MORNING SERIAL
THE old man had nodded to those he knew, acquaintances and former students, comrades he would have said once, all come to acknowledge the deceased eighty-year-old who had once had his teeth smashed out in police cells, couriered Russian gold through Nazi Germany, served as a political commissar in Spain, saw people killed there by decree, maybe even approved of it, and later through various modes of compromise led his union tightly and well.
A proper leader, his old man would snarl, not a narcissistic Boy Scout. Billy had seen Will Paynter once, in his retirement, shoulder to shoulder with the old man. Same height, short, and his breadth wide, and his temperament stubborn. Billy had photographed them, never seeing hero-worship in the old man’s eyes before. The camera failed to capture it.
His old man had winced and drifted when Billy stood off the path to snap the bareheaded, dark-suited men who walked up in clusters to the crematorium. Some old timers. Current leaders and officials, of a later time and different ilk.
Like a family that was cold shouldering itself. Scargill at the centre of a bristling group. Greeted and shunned. Billy clicked. The old man was one of those to be called to speak. The NUM President would have to listen, standing at the back. The old man had been measured about the life, but icy as to its meaning.
When the old man mentioned the General Strike and Lockout of 1926 it was not a banner to be waved but a shiver to be suffered. Resilience was always limited, he said. A union was not to be tested to destruction, he said. There was never one last punch to deliver. The President was grim and scornful but the family quarrel was open from then on.
His old man had predicted the way sense would finally be seen. He refused to give Ceri any credit for seeing it. For him that particular recanting had come too late and was as calculated, if self-interest allied to emotion was any kind of forethought, as the earlier embrace of madcap confrontation.
> The Crossing by Dai Smith is published by Parthian in the Modern Wales series www.parthianbooks.com
CONTINUES TOMORROW