centre of Rothersley – I knew I didn’t want to carry on with him.
I wasn’t convinced I even liked him much.
Which, I knew, was going to make it all very awkward as he was based in the next office to mine.
He was even talking about us getting engaged, once I’d done my final year in Leeds, both of us moving to London where, politically, ‘it’s all happening. ’
I sighed as I opened the front door, making my way into the building’s main hall, resplendent with its stained-glass windows, art deco panelling and beautiful ornate ceiling, before turning left into the office where I’d been assigned a desk.
There were a couple of other desks for union delegates when required, various phones, metal filing cabinets and a photocopier.
Immediately I’d sat at my desk, swivelling round on the chair to adjust its height, John appeared at my shoulder, squeezing my arm and nuzzling into my neck.
Embarrassed as I always was at any contact between us in the workplace, I batted him off, tutting.
‘Oy, not here,’ I warned. ‘I’m a professional, paid to do a job of work. ’