by A. J. Cronin
After dinner Robert walked down to the pit. He expected to find himself sacked. But he was not sacked. Dimly he realised that his friendship with Heddon, the miners’ agent, and with Harry Nugent of the Federation had helped him here. Fear of real trouble with the Union had saved his job for him at the Neptune.
He came straight home, sat reading by the fire, went silently to bed. Next morning the caller woke him, at two o’clock he was in the pit working the early fore shift.
All day long she prepared for his return in that same storm of unappeased bitterness. She would show him, make him pay… she kept looking at the clock, waiting for the hours to pass.
At the end of the shift he returned, dead beat and soaked to the skin. She prepared to wound him with her silent anger, but somehow the sight of him killed all the rankling in her heart.
“What’s like the matter?” she asked instinctively.
He leaned against the table, stifling his cough, gasping for breath.
“They’ve couped the cavils,” he said, meaning that the draw for positions in the Paradise had been overruled. “They’ve black-listed me, gi’en me the worst place in the whole district. A scabby three-foot roof. I’ve lay on my stomach in water, hewin’, all the shift.”
A throb of compassion beat within her. And with that beat of anguish something she had thought dead came painfully alive. She reached out her hands.
“Let me help ye, my lad. Let me help ye with your claes.”
She helped him strip the filthy sodden clothes. She helped him to the bath. She knew she still loved him.
NINE
David, five hundred feet underground and two miles from the main shaft, reckoned it was nearly bait time. He was in the Paradise, the Mixen-section of Paradise, the lowest level of the Neptune pit with Globe Coal two hundred feet above, and Five Quarter a hundred higher still. He had no watch, but the number of journeys he had made with his tubs from the flat to the landing gave him the clue. He stood beside Dick, his galloway, in the landing—where the full tubs which he, the horse putter, drove up, were hitched to the mechanical haulage and pulled outbye on the Paradise haulage road. He was waiting for Tally Brown to switch the empties. Though he hated the Paradise, David always liked the landing. It was cool, after a hot sweaty run, and he could stand upright without fear of banging his head.
While David waited he reflected on his own good fortune. He could barely believe it, that this should be his last Saturday in the Neptune. Not only his last Saturday; but his last day! No, he could not fully realise his luck.
He had always hated the pit. Some of the lads liked it, took to the work like a duck to water. But not he. Never! Perhaps his imagination was too vivid, he couldn’t lose the sense of being shut up, buried in these dark little warrens, deep down underground. He always remembered, too, in the Five Quarter Seam, that he was under the sea. Mr. Carmichael, the junior master at Bethel Street Council School, who had helped him over the scholarship, had told him the name of that queer sensation of feeling shut down. Deep underground; deep under the sea. While above the sun shone, the wind blew fresh, the waves broke white and lovely.
He always set himself stubbornly against that feeling. He’d be hanged if he’d give way to a thing like that. Yet, he was glad, glad to be leaving the Neptune, the more so as he had always had the odd notion that once a boy went down the pit, the pit claimed him, refused to let him go. Old pit-men said that, joking. In the darkness David laughed to himself, it was a joke, that, right enough.
Here Tally switched the empty tubs. David coupled them in a train of four, sprang on to the bar, clicked his tongue to Dick and set off down the pitch-black incline. Bang, bang went the tubs, jerking and crashing behind him on the badly laid track as he gathered speed. David prided himself on driving fast, of all the horse putters in the Paradise he could drive the fastest; and he was used to the banging of the tubs, he did not mind the din. What he did mind was the bother when a tub ran off; it nearly killed him, the raxing and straining to lift it back upon the line.
Down he went, down, down, smashing along at a glorious pace, balancing, guiding, knowing when to duck his head and when to throw his weight against the curve. It was reckless, terribly reckless, his father often checked him for driving so fast. But David loved the thrill of it. He drew up with a magnificent jolt at the putters’ flat.
Here, as he had anticipated, Ned Softley and Tom Reedy, the two hand putters who pushed the tubs from the coal face to the flat, were squatted in the refuge hole eating their bait.
“Come on, ye old beggor, and have yer snap,” Tom called out with his mouth full of bread and cheese, and he moved up the refuge hole to make room.
David liked Tom—a big, good-natured lad who had taken Joe’s place in the flat. He had often wondered where Joe had got to, what he was doing; and he wondered, too, why he missed Joe so little—Joe, after all, had been his mate. Perhaps it was because Tom Reedy had made so good a substitute: as genial as Joe, more willing to help with a run-off tub, less ready in the matter of lewd profanity. But though David was fond of Tom’s company he shook his head negatively:
“I’m going inbye, Tom.”
David really wanted to eat his bait with his father; whenever he got the chance he took his bait-poke and went in; he wasn’t going to miss it this last day.
The slant of the coal face was so low he had to bend himself double. The tunnel was like a rabbit run for size, so inky black his naked light, smoking a little, seemed hardly to carry a foot, and so wet, his feet made squelching noises as he plugged along. Once he hit his head against the hard scabby whinstone roof and swore gently.
When he reached the face his father and Slogger had not knocked off, but were still hewing coal to fill the empty tubs that Tom and Ned would shortly bring in. Stark naked except for boots and pit drawers, they were working bord and pillar. The place was awful, David knew, the work frightfully hard. He sat down on a dry bit, watching, waiting till they should finish. Robert, twisted sideways under the jud, was nicking the coal ready to bring it down. His breath came in short gasps, sweat ran out of every pore of his body, he looked done. There was no room to turn, the roof was so low it seemed to flatten him. Yet he worked tenaciously, with experience and wonderful skill. With him worked the Slogger. His enormous hairy torso and bull neck made him a titan beside Robert. He never spoke a word, kept chewing tobacco furiously, chewing and spitting and hewing. Yet David, with a quick pulse of gratitude, saw that he was saving his father, taking the heavy end of the stick, doing all the hardest bits himself. The sweat rained off Slogger’s bashed-in face, he bore no resemblance to the Pitboy Wonder.
At last they knocked off, wiped themselves with their singlets, slipped them on, came over and sat down.
“How, Davey?” said Robert when he saw his son.
“How again, dad?”
Harry Grace and Bob Ogle emerged from another heading and joined them. Hughie, his brother, followed silently. They all began to eat their bait.
To Davey, after a hard morning’s driving, the bread and cold bacon his mother had put up for him was delicious. He saw, however, that his father barely ate, merely drinking enormous draughts of cold tea from his bottle. And he had pie, too, in his poke. Since Robert and Martha had been reconciled she had made him the most appetising pokes. But Robert gave half of the pie to Slogger; he said he was not hungry.
“It ud take any mon’s appetite away,” remarked Harry Brace with a nod towards Robert’s heading. “It’s a bitch of a place for sure.”
“There’s no bloddy head room,” agreed Slogger, chewing pie with the noisy relish of a man whose missus usually gave him cut bread and dripping. “But this is bloddy good pie.”
“It’s the wet,” commented Ogle. “We hev it an’ all. Man, the roof fair bleeds water.”
There was a silence, broken only by the snoring of air through the wind-bore cast of the pump. The sound echoed in the darkness, mingled with the suck and gurgle of water through the lower sno
re-holes. Though they barely heard that sound, subconsciously each man approved it, aware, deep down within himself, that it meant the proper functioning of the pump.
Harry Brace turned to Robert.
“It’s not as wet as in the Scupper, though.”
“No!” said Robert quietly, “we’re well out o’ that sheugh.”
Slogger said:
“If the wet irks ye, Harry, lad, ye better ask the missus for a clout.”
Everybody laughed. Carried away by his success, Slogger gaily nudged David in the ribs.
“You’re a clivor young fella, Davey. Can ye do anything about my wet backside?”
“What about kicking it?” Davey suggested dryly.
There was a louder laugh than ever. Slogger grinned: in the dim light of that dark place he looked like some gay gigantic devil bent on a rich Satanic jest.
“Good lad! Good lad! That would warm it reet enough.” He approved Davey, taking his measure with one white eye. “Ye are a clivor fella after all. Is’t true what I hear, that yer goin’ te the Baddeley College to teach all the professors in Tynecassel?”
David said:
“I hope they’ll teach me, Slogger.”
“But for why in all the world are ye going?” expostulated Slogger with a wink at Robert. “Don’t ye want to grow up a proper collier like me wi’ an elegant figger an’ face? An’ a canny bit o’ money tucked away in the Fiddler’s bank.”
This time Robert did not see the joke.
“He’s going because I want him to get out of this,” he said sternly; and the burning stress he laid upon that word silenced them all. “He’s taken his chance. He’s worked hard, has got his scholarship, he goes to Tynecastle Monday.”
There was a pause, then Hughie, the silent one, suddenly declared:
“I wish I could get the length of Tynecassel. I’d fair love to see the United regular.” The longing in Hughie’s voice made Slogger laugh again.
“Don’t ye worry, lad.” He slapped Hughie on the back. “Ye’ll be playin’ for the United yerself one of they days. I’ve seen ye, I know what ye can do. Mon, I heard the Tynecassel spotter wor coming down to watch ye at the next Sleescale match.”
Hughie coloured under his dirt. He knew Slogger was pulling his leg. But he didn’t care. He’d get there one day, for all their jokes. He’d show them, and show them soon, he would!
All at once Brace lifted his head, cocked one ear towards the slant.
“Hey!” he exclaimed, “what’s like the matter wi’ the pump?”
Slogger stopped chewing, every one sat perfectly still, listening into the darkness. The snoring of the pump had stopped. For a full minute none of them spoke. David felt a queer cold pricking run down his spine.
“Dammit,” Slogger said slowly with a sort of obtuse wonder. “Will ye lissen to that! The pump has let up on us.”
Ogle, who was not long working in the Paradise, got to his feet and felt for the feeder. Hastily, he called out:
“The level’s rising. There’s more water here. A heap more water.” He paused, fumbling about with his arm in the water of the feeder; then, with sudden anxiety: “I’ll better fetch the deputy.”
“Wait!” Robert stopped him with a sudden sharp command; then in a reasoning tone he added: “Don’t be runnin’ outbye like a bairn, mon. Let Dinning bide where he is. Hover a bit! Hover a bit! There’s never any trouble with a bucket pump. And there’s nowt serious the matter wi’ this pump. It’s only some sludge choked up the clack. I’ll see to it myself.”
He got up in a quiet, unhurried style and went down the slant. The others waited, not speaking. In five minutes there came the slow suck of the cleared valve, the throaty gurgle of the restarted pump. Another three minutes and the healthy snoring was restored. The tension binding the men relaxed. A great sense of pride in his father’s knowledge broke over David.
“I’ll be damned…” Ogle sighed.
Slogger derided him.
“Don’t ye know there’s niver need to worry wi’ Robert Fenwick in the sett. Come on and fill some tubs. You’ll addle nowt by sittin’ here all day.” He rose, tugged off his singlet; Brace, Hughie and Ogle went back to their heading; David started towards his tubs, passing Robert as he came down the dip.
“You made short work o’ that, Robert,” Slogger said. “Ogle nearly had us roofed!” and he laughed extravagantly.
But Robert did not laugh. He pulled off his singlet with a curiously remote expression on his drawn face. Then he threw it down without looking. The singlet fell in a puddle of water.
They restarted. Swinging their picks, cutting, bringing down the coal. The sweat broke out on them again. The pit dirt clogged their skin. Five hundred feet down, two miles from shaft bottom. The moisture seeped slowly from the roof, it dropped incessantly like unseen rain in a pitch-dark night. And over and above it all there rose the measured stertor of the pump.
TEN
At the end of that shift David led his galloway to the stables and saw him comfortable.
This was the worst bit of all, he had known it would be the worst of all, but it was worse even than he had thought. With firm strokes David caressed the pony’s neck. Dick turned his long head, seemed to look at David with those soft blind eyes, then nuzzled towards the pocket of his jacket. Often David saved a bit of bread from his bait, or maybe a biscuit. But to-day there was something special; he pulled out a lump of cheese—Dick went simply mad about cheese—and slowly fed the pony, breaking off little pieces, holding them flat on his palm, spinning out the pleasure for Dick and for himself. The wet velvety feel of the galloway’s muzzle on his hand brought a lump to his throat. He slowly rubbed his wet hand on the lapel of his jacket, took a last look at Dick and went rapidly away.
He walked outbye down the main road, passing the place where a fall of roof had killed three men the year before: Harrower, and the two brothers Neil and Allen Preston, he had been there when they dug them out, all mangled, flattened, their chests caved in and bloody, their mouths pressed full of dirt. David would never forget that fall. He always walked slower under the place with a stubborn determination to show that he was not afraid.
Along the road he was joined by Tom Reedy and his brother Jack, Softley, Ogle, young Cha Leeming, son of the Slogger, by Dan Teasdale and some others. They reached the shaft bottom where a big crowd stood waiting to ride the bank, jammed together yet patient. The cage was single and could take only twelve persons at a time. Besides the Paradise the cage was serving Globe and Five Quarter Coal, the levels above. David found himself squeezed next to Wept, away from the larking of Tom Reedy and Softly. Wept fixed him with his dark, intense gaze.
“Ye’re going to college, then, to Tynecassel?”
David nodded. Again it seemed to him too strange to be real. Perhaps he was a little worn by the last six months, the strain of working by night, of studying with Mr. Carmichael, whirling to Tynecastle to sit the scholarship, learning joyfully of the result. The silent struggle between his mother and his father had worried him too: Robert doggedly intent that he should get the scholarship and leave the pit, Martha equally determined he should remain. When the news had come of his success, she had said nothing, not one word. She had not even prepared his clothes for his departure, she would have no hand in it, she would not.
“Ye must mind Tynecassel, lad,” Wept said. “Ye’re takin’ your journey into the wilderness where they meet with darkness in the daytime and grope in the noonday as in the night. Here!” He slipped his hand into his inside pocket and pulled out a thin folded finger-marked booklet much soiled by coal dust. “You’ll find counsel in this! It’s been good company to me many a bait time in this very pit.”
David took the tract, colouring. He did not want it; at the same time he did not want to hurt Wept’s feelings. Awkwardly he turned the pages—the light was bad, he could barely see, but he could think of nothing else to do. Suddenly his lamp flickered and a phrase leaped up to him: No servant can serve t
wo masters, ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Wept watched him with intent eyes. Over his shoulder Tom Reedy whispered slyly:
“Has he gi’en ye the winner of the three o’clock?”
Around him the men were beginning to sway. The cage crashed down. From the back someone shouted:
“All in, lads! All in.”
There was a rush, the usual squash for places. David jammed in with the rest. The cage lifted, swishing up the guides, up, up as though plucked by a gigantic hand. Daylight came flooding down to meet it. There came a clang, the bar lifted, the men crushed out into the sweet daylight as though welded in a solid mass.
David clattered down the steps with the men, crossed the pit yard, took his place in the pay line outside the offices. It was a bright June day. The hard outline of the headgear, stocks and spinning pulleys, even the smoking upcast stack, was softened by the languid beauty of the day. A wonderful day to be leaving the pit.
The line moved slowly forward. David saw his father come out of the cage, he had been the last to ride the bank, and take his place right at the end of the line. Then he observed the dogcart from the Law drive through the yard gates. The occurrence of the dogcart was quite normal: every pay-Saturday Richard Barras drove down to the offices while the men stood lined up for their envelopes. It was a sort of ritual.
The dogcart took a neat sweep, its yellow spokes flashing in the sun, and brought up opposite the offices. Richard Barras descended, holding himself erect, and disappeared through the main door of the offices. Bartley was already at the horse’s head. Arthur Barras, who had been wedged between the two, remained seated in the dogcart.
From a distance, as he moved slowly forward, David studied Arthur; wondered about him idly. Without in the least knowing why, he felt a strange sympathy for Arthur; an extremely odd sensation, peculiar, paradoxical almost, as if he were sorry for Arthur. It was ridiculous considering their respective situations. Yet the small boy, undersized for his age, perched all by himself upon the seat of the dogcart with his soft fair hair ruffled by the breeze, looked so very much alone. He invoked protection. And he was so serious, his gravity, his serious preoccupation lay upon him like a sadness. When he discovered that he was pitying Arthur Barras David almost laughed aloud.