Authors: Bea Davenport
“It’s Saturday, Miss Beautiful,” he said, grinning at her. “You should still be in bed.”
“I know, I know. But I’ve got something to write up.” Clare was glad to have the excuse of last night’s miners’ benefit to take her into work, but in fact she had been coming into the office every weekend for the last five weeks or so. It was just about the only advantage of having an office to herself, that she could see. No one, except Jai, was there to ask questions if you were there late into the night, early in the morning or on days when you should have been having a life.
So she sat down and started typing:
Young miner’s wife Margie Jeffries wasn’t looking forward to the school summer holidays. With husband Micky out on strike, she wondered how to help her two boisterous boys – Christopher, six and Andy, eight – fill the long six weeks. Thanks to a fundraising benefit held at the Sweetmeadows Social Club, however, she and some of the other miners’ families can look forward to some trips out…
When midday arrived, Clare had written the benefit night feature and six other dateless stories that would see her through any quiet days next week. What’s more, if anyone were to tot up her story count, they couldn’t fault her: she was outstripping every other reporter by a long way. Particularly Chris Barber, which was partly the point of the frenzied work. The other point was filling that aching hole in the rest of her life. Other people’s stories were a great way of doing that. Sometimes, Clare thought, being a journalist turned you into a big blank page, waiting for other people to come and write on it. Your own life was what ended up on the spike.
She’d banked on the phone ringing at least once, with some lead for another story. It hadn’t. So with a long afternoon and evening ahead of her, Clare faced the prospect of going home. She’d just been paid, though, so maybe some of the girls could be persuaded to get together and do something, if they’d forgiven her for being such lousy company the other night.
On the other hand… Clare flicked through her contacts book for Finn McKenna’s number. She held her fingers over the dial for a few moments, then called him. “Hi, it’s Clare Jackson. I just wanted to say thanks for the invitation last night. People were kind to me. I think it’ll make a great piece.”
“You’re working today?”
Clare hesitated. “Sort of. No, not really. I just had a few things to do in the office.”
“You finished?” Finn paused on the end of the phone and then said, “So what’re you doing now? Come for a drink?”
“Umm, yeah, I could do that, for a few minutes, maybe.”
They arranged to meet at a seaside pub, a few miles out of town – Finn’s suggestion. It didn’t escape Clare’s notice that he could have picked somewhere much nearer, but where they would both be much more likely to be spotted. Not that there was any reason to hide. After all, it was perfectly reasonable for a reporter to be having a drink with a local union leader in the middle of a controversial national strike.
Finn was wearing a pressed white shirt and his aftershave smelled freshly-applied. The shirt looked expensive. It must have been a pre-strike purchase, Clare told herself. She toyed with the notion of asking who did Finn’s ironing as she couldn’t quite picture him doing it himself, at least not quite so painstakingingly. But she didn’t.
“I’m glad you went along. Those women deserve a bit of recognition for their work,” Finn said, handing her a glass of orange juice clinking with ice.
“I want to do more on the women. The wives and mothers,” Clare said. “They’re the ones trying to hold things together, right? I want to do something about how it is to try to live on – what is it? Twenty-six quid a week supplementary benefit? Like maybe a diary-style piece for a week, from one or two of the women. What they’re eating and what they’re going without and which bills are not being paid.”
“You’re right, that would work. Take my mam,” Finn said. “My dad is on strike, so’s my uncle and so am I. She’s had a good wage coming in for the last few years and now she’s got none. No family to help out. Two big men still to feed, though.”
“Would she talk to me?”
“I think so. And,” Finn wrote a name and number down in Clare’s notebook, “this is someone who wants to form a Women Against Pit Closures group, like they’re doing down in Yorkshire. Maybe if you talk to her and put something in the paper, she’ll get a few more women joining in.”
“Brilliant.” They sat outside, looking over towards the cliffs. The breeze from the sea brought the temperature down, making the heat more bearable, but Clare wished she’d brought her sunglasses, to stop herself blinking and wiping her eyes in the bright sunshine. She hoped she wouldn’t get one of her dizzy spells. The last thing she wanted was someone chivvying her along to see a doctor.
“Tell me something, how do you feel about the men who’re breaking the strike?”
Finn kept gazing out towards the sea. “Is this on the record?”
“Everything’s on the record with me, Finn.”
“I’ll be honest. Bloody angry. I’d like to shake them. And you can guess which ones are going to crack first. Rob Donnelly – everyone said he was never quite one of the lads. But at the same time, I know what’s going on in their heads. They’re always wondering where the next meal’s coming from and how they’re going to get through the next couple of days, never mind the next few weeks. So I know the pressure they’re under. That doesn’t stop me thinking that what they’re doing is wrong.”
“But aren’t they just putting the needs of their families first? You know, the ones like Rob Donnelly, with a troupe of young kids?” Just two young kids, now, Clare thought. Not so much of a troupe.
“We’ve all got families. I haven’t got young kids of my own, but I’ve got a mother and a sheaf of red bills. We’re all going through it. Some of us are just a bit stronger than others. More determined, if you like.” Finn took a long drink of his pint. “The thing is, this can only work if we stick it out. If they chip away at us, bit by bit, with more and more men going back to work, we can’t keep going. So tough as it is, we have to hang in there.”
“Do you think you can win? Be honest.”
“If I didn’t think that, I couldn’t get up in the morning. Yes, we will win. Only a tiny minority have cracked and gone through the picket lines.”
Clare frowned. “I just can’t see Falklands Maggie and her crew backing down. Can you? Really?”
Finn smiled. “It’ll take a union as strong as the miners to beat her, that’s for sure. But we’ll stick it out. They’re trying to starve us back, but it’s not going to work. We need more reporters on side, though. The lads pick up
The Sun
and they get disheartened. It might not be outright lies they print, but it’s distortion. There’s only one point of view, which is anti-union. It wears you down.”
Clare nodded. She was conscious of Finn giving her the odd appraising look, his gaze lingering on her bare legs. She shifted in her seat.
“I’m sorry,” Finn said, suddenly. “I shouldn’t be staring at you like that. I’m embarrassing you.”
“You’re not.” Clare wondered how obvious her body language had been. Truth was, she liked being the object of Finn’s attention.
“You’re very attractive, that’s all.”
Clare looked at her drink. “Thanks.”
“I’m making it worse now.”
Clare shook her head. But she decided it was time to go. “Look, thanks for the drink, and there’s really no problem, but I need to be somewhere shortly. Sorry.” She remembered telling Finn earlier that she was free for the afternoon, but he didn’t argue. She didn’t want him to know how much she really liked him.
Just as she was getting up and hoisting her bag over her shoulder, she noticed Finn look past her and saw his face change. She turned to see two men in plain clothes, who were almost certainly police officers, walking up to them.
“Finn McKenna?” one of the men asked.
Finn gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“We’d like to ask you some questions in connection with the death of Jamie Donnelly on 12th July.”
Clare sat back down next to Finn and looked at him. He gestured to the officers to sit down, but they stayed where they were.
“At the station, if you don’t mind, Mr McKenna.”
Clare expected Finn to protest, but he just shrugged and stood up. She stared at him, at the two men, and back again. Then she grasped at his hand. “What’s going on?”
Finn looked down and gave her a half-smile. He folded his fingers around hers. “I don’t know. But I know I have nothing to worry about, so neither have you.”
“But…”
Finn squeezed her hand and then, in a quick movement that was over in a second, he leaned down and kissed her knuckles. Then he let her go. “I’ll call you when they’ve finished wasting everyone’s time. Let’s get this over with, then.” He followed the officers out of the bar. Clare stayed where she was, with everyone else in the bar staring at her, then she hurried out to the car.
She wondered where she could find to go. Anywhere but back to her flat, as usual. She set off almost without thinking about it towards Sweetmeadows, forming ideas in her head as to what she could do when she got there. Have a word with Annie Martin, perhaps, and see if there were any definite plans yet for Jamie’s funeral. That would be the next big story, she thought.
The Donnellys’ flat was Clare’s first call. She was relieved that Rob Donnelly was out, but Annie was there. “He’s taken the kids to the beach,” Annie said, on the doorstep. “I’m minding Deborah.”
Clare made a sympathetic face. “Still no better? Not that it’s surprising.”
“Come in.” Annie walked into the flat and Clare followed, stepping over the plastic building blocks and trying to avoid pressing broken crayons into the carpet as she walked. Things looked no worse than the day of Jamie’s death, though. That would be Annie, cooking, keeping on top of the cleaning and washing as best she could, while Deborah – the sunken-faced husk of a woman hunched on the sofa, swamped in a faded track suit – remained on heavy medication.
“This is the woman from the
Post
,” Annie said, loud and slow, as if to a little child.
Debs just blinked.
Annie shook her head. “Drugged up to the eyeballs. But otherwise I think the pain would be too much.”
Clare nodded. “How’s Rob coping?”
“He’s just getting on. You know, the way men do. By working and not talking about anything and going around like nothing’s happened.” Annie reached for a cigarette. “I don’t know which is worst.”
Drugs or denial. Clare wasn’t sure either.
“I wondered if there was any news on the funeral?”
Annie shook her head. “Deborah can’t think about that right now. What’s bothering us is that the police still haven’t caught the bastard.” She sucked hard on the cigarette. “Worse than bloody useless, the lot of them.”
“They still don’t seem to have any real leads,” Clare agreed.
“We’ve decided.” Annie stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette in a red tin ashtray that had come from a pub. “If there’s no news by tomorrow, we’re going to go and protest outside that police station.”
“Who is?” Clare wrote
Sunday - protest
in her notebook.
“Me and some of the other women from the estate. We’re going to go outside that police station with pictures of Jamie and we’re going to take candles and torches and we’re going to stand there all night. We want to shame the police, for doing bugger all for more than a week.”
“We’ll be there,” Clare promised. “We’ll get you some coverage for that.”
She toyed with the idea of telling Annie that Finn McKenna had been arrested, but decided against it. She was sure – she found herself hoping – that he would be released without charges after an hour or two. No point in getting Annie worked up about something that would almost certainly come to nothing.
“There are women round here who haven’t let their kids play outside since it happened. They’re having to keep them indoors in this stinking heat because they don’t want to let them out of their sight. Not when some madman’s roaming around throwing bairns out of their prams.”
On the sofa, Debs made a snuffling sound. Clare and Annie looked at her, but Debs just stared down at her own fingers and said nothing. She looked as if she was fading into her own sofa, as if she barely existed. She looked like someone who’d had her insides wrenched out. Clare’s own guts twisted painfully.
“See, if it was because of Rob breaking the strike, that would be one thing,” Annie went on. “No one else from this estate has been stupid enough to do that, so it follows that everyone else would be safe, right? But the police say they don’t think it’s anything to do with that. So we’re no further forward, and every mother thinks her kid might be next.”
Outside, Clare could see Amy leaning casually on the car. She waved when she saw Clare walking towards her. “Hey, Clare, what’ve you been reporting on today?”
“Some of the mothers are holding a demonstration outside the police station tomorrow night.”
“Yeah, that. Me mam’s going. I’ll go too, if you’re going to be there.”
“I will.” Clare noticed Amy was wearing the same shorts and neon T-shirt as the other day, and they didn’t look or smell as if they’d been through a wash in the meantime. “How’ve you been?”
“Great. I love not being at school.” Amy did a little hopping dance. “I did some more shorthand. I did it watching telly the other night. I’m getting faster.”
“That’s brilliant. Only try to write it in your notebook, not on your arms, eh? Why don’t you like school, anyway?”
Stupid question, really, Clare thought, after the words had tripped out. All kids hate school. She’d disliked it herself. More than disliked.
Amy scratched her head. “Everyone gives me wrong all the time.”
“Like, for what?”
“For things I say. I never mean to say the wrong thing but I always do. Me mam says, ‘Amy, I wish you’d learn to keep your daft gob shut.’”
“What about lessons?”
Amy shrugged. “They’re okay. Some of them. I like writing stories and all that.”
I bet you do, thought Clare. “What about your friends?” She hoped it was okay to ask that.