Lowborn by Kerry Hudson

Author:Kerry Hudson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473556423
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2019-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

17

Hetton-le-Hole

2018

The trip to Hetton-le-Hole didn’t start normally. It started at an award ceremony in Newcastle where I was to present some writing prizes that I’d judged. It was in a beautiful building at the university, there was a seating plan as you entered, I think there were even fake trees.

When I walked in nervously I saw someone I knew a little who immediately and efficiently said, ‘Who would you like to meet?’ I’d only just learned that when people say this it isn’t because they think you’ve come with a list for networking but instead because they are done talking to you and that’s the politest way to disentangle themselves. After wondering where people learn such things, I’d started answering, ‘No one really. But don’t worry, I can look after myself,’ before wishing them a good evening, giving them a wide smile and a squeeze on the arm, which is what I was taught to do in my world when letting someone down gently.

The seating arrangement told me I was at the top table with another writer, the director of the organisation, a TV historian and lots of important older men.

I wasn’t drinking because I was due to give my presentation later that evening. I’d squeezed myself into Spanx and I was incredibly hot. I sweated profusely and, though I was happy to celebrate the winning writers’ night and be part of a good organisation doing good things, sitting at that table with all it suggested made me uneasy.

The historian and I started talking. He was also working class and grew up in the region and we talked about this book, our childhoods. I’m incapable of small talk, I always have been. ‘The thing is, I think if you’re forced to change yourself to navigate a world that isn’t yours … well, it can make you a bit fractured. Turn you a bit weird.’

We leaned towards each other and though he appeared incredibly at ease – indeed, he was the star turn at the table – I wondered if he would also rather be seated further back or not at a lavish dinner at all. He told me that when he was first invited out socially by his university professor, along with some other students, he didn’t know what to say to him. In the academic setting he never faltered but outside he had no idea about ‘soft power’, he’d never been taught it.

I didn’t tell him that I’d never heard that term until he said it. Instead I smiled. ‘You excel at it now though, don’t you?’ He laughed. ‘Yeah, now I love it.’ Soft power. I thought of the way people so often seemed to be manoeuvring through the various rooms of life knowing dance steps that I was never given, coolly asking, ‘Who would you like to meet?’

After the dinner one of the older men at the table I’d spoken to briefly but who I’d found out little about except that he felt the Labour Party in Liverpool were horribly corrupt, came up and said to me, ‘Lovely to meet you.

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