Lambs to the Slaughter Page 2

  Tommy picked up his whisky and knocked it back in one.

  ‘Another!’ he said.

  Len Hopkins had finished his conversation with his supporters, and had almost reached the door.

  ‘Somebody should do something about you!’ Tommy Sanders called after him. ‘Somebody should fix you so you can never betray the working man again – you bloody Judas!’

  They were harsh words – many would say unjustified words – and almost everyone who heard them that night would remember them the following morning.

  TWO

  The politicians on the morning radio programme had all had their say – the Conservatives obviously blaming the Labour Party for the crisis, the Labour Party naturally blaming the Conservatives – and now it was the turn of the show’s resident pundit to give his own take on the situation.

  ‘The roots of the current problem lie in the miners’ strike of 1972,’ he said, in a calm, authoritative voice.

  ‘Is that right?’ asked DCI Monika Paniatowski, taking the hot bread out of the toaster, and quickly dropping it on to the plate.

  ‘In the aftermath of that strike, the government felt it had been held to ransom by the National Union of Mineworkers, and to avoid ever finding itself in that position again, it decided to build up stocks of coal at both the pithead and the power stations.’

  ‘Must have seemed like a smart move, at the time,’ Paniatowski said to herself, as she reached for the butter.

  ‘At the time, it seemed like quite a smart move,’ the commentator unwittingly echoed, ‘but back then, of course, no one had any idea that the Egyptians and Syrians were planning to invade Israel during the Israelis’ Yom Kippur religious holiday.’

  ‘That’s not quite true,’ Paniatowski said pedantically, ‘I imagine the Egyptians and Syrians had a pretty good idea it was going to happen.’

  She walked into the hallway, stopping at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Breakfast’s nearly ready, Louisa!’ she shouted. ‘Get yourself down here right now!’

  ‘When the war started to go badly for the Arabs, they sought to put pressure on Israel’s Western allies by first curtailing the supply of oil, and then increasing the price,’ the commentator told her. ‘In early October, it cost $3 a barrel, by mid-October it stood at $5, and would reach $11.63 by Christmas.’

  ‘Or to put it another way,’ Paniatowski said, ‘it now costs me an arm and a leg to fill my little MGA with petrol.’

  ‘And what effect did the oil price hike have on overall economic planning?’ the commentator asked.

  ‘It made using coal suddenly look like a pretty good idea?’ Paniatowski suggested.

  ‘It made solid fuel more viable,’ the journalist said. ‘Indeed, given the precarious state of the British economy, it made it an outright necessity. And the miners, realizing how much stronger their position had become, began to press for a large pay rise by taking industrial action. And that, in a nutshell, is the story of how we reached the point at which we began experiencing selective power cuts and the three-day week.’

  ‘Speaking of which, how long is it to our next selective power cut?’ Paniatowski asked herself.

  She glanced up at the kitchen clock, and strode into the hall again.

  ‘The electricity will be going off in five minutes, Louisa!’ she shouted. ‘Have you got that? Five minutes!’

  ‘Just coming, Mum,’ a sleepy voice replied from upstairs.

  ‘Well, make sure you are,’ Paniatowski replied.

  As she passed the hall mirror, she noticed the rueful smile that was playing on her lips.

  And it might well be rueful, she thought, because after all those years of listening to the way other women talked to their children – and promising herself that, in the highly unlikely event she ever became a parent, she’d never sound like them – she had become a carbon copy of all those mothers. And the worse thing was, she told herself, as the rueful grin widened into a joyous smile, she couldn’t possibly have been happier about it.

  Becky Sanders had awoken in darkness and dressed by candlelight that morning, but by the time she set off for her grandfather’s house, the power for Bellingsworth had been switched back on.

  It had become a regular part of Becky’s routine to visit the old man before she left for school every morning. She didn’t do this on the instructions of her parents – they took little or no interest in any of her activities – nor had anybody else, her grandfather included, even so much as hinted that it might be a good idea. She did it because she wanted to do it – she did out of both love and pity.

  When she arrived at his house that particular morning, she found her grandfather sitting, as usual, in his favourite battered armchair, with a chipped enamel bowl on his knee.

  ‘How are you feeling today, Granddad?’ she asked.

  ‘Not too bad,’ Tommy Sanders replied, though evidence of the black and red phlegm at the bottom of the bowl showed he was lying.

  ‘So what’s it to be this morning?’ Becky asked, with forced cheerfulness. ‘The full cooked breakfast? Or would you just like toast and jam?’

  ‘I don’t fancy any food at all,’ Tommy Sanders replied. ‘But a cup of tea would go down a treat.’

  ‘You have to eat, Granddad,’ Becky said severely.

  ‘I know,’ the old man agreed, then added unconvincingly, ‘I’ll have something later.’

  It was then that Becky noticed that her grandfather’s best sports jacket was draped over the back of the chair, and that he was wearing the trousers that went with the jacket.

  ‘Are you planning to go out, Granddad?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ the old man replied. ‘Why did you ask that?’

  ‘Because of the way you’re dressed.’

  ‘Oh, this is just what I put on last night, to go to the Institute.’

  ‘So why are you wearing the same things this morning?’

  ‘To tell you the truth, I haven’t been to bed yet.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I didn’t think I’d sleep, and it seemed pointless to go upstairs and just lie there.’

  ‘You have to look after yourself, Granddad,’ the girl said.

  ‘I know, I know,’ the old man replied wearily.

  ‘You’re the one who persuaded me I was clever enough to go to university. I’d never even have considered it if it hadn’t been for your encouragement. And if I do get in . . .’

  ‘You will.’

  ‘. . . and I end up walking on to the stage to collect my degree, I want you sitting in the audience.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ Tommy promised.

  ‘You’d better be.’

  But they both knew it was never going to happen. It would be four years before Becky was accepted by a university and another three years before she graduated – and Tommy would be long dead by then.

  Becky put the kettle on, and spooned some tea into the teapot.

  ‘When I was working down the pit, I used to dream of retirement,’ Tommy said.

  ‘Did you?’ asked Becky, who’d heard this particular refrain many times before.

  ‘But back then, you see, I always pictured retirement as being very different to what it is now. I thought I’d be healthy and vigorous – I thought I’d be able to go for long walks in the hills.’

  ‘Everybody has to grow old, Granddad,’ Becky said, reaching into the fridge for the milk.

  ‘And I thought I’d have your grandma by my side,’ Tommy continued.

  A single tear ran down Becky’s cheek.

  ‘We all miss Grandma,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I’ve had my time and there’s no point in dwelling on it,’ the old man continued. ‘It’s other people I worry about now.’

  ‘If you’re worried about me, then there’s no need . . .’

  ‘It’s these young miners, you see,’ her grandfather interrupted her. ‘They never had to live through the 1930s, so they’ve no idea what it was like. Some of them – not all,
by any means, but some of them – only care about this week’s wage packet, so they can pay off an instalment on their colour televisions and their new sofas. They don’t see that if they won’t stand and defend their ground, the bastar— the beggars . . . who run the mines will cut that ground right from under them.’

  The more he had said, the louder and angrier his voice had become, and suddenly he was coughing again.

  ‘You shouldn’t upset yourself, Granddad,’ Becky said, laying her hand gently on his shoulder.

  The coughing fit subsided, and Tommy looked down into the bowl.

  ‘By gum, lass, there must be half a coal shaft down in them lungs of mine,’ he said.

  ‘You need to look after yourself,’ Becky cooed again.

  ‘If I can just get these young lads to see sense, then there’ll have been some point to this miserable life of mine,’ Tommy said. ‘And if I can’t, then it will all have been a waste.’ When he raised his head from the bowl to look at his granddaughter, his eyes were blazing with what might almost have been madness. ‘I’ll do anything to see this strike succeed, Becky,’ he told her.

  ‘Now, Granddad, remember what I said about keeping calm,’ Becky said plaintively.

  ‘Anything!’ Tommy Sanders repeated.

  Paniatowski had just finished lighting the candles when she heard the church clock chime in the distance.

  ‘One, two, three . . .’ she counted.

  On the fourth stroke, the power went off – just as the local newspaper had announced it would – and Louisa appeared in the doorway.

  ‘You’ll be eating your breakfast by candlelight – and it’s your own fault,’ Paniatowski told her daughter.

  As she down at the table, Louisa sighed.

  ‘Breakfast by candlelight,’ she said. ‘How romantic!’

  How romantic!

  Paniatowski grinned. A couple of years earlier, the word ‘romantic’ would not even have been part of Louisa’s vocabulary, but now it tripped off her tongue as easily as ‘dolly’and ‘teddy’ would once have done.

  She examined her daughter in the flickering candlelight – took in the dark eyes and coal-black hair she had inherited from her real mother, and the pleasantly stubborn line of her jaw, which came from her dead father. There was no doubt about it, she told herself, the girl was growing up.

  Paniatowski broke four eggs into a frying pan and added a little milk. She had just begun to stir the mixture when the phone rang in the hallway.

  ‘Get that for me, will you, love?’ she said. ‘If it’s headquarters, ask them if it’s urgent – and if it isn’t, tell them I’ll ring back in ten minutes.’

  Louisa stood up again. ‘Honestly, Mum, sometimes you work me to death,’ she said with a grin.

  For Betty Cousins, resentment had become a way of life, and she resented the power cuts more than she could say.

  The first reason for this was that she knew – though no one else seemed to – that the so-called ‘industrial action’ was not about pay or conditions at all. No, it was about the fact that the miners – who she’d lived among her entire life – were all lazy devils, and would do anything to get out of doing a decent day’s work.

  Her own husband had been a case in point, always complaining about how life down the pit was hard, and using any excuse – even the bit of blood he coughed up some mornings – for staying away from the colliery. Well, he was gone now – too lazy to even bother going on living, in her opinion – but the rest of them who were left behind were just as bad.

  The second reason for her resentment was that she half-suspected these power cuts to be nothing more than a plot to prevent her fulfilling her sacred mission, which was to watch the weakness of others being played out in the street below her bedroom window. But the plot – if that was what it was – had only partially succeeded. It was true that the street lamps were not switched on even when there was electricity, but the lights from the miners’ bedroom windows – as they dressed for work they could no longer avoid – filtered out on to the street and stopped it from being in complete darkness.

  It was in the light from the miners’ bedrooms that she observed the dumpy woman who was shining her torch in front of her and making her way carefully down the street.

  Even though the woman herself was little more than a dark blob, Betty knew it was Susan Danvers, Len Hopkins’ housekeeper.

  ‘Housekeeper!’ she said to herself in disgust.

  Well, that was one name for it – though she could easily think of another!

  It was over twenty years since Len’s son, who’d had ideas above his station, had bought a car and then proceeded to crash it, killing himself, his brother and his mother in the process.

  And hadn’t Susan Danvers been quick to get her feet under the table after the funeral?

  By God, she had!

  It was strange there wasn’t a light on in Len’s front parlour, Betty thought, because although he was as idle as any other man, he usually made an effort to be up and about by the time his ‘housekeeper’ arrived.

  Susan opened the front door without knocking – and that told you all you needed to know – and stepped inside.

  Once she’d closed the door behind her, there was nothing more to see, because Len Hopkins – being a secretive, mistrustful man – always closed his parlour curtains at night.

  It was just as well, in a way, he did close the curtains, Betty thought, because whatever was going on in there should certainly be shielded from the eyes of ordinary decent people.

  And yet she couldn’t help wishing that, just once, he’d forget and leave the curtains open.

  When Louisa picked up the phone, the voice on the other end of the line said, ‘This is Ellie Sutton. Could I speak to Louisa, please?’

  Ellie Sutton! Calling her! Louisa felt her heart start to pound just a little bit faster.

  ‘It’s for me, Mum,’ she called across the hallway.

  For me! she repeated in her head. And it’s Ellie Sutton!

  ‘Well make it quick, or your food will be completely spoiled,’ Paniatowski shouted back.

  Louisa didn’t care if her food did spoil. At the moment, she didn’t care if she never ate again.

  ‘Hi Ellie,’ she said.

  She knew the reply was inadequate. She knew she should say something much smarter and wittier when she was talking to the coolest girl in school. But she just couldn’t think of anything else.

  ‘It’s my seventeenth birthday on Friday, and Robert says I can have a big party,’ Ellie told her.

  ‘Who’s Robert?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘My dad! You must remember him. He gave a lecture to your year on some boring old subject or other.’

  ‘Dr Sutton!’ Louisa exclaimed. ‘He’s brilliant. The talk was all about local history, and—’

  ‘Yes, well, I’m glad you enjoyed it,’ Ellie interrupted. ‘But I didn’t call you to tell you about Robert – I called to tell you about the party!’

  But why would Ellie want to tell her about the party? Louisa wondered. Why would this cool girl – who she was surprised even knew that she existed – ring her at all?

  ‘Well?’ Ellie asked, a little impatiently.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Can you come?’

  ‘Me?’ Louisa gasped.

  ‘Of course you!’

  It was like a dream. It was better than a dream!

  ‘I’ll have to ask my . . .’ Louisa began.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Of course I can come – if you really want me to.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have asked if didn’t,’ Ellie replied. ‘See you in school.’

  As Louisa put down the phone, her hands were trembling. She’d have to handle this carefully, she thought – very, very carefully – or her mum would never let her go.

  The miners on the morning shift had started to come out of their houses now, and Betty Cousins shifted her attention from Len Hopkins’ unpromising front window to the men on the str
eet.

  There was Phil Drummond, whose wife – the poor deluded fool – thought he was giving her his full pay packet every Thursday, whereas the truth was that before it ever reached her hand, he’d already extracted a couple of quid which he would shamelessly waste backing the ponies.

  And there was Tony Clarke. His wife thought that when he went out on a Saturday it was to race pigeons, but Betty knew that what he was really doing was conducting a secret affair with – appropriately enough – a bus conductress.

  Betty was following the progress of these men down the street when she heard the scream, which was so loud that she almost dislocated her neck in twisting round to find out where it came from.

  And that was when she saw Susan Danvers again, standing outside the front door of Len Hopkins’ house – and making as much noise as a scalded cat.

  THREE

  Instead of wolfing down her omelette, as she would normally have done, Louisa pushed it listlessly around her plate.

  ‘Is there something wrong with your food?’ asked her mother.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Then why aren’t you eating it?’

  The truth was that she was too excited to eat, Louisa thought – but she knew instinctively that it would not be a good idea to tell her mother that.

  ‘How much longer do you think these power cuts are going to last, Mum?’ she asked.

  Paniatowski shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘It’s all the miners’ fault, isn’t it?’ Louisa said. ‘We’re all having to struggle in the dark, just because they’re on strike.’

  ‘That’s a bit judgemental, isn’t it?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Well, for a start, the miners aren’t on strike – they’re just not working any overtime. And it’s far too simplistic to say that it’s all their fault. You’re old enough now to stop simply seeing things in black and—’

  ‘Will there be a power cut on Friday?’ Louisa interrupted.

  ‘There’s a power cut every day. You know that,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘What’s so special about Friday?’

  ‘Nothing really,’ Louisa said. Then, deciding this was as good a time as any to make her play, she continued, ‘It’s just that that’s when Ellie Sutton’s got this birthday party.’