Sam was pointing over to the small shed. ‘Get yourself into some clothes over there, lad. I’ll fetch Hannah some clay and she can fix the candles for us before she makes herself comfortable. Remember the hats, there’ll be a bit of blasting down there, I expect.’ Sam followed on behind Harry, waving at the men with the trolley to hurry up. They nodded and bent over the trolley, manhandling it into the blacksmith’s lean-to.
Sam was back soon, dressed in the canvas jacket and trousers and felt hat that all the miners wore. ‘Here you are then, Hannah.’ He gave her two lumps of clay to mould into balls. Her gloves were already off and lying on the seat of the trap and she stood by the wheel working the clay until it was warm and soft and squeezed up between her fingers. It felt good, like the clay Mrs Arness had allowed her to use yesterday. She pressed the candles in firmly and when Harry came from the shed Sam fixed one in each hat. Harry did not speak to her but Sam smiled and shook his head, winking as he turned and she felt warm, here in the sun, thinking of that kindly face.
She walked over to the grass-covered bank, climbing above the dust-sprayed edge to the flattened boulders which were strewn amongst gorse, the sheep-cropped pasture and the wind-blown heather. She turned, sitting on the flattest rock, and watched as they walked across to the shaft. They seemed so much smaller. The wind was snatching at her hat so she removed it, holding the hat-pin in her teeth, feeling the loose hair whipping about her face. The clay was drying now and she rubbed her hands together. It was good to see dirt on them as it had been on her feet at Joe’s. She stuck the pin through the brim of the hat, pegging it hard into the earth, watching as Sam and Harry disappeared. They would use ladders to reach the workings and the climb would be hard and dark since they would not light the candles until they reached the bottom. Sitting here above the seams she was excluded, again. She pressed the hat-pin further into the ground until the jet bead caught against the felt of the hat. The ground was so solid, so heavy.
Harry felt the familiar surge of excitement as the darkness clamped around him and he gripped the rungs of the ladder. He wore no gloves because he liked the feel of the wood against his skin. Here, as he climbed down into the mine, his family’s mine, was the taste of grit, the smell of ore, the heat that welled up from the depths. In the blackness he could hear men passing upwards on the man-engine as the shift finished, but his only tangible reality was the ladder he felt beneath his feet, beneath his hands. He counted with each downward step. Fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three. Dust fell on to his shoulder and, pausing, he looked quickly up beneath the shelter of his hand. He could see the glow from his uncle’s pipe and grinned; it broke the spell. What would Sam do if this was a coal mine and methane gas threatened to blow his head off? Probably go and sit behind a desk, he thought, give up all this which is something he would find hard to do.
There was still hundreds of feet to go and his breathing was becoming laboured now as he felt for each rung carefully, wishing that he had the speed of the miners who came down regularly. Four hundred and ten, four hundred and eleven, he counted silently, not able to spare breath for words.
They had an instinct that he had not developed, but perhaps that was because speed to them was of the essence. Tributing made the men work fast because they earned a fixed percentage of the value of the ore they raised in a given time. Out of their wage at the end of the period the men would be charged for all their materials such as tools, candles and powder, so no wonder they needed every minute they could find. It was a good, economic way of working, his father had said, and he agreed.
‘Do you still charge the men for their tools, Uncle?’ he called out to the figure above, but he did not look up again because dust would be kicked into his eyes. His arms were aching, and his legs trembling. Five hundred and eighty, five hundred and eighty-one.
‘No we don’t, thank God. Damned bad way to treat people. We adjust the profits accordingly but don’t tell your father. It’s only a small percentage anyway.’ His voice was thin because his pipe was still between his teeth.
It was too dark to see anything at all; the candles would only be lit when they reached the bottom and it was always at this stage that Harry felt scared. It was the dark. He didn’t like the dark and at the count of seven hundred and fifty rungs he always felt lost, felt that he was climbing down into endless space, felt that he would never reach the end, never stop climbing. His hands were blistered now from gripping the rungs. He chewed the inside of his mouth and shut his eyes. It made him feel safer somehow. He clutched on to Sam’s words turning them into letters in his mind. White letters against black pages. Words into sentences. Eight hundred and fifty.
Maybe if Sam still deducted for the materials he would have been able to go shooting, but he could not tell Father, that would be a betrayal of Sam; even though, in his opinion, he and Aunt Eliza were wrong. And what business did his aunt have to interfere anyway? Women knew nothing of business, and profit was all-important.
Nine hundred and forty. The blister stretched across the whole of his hand now, he was sure of it. Hannah had no right to make such a stupid remark about Mother’s money and in public too. What was Mother’s was Father’s; she should know that by now. Women could not possibly manage their own affairs, there would be all sorts of mess. He let his left hand take more of his weight. The noise of drilling was reaching them now, so they were almost there, thank God.
At the base of the ladder they caught their breath, relieved to be in the dull glow of the lamps, seeing shapes for the first time for what seemed like hours. Men and machinery, rock walls, cut and carved, the well-propped lode. Their candles lit their way only dimly as they left the foot of the shaft and entered the dense darkness of the seams. The square-pitched pine props were set every three feet and groaned from the weight but he was not frightened. He was at home at last. They passed yawning black holes and heard in their depths the noise of miners as they shovelled and drilled. These mechanical drills had water fed through the centre, Harry saw, as one miner, working in a bulge in the main seam, levered a drill and cut out some of the ore. He pointed and Sam nodded.
‘Lays the dust, improves the cutting.’ Harry could not hear but in the light from the candles he could read Sam’s mouth.
Fumes grew stronger with each step they took. Blasting had been going on this morning, he thought. The accumulated dust was making his eyes smart. His hand throbbed.
‘I still think we should do our own smelting,’ he shouted at his uncle, but Sam was talking to a miner. Harry waited until he had finished and then repeated his remark. Sam took a suck on his pipe, holding his hand over the bowl. How could he smoke when there was already so much dust and so many smells, Harry wondered and shook his head.
Sam took his arm. They stood to one side of the main seam watching the activity which flowed and ebbed before them. ‘No, Harry. It’s too much capital outlay and Malaysia is taking over smelting as well as mining. There’s no future in English tin any more.’ His mouth was against Harry’s ear and he could just make out the words.
Harry reached out and ran his hands down the prop. Bloody hell. Why did tin have to be so common? Their usual customers were finding supplies nearer home now but it was in his blood, he knew that, and every time he came down here it was the same. He ground his boot in the dust. He knew his hair and the pores of his skin would be full of dirt and he would smell of the mine for days, but to him it was a good smell, an honest one. They leant back as a trolley was pushed past. He watched as the miner leant into the load, shoving the trolley with the whole of his body weight. He was small, a boy. A miner walked past him, a piece of wood in the corner of his mouth, he was chewing then spitting as he moved on down. Harry stayed where he was, resting against a blackened prop while Sam moved amongst the men, talking to the team leaders, checking with the supervisors, until eventually he turned back towards Harry and beckoned, nodding towards the shaft.
Harry pushed himself upright, reluctant to leave the scene so soon but know
ing that it was time. He caught up with Sam who was relighting his pipe in a hacked-out bay of the main seam. They walked on together, their arms knocking, their feet kicking up dust which caught in their throats. Though he would have liked to stay for longer, Harry knew it put the men on edge to have the boss and the owner’s son standing behind them as they worked, and besides, Eliza was preparing one of her cream teas for them.
And then he stopped, every muscle tense. He knew before he heard the creak, knew from the feeling which made his hands go cold; but nothing had happened, yet. It was not a feeling that had been growing as they walked – it was a sudden knowledge, a certainty which stopped him in his tracks and made the hair rise on the back of his neck. He half-turned, oblivious to everything else, not knowing whether Sam had also stopped, only knowing that he must listen to the next sound, listen hard for it above the noise of the mine; knowing that in a moment his world had changed from normality to crisis, from contentment to animal instinct. It would come and his world had ended, his life forced from his body if he couldn’t place the next small sound.
He held quite still, his eyes straining into the darkness which lay beyond the candle’s glow and there it was again, a creak; above him of course but to the left or to the right? He couldn’t decide. He breathed through his mouth to hear just that fraction better. The dust made him want to cough but he did not, he could not afford to miss the next warning but where was it coming from, God damn it? Where?
There was a creak again, but faint, and he wanted to call for silence but that would distract him for perhaps a vital moment. If only it wasn’t so dark. Then there was a crack. A noise which was taken up again and again. He strained to hear above the drilling, the rumbling of the trolleys, the shouts of the men. He strained to see into the thick darkness.
He held his breath and looked for Sam who was also standing quite still, waiting with his head cocked, his face tense and strained in the flicker of the candle-light. Christ, which way to move? To the left, or to the right or to stay here? Where was safety? There was too much darkness outside the flicker of his candle, too much darkness all around, pressing down on them, a thousand feet of heavy darkness pressing and cracking and coming to suck the breath from him. He was panting now, breathing up in his throat, trying to think, trying to hear because he had to guess right. Now there was no more time though how did he know that? He just did.
He moved then, to the right, gripping Sam, pulling him with him, feeling the canvas of his jacket, feeling the weight of the man resisting his slowness, but he did not let go. The cracking was louder but still the ceiling held though the dust was coming down now, dousing his candle, Sam’s candle – but not before he had seen the man’s face in the last flicker of the light, seen the fear which must have mirrored his own.
He hauled hard, sweating with effort, bracing his feet and taking Sam as though in a rugby tackle, letting his own weight take them across the main seam. Christ, let me be right, he groaned, and knew that he spoke aloud because he could taste the grit in his open mouth. Then it came, the roar that Harry had known would come in that first moment, which was probably only a few seconds ago. A grinding roar which exploded into bursting air, knocking them hard into the rock wall, blowing the breath from his body, hurling him down, on to the ground so hard that he thought his ribs were broken. And then he waited for the crushing weight of the tumbling ore to bear down and finish him, finish Sam. He reached out for the man, finding his arm and gripping it, not wanting to be alone when it came; and all the time there was a roaring.
But he had guessed right and no great weight came cutting into him or Sam. There was only pressure that hurt his ears, dust that whirled and choked until at last the noise ceased. Then there was just dust and darkness but no drilling, no rumbling of trolleys, and miners running to them and shielding their candles with their hands against the draught. He had never heard such quiet in the mine before.
The man-engine was a godsend. His ribs still ached and his limbs trembled as he stepped on to the moving rod on its upstroke, fitting his hands and feet into the holds cut into it, stepping off at each platform as the rod went down again, then catching the other as it came down from above and then moved up again. Sam was coming up slowly behind, his pipe broken and in his pocket now. Harry’s head ached and he shook it but his ears still felt strange. He didn’t yet feel part of the world. He was still back there, tensed and waiting, and now the joy came flooding through him because, God damn it, he had guessed right. He stepped off the rod on to the platform. Damnation – he had guessed right and he wanted to shout but he remembered the feel of Sam’s hand on his shoulder as he had dusted himself off, taking his hat from the outstretched hand of a wizened miner.
I owe you, lad, Sam had said. I’d not have been quick enough. He looked at him closely, a thoughtful expression in his eyes. You’re blooded now, Harry. Harry set his shoulders back. By God, and so he was. He’d beaten the mine, he’d known it was coming for him and he’d bloody beaten it. Wait until he told Arthur. He jumped on to the upward rod and called down to Sam.
‘Don’t tell Hannah, or the family.’ He listened, leaping on to the rod, straining to hear Sam’s reply.
‘She’ll have to be told, Harry. She’ll have heard the noise, seen the dust and even if she hasn’t, the men who came down to help will have told her.’
Harry shook his head. ‘God, I hope she keeps quiet about it.’
‘She’s bound to, isn’t she?’ Sam called up. ‘She’ll have to if you want to be allowed down the mine again.’
Harry did want to, now more than ever.
Hannah had moved from the bank soon after Sam and Harry had disappeared. The wind had grown cooler up there with no shelter and she had walked about Penhallon, seeing the piles of ore, the sheds, the stables which housed the ponies. Watching the shift that changed while her uncle and Harry were below.
She had seen the grimed men walk unsteadily from the moving rod, their faces drawn with tiredness, black blood from a cut ran down the cheek of one and she wondered where they would go when age took their livelihood away from them. To the workhouse too, to be separated from their wives for the rest of their lives? It was too dreadful to think about but she must. Joe had said she must.
She had taken baskets with Mother one Harvest Festival to the workhouse which served the area lying to the back of the Crescents. When they had entered the green-tiled room which lay at the end of a cold stone corridor she had thought it was empty, but then the small grey-clothed women sitting in chairs set against the walls had moved to see what the disturbance was before settling back again into their stillness. There had been a smell, not of dirt but of age and carbolic soap, and as she passed the Michaelmas daisies the hands that reached for them were gnarled and big-veined. But she hadn’t felt sad; she hadn’t wondered then where these people had come from, hadn’t felt this confusion that was tearing at her now.
Then as she stood there, she had heard the noise, a muted roaring, and felt the earth shudder; had seen the men so tired and bowed turn and run back to the shaft. Dust had wafted up from the blackness and she knew what had happened. But who was hurt? Was it Harry? Or Sam?
She called to the men. ‘What is it?’ Wanting to clutch their arms.
‘A fall,’ one called, his tiredness gone, his voice urgent. He had not turned to speak to her but waited impatiently in the queue which was moving quickly back down the ladder. There had been no panic, just determination. The clerk from the office had come and stood with her. He was an old man and used to this, he told her. It happened frequently. But that did not help the feeling of fear and helplessness that gripped her. I’m not used to it, she had wanted to scream, wanting him to go and find out if her brother was safe, not stand there with a resigned expression on his face. Do something, she wanted to shout into his face, or let me do something, but by clasping her hands together she was able to hold herself back; was able to tell herself that the men climbing down the ladder were the only ones who
could help. But Harry was her brother.
The wait was so long. The clerk wanted her to move over to the office but she couldn’t. Not until she knew.
And then at last she saw him climb from the ladder, his face dirty and streaked with sweat, his smile wide. She did not run to him, though she wanted to, but walked across.
‘Are you all right, Harry?’ her voice was steady but her nails dug into her palms as she clenched her fists, fighting to appear calm.
‘Not a scratch, Hannah. No one was hurt. It was just one of those little things that happen.’
Hannah saw Sam climb up now. He looked tired but he also smiled, and slowly she allowed herself to believe that her brother was still here, still whole, and she wanted to weep and clutch him to her, feel his breath on her face again as though it was a sunny day in the old garden.
Instead she said, ‘So you’re a real miner now, Harry.’ Her voice sounded firm and strong but as he smiled at her she gripped his hand and held it to her mouth.
‘Thank God you’re safe,’ she whispered, her eyes holding his.
Harry felt the warmth of her lips, the strength of her hand, and for an instant wanted to hold her close as he had once been able to do when they were very young. But men were climbing out, pushing past them, and he squeezed her hand. ‘Don’t tell Father,’ he said. ‘Please, Hannah.’
She held his gaze, then looked past him to Sam and nodded. ‘I promise, Harry.’ She wanted to wipe his face, to gently bathe the dirt away. ‘If Beaky saw you now, she’d scrub you raw,’ was all she said.
Sam brought them back to the big house for tea. She still thought of it as Eliza’s house, though it had been her mother’s as a girl too. Ivy covered the walls, and in the autumn this went a deep red and looked warm when all around the chill was settling on the ground. The gravel crunched beneath the wheels of the trap and beneath her feet as she walked over and on to the grass. She reached forward and took a leaf in her hand. It was warm and limp from the sun and was summer-green.
A Time for Courage Page 8