The Coal Miner & The Conservative

"Yeah, she's a fucking mental case," said Paul. "A head full of bad wiring. I know it's tough, but we have to keep up this strike, let Thatcher and her government know they can't push us around."

"Yeah, I know, but it's not bloody easy," said Gary. "What are they going to chuck at us next? A tax on households, where you get taxed on number of people who live there, not on how much you earn?"

"Don't suggest that to the fucking Conservatives," said Julie. "They might actually do it."

"Let's see what's on TV, it might take your mind off things," said Paul. He turned on the television, but the first thing to appear was a news story on the strike, and a violent confrontation between the police and picketing miners in Wales.

Paul hastily changed the channel and said, "I mean, even if worst happens and mine closes, we could get other jobs."

"Yeah, what would we do?" asked Gary.

"What about your stepfather, Phil?" asked Paul. "What's the name of that gas platform he works on in the North Sea?"

"Piper Alpha," said Gary. He smiled wryly. "But Phil likes to pretend me and Kenny don't exist, so I think the chances of him helping me and you get jobs on Piper Alpha would be like Leicester City winning the Football League."

"Yeah, I guess so," said Paul. "Anyway, I don't know if I'd like to work on one of those platforms. Are they safe? If there was a gas explosion, what would happen, miles out at sea like that? Fuck, that would be real bad."

"I heard Phil saying to Mum that the safety on Piper Alpha is second to none," said Gary. "There's no chance of an explosion or fire."

"We could join police force," joked Paul sarcastically. "I mean, there's plenty of work for them at the moment. Every time we picket, they bus hundreds of them in."

"Yeah, we'd have work but nobody would ever speak to us again in this town," said Gary. "We'd be worse than scabs."

"Nah, bloody scabs are worse," said Julie. "At least with police, they're just doing their job. The scabs don't support their mates who are out on strike standing up for their jobs and their towns. Bloody hate scabs."

"How about hairdressing?" Paul suggested, smiling at his sister.

"Yeah," laughed Gary. "How about it Julie? Me and Paul can be your apprentices, and you can train us?"

"We'll learn real quick, we promise," said Paul. "We won't ask dumb questions, or nothing."

Julie laughed, her smile making her even prettier. "Yeah, that sounds like good idea. I'll talk to the boss on Monday. If I wanted to send hairdressing salon bankrupt by taking on you two clowns, I'd do it tomorrow. Then all three of us could be on dole together."

"I think hairdressing's out, mate," said Gary.

"Yeah," laughed Paul. He turned to his sister. "I forgot to ask, how was Granny this morning?"

"Okay at first," said Julie. "Then I was halfway through doing her hair and I went to the loo. I was gone about two minutes, and when I got back, she thought I were bloody Jehovah's Witness." Julie shook her head. "Dad were right, she has gone round bloody bend. I don't know how Uncle Tom and Aunty Betty cope with her, especially when she goes wandering off."

Paul, Gary and Julie looked at the television, where a special on the upcoming Los Angeles Olympic Games was playing.

"With Soviet Union, Romania, East Germany and all the other communist countries not taking part this year, I reckon Britain's got real chance of winning some medals," said Paul. "The Eastern bloc countries win bloody everything that the Americans don't."

"I saw one of the sports they have at games," said Gary. "Walking. How can walking be Olympic sport? Anyone can do it. We could do it, all you have to do is walk 42 kilometers."

"Yeah, we could do it easy," said Paul.

"I don't think it's quite so simple as that," said Julie.

"It's putting one foot in front of other," said Paul. "Hey Gary, what you say? We can represent Great Britain at walking, and we get a free trip to LA."

"Yeah, that's a great idea mate," said Gary. "We could win that event, easy."

"Then we'd get all the sponsorships, speaking tours, meet President Reagan, get our photos on cereal boxes," said Paul. "We'd be rich!" He laughed.

"Yeah, let's do it," laughed Gary, now much more cheerful than earlier.

"I think you two are bloody dreaming," said Julie good-naturedly, laughing along with Paul and Gary.

The segment on the Olympics finished, replaced by yet another news story on the miners' strike so Paul again changed the channel. On the next station there was a most familiar figure to the trio presenting a fundraising show in the English countryside somewhere. Flamboyantly dressed in a bright green suit, his untidy hair dyed blonde and smoking a very large cigar, the tall man clowned around with the elderly and middle-aged women in the audience, cracking jokes and repeating his well-known catchphrases in his broad Yorkshire accent.

"Jim fixes problems for people, perhaps he could help us fix strike if we wrote in?" suggested Gary.

"I think fixing strike is beyond even Jimmy," said Paul. "Although that's another job we could do. TV presenters."

"How's that?" Gary asked.

"Jimmy Savile, he was coalminer," said Paul.

"I never knew that," said Gary. "When was Jimmy coalminer?"

"During the war," said Paul. "He left school real young and worked in the pits. Like Dad said, it was real tough down there back then. So if Jimmy can get rich and famous, maybe we can too?"

Gary glanced at Julie who was watching the TV with a somewhat uncomfortable expression on her pretty face. "What's wrong?" Gary asked her.

"Don't mind her, she's scared of Jimmy Savile," laughed her brother.

"Shut up, Paul!" said Julie. "I was scared of Jimmy Savile when I was a kid, but I'm not now."

"Most normal kids get scared of ghosts, monsters, the dark, spiders, snakes, sharks, something like that," said Paul. "My sister, she gets scared of Jimmy Savile, a nice man on TV who helps people and who she's never even met."

Julie flipped her brother an obscene hand gesture as he and Gary laughed.

"You were scared of Jimmy Savile?" Gary asked Julie incredulously. "Why's that?"

"I don't know, there's just something about him I never liked," said Julie. "I can't really explain it. Thought he was creepy. I shouldn't feel that way, Jimmy Savile's one of the good guys. Look how much good work he does for charity."

"That's true," agreed Gary.

"I wonder if Dad will be late back from the allotment just to make a point?" Paul asked as he continued to watch the television, where Savile kissed the hand of an elderly lady, making her laugh with one of his jokes.

"Yeah probably," said Julie. "He always moans and groans so much when Aunt Hilda and Uncle Richard and our cousins visit. Lucky they don't come here very often."

While Gary had been friends with Paul and Julie since early childhood and knew their extended family, these relatives were people he had never met, always seeming to miss encountering them during their limited visits to Yorkshire. He felt he knew them, considering how much Mr. Carter complained about them as he had at breakfast earlier that morning, but nonetheless had not met them.

"I've never met your Aunt Hilda, Uncle Richard or their two kids," said Gary.

"You will get to meet the Thornton-Browne's in less than an hour, and you'll wish you hadn't," said Julie. "They're bloody awful."

"What are they like?" Gary asked.

"Tory twats," said Paul. "Aunt Hilda's about the biggest bloody snob you'll ever meet. Walking around with her bloody nose stuck up in the air, looking down at working-class people like us."

"With a bit more practice, you'll be just like our Dad," said Julie to her brother. "Although everything you said is true. Aunt Hilda's a cow."

"Yeah, she's nothing but a witch," said Paul.

"Witch spelled with a B," said Julie.

"But if your Aunt Hilda's from this town, why would she be such a snob?" asked Gary.

"Often, people who came from working class backgrounds who've gotten rich are much worse snobs than those who were born rich," said Paul. "Mum's sister is just like that. She was clever, got a scholarship to a fancy school, mixed with rich girls there, moved to London and married Uncle Richard who has heaps of money. Aunt Hilda hates to think that she grew up in working class family in Yorkshire coal town."

"If Aunt Hilda had her way, England would be like Berlin," said Julie.

"Berlin?" asked Gary.

"Yeah, you know how in Berlin they have wall to separate Western Zone from communist Eastern Zone?" said Julie. "Aunt Hilda would love it if there was a wall like that across England, only separating North from South. She and her family and friends could live in South in comfort and luxury, knowing us working class people from North can't cross it and ruin things."

Paul and Gary both laughed, imagining what a wall like that across England would actually be like.

"What about your Uncle Richard?" asked Gary.

"He's a banker," said Julie.

"Yeah, banker spelt with a W," said Paul.

"I weren't going to say it, but that's about right," said Julie.

"Does he really do gardening wearing tie, or was your Dad making that up?" asked Gary.

"Nah, that were true," said Paul.

"Yeah, they invited as down to London to visit them for long weekend a few years back," said Julie. "It were more one of those 'look how much more money we got than you' type of things. Anyway, we drive up to house - this big flash house in a posh suburb - and there's Uncle Richard, pruning the roses wearing shirt, collar and tie."

"Aunt Hilda made our Dad put the car out of sight where neighbors couldn't see it, and it didn't lower tone of the neighborhood," said Paul.

"Bet your Dad loved that," said Gary.

"Yeah, he were real mad about it," said Julie. "Uncle Richard's obsessed by making money. Never stops going on about it. Wish he'd give us some, if he's got so much of it."

"How about your cousins?" asked Gary. "What are their names? Can never remember."

"The son - the older - he's called Jonathon. He's bloody wanker, just like his Dad," said Paul.

"What does he do?" asked Gary.

"Goes to university most of time, studying masters' degree in Economics," said Julie. "Rest of time he works at his Dad's merchant bank."

"Then there's our other cousin," said Paul. "Miss Felicity Thornton-Browne."

"What's Felicity like?" asked Gary.

"Imagine me as a total bitch," said Julie.

"That's not hard," smirked Paul

"Oh, shut up," said Julie, chucking a cushion at her brother. "No, we just look alike. People have thought we were sisters. We were even born just week apart."

"Felicity loved that, you two being taken for sisters," smirked Paul.

"Yeah, stuck up little Southern cow couldn't stand it that her common, working-class Northern cousin got mistaken for her sister," said Julie.

"Remember how pissed off Felicity used to get when you said her name wrong when you were kids?" asked Paul.

"Oh yeah, I'd just about forgotten that," said Julie. She turned to Gary. "When I was a little girl, I couldn't say Felicity properly, I used to say 'Flissy' or 'Facility'. It drove her mad."

"I'll make sure I say her name right then," laughed Gary.

"You'll get your chance soon enough," said Paul, as he looked out the window. "They're here."

Gary looked out through the sitting room curtains. Parked outside the house was an expensive car, gleaming silver in colour. If a UFO had landed in the street, it could not have looked more out place than the Thornton-Browne's car. Gary hoped that Kenny and his neo-Nazi mates did not see the car, otherwise it might not be there very long.

The doorbell rang and Mary Carter came scurrying in, clearly flustered. "Kids, turn off the TV and come and say hello to your aunt, uncle and cousins," she said. "You too Gary. They're here early. I don't know where Gordon's gotten to. Told him to get home in plenty of time."

Paul and Julie followed their mother's direction, and with Gary stood at the staircase as Mrs. Carter opened the front door. If the car looked as out of place in the Yorkshire mining town as a flying saucer, the Thornton-Browne family looked as out of place as a group of aliens that emerged from the said UFO.

Hilda Thornton-Browne, a tall woman with who wore an ultra-conservative floral dress swept into the house, casting imperious glances around her, Gary unable to miss the fact that Mary Carter was completely intimidated by her older sister. He was also unable to miss that the woman's light-brown hair was styled somewhat like a much more famous woman who had taken the highest Government office in Britain in 1979, and who was anything but popular in the town.

The sisters kissed on the cheek. "Mary, you look so thin," said Mrs. Thornton-Browne. "It must be the stress of having a husband out of work."

"Well Gordon isn't actually out of work ..." stammered Mrs. Carter as her sister moved her index finger across a small table to see if there was any dust, before Hilda turned her attention to her niece and nephew.

"Hello children," she said, despite the fact that Paul and Julie were both adults.

Paul and Julie exchanged an exasperated glace, but maintained politeness. "Hello Aunt Hilda," they said.

Hilda Thornton-Browne noticed Gary for the first time. "Who is this young man?" she asked her sister.

"This is Gary, he rents our spare room," said Mary Carter.

"Yes, it must be hard to make ends meet in the current environment with a husband and son on strike instead of going out to work with only your cleaning wage and your daughter's low-income hairdressing job to support a family and you have to rent your room to strangers," said Mrs. Thornton-Browne, ignorant of the fact that Gary had known the family long before the coal strike.

Standing between Gary and Julie, Paul made a mooing sound under his breath, audible to his sister and friend but not to the others. Both began laughing, Hilda Thornton-Browne giving them a puzzled, haughty look.

The rest of the Thornton-Browne family had joined their matriarch. Richard Thornton-Browne, a tall and slender man with brown hair, wore a smug, superior look and had a posh, educated accent. Gary thought how he had detected not the slightest trace of a Northern accent in Mrs. Thornton-Browne's speech patterns, and pondered how she had rid herself of it so completely. As he shook hands with Mr. Thornton-Browne, who seemed over-dressed for a Saturday wearing a tie, beige shirt and trousers, Gary could feel the man looking down upon him as a medieval aristocrat might have regarded a peasant.

"So Gary, what is your occupation?" Mr. Thornton-Browne asked.

"I work on maintenance team in coal mine, with Paul and Mr. Carter," said Gary.

"So, you're not actually working at the moment then?" said Mr. Thornton-Browne.

"Guess not," said Gary.

"You guess correctly," said Richard Thornton-Browne, giving Gary a haughty look.

'Toffee-nosed tosser,' Gary thought, imagining the man in bed with his dick in his hand, wanking off over a girlie magazine. If Gary had been Richard Thornton-Browne, he would have probably gotten himself off by this method rather than screwing his wife. Still, they must have done it at least twice in their lives, the first in circa 1962 and the second time around 1964. The two pieces of evidence to prove this were standing in the house with their parents.

Jonathon Thornton-Browne was a typical public school type, and seemed to be a younger version of his father, both in looks and in personality. He was dressed more casually than his father, in a white shirt, white trousers and white shoes as though he was going out to play cricket, his jumper tied around his shoulder.

"Nice to meet you, Jon," said Gary as he shook Jonathon's hand.

"It's Jonathon," corrected the young man, regarding Gary with a snooty expression.

"Oh sorry," said Gary, as Paul and Julie smirked. "Jonathon it is then."

"Yes, Jonathon," Jonathon reminded Gary.

Gary pondered how long pretentious prat Jonathon would last in the coal mine - about half an hour if he was lucky - and also wondered if Jonathon would get his rocks off by indulging in solitary vices. Possibly, as none of the girls around here would give such a wanker the time of day, and this was assumedly true of all British girls. Even a slut like Angie's younger sister Sheree would keep her knickers on and up if Jonathon tried chatting her up.

The last member of the Thornton-Browne family introduced to Gary was the 19-year-old daughter, Felicity. Julie's description that she and Felicity looked very much alike was true; the two girls indeed would be taken for sisters more than cousins. Like Julie Felicity was blonde, although her long hair, kept in place with a white hairband was completely straight opposed to Julie's wavy hair. Again like Julie, the highlight of Felicity Thornton-Browne's exceptionally pretty face was her sparkling blue eyes. Felicity's perfect figure was dressed in a white blouse that showcased her shapely breasts, and three-quarter length white leggings that showed off her legs. The two girls were like two different versions of the same doll produced by a toy manufacturer; Julie the working-class, Northern version and Felicity the posh, Southern version.

"Hi, I'm Gary," said Gary, as he shook hands with Felicity.

"Hi Gary, I'm Felicity, it's very nice to meet you," said the pretty blonde as she returned his handshake with a smile.

Felicity's voice was undeniably posh, but unlike her mother, father and brother her greeting to Gary seemed genuine and polite. Maybe she wasn't as bad as the others, and Paul and Julie were unjust in their criticism of her, or exaggerating their cousin's negative qualities?

"Well, how about we have some tea and sandwiches in the kitchen?" Mary suggested.

"Yes, it would be nice to get something to eat before we check into our hotel," said Hilda.

Again, Julie, Paul and Gary exchanged a glance. The hotel Hilda Thornton-Browne spoke of was actually the pub where the wedding reception was to be held, but the woman obviously did not like to use common, working class expressions such as 'pub'.

Turning towards the kitchen, Gary enjoyed one of the best views of his life with Julie and Felicity walking in front of him. Two drop dead gorgeous 19-year-old blondes, both with bums to die for, one wearing tight denim jeans, the other tight white leggings through which the outline of her knickers were marginally visible. Feeling the stirrings of excitement in his groin, Gary frantically tried to think of something to prevent an embarrassing situation, and quickly found it in the form of Felicity's mother. Thinking about Hilda Thornton-Browne as she swept through the house as though she owned it, checking for dust as she had done earlier despite the fact that her sister was a tidy housekeeper, was enough to do it, and Gary did not have to feign a leg cramp or something similar.

"I think it's wonderful that Rebecca and Desmond are getting married before they start having their children, unlike so many irresponsible young people today," announced Hilda.

Julie, Paul and Gary raised their eyebrows to each other and discretely shook their heads. There was no way Gary was going to disclose to the woman that he was the father of a two-year-old daughter. He also could not miss the fact that Hilda referred to her niece as 'Rebecca' when the girl had always been referred to as 'Becky', and Becky's fiancée as 'Desmond', when he always was called 'Des'. Perhaps, like her awful son, shortening names was beneath Hilda Thornton-Browne?

"I'm looking forward to the wedding this afternoon," said Mary, ineffectively trying to think of something neutral to say.

"Yes, it will do you good to have something like Rebecca and Desmond's little wedding to take your mind off worrying about your husband and son being unemployed at the moment," said her older sister, again grouping people who were on strike with those out of work and on the dole. "At least Desmond and Rebecca have jobs, even though Desmond chooses to go around collecting other people's garbage. I always thought Rebecca had more potential than working in a shop, but if that's what makes her happy, I guess that's all that matters isn't it?"