The Menagerie

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘You can’t go inbye yet…bit of a hold up.’

  ‘Owt wrong?’ The query came quietly from a number of quarters.

  ‘Nothing serious.’

  ‘Why are they keepin’ them? They should be up by now, it’s long after four.’

  ‘They’ll be along shortly. There’s been a slight fall at the tail-gate end of number six.’

  ‘My bloody hideout,’ came a voice. Then with a short laugh: ‘I bet Geordie Burns has been rattling the foundations with his ruddy shuttle car.’

  ‘More likely young Broadhurst fired a shot in the face roof to release a chock, or put one under Bill Turner’s joy loader.’

  On a ripple of laughter came a censuring voice, saying, ‘Broadhurst’ll release those roof chocks once too often. Its illegal…it should never be done.’

  ‘Oh, illegal, my God! If we did nowt illegal there’d never be any coal got out. They’re shoutin’ enough about production now.’

  The voices trailed off and the men stood grouped together. Now and again a man’s eyes would slowly move and take in his surroundings as if he were only now becoming aware of them; which was more than likely, for in their scurryings to and from the coalface the roads became just roads, and here the conveyor belt, coming from number eight face and pouring the coal into the chutes, was not a piece of ingenuity that had saved the torturing grind of the ponies and the agonising sweat of men, it was now just a piece of accepted pit mechanism.

  The lights from their caps shone onto the others’ faces, showing them up with womanish whiteness against the dirty grey depth in which they stood.

  There was the sound of steps approaching from the shaft end of the road and the group turned as one and watched men up to twice their number turn off a side road near the stables and go into their own district. Then, without comment, they turned away again, and their eyes seemed now to focus on a door of about four feet high set in a recess.

  After a time the unity of their waiting began to split, and an oldish man sat down on a heap of stones and opened his bait tin, bringing his head down to shine the lamp onto its contents. The whole action caused a ripple to pass over the men, and they moved about and laughed, throwing quips at the unperturbed figure.

  ‘What’s it the day? Jam and breed again?’

  ‘Why, no, man. His missis has put him up chicken sandwiches and caviere.’

  ‘No! Go on!’

  ‘Aye; hasn’t she, Sam?’

  Sam said no word. He spoke little but he ate a lot, and slowly now he opened two slices of bread and there, to the amazed and amused eyes of the beholders, lay the thick creamy breast of a chicken with the deep-brown crisp skin still intact.

  A roar went up against the quippers, and a voice cried, ‘Divn’t let on, any of you, mind, aboot this. Let it be known that we bring chicken doon here and they’ll dock wor wages, they will, begod!’

  Sam’s eyes twinkled, and as he bit deeply into the sandwich the phone bell rang. The deputy went to the wall and, picking up the receiver, listened. After a number of nods, he said, ‘OK, Philip’; then turned to the men, saying, ‘It’s OK, you can get going.’

  In twos, they now moved towards the low door.

  Willie and John were once more together, and were the last to pass through. They did this bent double, and when they entered the mother gate their backs, although straighter, were still bent.

  When the blast hit Willie it came like a kick in his middle, and knocked him into a sitting position. He was aware of men tumbling about in front of him as the sound of the explosion vibrated around the walls. He had been sitting on the ground for what seemed minutes but what his alerted mind told him was no longer than a second or two. The air was thick with the mixture of grit and coal dust, and the space towards the air doors became choked with gasping men. Staggering drunkenly, they stumbled back into the roadway from which they had moved only a few minutes earlier. The deputy came out last, banging the door firmly behind him, and leant against a prop and drew in great gulps of the clean, circulating air; then pulling himself up, he gasped, ‘You all here?’

  He moved his lamp and counted, then going to the phone he tried to make contact with the affected area, but there was no response to his repeated hellos.

  The men were breathing more easily now, and their eyes were on him and their ears listening. They heard him get in touch with Johnson, the shift foreman, before he turned and said, ‘Get going to the shaft…except one or two of you. I want someone to come to the tailgate with me. Johnson’s in the Bottle district, he won’t be able to get here right away. They’re notifying up top.’

  There was a shuffling movement of all the men forward, and the deputy, who may have been thinking of wives and families, looked at Willie, saying, ‘You, Willie, you were at the back end and seem all right.’

  ‘Aye, Dep, I’m all right.’

  ‘I am an’ all, man.’

  ‘And me. I’m all right, man. I’ll only have to come back anyway.’

  ‘Well, you’ll come back with the rescue squad,’ said the deputy to the man in question, ‘but for the present, all get going. I won’t be but a few minutes after you. If any of them’s been near the tailgate and the return airway’s all right, I can signal along. Look, give Sam a hand there, he’s a bit shaken.’ He pointed to where Sam was sitting, once again on the heap of stones, his head drooping towards his knees. ‘Get him moving. You could stay at this point, Bob, and you, Stan, and I’ll phone you back if need be. Come on, Willie.’

  Willie moved to the deputy’s side, and from the expression on his face there was no indication of what he was thinking as together they moved into the darkness.

  They had gone some way when Willie asked, ‘What’s the chances?’

  ‘Hard to say, yet it wasn’t much. If it had been we wouldn’t be here now.’

  ‘God,’ said Willie, ‘I hope you’re right. Frank Broadhurst and Jack’s in there.’

  The deputy said nothing to this for a moment; then he said caustically, ‘Well, it’ll be news for their Larry…I hear he’s left.’

  Willie made no reply, and the deputy went on, ‘Dirty way of doing things, if you ask me. No notice, no nowt.’

  Even in such circumstances as these, a protest of defence was hot on Willie’s lips when the sound of a dull thud in the distance came to them. They both halted, and their eyes darting about them, seemed to feel at the air.

  ‘Current’s changed,’ said Willie.

  Swiftly now, they turned and ran. But having traversed but a few yards, they pulled up. The air current had once again changed and was back to normal. They stared at each other in the two beams of light, and the deputy said softly, ‘A fall could do that…change the air. That’s likely what it was. Are you going on?’

  ‘Aye, by all means.’

  Turning, they moved inbye once again, and as swiftly as the rough road permitted they made their way towards the tailgate, and it was when they were within actual sight of it that a sound as if the heavens were being split by thunder rang round them. In a split second they had gone down before the blast and were enveloped in a sheet of flame.

  Fighting now like madmen, they tore at their burning clothing. The deputy’s helmet together with his lamp rang against the stones behind the props, and Willie, in tearing off his coat and shirt, dislodged his own lamp. Frantically, he made an effort to save it, while fighting the flames around him. But, in so doing, precipitated it into a far crevice of the piled rocks.

  The flames out, and now in total darkness, Willie gasped, ‘Are you there, Dep?’

  The answer was a muffled groan, and Willie, moving towards the sound, touched the deputy where he lay on the bottom.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘It’s…me face…God!’

  ‘We’ve got to get moving.’

  ‘Oh, God Almighty!’

  ‘Look, grab hold of me belt…come on.’

  With one hand the deputy groped at Willie’s waist, and when Willie felt the tug at
his belt he moved round on his knees, grabbed at the rail of the tub track, and using it for a guide, he started the laborious journey back to the loading station.

  There was nothing but darkness, frightening darkness full of malevolent life; it was thick and heavy and had a power of pressure. Willie felt he was swallowing the blackness as he gulped the dust-filled air. The pace was excruciatingly slow, and they both kept their mouths as near the steel rails as was possible. Not more than a few minutes had passed in this way when the deputy gasped, ‘I’m gonna…leave loose, Willie. I canna get along like this. You…carry on…I’ll take me time.’

  ‘Like hell,’ said Willie. ‘You come on in front, and I’ll follow.’

  So saying, he crawled behind the deputy, and the slow-moving journey began again. Then, without any warning, the deputy’s crawling stopped abruptly, and Willie asked, ‘You all right, Dep?’

  There was no answer, and with a rising feeling of panic Willie’s hands moved over the prostrate man. He could feel his heart beating, so he guessed he had passed out with the pain, and thought it must have been an outsize pain to make Charlie Cock pass out, for he was as tough as they came.

  He had no means of reviving him, so all there was for it, his dizzy mind told him, was to get them both to hell out of here as quickly as possible. So, easing the deputy to one side, he put one arm about his naked body and with the other hand gripping the rail he dragged them inch by inch along in the everlasting blackness.

  Taking a rest for a moment, Willie’s mind began to reason. It must be ten minutes since the explosion. This road connected directly with the loading station. By now there should be lights dancing towards them, that’s if Bob and Stan hadn’t caught it an’ all. He should be seeing the lights any minute now…Well, he’d keep moving. It would be a shorter distance to walk, he encouraged himself.

  After a few more minutes, which seemed like an hour, he stopped again…abruptly. He knew now why there were no lights, no sound, nothing, only eternal quiet and darkness; and on the thought his teeth bit on the steel rail of the track. Then lifting his head, his grip tightened around the dep and he moved forward again. He would carry on, he told himself, until he came to the fall.

  Chapter Eleven: The Test

  ‘Darling, don’t be so impatient. We have all our lives in which to trot about the continent—what does a day or two matter? Didn’t you realise you’d need a passport?’

  ‘Yes, I realised that all right.’

  ‘Well, did you expect them to give you priority? Come on, let’s do a show. Something funny…that Victorian thing. One of the characters on the stills looked the image of that fellow who gave us a lift from York. Do you know, darling’—she snuggled closer into his arms on the couch—‘it was more fun begging lifts than coming primly by train. I enjoyed every minute of it. What do you say we do it from Calais? There’s no strike on there, it should be easy.’

  Her face was below his, and he looked searchingly into her eyes. Either she didn’t really mind roughing it or she was putting on a good act. He hated to think it was an act, but his common sense told him it was. Yet hadn’t she plumped for this third-rate place? A bedsitter with breakfast. It bore the smell of countless predecessors—its furniture was shabby and dirty—and the fact that he was being charged six guineas a week in advance was already beginning to have its effect. How long would his three hundred last at this rate, plus the eating out? For himself it wouldn’t matter, but he was developing a nightmarish dread of the time when she would be forced to compare what she had given up with what he was offering her.

  He wanted to get away. He wanted to get away from London and from England and as quickly as possible. There was an uneasiness about him whenever they went out—the fellow was in London. It was a thousand-to-one chance that they would meet, yet such long shots very often came off. But why was he worrying? She loved him, she worshipped him. Hadn’t last night proved it? Of one thing he was certain: no man had ever been loved as she loved him. There was a mad ecstasy in her loving that was the antithesis of her apparently cool, poised self. It had been a mad night, a night that had been impossible to foretaste in dreams.

  ‘Oh, darling, your arms are like iron. No, no’—she pushed his face aside—‘we’re going out. What time is it? Let me get up. Oh do, please.’

  The last was in the form of a command, and his hold slackened. And he despised himself as he watched her swing her feet from the couch and stand up—some tones of her voice had the power to put him in his place. But what was his place? Springing up, he caught her to him and kissed her with such fierceness that they both overbalanced and fell once again onto the couch. Here they lay looking at each other and laughing until she said, ‘My lord and master, now that you have proved your maleness may I get up?’

  He let her go, perturbed again in his mind that she could read him so easily, and perturbed also at her manner, which was new to him, bright and brittle.

  ‘What time is it?’

  He looked at his watch. ‘Quarter past six.’

  ‘It isn’t that, surely—it’s fast.’

  ‘It gains a bit, but only a minute or so. It was three when we came in, you know.’

  ‘Put that wireless on if the thing works. I bet it doesn’t, it looks so ancient. I’m going to have a wash. Do you think I dare ask the old dear for a bath tonight?’

  ‘Why not?’ Larry went to the old-fashioned set which was standing on top of a battered sideboard and fiddled with the knobs, and Pam, pouring some water from a jug into a bowl, said, ‘You know, darling, you can get lodgings for next to nothing in some parts of Italy, but not the Florence section. You’re not really struck on Florence, are you? Without waiting for his answer she went on. ‘The Duckans—they’re friends of Arlette, you know, my French friend—they lived for two years in an old villa. They rented half from a family who had a little farm. It didn’t cost the two of them more than three pounds a week, and they fed beautifully. Oh what a noise!’

  ‘It goes, anyway,’ said Larry, shouting above the voice of the announcer. ‘It’s the news. Good Lord, this watch is fast.’ He turned from the wireless, adding, ‘Strikes, strikes, strikes. We’ve all gone mad. But why worry. Where is the place you say?’

  ‘Twenty-seven miles from Rome. Oh Lord’—the soap skidded from her hands and shot over the linoleum and under the sideboard. Laughing, they both went down on their knees to retrieve it, and their shoulders touching, they turned, and slowly put their lips together and softly and gently kissed. It was a quiet moment, and they stared into each other’s eyes while the voice above them rambled on. Then the voice paused, and resumed the news on an altered tone in which there was that touch of personal regret used by some of the announcers to differentiate the sad from the gay.

  ‘It has just been announced that an explosion occurred at four-thirty today in the Venus coal mine, Fellburn, County Durham. The explosion has trapped twenty-eight men working at the face. It is feared there is little hope of finding the men alive. Also a deputy and another man from the ingoing shift, who went to investigate, are missing. They are believed to have been caught by a fall following the second explosion which blocked both the inroads and outroads of this section. The under-manager and the agent, who happened to be in another section of the mine at the time of the explosion, led a rescue team to clear the fall, behind which they believed the two men to be. Tapping has been heard from time to time.

  ‘This mine employs up to three thousand men. All those working in the mine at the time of the disaster have been withdrawn. The trained rescue squads of the mine have been reinforced by the permanent rescue corps from Houghton-le-Spring.’

  Rising slowly from his knees, Larry stared at the box from which the impersonal voice had set a seal on his life and actions. Pam, gazing up at him from the floor, suddenly jumped to her feet, crying, ‘Larry, don’t take it like that. Look at me…Larry.’

  As if he were just recovering from a stunning blow, he blinked and brought his dazed eyes
to her face. ‘Pam…my God!’

  ‘Listen, Larry. Come and sit down.’

  ‘No…wait a minute.’ He shrugged her hands off. ‘I’ve got to think…Pam, two hours ago—four o’clock—me Da and our Jack would be up by then.’

  ‘Of course they would. Come and sit down. Don’t take it so badly, dear. Poor souls. Oh, pits! They’re dreadful places. It’s the women I think of at a time like this.’

  ‘But what did that announcer say? He said the deputy and another man went to investigate, men from the ingoing shift. It could have been they weren’t up.’

  ‘Don’t be silly; you said they’d finish at four.’

  ‘They should do, but there’s no hard-and-fast rules. If something went wrong they’d want to put it right before the next shift took over.’

  ‘But it could have happened on any other face, or whatever it is, there’s so many of them. Look, my love, don’t worry. What can you do now? Come and sit down.’

  Gently she led him to the couch, and when seated, she gathered his rough hands into her smooth tapered ones. She was no longer bright and brittle, but tender. ‘You’ve left the pit, darling, and there’ll always be accidents in pits. You couldn’t do anything if you were there.’

  ‘I’m a trained rescue worker.’ His voice was dull and flat.

  ‘But there are dozens of trained rescue workers.’

  He swallowed, wetted his lips, then rubbed the moisture off with the back of his hand. This instinctive, earthy action was one he never indulged in when in her presence.

  ‘Larry, listen to me.’ Her voice, though still tender, was firm. ‘You’ve got to face up to this thing right now. It’s just as well it’s happened. The pit and all it entails is behind you. You have always wanted a new way of life—well, you are starting on it. There’ll be more accidents in the Venus pit, and in all the other pits. Look at the one in Easington in ’fifty-one. Then that one in Horden about two years ago. There’ll always be accidents.’