Juliet Bell - The Heights - A dark story of obsession and revenge

Chapter Seven

March, 1984

Ray Earnshaw walked the long way home, along the pit road onto the estate, rather than cutting by the blue hills and onto the back lane. He needed the thinking time. He’d told himself it weren’t going to happen here. He’d known the younger lads were getting angry, and he’d heard about what was going on at other pits around and about and down by Nottingham, bits on the news about the union, but that was there. They were firebrands over there. Not like Ray.

Ray had never voted to strike in his life. Just last year, he’d voted against it in the national ballot, and he hadn’t voted to strike this time either. None of them had. Then Maggie had started to talk about pit closures and the walkouts had started. And now Scargill had called everyone out. There was some as said that wasn’t right. That there should have been a vote. Ray agreed, but it were too late now. He’d never crossed a picket line in his life and that wasn’t about to change. Nobody was going to call Ray Earnshaw a scab. He had a reputation round here. The lads knew him. He fancied they respected him. That counted for something, so it was one out, all out. Didn’t matter what you thought yourself. That was how it had always been. That was how it would always be.

He walked up to his front door and reached for his keys. The first thing that hit him as he opened the door was the sound of shouting from the kitchen. For a heartbeat he thought Shirley might be back. That was the fantasy he had every night as he put the key in the lock. Shirley back and everything as it should be, but the female voice he could hear was his daughter, not his wife.

He opened the front door and the words became clearer.

‘Leave him alone, Mick. You’re a bully.’

‘That gyppo bastard doesn’t get to give me cheek.’ Mick’s voice was slightly slurred, leaving Ray to wonder if his son was drunk. ‘If he doesn’t stop staring at me, I’ll punch his lights out. And as for you, going off with him up in the blue hills. People will think you’re a slut.’

He heard a low growl. Heathcliff, jumping to Cathy’s defence, no doubt, which seemed like his normal way to get himself in trouble.

‘That’s enough,’ Ray shouted as he walked through to the kitchen. ‘Shut up the lot of you.’

The kids did as they were told, probably shocked by the uncharacteristic roughness in his voice. Ray went to the fridge and reached for a can of beer. God knew he needed it.

‘Dad,’ Cathy ventured in the voice she used when she was trying to get him on her side in an argument. ‘Mick said…’

‘I don’t care what Mick said. Pay attention. All of you. Things are about to change here. We’re on strike. The miners. All of us.’

Silence fell in the kitchen. Ray checked the clock on the wall and reached for the radio. The smooth voice of the BBC announcer filled the room.

‘…Britain’s miners have stopped work in what looks like becoming a long battle against job losses. More than half the country’s 187,000 mineworkers are now on strike. Miners in Yorkshire and…’

‘You’re on strike, Dad?’

‘Shut up, Mick. Listen…’

‘…National Union of Mineworkers president Arthur Scargill is calling on members across the country to join the action.’

Ray took another swig from his beer. Now the strike was on, no one was going to hear him say a word against Scargill. That was what the union was all about.

‘…Violence flared on the picket line at Bilston Glen colliery in Scotland, when miners from the recently closed Polmaise pit tried to stop others going into work…’

Scabs. There’d been talk of trucking in lads from the other pits to join the picket. There’d be nobody working at Gimmerton. He’d see to that.

The kitchen became very still, the only sound the voice from the radio. Words seemed to hang in the air, painting a bleak image of a long and bitter time to come.

‘It won’t last long, Dad, will it?’ Cathy asked. ‘I mean… without jobs people won’t have any money…’

‘They’ll cave in,’ Mick said brashly. ‘She can’t close the pits. The whole bloody country’d come to a standstill.’

Ray wasn’t so sure. There had been rumours of coal stockpiles.

‘It might last a few weeks,’ he said. ‘So we all have to pitch in and make ends meet. No more beer and fags, Mick – all your dole money goes to the house.’

‘I want to join the picket,’ Mick said.

‘You’re not a miner.’

‘No, but I want to join the picket. That guy on the radio said even women were expected to join this. I won’t be left out of the fight. You’re gonna need all the help you can get.’

Ray didn’t like it, but Mick was right. He looked at the boy he had raised as his son, and for the first time thought that maybe there was something of him in Mick after all. If he was willing to stick up for his mates.

‘All right. But be careful. They’re going to bus police in here as well as lads for the picket. I don’t want you getting involved in anything violent, you understand.’

‘Yes, Dad.’

And as for the two of you…’ Ray turned towards Cathy and Heathcliff, who, as always, were standing so close together they might have been Siamese twins. ‘You two keep going to school. Cathy, you look after the house the way you have been since your mum left. And I don’t want social services on my case because you’ve been bunking off. Understand?’

‘Yes, Dad,’ Cathy said meekly. Heathcliff as usual said nothing. But Ray knew he would follow where Cathy led.

Ray relented and reached out to pull his daughter close for a hug. ‘Ah, you’re a good girl, Cathy. Hopefully this strike will be over in a couple of weeks and we can all get back to normal.’

‘Look, Heathcliff. A kestrel.’

‘Where?’

‘It went… No. There. Above those rocks.’ Cathy pointed. ‘See it?’

‘Yeah.’

Cathy leaned forward from her place on the high, rocky outcrop, as if she was about to launch herself into the air. ‘I wish I could fly, Heathcliff. Just like that falcon.’

‘And if you could fly?’

‘I’d fly away from this place and never come back.’

Cathy felt his body shift, as he moved away from her. She dragged her eyes away from the bird to look at the youth sitting next to her. His face was a black mask.

‘You’d leave me behind. Stuck here.’ His voice had turned all pouty.

She knew that black look. And she knew how to fix it. ‘No, of course not. You’re my brother. If I was a falcon you’d be a falcon too and we could fly away together.’

‘I’m not your brother.’

‘No. You’re better than a brother.’

That seemed to help. He turned back to look for the bird, giving Cathy a good look at the bruise on the side of his face. It was much darker than it had been when she first saw it last night. She reached out her hand and touched Heathcliff’s cheek ever so softly. He didn’t flinch away.

‘Why didn’t you tell Dad that Mick did this?’ she asked.

‘What good would that do? He’d only give me another hiding for ratting on him.’

That was true. And their father wouldn’t help. He didn’t care about anything except the strike. And now Mick was on the picket with the rest of the old men, their dad was more inclined to take his word over Cathy’s.

‘Look at that!’ Heathcliff drew her attention back to the bird. ‘He’s spotted something. A rabbit maybe.’

The kestrel was hovering not far away from them. Cathy could see that the bird had its eyes fixed on the ground. Suddenly it dropped like a stone, its wings folded tight against its body until the last moment, before it crashed to earth. A moment later the bird rose from the long grass, and she could see it held something in its talons.