He was early for his shift at the colliery, so he collected his lamp and his two brass checks and went to sit by Sam Bamford, who had found a sun trap at the back of the stores and was basking in it like a cat.
‘Stockin’ up on sunlight?’ Amos said. ‘Grand idea. There’s none where we’re off to.’ He lowered himself to the ground.
Sam kept his eyes closed and his head tilted, but he knew it was Amos.
‘Good turn out last neet,’ said Sam. ‘Now you’ve got t’ball rollin’, we’ll be carryin’ a union flag through Barnsley before we know it.’
‘Aye,’ said Amos. ‘Fifty-four names. I need more than that to give Lord ’oyland an ’eadache, but it were a grand start.’
‘What’s thi next step then?’
‘A bit more gentle encouragement, a couple more meetin’s, a proper agenda o’ fair demands. Then we can present t’management wi’ a formal letter askin’ ’em to acknowledge t’New Mill branch of t’YMA.’
Sam opened his eyes now and looked at his friend. ‘Then they’ll go runnin’ down to Netherwood ’all, and Lord ’oyland’ll do ’is nut.’
‘Aye, more than likely. And we stand firm.’ He grinned at Sam, and adopted Reverend Oxspring’s sermonising voice. ‘Stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong. Corinthians, Sam, lad. We could sew that on our flag. You any good wi’ a needle?’
Sam laughed, then he cocked his head in the direction of the winding gear where the wheels had begun to turn, bringing the day-shift miners up in the cage from the pit bottom. There would be more than one draw, so they sat on a while in the day’s warmth, crossing the yard towards the pit bank only when they knew that most of the last shift were up. At the bottom of the steps they joined a small band of colleagues and waited, standing back to let muck-blackened miners pass in the other direction. To a man, they envied them their homeward journey. It’d be eight hours before they were treading the same path.
As the empty cage went down for the last few men, Amos and Sam walked up the steps. Stan Clough, duty banksman, greeted them.
‘Nah then,’ he said, nodding. But the wheels were moving again, the cables taut as they took the strain for the upward journey, and there was no conversation among the waiting miners. Silence often fell over them before they descended the mine, as if a few minutes’ reflection were needed to prepare for the job ahead. Amos leaned on an empty tub, listening to the music of the mechanism, for want of anything more interesting to do. It was as familiar to him as the sound of his own footsteps, this metallic slip and grind of the headstock. And because he knew it so well, he also knew the very second that it altered its tune; Stan Clough and Sam heard it too. There was a discordant squeal of metal on metal, and a quickening of the usual rush and rattle of the chains. Then the cage emerged from the shaft, but not slowly as was usual, preparing to stop at the surface. Instead it moved without intention of stopping, continuing its upward path at great speed and smashing with all its mighty weight into the headgear. The massive steel rope, too thick for a man to enclose in his fist and secured to the cage by a great iron cappel, broke like a strand of cotton on impact with the workings and the two-tier cage and its cargo plunged back into the earth, free-falling for six hundred yards to the unyielding sump at the pit bottom.
All of this took only seconds. Stan said, ‘Over-wound. Engine winder must’ve slipped up. Else workings were faulty and we never realised.’
His face was white with shock, but he spoke placidly as if he was commenting on a bad hand in a game of whist. Which, in a way, he was. You get the cards you’re dealt, and you prosper or suffer accordingly. Amos turned and ran down the steps from the pit bank to fetch the manager, pushing past the crush of men who were pressing forwards to find out more. But Don Manvers was already striding towards him across the yard, alerted to the disaster by the ungodly racket he’d heard in his office when the cage slammed into the winding gear.
‘How many?’ he said to Amos.
‘Last draw of t’day shift. Eight, nine.’
‘Ah, right. Could be worse.’
‘Not for them,’ said Amos. ‘They’ll all be lost.’
They stared at each other for a moment, grim faced. Don dropped his eyes first, and strode on to find the engine winder and the banksman. There’d be officials here within the hour, asking questions, piecing together what had gone wrong, and Don Manvers needed to be a few steps ahead.
Amos, who had been close enough to the advancing cage to see the stricken faces of the men trapped inside, bent double where he stood and vomited.
The Duchess of Abberley peered closely at the plate of tiny offerings being presented to her on a silver platter by an immaculately liveried footman.
‘Clarissa,’ she said, calling across the terrace in her customary strident manner, ‘what on earth?’
Lady Hoyland sashayed towards her. She was in the best possible mood for a number of reasons. First, her gown was superb and up-to-the-minute – a daring, clingy Fortuny silk in lustrous green satin; second, her latest flirtation, Robin Campbell-Chievely, was eyeing her up deliciously often while pretending to attend to his dreary wife; third, the warm weather had held, so they were able to hold the soirée outdoors overlooking Daniel’s masterpiece of a garden; and fourth, her divine footmen, specially hired for their height and dashing good looks, were touting platters of highly amusing working-class canapés. The duchess was, at this moment, peering through her lorgnettes at an arrangement of tiny steak puddings. Such fun, when everyone had expected the usual fare of shrimp toasts, foie gras and mousselines.
‘Are these suet puddings?’ the duchess said.
‘Indeed,’ said Lady Hoyland. ‘Aren’t they the darlingest things?’
Clarissa took one from the proffered plate and popped it whole into her mouth, by way of demonstration. The taste was extraordinary; steak puddings, reduced to their very essence. Eve had pounded shin of beef to a fine pulp with the pestle and mortar, then cooked it long and slow until the meat and its juices had become an unctuous, flavourful filling for the suet-lined thimble basins. Polly Pargiter, the mouselike kitchen girl she’d been loaned, had turned out to be adept with her fingers, and had managed where Eve could not to tie wax-paper lids on each thimble before they steamed in their pan of barely simmering water.
The duchess, sorely tempted and – though she would die rather than confess it – intrigued, followed Clarissa’s example and found that the little pudding was easily the most delicious thing she’d eaten since – well, she couldn’t remember when. Some long-ago supper in the nursery, she presumed, because the taste reminded her of childhood. Extraordinary. Carefree days with Nurse, before duty and obligation reared up and bit her. How wonderful that those memories could be unlocked by a steak pudding. Without really meaning to, she picked up a second and ate that too. Then a third. Then she looked up sheepishly from her feeding frenzy.
‘I can’t seem to stop,’ she said. ‘They are simply divine.’ She had the merest fleck of gravy on the corner of her mouth, which only added to Clarissa’s triumph. The countess took a gulp of her gin sling and felt a frisson of internal pleasure as it slid down her throat and made her, momentarily, swimmy-headed. Robin, in deep conversation with Totty Fitzherbert and Dickie, risked a lascivious wink in her direction. Then Teddy, red-faced and large-bellied, boomed across the assembled company.
‘Don’t be hogging the steak puddings, Clarissa.’
She laughed merrily but thought him awfully boorish. If anyone was hogging anything, it was the Duchess of Abberley, who snuck a fourth pudding before the footman was able to make a dignified dash for the earl. But everyone was in ecstasies over the food; the little veal-and-ham pies had them swooning, too. The countess knew there was more to come, but she was confident that, on the social battlefield, she had already made significant incursions into enemy territory this evening.
Munster appeared, stepping smartly on to the terrace from – apparently – nowhere.
‘Ambassador
and Mrs Choate,’ he announced, ‘and Miss Dorothea Sterling.’
There was an audible ripple of interest as the Americans joined the gathering. The earl and countess were suddenly as one again as they converged on the honoured guests, Teddy all manly bonhomie and Clarissa his elegant female equivalent. Joseph and Caroline Choate were an urbane and sociable pair, more than equal to the present company, and their attractive young companion seemed similarly at home. More at home, perhaps, than was entirely desirable. She stepped forwards when conventional etiquette dictated she should have hung back, and she shook Lord Hoyland’s hand heartily. Then, to the badly concealed amusement of all, she did the same to the countess, whose forearm looked about ready to snap under the strain.
‘I am so happy to be here,’ said Dorothea, wide-eyed with sincerity, wielding the countess’s fragile hand in time with her words, up and down like a piston. ‘It is so nice of you to have us over. Your garden is just beautiful.’
Mrs Choate, extremely well versed in the niceties of English society, stepped in.
‘Dorothea, dear,’ she said, taking her firmly by the elbow, forcing her to let go of the hostess. ‘Let’s go say hello to the young people.’
She steered her in the direction of Tobias, who had brightened up considerably at the sight of this charmingly brash new species. She had such a ready smile, and a sort of innate bounciness that reminded him strongly of his dairy maid back in Netherwood, though he doubted he’d get to know Dorothea quite so well on first meeting as he had Betty Cross. She was striking rather than pretty: small, slim, chin a little weak but eyes large and expressive, which went a long way to compensate for lesser attributes. Her brown hair was extremely modern, cut to shoulder length and not pinned up in the normal way, but held off her face with a rather exotic jewelled satin bandeau. Tobias unfolded himself from the stone balustrade on which he was artfully draped, and prepared to give her his full and undivided attention.
Lady Hoyland signalled discreetly to Henrietta, who promptly joined her in a brief, private huddle.
‘What do you make of Miss Sterling?’ said the countess.
‘Nothing yet,’ said Henrietta. ‘Haven’t had a chance to chat.’
‘Oh pish,’ said her mother. ‘No need to chat to take a first reading. She looks dangerous to me.’
‘By which, you mean, she’s talking to Toby,’ said Henrietta.
‘No, that’s not what I mean at all. Look at her. She has an extraordinarily bold manner, as if she already knows everyone. Oh, Henry, you don’t suppose she’s a suffragist?’
That her household might somehow fall under the influence of the appalling Votes For Women brigade was one of the countess’s deepest fears, along with premature ageing and running to fat round the middle. Dorothea Sterling’s individual style marked her out as deeply suspicious. The countess could quite see her waving a placard and shouting slogans.
‘I’m sure not, Mama,’ said Henrietta soothingly. ‘I really don’t think they have them in America.’
Chapter 45
The winding accident was no reason to halt production at New Mill, and Amos and the rest of the afternoon shift were redirected to a wide, single-tiered cage in a ground-level shaft usually used for coal tubs and ponies. Amos had got hold of a list of names of the deceased, and he made sure as many people as possible knew the facts. Lew Sylvester was on it and old Alf Shipley, who had only been down there for a couple of hours to look at a damaged section of the roadway. There were six others. Jed Goddard and his two lads, Henry Schofield, Billy Goldthorpe and young Abe Utley, an apprentice who had only left the screens two weeks previously. The word was that the remains were horrific, the men having been crushed when the force of the fall caused a concertina effect on the cage, collapsing it in on itself as it hit the sump at the bottom of the shaft at a speed of two hundred miles an hour.
It was a black day, and there wasn’t much said among the men down the pit as they went about their work. Up on the surface, the bereaved were being plied with sweet tea, though the earl wasn’t attending to them in their grief, being away with his family at his London home.
‘I reckon nowt of ’im, living the ’igh life while men die in ’is service,’ said Sam Bamford.
Amos shrugged. ‘Makes no difference who comes, does it? They’re dead now. I expect ’e’ll be told, anyroad. Telegram or summat.’
In Lord Hoyland’s absence Jem Arkwright had come across from Netherwood Hall, representing the estate, and he was holed up now in a pit office with Don Manvers, putting a story together before the inspector of mines arrived. There’d be an inquest sharpish, thought Amos, and doubtless a great deal of energy would be expended proving the accident hadn’t happened through neglected repairs to shoddy equipment. God forbid that the earl’s reputation as the great benefactor should be tarnished. Privately, he wondered if this latest tragedy might not galvanise a few more men into joining the union. Death benefits to widows and security for families of the deceased were on the agenda of the YMA. Amos wondered, as he worked, how he might raise the issue without appearing to profit from the disaster.
When he got home that night Anna was waiting, standing like a sentry by his back door in Brook Lane. This was not a usual occurrence. He was almost upon her by the time he noticed her and he stopped in his tracks, astounded. His relationship with Anna had always been friendly, but she had never paid him a visit at home.
‘What’s up?’ he said at once. ‘is it Seth? ’as something ’appened to t’lad?’
‘No. Well, yes,’ she said. ‘In a way.’
He looked at her, mystified and not reassured.
‘What I mean,’ she said, ‘is Seth is safe, but not happy. Can you come see him, talk to him?’
‘Now? In all my pit muck?’ said Amos. ‘What is it that can’t wait till morning?’ It wouldn’t be beyond the boy to need an urgent conversation about melon varieties. There wasn’t much Amos wouldn’t do for Seth, but right now he needed a wash and a hot meal.
‘Please,’ said Anna. ‘He heard there was accident. He will not believe you are alive.’
The penny dropped. Amos turned at once and began to run down the street towards Beaumont Lane.
‘He’s not at home,’ Anna called after him. He stopped and turned to her.
‘He’s at allotment,’ she said, and shook her head to show that she knew this was madness, but there it was.
Amos set off again, changing his course. Anna followed in less of a hurry. She had had a terrible time with Seth today; frankly, she was happy to hand the problem over to Amos. She was sick of the boy’s baleful gaze, which he turned on her so often that she saw it even when she closed her eyes.
Amos, meanwhile, cursed himself as he ran. Among all the thoughts he’d had since the accident, the lad hadn’t been among them. It hadn’t even crossed his mind that Seth might believe him to be among the dead. He jogged along the quiet streets and out of the town along the Sheffield Road, then swung right on to the lane which led to the plots. By the time he flung open the gate on to his allotment, he could barely breathe, let alone speak. The boy was a sorry sight; he lay face down in the dirt by the potato rows.
‘Seth, lad,’ Amos said, alarmed, appalled, embarrassed for the boy. ‘Frame thissen.’
Seth twisted and sat up, as if he’d been poked with a cattle prod, then he jumped to his feet and hurtled into Amos. He was trying to speak, but couldn’t get anything out beyond an incoherent stammer. For a long while they just stood there, Seth’s filthy face pressed against Amos’s filthy shirt.
‘You could’ve come to t’pit,’ Amos said, finally. ‘They would’ve told you there that I weren’t among ’em.’
‘We did.’
This was Anna, who had just pushed open the wooden gate and arrived by their side. ‘Didn’t we, Seth? We went to pit, and we spoke to men who told us, no, Amos Sykes was not in cage.’
Amos held Seth out at arm’s length, studying his face which had been disfigured by his afternoon
of imagined horror.
‘Nah then, lad, is that right?’
Seth nodded. Now that Amos was here, in the flesh, he felt weak and stupid for thinking him dead when everyone told him otherwise. He shuddered involuntarily and gave a great, tragic sniff. He simply didn’t have the words to express the blind panic that had seized him when he heard the pokers rattling on the fire backs and saw women leaving their homes and their chores to be at New Mill if the worst news came. He had been on his way back to school after eating the bread and cheese that Anna had left for him and Eliza on the kitchen table. Eliza had skipped on ahead and was already in the school yard, but Seth was dawdling along, wishing he could spend the afternoon in the sunshine getting the canes up for the runner beans. Then the clanging had started, passing from one house to the next like jungle drums, and women had emerged into the street, pulling shawls around their shoulders as they half-ran, half-walked towards the colliery. Seth had begun to run himself, all the way to Mitchell’s Mill where he knew Anna would be working. She had a fleeting moment of surprised satisfaction that he’d come to her in a crisis, but it hardly lasted a second because he threw himself on her in a fury, pummelling her with his hard little boy’s fists, and apparently blaming her, in a barely coherent stream of words, for his father’s death and now Amos’s.
Ginger had come to Anna’s aid, pulling Seth off her and giving him a resounding slap across the face.
‘Now pack it in, Seth Williams,’ she had said. ‘Your mother would be ashamed of t’way you’re carryin’ on.’
There were customers in the shop, all of them gawping at the scene unfolding before them. Anna and Ginger exchanged a look.
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