Rose by Martin Cruz Smith Page B

by bookmakers at racecourses hung from his shoulder. His prominent nose,set off by black smudges on his cheeks, was in crimson bloom.
    “I’m not drinking,” Smallbone said.
    “I can see that.”
    “I came in with the lads, I didn’t spend a penny, I was only being sociable. It’s a very friendly situation, The Young Prince.”
    “That’s what you tell Mrs. Smallbone?”
    “Mrs. Smallbone is another story.” Smallbone sighed as if his wife was a volume to herself, then brightened. “You’ve come to the right place, especially tonight. Oh, if you’d gone to The Harp.”
    “I was at The Harp.”
    “Irish. Is it me or is it dry in here?”
    Blair caught the barman’s attention and held up two fingers.
    “The fights at The Harp. Every night it’s one Irishman biting off the nose of another Irishman. They’re good men. Oh, there’s no one better for digging a hole than an Irishman. But for the day-in, day-out getting of coal there’s nothing like a Lancashireman.” Smallbone sighed as the gins arrived and took his before it hit the table. “Your Welshman, your Yorkshireman, but above all, your Lancashireman.”
    “Underground?”
    “So to speak. Your health.”
    They drank, Blair half his glass at a go, Smallbone with a careful, parsimonious sip—a man for the long haul.
    “You must have known the men who died in the fire.”
    “Knew them all. Worked with them thirty years, fathers and sons. Absent friends.” Smallbone doled himself another sip. “Well, not all. There are always miners from outside Wigan. Dayworkers. You never even know their last names. If they’re Welsh you call them Taffy, if they’re Irish they’re Paddy, and if they’re missing two fingers you call them Two Pints. As long as they can get coal, that’s all that matters.”
    A group of women entered. Respectable women were relegated to an area called the snug; their bustles would upset glasses if they even tried to make their way to the bar. These four, however, pushed through. Boldness was not the only difference: from the waist up they dressed in woolen head shawls and flannel shirts, but their sack skirts were rolled up to the waist like cummerbunds and sewn to stay permanently out of the way of their corduroy pants. Their hands were blue on one side, pink on the other, their faces raw and damp from washing.
    The bartender didn’t seem surprised. “Beers?”
    “Ales,” said the big girl with ginger hair. She told the other girls, “He’d forget his balls if they weren’t in a bag.” Her eyes roamed the pub until she noticed Blair. “You’re a photographer?”
    “No.”
    “I do photographs. My friend Rose and I pose in work clothes or Sunday dresses. We’re very popular.”
    “Rose who?”
    “My friend Rose. No artistic poses, if you know what I mean.”
    “I know what you mean,” Blair said.
    “Call me Flo.” Ale in hand, she approached his table. Her features were plain, but she had painted her lips and cheeks with enough rouge to look like a tinted photo. “You’re American.”
    “You have a good ear, Flo.”
    The compliment brought pink to her face. Her hair seemed to spring electrically from her shawl. She put Blair in mind of Queen Boadicea, the mad queen of the Britons who almost drove Caesar’s troops back into the sea.
    She said, “I like Americans. They don’t stand on ceremony.”
    “I don’t stand on any ceremony at all,” Blair promised her.
    “Not like someone from London.” There was a dramatic quality to Flo; London was clearly her equivalent of a nest of lice. “Members of Parliament who want to put honest girls out of work.” Her gaze swooped down on Smallbone. “And the little arse-kissers who help them.”
    Smallbone listened unprovoked, a pat of butter that wouldn’t melt in a furnace. She turned her attention back to Blair. “Could you see me in a factory? Flouncing around in a skirt, seeing to a bobbin here and a spool there? Going pale and deaf and tied to a machine?