The Denniston Rose

by Jenny Pattrick

  ‘Another load and we’ll stop for our bite,’ says Josiah to his son. ‘Come down to the lay-by and we’ll have it together. Where are the lads?’

  His next two boys, David and Mathew, fifteen and thirteen, are clippies, clipping the boxes onto the endless chain that will take them off to the Bins.

  ‘Two sections away,’ says Samuel, who always knows where his brothers are. ‘Shall I fetch them?’

  ‘Nay nay, lad, they are old enough to fend for themselves. You worry like a mother.’

  Samuel grins. ‘And who has taught me to worry, eh? Who has said a miner looks out for his mate first, last and every second in between?’

  ‘Ah well, true, but your brothers are clippies in another section, and you must trust that section to keep an eye on the young ’uns. Your responsibility is here with your horse, and the men in your own section. Now get on out of here — your horse is halfway to the haulage already.’

  As Samuel sets off after Noggin he sees a wavering light approaching.

  ‘Someone coming!’ he yells back. ‘Are you waiting for the underviewer to fire your shot?’

  The fellow with one arm comes past with a cheery-enough nod. He has hooked his lamp crookedly to his cap. Samuel can see the gleam of warm oil running down his nose.

  ‘Shall I fix that for you?’ he offers, but Jimmy Cork is in a hurry. Samuel tries again. ‘I’d head out if I were you. The men won’t welcome you.’

  ‘Ah well, so what?’ says Jimmy and keeps going.

  Samuel waits for his dad’s explosion.

  ‘Bloody hell, man!’ shouts Josiah. ‘Didn’t I tell you last time this is no place for bloody volunteers? You are a danger to us all.’

  Jimmy Cork holds up his air tester. ‘Hold your hair on, Mister. I am only doing my job.’

  His cheeky grin enrages Josiah. ‘You have tested the air once already down here. It is bad, we all know that, and you are using up precious yards of it sniffing around. I will have a word to Eddie about this.’

  Jimmy backs off. Talk of the mine manager seems to fluster him. ‘I’m going, I’m going,’ he says. ‘Now, tell me, are there more air shafts down this way?’

  ‘Go back up above and look at your map and get out of our hair. This section will close today, God willing, and I want no stranger to nursemaid when it comes down. Off with you!’

  But Samuel, enjoying the scene from up the line, sees that Jimmy heads deeper in, towards Frank and Peter.

  Later, when Samuel comes down the dark tunnel with the next string of empties, he finds Josiah and Arnold standing still, listening. The horse cocks his ears too, then tosses his head, and paws the ground.

  ‘See that?’ says Josiah to his son. ‘Noggin knows it’s on its way. Listen, lad.’

  Samuel hasn’t experienced a close before but has heard his dad talk about them often enough. When most of this pillar of coal has been extracted, the rock roof above will collapse to fill the gap. The whole landscape above settles. As the miners are working their way through the pillars, the mine is collapsing in behind them. It’s important this happens, otherwise the weight of all that rock swings over above the next pillar and is a danger to the men. Samuel looks up. Above him the top-coal is creaking like the timbers of a ship in a storm. A small lump drops down and Sam jumps in alarm. Josiah smiles.

  ‘You are right to be on edge, lad, but we have a few minutes yet. First the roof coal will come down, then we will see. Sometimes there is time to box up some of it, other times the roof comes down very soon. We’d best walk up the line a bit. Run now and tell Frank and Peter our close is on its way and they should be ready in case theirs goes with it.’

  Sam looks for his horse but Noggin is already away up the mine.

  ‘Noggin thinks it’s coming soon,’ he says, smiling, but nervous too. ‘I bet he’s right!’

  Quick on his feet, he runs down to the next section.

  ‘Coal’s creaking up Dad’s way. He says to shift out.’

  Frank whistles. ‘Ah well, looks like the ancient ones have beaten us to it, Peter. No sign of a close here, though.’ Just then, a couple of lumps fall from the roof with a clatter. Frank tilts his head so the flame of his lamp shines upwards. As they watch, a crack opens up in the shining coal with a sound like a pistol shot. Sam jumps. He is not easy underground without his good steady Noggin, who reminds him of the living world outside.

  ‘Off we go, then,’ says Frank, ‘but I’m guessing we’ll hold here for a while.’

  Suddenly he stops. ‘Damn. Where is that one-arm man?’

  ‘He was here a minute ago,’ says Peter. ‘Ferreting around in a strange way. I reckon he’s just through that brattice.’

  ‘Nip through quick, Sam, while we pick up our tools,’ says Frank. ‘Give him a yell, the silly idiot. Don’t waste time, though. If he’s more than two chain away come straight back.’

  Samuel wants to run for the surface but the others are calm enough, taking time to pick up their tools and their powder cans. He runs the next chain, turns left and through the brattice. His lamp seems to make no impression on the dark in here.

  ‘Hey!’ he yells. ‘Anyone here?’ Above him the coal groans and creaks. Several lumps come down. He feels for the wall and it seems to shift under his hand. A thin trickle of stones and sand pours like a waterfall just in front of his nose. Suddenly Samuel is very frightened.

  ‘Hey!’ he yells again, but it is more in fear than warning. He turns to run back. But which way? The noise has disoriented him. In his panic he runs deeper in.

  Frank and Peter hear the coal shift.

  ‘Bloody hell, it’s coming down,’ shouts Peter. ‘Where’s that brother of yours?’

  But Frank is already running down the shaft and through the brattice. As he reaches the junction the top-coal comes down with a roar. The black tide rolls towards him across the floor. His feet are trapped. Frank knows he must stay upright but is desperate for Samuel.

  ‘Sam! Sam!’ he shouts above the roar of the coal all around him. He is in total darkness. His lamp has been extinguished by the rush of air. He hears a thin wail, and then everything is engulfed in the roar of the close. The sandstone roof gives way to the ancient force of gravity. Roof and floor become one and the land in this section is solid again.

  The fall is not above Frank but just behind him. His upper body is tossed like a rag doll as the blast of air roars past him. But his legs are already held: he is powerless to move. His mouth fills with dust. He cannot see the rubble but feels it rolling up over his trapped legs, up past his chest. The pressure is intolerable.

  Frank gives a last despairing shout. ‘Sa-mu-el!’ He thinks this will be his last living word. But the fall is spent, and Frank’s head is still above the pile. He is entombed, immobile but upright, up to his neck in a dead-weight of sandstone. No part of his body can move even an inch. To drag even a mouthful of the dusty air into his lungs takes an immense effort.

  Frank listens: a trickle of sand still falling, a stone rolling down the pile to settle somewhere in the darkness. No other sounds. The close has settled, but will the men be able to find him? And Samuel? In the dark Frank can only guess at the extent of the fall. Surely he is at the edge of it to be left like this?

  He hears feet running and voices calling.

  ‘Frank!’

  ‘Frankie!’

  ‘Samuel! Oh God, Sam! Sam!’

  There are lights approaching and Frank’s heart gives a lurch of relief. He tries to call out but his overworked lungs can produce only a tiny squeak. He fixes his eyes on the three little pools of light and prays to God.

  Josiah stops. His chest is heaving. ‘Tom, Arnold, quiet! We must listen.’

  In the silence Frank manages a whimper. Josiah’s lamp immediately points in the right direction. He walks forward, but gingerly, then stops about three good strides from Frank. He has reached the edge of the pile. He is straining to see. Frank manages to shift his head an inch. Josiah looks straight into the eyes of his
brother. His own eyes widen in disbelief to see the head sitting like St John the Baptist’s on a platter of brown sandstone. Frank is crying silently. Each slow breath rasps and whoops like a child with diphtheria.

  ‘Sam?’ asks Josiah, but Frank can only let the tears fall.

  ‘Well,’ says Josiah, his voice cracking, ‘we’ll have you out in no time, with the good Lord’s help. You have here three champions with the banjo. Take heart, brother.’

  The three men work at the pile with their shovels. Josiah would like to tear at the rock like a demon but he keeps his head. If the rock pile shifts again it could engulf what is left of Frank. Others have arrived now, and John Davies helps with the shovelling, but four is all there is room for, working at the pile. The others ram timber props to either side of the cleared gap to keep the rubble from rolling back in, but the sandstone is loose and it rolls back anyway. Big Andy Fellows takes over from Peter and makes good progress. Josiah’s middle sons, Mathew and David, are further back, holding hands like the children they are, and crying. No one thinks to send them above ground.

  All the time Frank’s breathing is weakening. His mouth is a black hole, his eyes terrified as he hauls at the air.

  ‘Hold on, Frank, my bonny, we are closing on you,’ grunts Josiah. But all can see there is much yet ahead of them.

  ‘Is there a lad here?’ shouts Josiah. His own Mathew and David, tear-streaked and shaking, come forward.

  ‘Are you willing?’ says Josiah to Mathew, the youngest, who is small and thin as a stick.

  ‘Aye, Dad.’ But he’s frightened enough.

  ‘We will hoist you onto the pile. Lie flat, not to disturb, and see if you can clear a little space around his neck and shoulders to breathe.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Good lad. Gentle as a lamb now.’

  David wails like a baby to see his brother hoisted into the dark. Someone puts a grimy arm around his shoulder but David shrugs it off. He curls up on the wet ground, arms over his head until it is all over.

  Mathew lies spread-eagled on the pile of loose stone. His own head is close to his Uncle Frank’s. Gently he pulls away stone after stone. Uncle Frank doesn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Oo … oo … oo …’ His uncle’s breaths moan like a far-distant owl in the night.

  ‘The shovels are nearly here,’ whispers Mathew, his little boy’s fingers working away in the dark.

  ‘Oo … oo … o …’

  ‘Uncle! Keep breathing. Please, don’t stop now!’ Mathew touches his uncle’s dusty head as gently as he would a baby’s. The head jerks suddenly but takes no breath.

  ‘Dad! Daddy!’

  Josiah hears his son scream and knows they are too late. Leaving all caution he tears at the rubble with his bare hands, scrabbling up to Frank’s silent head. He passes his screaming son down to waiting hands below. He kisses Frank on each cheek, closes the staring eyes and prays.

  ‘The Lord be with thee. Go in peace into eternal life, both thee and our dearly beloved Samuel …’ On he prays, his voice echoing in the dark, while the miners touch their smoking caps in reverence for a lost brother.

  Josiah will not pray for the one-armed man.

  Prayers turn to curses later that night when it is reported that Jimmy Cork has been found, alive and (unforgivably) cheerful, drinking at Red Minifie’s, unaware of any accident, so he says. It is also reported that no mine manager gave him permission to check for clean air. His job was to supervise the new clippies, see they came to no harm. Jimmy’s story is that he was taking extra caution over the air on his own initiative. No one believes him. Prospecting for gold in Company time is more likely, they mutter. Somehow Jimmy had wandered into an air shaft and come out above ground safely, while the two Scobies were trapped, looking for him.

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Jimmy to the crowd of silent miners who came down from Burnett’s Face next day to confront him, ‘I felt something — the ground shift, and a rumble. But I was out then — in the sun. An earthquake, I thought.’

  And as the miners came closer, menacing: ‘Look, my friends …’ (Josiah spat on the ground before him) ‘… you can’t blame a fellow for worrying about the air you breathe. I am sorry about the accident, but how was I to know …’

  Josiah stabbed a finger at him. ‘Accident! Murder, more like. Don’t you insult us with your wild excuses!’

  Jimmy took a step back and his bad knee gave way. He fell awkwardly but not a man, not even the manager, put out a hand to help him up.

  Josiah, his face set like stone, eyes boring holes, pronounced the curse. ‘God’s wrath be called down on you! You and all your kind. We have no wish ever to set eyes upon you, in this world or the next.’ He turned to Eddie Carmichael. ‘If this man comes within a chain of Banbury or of any other mine on this whole hill every miner here will walk off the job.’ The men rumbled assent. ‘Moreover,’ said Josiah, ‘if he comes down to Burnett’s Face at all we will find it hard to muster any Christian charity, and will more likely do the man in.’

  More nods. Without another word the men left, leaving a white-faced Jimmy struggling upright, and an angry mine manager watching him.

  They say Eddie pleaded with Jimmy to leave that night; offered him and his family assistance on the Incline to get them down safely. When he refused, Eddie fired him. There would be no further work, said Eddie, not now or in the future. Jimmy must have been mad or worse, they said, to stay. But stay he did, in his hut at the corner of the Camp, with few friends and many enemies. With Eva, and with Rose.

  School of Six

  MARY SCOBIE BROUGHT up the idea of the school, which was not surprising. The Scobies were organisers, every one of them.

  ‘Born stirrers more like,’ Mr McConnochie had grumbled on more than one occasion, but held his peace now, because they were born miners too.

  Totty was pleased to stop work for a moment, and intrigued. She knew there were women up at Burnett’s Face; Tom, building houses for the immigrants, had brought the news. But this was the first time in six months one had paid a formal visit.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ she says, wondering whether to put the visitor in the boarders’ parlour or the kitchen where it is warm.

  The stout woman, leaning heavily on her stick, makes the decision for her. ‘I won’t come past the kitchen, Mrs Hanratty, my skirt is a good six inches in mud. Do you mind if my Brennan comes in too?’

  And there at the gate stands a sturdy little fellow in trousers a few sizes too big, mud on his knees, his hands, in his hair even. He looks down — perhaps he’s crying.

  ‘He would not take notice of where his feet were carrying him and fell twice, in the thickest mud, wouldn’t you know it?’ The woman sighs bleakly as she looks at the muddy boy. ‘I have told him to stay at the gate till I ask permission to bring in such a rascal. But there. I am not much cleaner and have stayed upright all the way. It is more than time the Company put in a road or two.’ Her flat voice rises a peg or two, then fades into silence. She is exhausted. And some other darkness lies behind the black eyes, the tightly corseted exterior.

  ‘Please come in, both of you,’ says Totty. ‘We will wash off the worst of your boy’s mud in a moment.’

  In the warm kitchen the two women make the formal introductions.

  ‘I am Mrs Josiah Scobie from Burnett’s Face. Please call me Mary.’

  Burnett’s Face is the settlement further in on the plateau, close to the new mines being opened up. Fifty or so miners live there now. It is a two-mile walk and one not often made for purely social reasons.

  Totty nods. She understands now, the darkness that has entered with the woman. ‘My husband, Mr Tom Hanratty, has spoken of you. Of your tragedy.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Thank you. It is the will of the Lord.’ The bleakness in Mary Scobie’s voice belies her words.

  ‘I should have paid a visit.’

  ‘Well, it is not easy. We have our lives to lead.’r />
  ‘Yes.’ Totty looks down, not knowing what to say to this flinty woman. The loss of a brother-in-law and a son soon after arriving at so alien a place as Denniston would surely have broken most women. ‘Perhaps,’ she says after a pause, ‘my husband built your home?’

  ‘No, my dear. Scobies build their own homes, but I have seen your husband and know him to be a good tradesman.’

  There is something a little patronising about this. Tom, after all, owns the only six-roomed building at Denniston, and will soon build a second boarding house. But Totty is too tired today to take umbrage. She puts tea on the table, groans with pleasure at taking the weight off her feet.

  Mary Scobie looks at her with a practised eye. ‘About two more months?’

  ‘Yes. Two exactly.’

  ‘Will you have it up here?’

  ‘I will. Mrs C will help, as she did with Michael and Elizabeth.’

  There is a silence as the two sip their tea. Michael and Brennan circle each other like puppies. Then Michael bolts into the hallway and Brennan follows. Soon they are banging up and down the corridor with whoops and Totty has to call them not to wake the baby.

  ‘I heard you had six boys and all in the mine,’ says Totty, back in the kitchen. ‘Tom didn’t speak about the little one.’

  Mary takes a scone. It’s yesterday’s, warmed in the oven. ‘Well, and that is the reason for this visit. I would like Brennan to have schooling. There are two more children arrived last week, up near us, nine and ten years old. With your Michael that makes four. Also,’ Mary Scobie takes a breath as if preparing for some battle, ‘I intend to take the twins out of the mine for a year’s school-work. To take their Certificate. Six pupils is enough for a school, they say.’

  Totty flushes, not sure how to put it. ‘There is another little one. Rose. She could do with the schooling.’

  Mary looks her dead in the eye. ‘The child at the Camp?’