Family of the Empire

by Family of the Empire (retail) (epub)

  And as the Royal motor car made its way through the village and onwards, eventually to arrive at Wentworth Woodhouse, nothing else mattered to Probyn either.

  Proud and erect amongst the host of veterans he marched behind the regimental band, his boots and his heart marking time to the big bass drum that without fail made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, his whole body throbbing with happiness as he saluted the Monarch. It might only be for one day, but he was a soldier again.

  * * *

  With such wonderful moments to share with his family upon meeting them again that evening, Probyn’s excitement was to be maintained for hours, the happy and dishevelled children eager to tell their father what they had seen, until, all replete with fish and chips, they tumbled into bed.

  Only in the morning did anti-climax come when Probyn awoke expecting to hear the bugler, but heard instead only the clip of miners’ boots as those on the night shift made their way home.

  Light seeped through the curtains which were billowing under the summery breeze from the open window. Grace rose and dressed, telling him to have a lie in. He did so, listening to the sounds of the children as one by one they were roused from their beds. Not due at work for a while, he closed his eyes, reliving the splendour of yesterday, dreading the thought of being trapped in his dingy office.

  Telling himself it would do no good to lie here moping, he kicked his limbs together and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his face, then began to dress.

  He was in the act of buttoning his trousers when he heard a commotion outside, a wail that signalled catastrophe. He stood stock still for a moment, images flying through his head, then rushed to the window, pulled back the curtains and stuck his head through the open sash.

  Men, women and children with puffy eyes and tousled hair, some only half-dressed, were streaming out of their houses, appearing from every direction and coming together like a flock of starlings, swirling and weaving down the street and around the corner towards the pit.

  Without calling to any of them, he rushed to the staircase and thudded down it to meet his wife’s startled face.

  ‘What on earth is all the din?’ Grace clasped her breast, shock in her voice.

  He pulled his dangling braces up over his shoulders and hurried to put on his boots. ‘Summat’s happened at the pit – I’ll have to go and help!’ And without wasting further time he rushed out into the street, his wife and children after him, all joining the torrent of panicked humanity that surged down the slope to Cadeby Colliery, over the river and the railway, hundreds of feet thudding across the long wooden gantries.

  Running for almost a mile, by the time they arrived at the colliery gates Grace was clutching her side, her husband’s face bright pink. ‘Slow down, Probe!’ She reached out to grab at his sleeve, pretending it was for her benefit. ‘I’ve got a stitch.’

  At his wife’s behest Probyn stopped, panting heavily, but seeing that Clement had got ahead of him and was shoving his way through the herd, gave a loud command, ‘Clem! Come back, you’ll only get in the way.’ Then, still breathless, he continued with his wife to the pit-head that had been besieged by a distraught throng, men arguing as to what should be done, women clutching shawls over hair that was still tangled from bed, crying that their husbands and sons were down there.

  Accustomed to being in control, to guiding men and having them obey him, Probyn felt the desperate urge to take charge, but was compelled by inexperience to stand and wait whilst others gave command, feeling like a duck out of water.

  ‘What’s happened, Father?’ He felt little Joseph tug on his sleeve.

  ‘I don’t know, son. There’s been some sort of accident.’ Probyn cast his worried eyes around the crowd, searching for enlightenment.

  There was a moment’s awkwardness as he found himself standing right beside his uncle, both men reticent in their greeting.

  Probyn spoke first. ‘Do you know what’s happened?’

  Owen’s face was grim. ‘There’s been an explosion on fourteen level. Gob fire so they say. Started in t’early hours.’

  ‘How many’s down there?’ asked Probyn.

  Owen did not know. ‘The wick uns who came out said they saw a load of tubs blown about and a couple of bodies. They’re just getting t’rescue team together.’

  As he spoke, a grim-faced rescue team emerged from the enquiry office with Mr Bury the manager, equipped with breathing apparatus and spare oxygen cylinders, and all descended the pit.

  A few moments later the crowd parted as a motor car swept into the yard bearing men from the Wath Rescue Station who also descended. Following this, the onlookers were left to wait in anxious ignorance.

  Ignorant, too, as to the whereabouts of his uncle’s family, for they had not spoken in years, Probyn felt he should ask. ‘Are any of yours down there?’

  Owen shook his grizzled head. ‘Nay, thank the Lord. I’ve just come to see if I can do owt.’

  The atmosphere uncomfortable between the two men, plus the general tense attitude of the crowd, nothing much was said for the next hour. The waiting was terrible.

  Probyn dared not look at his watch for fear of upsetting someone. He guessed it must be about seven when Mr Witty the agent arrived, immediately to be engulfed by a crowd of women wanting to know what he was going to do to get their men out. Fearing that her smaller children were going to be knocked over with the crowd’s rush, Grace grabbed them close to her, listening anxiously.

  Tactfully removing himself from the grasp of supplicating hands, Witty accosted a deputy and asked to be apprised of the situation.

  The informant looked tired and worried. ‘Mr Bury and Mr Cusworth are already down there, sir, and the ventilation’s been restored.’ At the latter information there was a slight sigh of relief. But at his next statement concern was resurrected. ‘Bodies have been located but Mr Bury has telephoned to say they need help in getting them out.’

  ‘Is there any alive?’ asked Witty.

  ‘None found sir.’

  A combined moan went up. Feeling desperately sorry for the woman who stood beside her weeping, Grace extended a comforting arm.

  Mr Witty, looking pained but remaining in control, said to the informant, ‘Right, then we’ll need somewhere to put them. Get the pay shed ready, we’ll use that. We’ll need stretchers too, and volunteers,’ he embraced the crowd in his next words. ‘I’ll need twenty of you to start with.’

  There was an immediate and positive response.

  ‘Are you going, Father?’ asked twelve-year-old Clem.

  Owen, about to step forward himself, paused to behold his nephew, a cynical look on his face.

  Though his uncle made no comment, Probyn set his jaw into a resolute slant as he answered his son. ‘No, lad, I’m not. If there were any alive down there I might do, but I’m not trained and I won’t risk my life for dead bodies. Not with a family to think about.’

  Retaining his cynical expression, Owen went off to collect his lamp, leaving his worried wife to wait. Grace reached out a tentative hand to Meg, though it was barely acknowledged.

  At the supposed cowardice from his father, the big bold soldier, Clem hung his head.

  Sensing accusation in this pose, Probyn recalled the time when the scales had dropped from his own eyes and he too had made the discovery of his father’s failings, seeing Monty not as an invincible hero but as the vulnerable human being he was. That knowledge should have provided comfort to him now. It did not. Too wounded to offer explanation, he remained silent.

  But Grace understood her husband’s motives, and rested a hand on her son’s shoulder. ‘Sometimes, Clem, it’s braver to say no.’

  Wondering what on earth he was doing here if not to assist, Probyn made a sudden announcement. ‘I’m off to see if they want anybody to supervise the mortuary. You go home, dear, there’ll be grim hours ahead.’

  But Grace refused. ‘I’ll wait a while, there might be some way I can help.’

  Th
ey separated then.

  Hours were to pass. Hours of waiting in which the silent crowd hung around the pit-head with terror-stricken faces, their numbers constantly accumulating so that every footbridge over the railway and river, every road leading to the pit yard became clogged with people. Newspaper reporters came barging from the railway station, breathless and eager, pads and pencils at the ready. Others came to offer succour, clerics of every denomination bestowing prayers amongst the flock. Through a sea of dreary garb that was incongruous under the brilliant sunshine – black stockings, plaid shawls, woollen caps – the stark white pinafore of a nurse shone out in bright relief as her bicycle carved a passage, come to aid the injured.

  But there were no injured. The bodies started to come out then, emerging in stages; at first just a few, then eighteen in a row, transported reverently out of the pit mouth and into the sunshine. And every time another came the crowd would close around it, anxious to see if it were a relative or friend and a horrible keening would go up from a bereaved wife or mother. Whilst her husband rearranged the contorted limbs of the dead, Grace could only offer sympathy.

  At mid-morning the Mines Inspectors arrived and went immediately down the shaft. Others were to arrive some time later but delayed going down and instead studied a plan of the district.

  Guarding his roomful of corpses, Probyn sneaked a look at his watch, discovering it was after ten. No bodies had been unearthed for a while, and another hour was to pass without news.

  In the enquiry office a telephone rang. Those standing near the office surged closer, hoping to learn something. Mr Witty frowned, straining to hear what was being said at the other end above the buzz of anxious queries. ‘Yes, Captain Brook … yes, I’ll pass that on to Mr Pickering straight away!’ Settling the receiver back on its hook he went to a different telephone and made contact with those at the pit-bottom.

  The voice from below must have said something devastating, for Witty’s face turned ashen and he said, ‘Oh my God …’

  Harried for news by those who crowded round his door, his dazed face observed them. ‘It’s gone off again.’

  A heartrending wail went up. Hearing it, Probyn came to the door of the makeshift mortuary. Dear God, Owen!

  The commotion seemed to shake Mr Witty from his trance for he rushed to the cage, taking another man with him.

  Feeling utterly inept over his lack of underground training, Probyn could only employ his eyes to telegraph sympathy to his Aunt Meg, but she did not look at him, just stood there with her black shawl over her head, totally devastated, whilst Grace made every effort to support her. Not for a long time had he felt so isolated.

  When Mr Witty eventually emerged the full horror of the situation was writ large upon his face. Only four live men were to exit from the shaft with him, and even these were to be borne on stretchers, one of them though barely conscious kept moving his legs like pistons, as if trying to run away from the horrors he had seen. Two hundred tons of roof had come down, instantly annihilating many of the rescuers, the rest trapped behind it and succumbing to gas.

  Preparing himself to be inundated by another round of corpses, seared by anguish over the death of his uncle, Probyn’s heart raged for those brave men. Poor, poor Owen, but worse for his wife left to grieve.

  The sun rose to its zenith. The waiting crowd grew more distressed. With the younger children beginning to whine Grace whispered to Augusta to take them home and give them something to eat. She herself stayed to lend her arms to the grave-faced womenfolk, to watch and to wait for hours as one after another the corpses of the brave rescuers were brought out into the hot afternoon, some identifiable, others not, but all evoking an emission of grief from the crowd.

  The desperate work was to continue throughout the day, the last of the bodies eventually brought up by evening and the order given that no one else was to go down until stoppings had been built and the pit made safe.

  ‘Close to eighty by the look of it,’ murmured Probyn with a sad shake of head for the lifeless occupants crammed into the mortuary, one of them his uncle. ‘What a waste, what a terrible shameful waste.’

  Stretching his tired, aching back, he wondered if Grace was still out there waiting, and stepped from the pay shed to check on her whereabouts, narrowing his eyes against the still bright sun. Running his gaze over the crowd, he allowed it to settle occasionally, but was swift to tear his eyes away, for each face resembled a tragic gargoyle. Unable to see his wife and assuming she had gone home, he went back to his thankless task of guarding the dead.

  The coroner arrived to open the inquest and, with his jury appointed, the grim identification of the bodies began, death certificates filled out for those able to be recognized.

  Only then did Probyn beg leave to go home. After the gruelling day, the ghastly task of identifying his uncle, he was glad for others to take charge of the dead who were to remain here all night. A heavy stone within his chest, he made his weary passage through the crowd. Its numbers had begun to thin now, though hundreds remained to keep their vigil, for many of them had no reason to go home.

  Pausing only to scan the messages of condolence that had arrived throughout the day and had been posted on some railings – amongst them words of sympathy from the Home Secretary, the Archbishop of York and from the King and Queen – he finally left the place of disaster.

  * * *

  Arriving home, he found Father Flanagan there. In the middle of telling the children a story, the priest broke off to say in concerned tone, ‘Good evening to you, Probe, and how’s yourself? It’s a grave day and no mistake.’

  ‘It is that, Father.’ There were six extra children in Probyn’s kitchen, their stark, tear-stained faces advertising that their fathers were among the dead.

  Grace came immediately to her husband, providing comfort and food, whispering, ‘I said we’d look after them for a day or two. Their mothers have enough to see to. You don’t mind do you?’

  Probyn sank gratefully onto a chair, saying quietly, ‘Of course I don’t. They can stay as long as they like.’ Exhausted and hungry, he ate his meal in silence whilst Father Flanagan gathered the children about him and resumed the tale that had been interrupted, only emerging from his trance to ask what had happened to Meg.

  Told that she had rejected Grace’s offer of help and had gone home, Probyn fell back into silence, maintaining his reflective air for a good while after he had finished eating.

  After half an hour or so, Father Flanagan left saying he had better tend the rest of his poor bereft flock, but had not been gone a minute before he reappeared with word that the King and Queen had made a surprise return to Cadeby to offer solace to the people who had cheered them so warmly yesterday, and were down at the colliery.

  Once again Probyn and his family went out to gather in the warm sunny evening to pay their respects. But this time there was no cheering, only expressions of sorrow from their Majesties as they went amongst the depressed crowd in the colliery yard, shaking hands and extending condolence.

  ‘I wish he’d got his crown on instead of just an ’at,’ grumbled Joseph, having passed disapproving comment on the King’s bowler yesterday.

  ‘It would look a bit out of place, dear,’ reproved his mother softly.

  Probyn wondered if the King felt as out of place as he did himself amongst the bereaved crowd of miners; an impostor, a man apart. And as the royal couple approached the place where he was standing he moved a step back, detaching himself from those who had suffered and melting into the background so that he might not steal their moment, for he had done nothing to deserve it.

  * * *

  On Wednesday morning, leaving the blinds closed as were those in the rest of the terrace, Probyn went back to the pit, not to work but to help transfer the bodies to coffins. Grave as the death toll might be, it was a miracle there had not been more, for news emerged that the men who had spent the night building stoppings to make the pit safe had also been forced to run for their lives
as a third explosion occurred, injuring two of them.

  Throughout that day the mean, blackened streets thronged with various dignitaries eager to pay their condolences, aristocracy by the carriage load, the Archbishop of York who held a service at the pit-head before visiting bereaved relatives. The humble pit village had never seen such distinguished visitors en masse.

  But once the flow of sentiment dried up, a pall began to settle over the neighbourhood as reality sank in and the villagers were left to bury their menfolk.

  During the weeks after the disaster the funerals of eighty-eight men took place, those bereaved coming together in a spirit of community and, as was the way of things in a mining village, helping each other to get on with their lives.

  Probyn felt guilty for feeling as miserable as he did. The last horse-drawn hearse had departed weeks ago. He had lost no one, at least no one really close, why should he harbour such emotion? Despite all that had happened here, even maybe because of it, he still did not feel part of the colliery village; part of anything.

  Grace sensed her husband’s misery and hoped that her news this Sunday evening might lift him. ‘I’ve either been eating too much pastry, or baby number six is on his way.’

  ‘Aw, that’s grand.’ Probyn hoped he sounded pleased, for he was.

  ‘Which officer are you going to name him after this time?’ teased his wife, smiling.

  Taking a last drag on his cigarette, he ground it into the ashtray. ‘Oh, I’ll leave the names to you.’ Despite the warmth in his eyes he sounded despondent. ‘Besides, it might be a lassie.’