Born Under Punches (33 page)

He read the title:

COLDWELL PICKET LINE VIOLENCE

Not the title he had given the piece, but he had expected them to change it.

Then he saw the byline:

By Stephen Larkin, Frontline Reporter

That was more like it. Frontline Reporter. That summed up his work. In the battle, at the front line. Sending missives as missiles, with words as incendiary and anything fired from a gun.

He nodded. Frontline Reporter.

Then in smaller letters underneath:

Additional Reporting by Doug Howe

A frisson of confusion. Who? Some staffer? What did that mean?

Then he looked at the photos chosen to accompany the piece:

Pickets pushing at a wall of plastic-shielded riot police. In the foreground an angry miner with crazed, hate-filled eyes clawing back one of the shields, looking as if he were about to rip the policeman's head off, the copper looking scared but stoical.

Pickets throwing makeshift missiles, some with faces covered by scarves and bandanas.

Police retreating along a debris-strewn street, firebombs nipping at their heels, pickets cheering their flight.

Library pictures. Not even from Coldwell.

He began to read.

By the second paragraph, he was stunned.

By the sixth paragraph, he was shaking with rage.

By the eighth paragraph, he was on his feet and walking quickly towards the editorial offices, the newspaper held tightly in his fist, his knuckles white.

Looking for answers.

‘What the fuck have you done?'

Bob Carr was standing, elbow on the bar, pint at his fingertips, laughing at a joke he was telling two other journalists. It involved a typesetter replacing the word ‘congenial' with ‘congenital'. His audience had heard it before and were laughing out of politeness. Bob was laughing so much he didn't notice.

All three turned at the voice. So did the rest of the Groat Bar's lunchtime trade.

‘Hello, Stephen.' Bob's tone was uncertain. Trepidation crept into his voice. ‘Seen the article?'

Larkin slapped the angrily scrunched-up newspaper down on the bar.

‘Yes, I've seen the fuckin' article.'

He looked about to explode.

‘Oh.' Bob turned to the other two journalists. ‘It's all right. Me and Stephen are going to have a chat.' The journalists moved away, already preparing an anecdote better than Bob's earlier one to tell on their return to work. He turned to the barman who was hovering, fists clenched, ready to wade in. ‘It's all right,' said Bob again. ‘He just needs a drink.'

‘I don't need a fuckin' drink.'

‘Get him a pint of lager.'

Larkin stared at Bob, eyes embers of anger. Bob, busying himself with paying, avoided returning the look.

The barman placed the lager down. Larkin ignored it.

‘It's there if you want it,' said Bob.

‘What I want,' said Larkin, his voice low and deep like underground lava looking for a fissure to erupt from, ‘is to know what happened to my fuckin' article.'

Bob swallowed. When he spoke, his voice was small.

‘We published it,' he said. ‘We paid you for it and published it.'

‘No, you didn't,' said Larkin. ‘You published something with my name on but that wasn't what I wrote.'

‘Well, we subbed it, obviously. Gave it a polish.'

Larkin found the fissure. ‘Subbed it? You fuckin' rewrote it! There's nothin' of mine in there, nothin'!'

‘Keep your voice down. You'll get us thrown out.'

‘I don't give a fuck!'

The barman appeared again.

‘Keep your voice down, please, sir. If you don't, I'm gonna ask you to leave.'

He flexed and cracked his knuckles, showed which part of his anatomy would be doing the asking.

‘He's all right,' said Bob. ‘We're just talking.'

Unconvinced yet unable to intercede, the barman moved away, keeping an eye on the situation.

Bob turned back to Larkin. ‘Your piece was good. Very good.'

‘So why did you fuck about with it?'

Bob opened his mouth, furrowed his brow. He chose his next words carefully.

‘You're a talented writer. An exceptionally talented one, I think. But you have some growing up to do still.'

‘Don't patronize me.'

‘I'm not patronizing you. I'm telling you the truth.'

Larkin took a step closer. So did the barman. Bob flinched.

‘I wrote about what was going on in Coldwell on Monday. What I saw. What I experienced. The truth. And what do I find when I open the paper? Propaganda, that's what. Poor me stories about injured policemen. Hate pieces about bullying, violent miners stopping honest folk from going to work. Nothing about what actually happened.'

Bob sighed.

‘Stephen. What you wrote was brilliant. But unfortunately we couldn't publish it as it was.'

‘Why not?'

‘Up till now you've dealt with the small stuff. The free press. The left-wing magazines. And it's fine for them. But if you want to write in the mainstream, you have to be prepared to compromise.'

‘Fuck off.'

‘It's the truth, Stephen. We've got a readership that comprises all sections of society. All sides. Miners and police. And we don't want to alienate them.'

He took a sip of his beer. Larkin remained silent.

‘Plus,' Bob continued, ‘we've got to think of the legal perspective. You can't go throwing around unsubstantiated allegations about the police.'

‘They're not unsubstantiated. I was there. I saw it happen.'

‘So where's the evidence? Where's the pictures?'

‘You know where they are.'

‘There you go. With them, we'd have had our article. Without them …'

Bob shrugged.

Larkin stared mutely ahead. The lava flowed away.

‘Your pint's there,' said Bob.

Larkin picked it up automatically, put it to his lips, stopped.

‘I don't want this.'

He placed it back on the bar.

‘Suit yourself.'

Bob took a mouthful of beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘You want some advice?' he said. ‘Phone Pears. Accept his offer.'

Larkin just looked at him.

‘Fuck you.'

‘What are you going to do, Stephen? Go back to the magazines with six readers, that pay nothing and think they're changing the world? You've got talent. And ambition. I told you yesterday. There's nothing for you here.'

‘Fuck you.'

‘Listen, I know you're upset. But listen. I had chances like you once. But I didn't take them. And I've always wished I had.'

Larkin looked at Bob standing there in his threadbare cardigan, his greasy-collared shirt, his dirty, breakfast-stained tie as if seeing him for the first time. A sad, middle-aged man. Not even a has-been, just a never-was. And he understood. Bob couldn't do it himself so, like the man who discovered Jackie Milburn, he wanted Larkin to have success so he could experience it vicariously.

‘Do yourself a favour. Phone Mike Pears.'

The barman had lost interest in them. The other two journalists were drinking up, ready to return to work.

Larkin turned and walked out.

Bob stood, watched him go. The other two journalists put down their glasses, made their way to the door. Bob downed the remains of his beer, reached for his jacket. As he did so, he noticed Larkin's untouched pint on the bar top.

‘Waste not, want not,' he said to himself.

He took a mouthful of beer and sat there alone.

A punter put a song on the jukebox:

Prince. ‘When Doves Cry'.

Bob took another sip of his beer.

This is what it sounds like.

‘Is that Dougie? Dougie Howden?'

‘Aye.'

‘It's Stephen. Stephen Larkin.'

Silence. Daytime TV rattled tinnily down the wire.

‘Stephen Larkin. The journalist.'

A sigh.

‘Oh, aye, bonny lad. Aye. Mind's wanderin'.'

The voice on the other end of the phone didn't sound like Dougie Howden. It belonged instead to an old man.

‘Listen. Have you seen tonight's paper?'

Another silence, then:

‘No, son, I haven't. Stopped gettin' the paper.'

‘OK. Well, I just wanted to let you know, there's a piece in it. It's about the strike in Coldwell and it's got my name on it but it's not written by me. Those aren't my words. OK?'

‘Aye, lad. I haven't seen it meself but I'll let people know.'

Dougie's voice: detached, somnolent.

It was Larkin's turn for silence.

‘Dougie … You all right?'

‘All right?' Dougie sighed. ‘Aye, I suppose I'm all right.'

‘Right. Well, I just wanted to let you know. About the article. I'm sorry, I had nothing to do with it.'

‘Never mind, son, you tried your best. We've all done our best.' Another sigh. ‘Aye, we've all done our best.'

Dougie's voice didn't just sound old, it sounded weary. Like he had put down a heavy weight he had been carrying for a very long time and was trying to find rest for his weary body.

‘Brutality and propaganda, he said. Aye. That's how they do it.' Dougie spoke dreamily, his words like clouds, as if he wasn't sure who he was talking to and didn't care. ‘They makiri' the world over with brutality and propaganda. Well, let them, eh? Let them. Aye.'

A click and a burr and Larkin was left holding a dead phone.

He replaced the payphone receiver, stepped outside the box.

Late afternoon in Newcastle city centre, back at Grey's Monument.

Movement all around him as commuters began the first stages of their journeys home, shoppers, bags bulging, deciding on one more store before calling it a day. And the unemployed, walking more slowly, less purposefully, with no immediate direction or reachable goal in sight. With one thing in common:

They were stopping to buy a paper.

They would open it on the bus or on the Metro or at home. Maybe they would read the article with his name on it – he couldn't call it his article – maybe they would only glance at it. They would see the headline, the photos. The opinion would be lodged. The message subliminally ingested, the side unconsciously chosen.

He wanted to rush up to the paper seller, knock over his stock, spill his money, shout: Don't read it! It's lies! It's not the truth, I know the truth! I'll tell you the truth!

But he didn't.

He just watched. People putting down coins, picking up newsprint.

He timed, he counted.

As it got busier, the stall averaged six or seven customers a minute. He calculated. Four hundred and twenty people an hour. For three or four hours. From just one seller.

That was what he was up against. That was-what he was fighting.

At the other side of the monument were two miners rattling buckets, Coal, Not Dole stickers on both the bucket and them. They looked tired, badly dressed, sallow-skinned. Occasionally passers-by would throw in some coins. They would smile, thank them, hand out stickers in return.

They didn't have as many customers as the paper seller. They didn't make nearly as much money.

That was what they were up against. That was what they were fighting.

Larkin turned away.

He had to think.

He had to meet Charlotte.

The first picture showed a tower block. Empty, but standing. The area around it had been cleared in expectation. A concrete and brick anachronism, out of place with its surroundings, its frame of reference. Its world.

The second picture showed the detonation. Charges placed at the base, blowing out the lower floors, decimating the foundations. The explosive cloud at its base like the lift-off for an Apollo rocket. It looked surprised, if a building could possess such characteristics. It wondered why it was alone, why it was falling instead of others being built to join it.

The third and final picture in the sequence. No longer a building, just a reductive, sprawled mass of brick, mortar and concrete, a fast-billowing dust storm rising overhead. What it had stood for was now unwanted. It couldn't change, it couldn't adapt, so it had to be destroyed. Now it was gone. Unmourned. The world it was a part of gone.

The Side photographic gallery. An exhibition of collapsing buildings by German photographer Dietmar Hacker. Hacker quoted in the exhibition leaflet: The present destroys the past. Every generation creates its own Year Zero. History is never built upon or learned from.

He was talking about his generation's attitudes to the Second World War, but Larkin found something closer to home in the collapsing buildings. His own collapsing beliefs.

He was killing time before meeting Charlotte. He looked at his watch, made his way out.

The city was in crepuscular transition: day wear to evening wear.

He walked to the Swing Bridge, wondering just how much worse his day could get.

He was the first one there. He stood against the old metal handrail of the bridge, watching the Tyne flow out and away from him. Lights were coming on along the quayside. It twinkled picture postcard: bars and restaurants with wish-you-were-here illumination, streets open and friendly. Behind the lights, pooled dark shadows, harsh and dangerous to step in.

Charlotte appeared, walking from the Newcastle side, dressed for an evening out.

He looked up, smiled. Waited for her in the middle of the bridge. Waited to meet her halfway.

She attempted to return his smile. It flitted about on her face like a swallow trapped in a barn. As she approached, her eyes widened once she took in Larkin's appearance.

‘Hello, Charlotte.'

He moved towards her, made to kiss her.

She flinched away.

‘What the hell happened to you?'

Her eyes were all over his face.

‘I got attacked in Coldwell. Beaten up.'