Guy Fawkes Day
Page 22
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Westminster Underground Station: 6:OO p.m.
The passageway led off the side tunnel. Behind him, Neil Smedley could still hear the other lads drilling in the main tunnel. In front, the passage narrowed, veered to the left and rose. The canvas bag was cutting through his coveralls into his shoulder. Droplets of sweat clustered cold on his forehead. No stranger to the dark and damp, Smedley scanned the side of the passage for the padlocked grille. He smelt the damp iron before the beam of his headlamp revealed its shape. The feel was familiar; he had severed it only the week before, using a blowtorch to cut it where the four metal joints were riveted to the stonework. The grille came away smooth and heavy in his miner’s hands and he rested it against the passage wall, taking care not to echo its removal to distant ears.
Crouching at the entrance, Smedley peered into the shaft then crammed the canvas bag inside the aperture. He had to twist his shoulders sideways to squeeze his head and torso into the shaft, and the pressure of his head pushed the bag a few grudging inches along. His shoulders pressed so tightly against the sides of the passage it seemed impossible he could ever propel himself forward. But he had done it before. It had nearly cost him dearly each time, but he knew his mission as feasible.
Once his whole frame was inside, it took skill and a good deal of grunting to manoeuvre the grille back across the entrance—an excessive precaution, perhaps, but Smedley was a fastidious man. From here on he would reacquaint himself with the torture of the crawl, nudging the canvas bag yard by yard along the vent till he reached his destination.
It did not take long before his shoulders and lungs burned with oxygen deprivation and he could feel rivulets of hot sweat coursing in syrupy beads inside his coveralls. He started counting, just as he had counted when he had done those other painful runs. Push, breath, one. Push, breath, two. Push, breath, three. Head giddy and screaming for air. Push, breath, again. Think of the anger, Neil! Push, breath, again. All these years on there was still one son of a miner from Thornton Colliery who didn’t like the view from the top of the slagheap where They had chucked his dad and all his mates.
Push, breath, again. And why’d they closed ’t bloody pit?—’cause they can buy coal cheaper from Poland, Neil lad. Market economics, int’it? Push, breath, again. And what a bloody brave new world Free Market Britannia had become—a nation of insurance peddlers, security guards, switchboard operators, investment fund jugglers and burger flippers. Push, breath again.
Sod that! When she was alive, Thatcher thought she’d break us up by ripping our communities apart. Then big business bought out the Labour Party, filled its ranks with free market stooges and made it ‘t same as t’ bloody Tories. Aye, then you won’t get no more trouble from ‘t buggers! Push, breath, again. Instead of a job for life with real money, benefits and rights, we’ll take all them part-time and temporary jobs, paid by the hour and shat on for life. Push, breath, again. Just enough for a couple of pints of lager and a National Lottery ticket. Push, breath, again. And what was it all for? Where was this New World Order heading which the turbo-capitalists had foisted on the world? Into an over-populated, over-polluted future more hellish than this bloody shaft!
At last, Smedley felt the front of the canvas bag sag gently downwards. Hold on! Gently does it, Neil lad. You’d better be careful with this little lot! He squeezed his hands right up against the top of the shaft, levering them through till his fingertips curled over the straps, then lowered the bag into the dip ahead. It would have to fall the last few feet.
He listened for the splash, hoping that none of the contents would be damaged. Then, pushing his head out of the top of the vent, a luscious trace of fresh night air washed over his sweat-saturated face, seeping through the manhole cover about fifteen feet above. The bag was some six feet below, lying on the bottom of the shaft.
He arrived headfirst at the lip of the vent and had to twist awkwardly to pull himself out. Shit! His fingers slipped and he fell down the remaining feet, landing on one side in the six inches of water at the bottom of the drain. Despite the danger of the location Smedley couldn’t stifle a dull groan. But the pain only gave him a surge of additional energy.
Struggling to his feet, he pulled a pen-shaped torch from his pocket and started to examine the canvas bag by the ultra-dull, lime-green glow of the torch. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the contents were undamaged and properly sealed. He lifted the bag onto an inclined shelf above the drain and paused to catch his breath. With the satisfaction of a job well done, he would cushion his injured side during the torturous wriggle back down the shaft. It would soon be worth all the pain. Omar would see to that.
Thirty-five minutes later, Smedley was back in the main tunnel where his work crew was reaching the end of its shift. The foreman couldn’t remember having seen Smedley for some time, but he wasn’t too upset and he must have been hard at, judging by the horrendous sweat he had worked up. If Neil went AWOL for the odd hour once in a while, or took a sickie now and then, he wasn’t going to be the one to complain. No one worked harder than Neil when it really mattered, no one did the toughest jobs better or more often, told better jokes, or bought more rounds in the pub afterwards. Yea, Neil was a star, all right. Who cared if the big Yorkshire lad disappeared in the tunnel now and again?