by Marie Joseph
‘Usually it’s the single men they send down.’ The woman who had touched Libby’s arm began to speak as if their conversation had never been interrupted. ‘But they’re all family men, all three of them.’
‘The doctor is my husband. We have a baby, a little girl.’ Libby felt the bile rise in her throat again.
‘It’s my son-in-law down there,’ the woman confided. ‘My daughter is near her time, so I made her stop at home.’ She stared straight ahead, seeing nothing. ‘There’s nowt we can do, anyroad.’ Suddenly her voice rose to a startling angry wail. ‘Why couldn’t they have fetched him up with the pick still in him? Why?’
A woman standing behind spoke up, her voice roughed with compassion. ‘There’s nowt you can do but wait, Mrs Parker. She’s had it all before,’ she whispered to Libby. ‘Her husband was killed on the job three years back.’
‘Oh, dear God. Oh, no!’ Libby moved closer and touched the grey shawl. ‘There’s a car waiting for me. Would you like to go and sit inside it? You are wet through, Mrs Parker. Please let me take you to the car.’
‘I’m stopping where I am.’ The woman spoke without moving her head. ‘I want to see him when they bring him out. For my daughter’s sake it’s the least I can do.’
Libby nodded, understanding at once. It had been a cold wet night for May, and now it was a cold wet morning. The fur at her neck was already uncomfortably sodden, and she could feel droplets running down her back. She glanced down at the women’s feet sturdily clad in clogs, then at her own shoes with their thin soles, the soft cream leather patched with damp. There was no more talking, no weeping, just a quiet standing there, keeping out of the way of the men rushing backwards and forwards. The ambulance was waiting, doors open, red blankets piled on stretchers, the driver’s face impassive beneath his peaked cap.
‘Are you by yourself, Mrs Brandwood?’ A man in a trilby hat came and spoke softly to her. ‘Will you come into the office and wait there?’
‘I’m stopping where I am.’ Unconsciously Libby echoed the words of the woman by her side. ‘But thank you. Thank you just the same.’
‘The cage is coming up!’ It was a great sigh, and as Libby felt herself urged forward, she saw them coming out. Black-faced men with eyes picked out in the coal dust on their faces. As they trailed away dejectedly towards the office, she felt her own shoulders slump in sympathy.
She could taste the wine in her mouth, sour and nasty, the wine she had drunk at Carrie’s wedding. She wanted to be sick, but knew she couldn’t give way with the women crowding her in. If they could stand it, then so could she.
Like an echo from the past, she heard Tom Silver’s teasing voice: ‘Finding out for yourself how the peasants think and feel?’
Libby frowned and bit hard at her lip. She had been so sure she was in the right, that time down on the market place at the beginning of the strike. She remembered how she had seen Harry striding towards her, his face set into lines of uncharacteristic anger, and she remembered how she had taunted him for his lack of feeling.
‘Oh, Harry . . .’ Even as she went on standing there, her face set into a stony mask, she was screaming his name aloud somewhere deep inside her.
When the sky lightened and the rain softened to a raw drizzle, she saw the cage descend yet again, and found she was praying as she had never prayed before. ‘Oh, God! Let Harry be alive. Even if he’s hurt, let him live long enough for me to tell him I’m sorry. Don’t let this be my punishment for not loving him enough.’ If Harry died, she told herself fiercely, the one thing she would never be able to put from her mind would be the memory of his hurt face as she had turned away from his kiss. She stared across the yard to where the carnation still lay, a dirty white mark on the greasy cobblestones.
Loneliness swamped her.
At seven o’clock she sensed that Carrie was there. Turning round she saw her twin coming across the yard with Tom Silver, and the next minute she was being held in Carrie’s arms.
Now at last she could give way, but not until Carrie had led her away with Tom following close behind. Sobbing, Libby told them, sparing them nothing.
‘Harry is trapped down there. It’s a long way out, and there was a second fall. They are trying to get through, but I think I heard one of the men say something about gas.’ She stared straight at Tom and saw her own despair mirrored in his dark eyes. ‘Oh, Tom . . . what will they do if they can’t get them out? Harry won’t be left buried deep in the dark, will he? Not Harry. He was – he is always so clean.’
She was close to hysteria now. ‘I can’t bear to think about him all black and cold and wet. Oh, Carrie, he’s still wearing his wedding suit.’
Over her head Carrie and Tom exchanged meaning glances.
‘Come home with us, lass. It may be a long time yet, and there’s nothing to be gained by you staying. Come home with us.’
Libby’s refusal was immediate. ‘No! No! I have to wait. I have to be here when they bring him out. Even if it takes for ever, and even if he – if he’s dead, I have to be here, waiting for him.’
She looked at Carrie and her new husband as if seeing them properly for the first time. ‘This is your honeymoon. Today is your first day together in your new house. You must go back.’ She nodded towards the women standing solidly together waiting impassively, silently for what must be. ‘I’m with them. I’ll be all right.’
‘Do you think I’d leave you?’ Carrie’s voice was a passionate cry. ‘How can you think for one minute that I would leave you to bear this alone? Oh, Libby . . . Libby, love . . .’
Tom followed more slowly as they moved back towards the group of women. ‘Two halves of one,’ he told himself wryly. The thought touched him deeply so that when he looked up at the grey clouds, moving swiftly now, he found he was blinking tears from his eyes. It had been a strange wedding night, his bride tossing and turning beside him, waking suddenly to sit up and call her twin’s name aloud.
Now, as the watery sun tried to break through the clouds, he took his place by the two sisters, accepting their closeness and somehow glorying in it.
It was after another two long hours of waiting that the second rescue party came up from the mine.
‘They’ve got through to them!’ The murmur spread like a sigh through the knot of watching women. ‘Thank God. They will have them up soon. You can always tell by the way they look.’
‘Aye, it’s something on their faces.’
Another hour went by, then the first stretcher came out, with the unconscious pit manager lying on it.
‘He’s lost a leg.’
The women pressed forward, one of them shaking the arm of a rescuer. ‘Is it true?’
The news was conveyed in a low voice. ‘He says the doctor took the leg off down there. It was the only way they could get him free.’
Carrie felt her sister stiffen. ‘That means Harry could be alive! Oh, Carrie, he has to be alive. Please, please God, let him be alive!’
But the face of the man on the next stretcher was covered with a blanket, and his body lay twisted into a grotesque shape.
‘That’s Jack.’
The little woman in the grey shawl buried her face in her hands. ‘Them’s his boots. Oh, God, how I can tell me daughter I don’t rightly know!’ Her eyes hardened. ‘I could tell her that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but I doubt that will give her much comfort. She’ll know the baby will just be another mouth to feed with no man bringing in his wage of a Friday. So I won’t say it . . .’
She was led away by a neighbour just as the third stretcher was brought out. With a great cry Libby broke free from Carrie’s restraining arm and rushed forward.
‘Stand clear, missus!’
The ambulance men moved into action but ignoring them, Libby bent over the stretcher to kiss the dirt-ingrained face above the swaddling blanket. The thick brown hair was matted with coal dust, and an ugly gash clotted with dried blood gave Harry’s face a strange twisted expression.
&n
bsp; Harry!’ Libby whispered his name at first, then her voice rose to a scream. ‘Harry! Open your eyes Oh, Harry, darling, darling love, open your eyes and speak to me! It’s me, Libby. Harry? I love you!’ She raised a piteous face to one of the rescue party standing close by. ‘He won’t die, will he! He’s not hurt badly enough to die, is he!’
Hands pulled at her, trying to drag her away, but with the strength of a madwoman she resisted. With all semblance of control gone, Libby tried to pull the unconscious man up into her arms.
‘Now then, love.’ A rescue worker moved Libby round to face him. ‘The doctor is alive, lass. He’s a bloody hero. His foot’s broken with us having to drag him out at the last, but he’ll live.’
The miner’s exhausted face was touched with grief for the loss of his workmate, but with infinite patience he appealed to Tom. ‘Get her away, lad. The sooner the doctor’s seen to at the hospital the better.’ He lowered his voice. ‘His foot needs looking at right away.’
‘But it was Carrie who led Libby gently away, and Tom who told the driver of the waiting car to follow the ambulance to the hospital. Tenderly he helped the sisters into the back of the car, his heart aching at the sight of the two identical faces, both tear-streaked, pale and drawn in their shared anguish.
‘When I thought he might have been killed I wanted to die. Oh, Carrie . . . if Harry had died then I would have wanted to die with him. Oh, how could I have loved him so much, and never known it? How?’
‘Harry never doubted that you loved him.’ Carrie’s voice was soft with understanding. ‘You are the joy of his life. You must know that.’
‘Oh, yes, I do.’
Tom found he was having to blink back the tears from his own eyes as Libby whispered, ‘Oh, Carrie. I thought I wanted – oh, I didn’t know what it was I wanted. I had Harry and the baby, and yet . . . And now God has given me another chance. I don’t deserve it, but He has given me another chance.’
Then, as the car swung out of the pit yard in the wake of the speeding ambulance, Tom turned round and saw the sisters clinging together, comforting and soothing as they would always comfort and soothe each other.
‘See, girls. The sun is beginning to shine,’ he said softly.
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Epub ISBN: 9781448107933
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First published in 1991 by Century
Arrow Edition 1992
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Copyright © Marie Joseph 1992
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ISBN 9780099102113