Free The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher

narrow streets like cliffs. The great noise, mysterious in the streets, continued day and night; those blast furnaces could never be shut down, and men poured in and out at unexpected times. Each man had his fiery function, and as they left their work, their eyes seemed soft, dazzled by the white-hot glare even through their smoked goggles. Francis saw none of it: he did not see the city that had made fire out of water. The rivers were hidden under a mountain of brick; the fires were deep inside those mausoleums. Only occasionally did a black river burst out for a stretch; only occasionally did a warm orange glow against a dark window suggest the fury happening within.
    The city had been made by fire out of water. And there was the earth, too, which Francis did see something of. Around the city, in earthworks and diggings, coal was still heaved to the surface. It was everywhere. The city made its money from steel; it was driven by its waters; it was built on coal.
    Francis saw almost none of this, as they drove into Sheffield for the first time. He saw a nightmare terror of a landscape; he ascribed evil to it. He had no means of seeing the money and power that these sights produced; he saw black waste, and bursts of fire, and smelt that hard, mineral smell. But he should have looked: in 1974, Sheffield’s splendour was coming to an end.
    And the motorway, with its raw, uncouth society of fire and mineral gave way now to something like a town: shops, offices, glass buildings, bridges and, at last, people. “I don’t remember any of this,” Sandra said. It was a shock to hear a voice in the car: they’d been quiet since the Sheffield turn-off.
    “No, you wouldn’t,” Bernie said. “We came up by train, don’t you remember?” She subsided again; that wasn’t what she’d meant, Francis could tell. She was mostly just complaining.
    “I’d feel a lot easier if we could see the van,” Alice said.
    “It’ll be at the house by now,” Bernie said. “We’ll go up there to make sure, and then we’ll go off to the hotel. The men won’t want to start unpacking tonight.”
    “Where are they going to stay?” Francis asked.
    “They’ll have made arrangements,” Alice said.
    .   .   .
    Daniel, Jane and Tim drew the curtains and switched on the television. They watched Why Don’t You? —Tim fervently, Daniel making sarcastic remarks about the sort of kids who go on telly. Tim wanted to watch Blue Peter , but Daniel got up before it started and turned over to watch The Tomorrow People . Then the cartoon—it was Ludwig , which was rubbish. “Where’s Mum and Dad?” Jane said. They were always home by now—they generally coincided, except on Fridays when Malcolm stayed late and Katherine came home before him on the bus.
    The news started. It was boring. There was going to be an election. There’d been one before, Daniel remembered, and that had been boring too, because at school they talked to you about it and tried to get you to say who you’d vote for if you’d got a vote. At school, most of the kids said they were Labour but that was only because their parents were. There was one kid who said he was Liberal but everyone called him a poof, because the Liberals were poofs, everyone knew that. Sometimes Daniel said he was Labour but at others he said he was Conservative and once he told a girl he thought Communism was best. He didn’t really care. They were all old and boring.
    “I think the Conservatives are going to come first,” Tim said, “and the Labour are going to come second and the Liberals are going to come third. That’s what I think.”
    “Why do you think that?” Jane said, but Tim didn’t know.
    They’d stopped talking. Even when Nationwide came on, and there was a story about a dog that drank beer, they didn’t say much. It was nearly seven o’clock before they heard the key in the lock. It was their mother. She looked tired and angry; for once her hair was untidy—she’d not