The Most Precious Thing

by Bradshaw, Rita

‘M-a-t-t.’ Veronica drew out his name in reproach. ‘Come on, you can look at those later.’

  ‘By, you’re a slave driver, Veronica Sutton.’

  ‘Aye, well, I have to be where you’re concerned, Matthew Sutton.’

  Matthew shook his head solemnly. ‘Nag, nag, nag.’

  ‘Oh you.’

  Matthew got to his feet and looked up into the blue sky. He was silent for a moment, then he said, his voice now sober, ‘Hark at the birds, and yet somewhere out there Uncle Alec is up to his eyes in it. Damn Nazis.’

  ‘Don’t swear.’

  ‘Damn isn’t swearing, not like some words anyway.’ He scowled at her and rubbed his hand across his forehead. ‘Aren’t you worried for him?’

  She did not answer him for a moment, and then she said, ‘Not like you, I suppose.’

  She came to stand near him and by unspoken mutual consent they both sat down now, side by side on the orange boxes. They sat in silence for some moments before Matthew said, ‘It’s so unfair, this war and everything. If it hadn’t happened Uncle Alec would have taken me on in one of the shops, he said so. He was looking forward to it.’

  Veronica nodded. This was not the first time he had spoken about it. Her voice soft, she said, ‘You can still do that, when the war’s over, I mean. It won’t last for ever.’

  No, it wouldn’t, but in the meantime his uncle was risking life and limb on foreign shores and he had to go down the pit. ‘Maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘Who knows though. If my da wasn’t a miner I wouldn’t have to go down the pit. Why couldn’t he have been like Uncle Alec? He hasn’t spent his life grubbing away under the earth, he’s made something of himself. Look at him now, fighting for England. He’s brave, he is.’

  ‘Oh aye?’ thundered a voice over their heads and a hand grabbed Matthew’s collar. Veronica let out a piercing shriek and fell backwards off her box. She watched in horror as her father swung Matthew to his feet as easily as if the boy had been a wet rag. ‘You saying your da isn’t brave? Is that it?’

  ‘Let - let go of me.’ Matthew’s face was turning a dark shade of red as his uncle’s vice-like grip prevented him from breathing.

  Walter ignored this and shook him slightly, like a terrier with a rabbit. ‘You little scut you.’

  ‘Da, Da, please.’ Veronica scrambled to her feet and caught at Walter, her voice frantic. ‘He didn’t mean that, did you, Matthew? He didn’t.’

  ‘Well, did you?’ Walter flung Matthew from him. He would have gone sprawling on the ground if the ramshackle hut hadn’t been in the way. He steadied himself and glared at his uncle.

  ‘He was just saying--’

  Walter’s hand made a sharp cutting action and Veronica held her tongue. ‘I heard what he was saying, lass,’ he said grimly, without taking his eyes off the angry boy in front of him. ‘You think your da has got the easy option, lad? Is that it? That Alec’s away covering himself in honour and glory and your da is nowt but some sort of animal that “grubs” under the ground? By, you’ve got a lot to learn.’

  Matthew stood tall and thrust out his chest. He was furious with his uncle for making him look a fool in front of Veronica. ‘Uncle Alec is brave,’ he said defiantly. ‘He could be killed at any moment.’

  ‘And you think your da couldn’t?’

  Matthew shrugged.

  ‘I asked you a question.’

  ‘Working down the pit is different.’

  ‘Oh aye, lad, I’ll give you that. Working down the pit is different all right. You work in places so low and filthy and dangerous you wouldn’t put a dog in them, and once the shift is finished and you come up - if you come up, and there’s plenty of poor blighters through the years who haven’t - then you’re on fire-watching duty or the Home Guard so you get it all ways.’

  Matthew shrugged again, and this seemed to infuriate Walter more than any backchat. His voice was rough as he said, ‘You don’t know you’re born, lad, that’s the trouble with you. All these fancy opinions and still wet behind the ears. You’re in for a shock in a week or two and no mistake. Or . . .’ He paused, staring hard at the boy he had secretly never had any time for. ‘Or perhaps you’d like a trip underground afore that, eh? See how your ideas hold up then.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ It was bravado, but not for all the world would Matthew let his uncle see that.

  ‘That’s settled then. And not a word to your mam, or your da for that matter. You hear that too, Veronica?’ Walter knew she thought the sun shone out of her cousin’s backside, something which had grown to irritate him more and more lately. ‘I’ll take you down tomorrow, it being your mam’s day at the shop. The deputy knows you’re starting after your birthday and I’ll explain you’re keen, eh? He can’t wait, I’ll say. Now, you get yourself off home, and you, miss,’ he turned to his daughter, ‘you’re coming home with me.’

  ‘Aw, Da. Matt’s only just got here and--’

  ‘No argument, lass. I’m not asking, I’m telling.’

  Matthew gathered up the comics and walked off sulkily to his bicycle.

  Walter called after him, ‘Midday or thereabouts at the pit gates. All right?’

  There was no reply, but then Walter had not expected one. He stood staring after the young lanky figure until his nephew had disappeared out of the side gate, silently admitting to a twinge of guilt now. He shouldn’t have gone for the lad like that, but Matthew was such a blasted little know-all whilst knowing nowt. And the way the lad was about his da, it made his blood boil.

  Strange, Walter thought, when you considered David was a miner through and through, but he couldn’t see the lad making the grade somehow. There was what he could only describe as a weakness about Matthew and it was becoming more apparent, at least to him, as the boy got older. Of course Carrie and Renee and the rest of the womenfolk were like his Veronica, they thought Matthew could do no wrong. But regardless of all that, he shouldn’t have gone for him. And then Veronica said exactly that. ‘There was no need to be like that, Da.’ Whereupon Walter promptly dismissed his pangs of conscience.

  ‘No?’ He looked at his daughter, the only thing in his life that held any real joy for him, and his expression was dour. ‘You think it right he runs your Uncle David down then? And it’s not the first time I’ve heard him. The lad wants a damn good hiding.’

  ‘He’s missing Uncle Alec.’

  ‘Aye, two of a kind they are.’ It was not a compliment. ‘And while we’re on the subject of Matthew, I reckon it’s about time you stopped coming up here with him. He starts work in a week or two and you’ll have left school by Christmas. You’re not bairns any more.’

  ‘But what about the vegetables and everything?’

  ‘Damn the veg.’

  Walter admitted to a feeling of surprise when he saw Matthew waiting for him by the pit gate the following morning. He had expected his nephew to come up with some excuse or other to avoid doing what he didn’t want to do. Matthew was good at that, in Walter’s opinion. Of course there were some lads who were champing at the bit to follow their fathers down the pit, but Matthew wasn’t one of them. Silly daft young so-an’-sos, their das would say, thought Walter, but nevertheless it was said with pride. It was born in some lads, that was the thing.

  ‘You’ve come then.’ Walter smiled as he spoke but there was no answering smile on Matthew’s face. He just nodded at his uncle. So it was going to be like that, was it? Walter’s mouth set. It suited him. He’d had a barney and a half with Renee this morning and was in no mood to wetnurse this little runt. Gone twelve, she’d got in last night, and stinking of whisky and cheap scent. She hadn’t exactly been at home much right from when she’d gone back to work after Veronica was born, but the last few months were something else entirely. It was like she’d gone mental or something. And he’d got his suspicions about that an’ all, oh aye. It seemed a mite too coincidental that this latest stage had started about the same time they heard the news about her boss from the factory.

  ‘I’ll do
the talking when we’re inside. All right?’ Walter tucked his bait tin more securely under his arm as he spoke. He intended to stay down with Matthew for a couple of hours or so and then it wouldn’t be long till his shift, so there’d been no point in leaving his sandwiches at home. Sandwiches he’d had to prepare himself, he thought bitterly. He’d heard some of his pals moan about what their missus had given them now and again, but he’d have been content with dry bread and water if it had been prepared by a wife who knew her place and function in the home.

  ‘What’ve we got here, Walt?’ An elderly man with blue marked skin and rheumy eyes was in the lamp house, and he gestured at Matthew as he spoke.

  ‘This is my nephew, David’s lad. He’s coming down in a week or two when he reaches fourteen, but he wants to see what’s what afore then so I’m taking him on a quick tour, as it were.’

  ‘Thinks it’s Blackpool down there, does he?’ The man cast a watery eye over Matthew. ‘Well, we’ve not much in sideshows an’ such, lad, but you give the pit ponies half a chance an’ some of them’ll nip you harder than any seaside donkey. You heard about old Bronco?’ he continued, turning to Walter while Matthew remained as still and silent as a block of wood.

  ‘No, what’s that then?’

  ‘Took a chunk out of old Frank Armstrong’s backside the size of a plate. Frank had gone into a quiet corner to do the necessary an’ was bending over with his trousers round his ankles when the cunnin’ blighter crept up on him an’ sank his teeth into what he must have thought was his birthday cake. They said you could hear Frank yell from here to Newcastle.’

  ‘Serves him right. He worked with Bronco for a time and I reckon he brayed him once too often, and that one’s an intelligent animal, he don’t forget. And Bronco’s a lamb with Geoff Pounder who’s got him now. If you ask me, that horse has been biding his time for years for the right moment.’

  ‘Aye, well, his patience was rewarded, sure enough. Just missed havin’ Frank’s weddin’ tackle an’ all, accordin’ to them as saw it. They said Frank leaped so high he nutted himself on the roof an’ then took off like a bat out of hell.’

  ‘That’ll teach him.’ Both men were grinning now. ‘He’s a nasty bit of work, is Frank.’

  ‘He is that. So, you’re takin’ the young ’un down. You’d better clear it with the deputy.’

  ‘Aye, I will when I see him. It’s no odds anyway, the lad’s going to be coming down every day in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Here.’ The lamp man handed Matthew a token and hung another one up on a long shelf behind him. ‘Look after that, lad. Put it in a pocket without any holes in it. You lose that when you’re comin’ down regular an’ you’ll have the whole pit lookin’ for you. An’ if they find you alive, they’ll murder you.’

  Matthew nodded. He was too terrified to speak.

  When he saw the cage he couldn’t believe they were going down in it, but still he didn’t speak; he followed Walter in and then hung on for dear life as it took off.

  The two hours that followed were the worst of his life. When he first stepped out of the cage it wasn’t as bad as he had expected. The area was larger than he’d thought it would be and relatively well lit, but then he was following his uncle down a road which got narrower and narrower as the roof got lower and lower, and all the time the light was being swallowed up by deepening blackness. In spite of his lamp Matthew kept banging his head and back on the roof and grazing his hands and elbows on the sides. And all the time the darkness grew, like a separate entity, until he couldn’t see anything beyond the lamp, no matter how hard he tried. It was darker than the darkest night, blacker than the worst nightmare.

  He saw men crawling like animals as they worked, some stripped to their underpants and some as naked as the day they were born, and all of them just a pair of white eyes in black faces and bodies. There were mice and rats and great shiny black beetle type insects with wings, and feelers as long as bootlaces, and the smell of coal dust was permeated by pony and human dung.

  Above their heads the roof was held up by what looked to Matthew like the flimsiest of props, and with each creak he fully expected them to give way. He was led through doors and along tunnels past machinery, conveyor belts, chocks, winding machines, to a running commentary from Walter about blackdamp, in-bye, jowl, judd and a hundred and one other incomprehensible terms, until Matthew’s head was spinning and his bowels felt loose and he wanted to be physically sick. He stumbled along almost blindly towards the end, the humid heat and stench and sheer thick black horror of it all pressing down on his mind until he just wanted to scream and run and run and run.

  It will end, it will end. He kept repeating the words over and over in his mind through the whirling panic that at any moment the roof would come crashing down on their heads and they would be buried beneath millions of tons of slate, rock and coal. It will end, it will end . . .

  He wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone how they got back to the main roadway and then the cage, but eventually he was going upwards and he was so thankful he had to fight back tears. There had been lots of banter between Walter and the miners who had been working, some of it spoken in such broad pitmatic by the oldtimers, it might as well have been a foreign language. This was another world. A world that had nothing remotely familiar about it and was typified by what Walter casually referred to as blacklocks. These bore no resemblance to the black beetles above ground; they looked like monster cockroaches and were as big as mice. Walter told him they were too big and nasty to ever come up out of the ground and that’s why people didn’t know about them. But he knew about them now, and this secret, terrifying, subterranean hell was where he would be every day in a couple of weeks’ time. What was he going to do?

  ‘So, there you are, lad.’ Walter could see how pale his nephew’s face was, even covered in coal dust, and there was something about the stiff way he was standing that prompted a softer tone than he had ever used to him before. ‘It won’t seem so bad second time round. You get yourself home and have a good wash afore your mam gets home, and then you’ll have something to tell them both the night, eh? And your pals an’ all. Stole a march on them, haven’t you?’

  The jerk of Matthew’s head passed as a nod, and Walter stood and watched him walk away and out of the colliery gates. Well, he’d bet his last farthing Matthew wouldn’t belittle his da’s courage again; he’d been brought down a peg or two today and no mistake. Strangely, the thought brought no relief to the guilt Walter was feeling. Aw, to hell with it, he thought irritably. The boy had to see for himself and that’s an end to it. Then he stomped off to the lamp house and Larry to while away the half an hour or so before his shift began.

  Matthew found he had to concentrate very hard to keep the numbness that had enveloped him in place all the way home. He dared not think, not until he was safe in his bedroom with the door locked, where no one could see him if he let go of the flood of feeling that had built up throughout the endless time down the pit.

  When he reached home he stood in the scullery for some minutes, his legs shaking, just gazing into space, before forcing himself to move into the kitchen. Again he stood for a while, holding on to one of the hardbacked chairs grouped round the table. He had thought he would cry once he was home, like he’d wanted to do in the cage, but curiously he found he was dry-eyed, the fear in him burning up the relief of tears.

  After a moment or two he walked across to the range and lifted the big black kettle he’d filled with water before he’d left to meet his uncle this morning. He pushed it hard into the red glow. He would have a washdown in the bath and then see to his clothes, he told himself dully. His mam wouldn’t be back from the shop for some time, it being a Tuesday, the day she saw individual clients by appointment.

  When there was six inches or so of warm water in the bottom of the tin bath Matthew bolted the front and back doors and stripped off completely. It was only then that he saw his knees were skinned raw from the number of times he’d stumbl
ed and fallen. The palms of his hands were in no better shape, and when he lathered up the bar of carbolic soap and washed his hair, the top of his head felt as if a cheese grater had been applied to it.

  He sat in the water until it was stone cold, and when he rose to his feet he was stiff and every muscle ached. He walked naked to his bedroom where he pulled on a pair of trousers and a shirt. Then he returned to the kitchen and washed his clothes as best he could in the cold bath water. This did not even begin to lift the grime out of them, so he boiled some more water on the hob and rubbed and scrubbed until the black coal dust was gone, his sore hands smarting so much he had to hold his breath at times. But still he couldn’t cry.

  He hung his clothes on the line in the backyard, climbed the narrow stairs to his bedroom, shut the door after him and flung himself on the quilted bedspread that covered his narrow iron bed. His mam had made the bedspread and matching curtains and they were bonny. All his friends said he was lucky to have a room of his own, a room that had a square of carpet on the floor and a wardrobe and bookcase and shelving for all his toys and things. They all loved to come round to his house because his mam wasn’t stingy with drinks and cakes, not like some. But then all his pals had brothers and sisters and, depending on the number, that meant they were hard-pressed. He was glad he hadn’t got any brothers or sisters; he wouldn’t have wanted to share this room with anyone or have little ones messing about with his things. His eyes alighted on the magnificent model of Sir Francis Drake’s ship, the Golden Hind, which his Uncle Alec had bought him for his thirteenth birthday. It was perfect down to every small detail, and the present had been the envy of all his friends.