Free The Storytellers by Robert Mercer-Nairne

trucks would drive from the yard, single file, at slow speed, so that the photographers, who would already have taken up positions beyond the gate, could get some action shots of the gauntlet his two sons and three other drivers would have to run. The rest would be down to the stories accompanying the images which he was confident, following his and Doreen’s hospitality, would be well weighted in their favour.
    * * *
    They’d arrived around 9.00 a.m. and it was now approaching midday. The van had kept its engine running, but Jack was trying to conserve fuel and the three inside the Cortina were numb with cold. Max’s ‘for Christ’s sake, Jack. You’re a bleeding shop steward. You can get as much fucking fuel as you want!’ had yielded nothing. Jack had not wanted to get into the subtle difference between a shop steward and an organizer, which he was, and expose the limitations of his power. Real power would come later. For now his priority was to conserve sufficient fuel to get himself back to Oxford where heexpected an enthusiastic Miranda would be waiting to welcome him from the revolutionary front.
    â€œHere we go,” Max said as people started to emerge from the house adjacent to the yard.
    â€œAre those reporters?” Jack asked, seeing cameras slung over the shoulders of some of those exiting the building.
    Things were at last looking up: action and limelight, his twin passions. Stiffly the three eased themselves from the car. But like reptiles emerging from the night’s cool air, it was taking time for their metabolisms to become fully charged.
    Next to them bodies tumbled from the warm van and it was clear these had not been idle. A playing card fell to the ground and Jack noticed what looked like an empty bottle tucked under one of the back seats. The heavies stamped the ground like bulls and watched their breath vaporize into steam.
    â€œHad a good morning boys?” one of the cameramen mocked, as he passed through the open gate.
    â€œFair to middling,” a heavy replied, eyeing the cameramen up with obvious distaste. Their kind of work was best practised away from public gaze.
    As the photographers and journalists clustered on one side of the road, the Kingsbury boys stood ready on the other, the side the tanker drivers would be on when they finally made a run for it. Max drifted over to join them, but Jack and John Preston stayed with the press.
    The confrontation started in surreal slow motion. At a crawl, the five tankers, headlights blazing, moved out of the yard towards the gate, one after another. The throbbing sound of their engines swallowed up the space around them, obliterating the outside world. Three of the pickets moved to the centre of the road. The photographers moved behind them to get shots of the first vehicle approaching the human barrier. Its driver appeared heavily dressed, with a grey woollen hat, but his youthful features were evident.
    As the cameras clicked like castanets and the first truck pulled level with the van, the driver was dragged from the cab, becoming invisible to the onlookers. A rain of blows fell onto him from boots with metal caps as the truck lurched to one side, scattering journalists and cameramen, and only just missing the Cortina, before sliding drunkenly into a ditch.
    Barely audible, the cry came up from Max: “Jesus, it’s a bloody wench!”
    Against her father’s orders, Abigail had persuaded her brothers to let her drive the first truck. ‘It’ll show them at their worst,’ she’d said.
    And now she lay by the side of the road, bloodied and beaten, her long hair clearly visible beside her grey hat.
    Incensed, the Kingsbury men reached inside the van for clubs just as the cameramen grasped what had happened and descended on the prostrate girl like vultures. As fast as they snapped, their cameras were grabbed from them and smashed to pieces on the frozen ground.
    By now Abigail’s