Swallow tattoo behind the ear

The swallows came back to the headstocks on Tuesday, a dozen of them stitching the air over the colliery yard as if nobody had told them the place was shut. Mam would have counted them. She always said you could tell the year by the first bird, and this year it was Tom Calder's boy who spotted them, shouting from the back lane with a bucket still in his hand.

I have been meaning to write since the funeral. Father Ryle asked after you, and I said you were somewhere past Hull with a job on the boats, which is true enough, though I think he heard the rest in my voice. The wages stopped in March. The club shut the week after, and the men stand about at the bottom of Front Street now with their hands in their pockets, looking up at the wheel as if it might turn of its own accord.

Your room is as you left it. I dust the sill on Sundays. There is a pencil drawing of a bird pinned above the bed, the one you did on the back of a ration book when you were nine, and I have never once taken it down. You always got the tail wrong. You said swallows fork their tails like scissors so they can turn quick in the air, and I never believed you until I watched them this week, cutting left and right over the slag heap like they owned the sky.

If you're coming home, come on the Thursday bus. Leave the boots in the chest. Mick says there will be work at the new pit in Ashington come autumn, and he has a cousin on the coal board who owes him a favour. I will keep the lamp lit in the window. The birds will find their way back whether we want them to or not, so I reckon we might as well.

Your loving brother, Danny