Until Our Blood Is Dry by Kit Habianic

Author:Kit Habianic [Habianic, Kit]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909844551
Publisher: Parthian Books
Published: 2014-03-26T04:00:00+00:00

— 10 —

Summer dragged on, hotter and more oppressive by the day. Scrapper felt sluggish, weighed down by the stalemate, by the bills that piled up. His arms and back were stiff from under-use, muscles melting to reveal his bones. Even his body betrayed him. Red’s face was paler and thinner than before. Iwan’s hair had thicker streaks of grey. Angela walked as though wading through quicksand. He couldn’t forget her words: you were wrong to stand up to your bosses, wrong to back a strike you cannot win. Truth was, they had to win. Had no option but to keep going.

The more he thought about it, the more rage seeped from his pores. All of it came back to his butty. Of the many wrongs the boys had faced, that betrayal hurt him most. He made up his mind, at last, to find Matt, to talk to him. He needed to hear from his butty’s own lips what turned a solid class fighter into a scab.

Come Saturday night, the clock crawling towards closing time, he set off down the High Street on his bike. He rested his feet on the pedals and cruised down the road that wound below the coal tip, braking only when he reached the settlement below Ystrad. It was a ghost town, now, built for a coal seam long dug dry. There was nothing to keep anyone here. The lone terrace of two-up, two-down miners’ cottages was all but derelict, most of the dwellings boarded up and left to rot. In the middle was Matt’s house, lights off, curtains drawn upstairs and downstairs. Scrapper leaned his bike against the lamp-post across the street and parked his backside on the pavement to wait.

An owl hooted portents up in the fields, unnerving in a night as thick and warm as soup. He was dozing off when he heard footsteps running towards him. Hands slammed his shoulders, shoved him backwards.

‘Come to dish out more, have you?’ Matt loomed over him. ‘Despicable, holding an old woman prisoner at home.’

‘I wasn’t—’

‘Bad enough getting shunned and picketed, but Mam’s had a guts-full of the graffiti and silent phone calls.’

Matt stank of ale and sweat and fear, his eyes were sunken and rimmed red. Scrapper almost felt sorry for his butty. Everything he knew about mining, he had learned from Matt Price: the difference between the moaning of rocks settling into position and the rumble of rocks about to drop. How to hold a pickaxe and hold his drink.

He stood, rubbing the elbow that broke his fall. ‘I need to know why, Matt.’

‘Aye, cos you’ll understand.’

‘How the fuck can I, if you won’t say?’

Matt didn’t answer.

‘You’ve not got the balls to explain, have you, Matthew Price? You got no balls, no backbone, no loyalty to your butties.’

‘Loyalty,’ Matt echoed.

‘Yes, loyalty. All of us looked out for you. Fed you, stood you drinks. You’ve thrown all of it back in our faces.’

Matt balled his fists. Scrapper braced himself to get hit a second time.

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