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kind.
    Within the walls, cool and calm prevailed. All visitors were pacified, made respectful. John wandered down past the massive stone columns that flanked and dominated the nave, each minutely and geometrically patterned, supporting great arches that lured the eye up to a ribbed and vaulting ceiling. Craftsmanship and handiwork, impossibly fine! This was the model of how God should be glorified.
    He sat awhile in the pews, peering at a huge circular rose window set high in the east end – Christ in majesty, ringed by solemn saints. The light so cast was rare within this great shadowy space, and yet it seemed to John there was no want of translucence, as if some form of light were emanating through the very walls. Everything felt heightened, every step meaningful. Some visitors lit penny candles. Many more sat stolid, heads bowed. John wished to give his feeling a physical expression, some gesture of respect. He went to a column midway down the nave, traced on it with a finger, then pressed his cheek against the chill granite.
    He found his mother again, drifting down the nave.
    ‘I always get the shivers a bit in here,’ she murmured.
    ‘Do you want my jumper?’ John enquired.
    ‘No, pet, I mean it just feels cold to us. The mood of it. It’s beautiful and all that, of course. But there’s no …’ She shrugged. John could not concur. Audrey seemed to read as much. ‘Well of course,’ she added quickly, ‘it’s a very special place.’
    She paid ten pence and lit a candle, then they walked back by the west side, Audrey pausing before an alcove in which was set a coal-black memorial feature, etched with gilt letters, winged cherubs flying up both sides. An extravagant basket of flowers was placed on a step below. Suspended to the left, above the creamy pages of a book of remembrance, was a brass candle-lamp, which John recognised as identical to one Alec kept on his mantelpiece in Langley Park. He followed his mother’s gaze to the gilt inscription.
    REMEMBER BEFORE GOD
    THE DURHAM WORKERS WHO HAVE
    GIVEN THEIR LIVES IN THE PITS
    OF THIS COUNTRY AND THOSE WHO
    WORK IN DARKNESS AND DANGER
    IN THOSE PITS TODAY
    *
    John clasped his hands across his groin, straining to recall what little Alec had mentioned of that immemorial explosion at Easington. Eventually he chanced a glance at Audrey. But she was pressing a forefinger on the bridge of her spectacles between closed eyes, rubbing distractedly, and there was nothing he could read but that she was ‘cold’, tired, ready for home.
    *
    The Gore household had seemed at peace on a Sunday afternoon in high June, with Alec lodged in the visitor’s armchair, mugs of tea getting supped and cold meat pie consumed. Alec sucked his dentures for a while, looked first at John, then to the settee where Bill and Audrey sat.
    ‘I was thinkin’, does the bairn maybe fancy coming wi’ us to big meeting?’
    Bill blew out his lips as to say the thought hadn’t occurred. Audrey was nonplussed. ‘I doubt our John’s one for a miners’ gala.’
    John knew his father’s dislike, and his mother’s worry – that he dallied too much around Alec, failed to consort with his peers. But at least he wasn’t knocking about with all the little terrors at the shopping precinct. And Big Meeting was known to be a grand day out. Still, when he raised his voice to express a preference, it felt nonetheless like a minor treason.
    *
    Saturday, 15 July 1978, and the done thing for Big Meeting, it seemed, was to go by bus and get there by nine. So John rode a mere handful of stops and disembarked near the County Hospital. There stood his granddad, imperturbable in black gabardine, toting two plastic carriers – one stacked with Tupperware boxes, the other with four pint-bottles of Federation beer.
    ‘Got your bit bait, have you, son? What’s your mam given you?’
    John proffered up a single sandwich wrapped in tinfoil. Itseemed a small package in the sunlight, next to Alec’s heavy