Page 38 of The Way We Are Now

‘Les, as far as I know…’ I glanced across at Mum for confirmation, ‘…you were diagnosed as dyslexic. Nothing to do with intelligence.’ I remembered Mum and Dad always up at both the junior school and then the local comp that all three of us had gone to. As the youngest brother of two academic siblings, Les had run the gauntlet of ‘You can’t be David Piasecki’s brother!’ and ‘Why can’t you be more like your Anna?’ from the teachers there. Frustration at not understanding what was expected of him had led Les to disruptive behaviour at school and it was a good day all round for everyone when he was finally allowed to leave and go underground with my dad. His dark good looks and swaggering confidence meant he was never short of willing bedfellows, and he was happily playing the field. I once overheard Mum saying to Dad, ‘Our Les’d do it with a doughnut if he got the chance.’ Which I thought was pretty crude and not especially funny. Maybe I’d inherited some of Mum’s puritanism after all.

‘Anyway,’ Les was still going on, ‘you can stick your bloody teachers and education. University, like you and our David seem to love, was never on the cards for me. And look what all this education’s done for him: if he’d stopped at home and gone down the mine like everyone else round here, he’d not be having these misguided ideas – hey, do you like that word, Anna? Misguided – that he fancies men instead of women.’

‘You’re a bigot, Les,’ I said in disgust.

‘Oh, yeah? Well, if I knew what that meant, I might be able to agree with you one way or t’other. Anyhow, what you up to then, Anna Katarzyna? Thought you’d got your feet under the table with that NUM bloke – that John Dyson you’ve been hanging around with for a couple of months. And then, out the blue you’ve got some other bloke in tow. Who was he then? The bloke in the black Mini? Bit of a comedown is a Mini after Dyson’s Quattro. It’s all right for the bosses,’ Les went on, going off at a tangent, ‘we come out on strike to save their bloody jobs, but they still get paid and can afford to motor round in their posh cars.’

‘So, who was he then, Anna?’ Mum turned to me now.

‘Who was who, Mum?’ After a sleepless night tossing and turning thinking about Theo Mandeville, I was irritable. The fighting with my conscience as to how on earth I could go with him to his family’s hunt ball when, let’s face it, in the sixth form, I’d been more than up for going with a bunch of hunt saboteurs to disrupt the Rotherham Hunt’s Boxing Day Meet. Only my dad’s intervention, as well as going down with a post-Christmas flu bug, had kept me at home.

‘The boy in the black Mini?’

‘A friend from uni,’ I said dismissively, buttering toast. ‘Friend of Fliss’s actually.’ Why the hell had I said that? Theo had not, according to him, ever been a friend of Fliss’s.

‘Oh, the poor boy.’ Mum was immediately sympathetic. ‘Finding it hard to get over her? Needing someone to talk to?’

‘Something like that,’ I lied. ‘Got to dash. I’m late for work.’

‘Are you seeing John this evening?’

‘In his big fast Quattro.’ Les grinned. ‘Plenty of room in the back of that for a bit of…’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Mum and I spoke as one, Mum reaching over to slap him with the previous Sunday’s newspaper.

‘Come on,’ Les said, picking up a Tupperware box of Mothers Pride egg sandwiches and handing me my own made from Dad’s homemade bread, ‘I’ll walk down with you. Keep you company. Got a meeting about the Nottingham lot.’

‘And, no, Mum, I’m not seeing John Dyson. Today or ever again. I realised I don’t even like him. He’s arrogant, entitled and actually probably a misogynist.’

Mum and Les elbowed each other. ‘She’s swallowed that dictionary again…’ Mum started.

‘Misogynist,’ I said, ‘a man who dislikes, despises, women.’

‘What? John Dyson’s a queer an’ all?’ Les pulled a face of surprise. ‘No wonder you’ve given him the elbow. How can any red-blooded man not like women?’

‘It’s not a matter of liking or disliking women,’ I said, heading for the door. ‘It’s for men to see women as their equal, to see them as human beings and not just sex objects.’

‘When a bird goes down t’mine,’ Les said cheerfully, ‘and does a ten-hour day underground with a pickaxe, then I’ll see her as my equal.’

‘Well, you could start by stopping calling women birds.’ I shook my head at my little brother. ‘You’ve a lot to learn, Les…’

‘Oh, get off your damned soapbox, Anna, and live a little before you become a bitter old cat lady, all alone and without a man.’ Les gave me a friendly pat on the arm and set off at a run to catch up with two girls walking ahead of us.

So, is that what I needed to do? Get a life? Was I letting my social conscience come between me and falling in love? I knew I’d ended up in relationships with both Roddy McClellan and John Dyson, working for the miners’ union, not because I fancied them like mad but because I’d assumed – totally wrongly as it turned out – that they must have integrity and a sense of honesty as well as strong moral principles.

My head full of Theo Mandeville, there’d been little room in it to go over the altercation with John at work yesterday. I did hope he wasn’t going to come back into my office and take up where he left off. Kicking him in the balls probably wasn’t an option.

Dyson appeared to have taken a stance of sneery disdain towards me, making sure I saw him flirting outrageously with both Debs and Linda, but particularly the latter, outside my open office door.

When I went to make coffee for the men, Linda came straight in after me. ‘Is it all off with you and John then?’

‘It is.’

‘So, you wouldn’t mind if I… you know…’

‘Be my guest, Linda.’

‘Is that a sarky be my guest…’ Linda air-quoted the words, ‘or you honestly wouldn’t mind if I… you know…?’ Linda looked hopeful.