The following week, John and Pauline were sitting in a local pub, waiting for Michael. It was a weekday evening and quiet, with just a few couples and solitary drinkers talking in hushed tones around the bar. Pauline sat gazing sadly at her lonely drink sitting on a newly washed table, while John sat silently thinking about what to say. At that moment, Michael walked in and strode over to them.
“Hiya, can I get you anything?” asked Michael.
John and Pauline looked at their unfinished drinks and said almost in unison: “No, we’re fine, thanks.” Michael went to the bar, bought a pint and came and sat down with John and Pauline. Pauline was still gazing at her drink.
“Are you alright, Pauline?” asked Michael.
“Yeah, yeah, of course.”
“Are you sure?” asked Michael.
There was an awkward silence, broken eventually by John.
“Pauline’s had some bad news.”
“Really? What? Not a health issue, or…”
“No. no, not that,” Pauline said after another silence. “It’s just that I got a text today… I wasn’t in at work, you see… and so I got a text saying…”
“Saying what?” asked Michael.
“Saying that she was being made redundant from her job at the library,” John interjected.
“Oh, I’m sorry about that. There will be other jobs won’t there?” Michael replied.
“You’ve lived too long down in London, Michael. We don’t have quite the levels of, er… investment up here…or jobs,” John replied.
“No, we don’t,” Pauline adds gloomily. “And I love my job. I don’t want another job…”.
“What exactly did you do, Pauline?” asked Michael. “I know you’ve told me before and I should know, but anyway, well…”
“My main job is that of an archivist. I work to keep historical records and keep the heritage of the area alive.”
“Oh, right,” said Michael.
“I love it. I meet some really interesting people and I think I do a good job. Or at least I thought I did.”
“I am sure you do,” said Michael. “So it’s like a museum, then?”
“Yes. In a way. It helps to preserve the heritage of the area, the people’s stories, you know that kind of thing…”
“That sounds nice, but…”, replied Michael.
“But, what?” asked John
“Well all those mining stories and all that. It’s all gone. We all have to look to the future.”
“Yes. But it’s like driving a car, Michael,” Pauline suggested.
“Eh?”, replied Michael.
“Well, you have to keep your eyes on the road ahead, but you still look in your rear-view mirror from time to time don’t you?” Pauline replied.
“Yes…but… I don’t see…”
“Well, it’s the same with society. We need to think about how we got here just as much as we look forward to where we are going.”
The bookshop
The next day, Michael was at his new workplace in the morning and was able to complete his business by early afternoon. Having left the car at home, he went into town for the bus, when a display in a bookshop caught his eye. Having a few minutes to kill, he decided to go in and was immediately drawn by the local section. Whether it was because of the conversation with Pauline and John the previous evening, or the covers of the books just attracted him, we do not know, but whatever the reason, Michael began to flick through a book about the industrial heritage of the North East.
At first, he was really just idly looking at the pictures, but then began to read little bits here and there.
Slowly, but surely, childhood memories of the coal and shipbuilding came back to him, all the things that he had tried and managed to block out of his mind, when he took the train to London all those years ago.
Michael glanced at his phone and saw that it was time to go for the bus, but he couldn’t leave the shop. He stood transfixed reading and thinking and reading and thinking and reading and thinking… All the good memories and the bad memories, of the slag heaps, the smell of coal dust, going to the mouth of the Tyne with his parents and John and Pauline to watch a large oil tanker leaving the river… and of his favourite uncle who struggled so much to get through the year of the last great strike in 1984 and 1985 and the stories he heard and memories he had as a child of his uncle’s pit accident soon after the strike.
Michael had been there in the room, a boy in the background, when the police came round to the family house and said that his uncle was in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead.
Michael’s aunt had to get her friend from down the street and go along with her to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Michael’s uncle was still in Accident and Emergency, lying on a trolley still in his work gear, black with coal and desperately wanting a drink. Michael could remember his older cousin saying that she had seen her dad and immediately thought, “that’s not my dad.” She literally didn’t think that it was her dad and then she ran out of the hospital and sat under a tree crying. Michael remembered that her cousin had said that nurses had gone out and told her what had happened, while at the same time the doctors were telling Michael’s aunt.
A chain had snapped on a coal cutter and Michael’s uncle could only watch the chain going round his legs twice. This caused his fibula and tibia to be broken and he sustained a severely crushed ankle.
After this accident Michael’s uncle never went down the pit again. He spent two weeks in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital before spending another two weeks at the County Hospital in Durham and for another four weeks he was not allowed to work. Michael recalled that one day during the recovery, his cousin had seen her dad at hospital up on crutches for the first time and was happy but at the same time sad, because her mother had missed it.
The family had moved on and Michael had gone to London, but something was taking him back to the day he heard his cousin talk about the accident. As Michael sat in the bus home, he couldn’t help but notice was 12 minutes late, he looked out of the window and tried to shake the memories from his mind, but they lurked in the back of his mind, just like Michael himself had stood away in the corner of the front room, when the policeman had come round that day long ago.
Job talk
The next day Michael was sitting with Pauline in the kitchen of her house, slowly sipping a cup of tea. There was an awkward silence, which Pauline eventually broke.
“You never did say what your new job up here was…”
“No, well, it’s not very interesting…”
“Oh, just like you never really told us what you were doing down in London. I guess that wasn’t very interesting either?”
“Yeah, something like that…”
“Must be nice to be in that position, Michael…”
“Yeah, well…look I am sorry about your job and all that.. It really meant a lot to you, didn’t it?”
“Yes, of course. It should be the kind of job that would mean a lot to you as well…with your background.”
“I guess so…”
“Well, the job has gone now…”
“Well….”, Michael turned away from his sister.
“You know something, don’t you Michael?” Pauline asked
Michael turned his head away and gazed out of the window. He said nothing.
TO BE CONTINUED
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