Black Parade

by Jack Jones

  ‘Hoy, Glyn, stop anyone coming up through my face,’ shouted Tom Ellis. ‘I’m firing a shot in my roof.’

  ‘Carry on.’

  Glyn heard the shot go off, and soon afterwards heard the dull sound of a heavy fall of roof. Then a cry, and as Glyn hurried out of his roadway he met Tom Ellis’ ten-year-old boy, Sammy. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘My dad – he’s fast – on in front of the tram where the fall caught him and his lamp…’

  Glyn was no time getting to where Tom Ellis was somewhere, and in God only knew what state under the fall of roof. Glyn’s experienced eye took in everything at a glance, and in less than ten seconds he had completed a mental reconstruction of how the accident had happened, one of those accidents which are so common, and which are, when they chance to be fatal, reported in papers short of copy. Glyn, thinking he heard a cry from under the fall, held up his hand for silence as some of the other chaps working on that heading, with the gaffer and the master haulier, all of whom had been startled by young Sammy’s crying, came rushing into the roadway. They all stopped and looked at Glyn.

  ‘What did you hear?’ asked the gaffer.

  Glyn went forward along the side of the loaded tram of coal standing on the rails close up to the fall to listen.

  ‘Come back, you bloody fool,’ cried Tom Rees, the master haulier. ‘Can’t you hear that roof working like yeast above your head?’

  ‘Shut up,’ the gaffer told him. They all listened, and, sure enough, they all heard a faint cry from under the fall. Glyn wriggled his way back along the side of the tram and said: ‘Well, it haven’t killed him. Judging by the sound of his cries from on there where I was I think that there’s something, maybe an old post or something, holding the fall up off him…’

  ‘Then what the hell are we standing here doing nothing for?’ roared the master haulier, who was all shout when the gaffer was about. ‘Let’s get to work and get the man from there.’

  ‘We can’t rush things with the roof above like it is, and us not knowing what to touch for fear of letting the whole lot down on him,’ Glyn said.

  ‘Quite right, Glyn,’ said the gaffer. ‘Now, keep your big mouth shut,’ he told the master haulier. ‘Now, Glyn, what do you think best to do?’

  ‘I think we’ll have to work through to him along the right side of that tram of coal – but we daren’t move the tram from where it is, for I think it’s an old post, p’raps two, that have fallen from the side and against the tram that are keeping the fall from off him. So we’ll have to be careful. We’ll want some short props by the time we’ve worked to beyond the tram; and we shall have to work only with our hands. So if you chaps’ll stand back a bit to give me a chance in case the roof begins giving again…’

  The chaps moved back a little, and Glyn started working his way carefully along the side of the loaded tram, and all that could be heard was the sound of Glyn working with his hands at the fall, an occasional whimper from young Sammy who was with the other boys back out on the road-parting, and, after Glyn had been working for about an hour, the voice of the trapped man was heard distinctly by all.

  Glyn shouted encouragements to the trapped man before he wriggled his way back out of the tunnel-like impression he had made on the fall with his bare hands.

  ‘We’ll have to be careful from now on,’ he said after he had taken a drink out of the drinking-jack held out to him, ‘for I’ve worked to the end of the tram, so from now on both Tom and the one working to get through to him haven’t got the same protection, and it’ll be domino on both if it starts moving…’

  ‘Come on, which of you are going to spell Glyn?’ said the gaffer.

  The man with whiskers had already pushed his whiskers down inside his singlet, and before anyone else had a chance he was wriggling forward into the opening made by Glyn.

  ‘Well, Jim knows what to do,’ said the gaffer quietly. ‘Go and shut the damned boy up,’ he hissed as the whimpering of young Sammy from out on the road-parting came forward to disturb the silence. One of the men tiptoed back to silence the boy.

  They all stood looking at old Jim Jones’ feet, which was all they could by this time see of him, as he worked his way carefully forward, scooping the debris he unloosed out of the mass ahead of him with his hands back along the sides of his legs. Maddening slow work. Soon old Jim had to wriggle out for some short props to prop up some dangerous huge stones he had worked partly under. Man after man took his turn in the hole of death, where there is no day, until about noon. A doctor had been sent for and was waiting in case…. Then, when the man with the whiskers was doing his second turn in the hole, he wriggled his way out to the others and warned them to be ready for the pull-out, as everything was clear for the pulling out of Tom Ellis. Then back he went, and Glyn laid down in the hole behind the one with the whiskers, and Shenk at the mouth of the hole took hold of Glyn’s legs, and a man behind him took hold… well, like a tug-of-war team they were, and they got Tom Ellis out all right without a scratch on him, for, as Glyn thought, a couple of old posts leaning out from the side, and a big stone across them again, had kept the mass of debris from falling on him and crushing him to death.

  After they had given Tom a drink out of one of the tea-jacks the gaffer went to show the doctor back as far as the main roadway leading to the pit bottom, after which he returned to find Tom and all the other chaps with the exception of the whiskered one still gathered in Tom Ellis’ roadway.

  ‘Here, why aren’t you chaps back at your work?’ he shouted.

  ‘Tom’s not feeling so well after all, gaffer,’ said Shenk, who had during the gaffer’s absence persuaded Tom to pretend that he was badly shaken up.

  ‘He told the doctor he was all right,’ said the gaffer.

  ‘I didn’t feel so bad when the doctor was here, but as soon…’

  ‘He went all shaky when he tried to make a start clearing this muck,’ Shenk supplied.

  ‘Then perhaps you’d better go home, Tom,’ said the gaffer.

  ‘That’s what I was telling him, gaffer, as you was walking into the road,’ up and said Will Hamont, who was also in the plot. ‘Take the rest of the day to get over the shock, I told him. So me, Shenk and Glyn’ll slip and put our things on and take him home safe, see, gaffer.’

  ‘Surely he’s not so bad as to want three of you to see him home.’

  ‘Gaffer, do you remember what happened when Ness Edwards went out of this pit and tried to get home hisself?’ said Shenk gravely. ‘And he looked all right when he left this heading; and I’m sure you don’t want anything like that to happen to Tom.’

  The gaffer searched their faces, but was unable to detect anything other than what he thought was concern for their recently entombed comrade. Anyway, they were all piece-workers, so the loss would be theirs. ‘All right, then,’ he said, taking out a pocket-book from which he ripped a leaf to write something thereon. ‘Here you are,’ he said, handing what he had written to Shenk. ‘Give this to the hitcher at the pit bottom; mind you don’t lose it, for he won’t let you up unless you produce that.’

  ‘But what about that other note, gaffer?’ said Will Hamont.

  ‘What other note are you talking about?’

  ‘As if you didn’t know. Why, the note which will get us chaps a drop of beer after we’ve seen Tom safe home. Honour bright, now, don’t you think we’re entitled to a drink after the way we worked to get Tom out?’

  The gaffer looked at them suspiciously, but Tom looked as sickish as ever, and the other three looked back at him seriously. ‘Well, I’m sure I don’t know. I gave those Black Vein hauliers a note for beer last Thursday, and there wasn’t one of ’em in work next day.’

  ‘I’ve always said that those Black Vein hauliers…’

  ‘And maybe you’re no different,’ the gaffer told Shenk. ‘Still, you did work well.’ He ripped another leaf out of his book and wrote something on it and handed it to Glyn. ‘But if any of you are absent from work tomorrow…’r />
  ‘We’ll be here, gaffer. For God’s sake put that beer-note safe, Glyn,’ cried Shenk, who hadn’t worried much about the safety of the note to be handed to the hitcher.

  ‘Well, I must be off on my rounds,’ said the gaffer as he hurried away from them. The three other chaps rushed to have a look at the note Glyn held in his hand.

  ‘A lousy ten pints,’ growled Shenk and Will.

  ‘Hardly worth pretending to be bad for,’ said Tom.

  ‘If it wasn’t that the best part of the day is gone,’ said Glyn, ‘I go to hell if I’d go out for this mouthful. Ten pints between four of us.’

  ‘Still, you never know your luck,’ said Will Hamont. ‘We may run into some good Samaritan, and if the worst comes to the worst we can always strap a couple of pints apiece. Come on, let’s go.’

  Soon they were up out of the pit and on their way to the Collier’s Arms, the place at which the colliery company ran an account for ‘allowance beer’, which on production of the company’s note was served to hauliers who drove all day through water-swamps below ground, and to all grades of workmen who were prepared to do extra work for liquid payment.

  Glyn and the other three chaps were almost at the Collier’s Arms when Will Hamont suddenly stopped and cried: ‘I’ve got it, I’ve got the bloody open sesame, boys.’ The others looked at him. ‘Let’s see that note,’ continued Will. Glyn handed it to him. ‘Now, see that figure one?’ asked Will.

  ‘What’s to stop us seeing it?’

  ‘Well, there’s room for a little stroke down that way, and another little stroke across that way, and that would be?’ He paused for a reply.

  ‘Then it would be a four,’ said Shenk.

  ‘But we’ve got ten pints as it is, so why change it to four?’ said Tom, who was as dull as a bat where jiggery-pokery was concerned.

  Will Hamont looked at him pityingly. ‘I think you must be shaky in the head, Tom, if you can’t see what I’m driving at. Look here, this is what it says: “Please supply ten pints of beer to bearer.” Right, I makes the one into a four, and then it’ll be: “Please supply forty pints to bearer.”’

  The others gasped.

  ‘That’d be a tidy drink apiece for us,’ said Shenk.

  ‘And maybe a summons at the end of it,’ said Tom.

  Will Hamont had gone into a nearby grocer’s shop to borrow a pencil, with which he added the two strokes necessary to enable chaps to have a tidy drink. Then into the Collier’s Arms they went. The landlord thought the note a bit high and unusual for so small a number, and said so, but when Will Hamont threatened to take the note for translation into beer at another of the pubs patronised by the colliery company, the landlord hastened to serve them with the first four pints of the forty.

  ‘You keep tally, Glyn,’ said Will Hamont, ‘for I don’t think this bloody landlord’s above cheating us out of our rights.’

  So Glyn kept tally, and they settled down. After the second pint apiece they opened their food-boxes and ate the food that loving wives had that morning placed so nicely in the food-boxes, food which their wives thought would sustain them whilst they earned a good day’s wage in the pit, and there they were, eating it in a pub before they had earned as much as a penny between them. The afternoon passed, and with the approach of evening the necessity of ‘strapping’ more beer became obvious, for no good Samaritans had been met with. So they ‘strapped’ through the night up to stop-tap, whilst their wives at home were…

  Well, Saran felt certain that her Glyn was working overtime for her. She had been waiting and watching from seven o’clock, the hour at which she had expected him to reach home from the pit. She had his pint of beer ready on the table in a bottle, and a lovely plate of taters and meat which she was keeping nice and warm in the oven. A lovely pork chop off the loin she had got for him, remembering how partial he was to pork chops off the loin. Yes, he’d like that. At eight o’clock she found it necessary to pour a little boiling water into the plate from the kettle to prevent the taters and meat from drying up. At nine more boiling water, for how could she keep his bit of taters and meat warm without the gravy drying up? By ten o’clock the lovely plate of taters and meat was as good as spoilt, by eleven o’clock it was spoilt, so she took it, such as it was by this time, out of the oven and put it away on the pantry shelf. It was most annoying. Still, if he was working overtime…

  She grunted angrily as she heard from somewhere outside the same song as she had heard at about the same time the night previous.

  ‘I love my share of pleasure,’ etc etc.

  ‘Humph, and me thinking he was working overtime, and sticking myself in here all night waiting for him when I could have been in the threeatre enjoying myself,’ she said to her mother. ‘Well, he sounds as though he’s had plenty without this,’ she added as she picked up the bottle of beer off the table and hid it behind the earthenware breadpan in the pantry. ‘I expect he’ll be wanting that in the morning.’

  ‘Yes, no doubt he’ll be glad of it in the morning,’ said her mother.

  And he was glad of it in the morning.

  CHAPTER 6

  IN BORROWED PLUMES

  ‘Yes, you’re a lucky young woman if ever there was one,’ said old Granny Rees the midwife as she placed the newborn babe into Saran’s arms. ‘Two boys for a start, and there’s poor Lizzie Ann Ward next door down who’s had seven and not one boy. Poor thing, let’s hope the one she’s in the way with now’ll be a boy. Well, you didn’t have such a bad time with this one, though I was a bit afraid for you after that bit of trouble we had with your first. But you’ll be all right from now on, you’ll have no trouble bringing ’em. Unless, of course, you’re foolish enough to let one of them slips of gels they sends out from the hospital mess you about, like they messed up Mrs Harris the shop, the stuck-up old thing as she is. She asked for all she got, but it was a pity to have to cut the little baby about. But she had to have somebody with a stificate to handle her, my gel, but, as I told Lizzie Ann Ward next door down, it isn’t stificates brings the babies alive and kicking. Oh, there’s that other chap of yours that I put over on your mother’s bed crying, I forgot about him. Wants the breast, I expect.’

  ‘Yes, let me have him,’ said Saran.

  ‘Wait till I move this chap to your other side first. That’s it. Oh, shut your row,’ cried the old woman as she picked up Saran’s hungry firstborn off the bed of Saran’s mother, where he had been deposited for a short time whilst his brother was being brought into the world. ‘Hungry-gutted little bugger this,’ observed the old midwife as she placed him to Saran’s breast. ‘Not a twel’month yet, is he?’

  ‘Not until the twenty-fourth of the month.’

  ‘I thought so. Time your mother was back, isn’t it?’

  ‘She won’t be long now.’

  ‘I hope not,’ said the old midwife, who was beginning to feel like the ‘drop of short’ which she expected, and usually got, as a sort of perquisite from all her clients after the safe delivery of a baby or the laying-out of a body, and as soon as Saran’s second had been safely delivered, the old midwife had reminded the old woman, Saran’s mother, of what she referred to as ‘the usual’, and Saran’s mother was out getting it. ‘Your mother’s none too gay these days, either, Saran,’ the midwife continued as she went on putting things to rights. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of her going off any day now, though she’s not as old as I am by a good bit. But your mother’s one of these God-help-me sort, Saran, one o’ them as is always worrying their guts out. She was the same as a young gel. Don’t you ever worry your guts out, Saran, for when you’ve got no guts… oh, I shall have to get some more snuff when I go through the street.’ After snuffing she went on to tell Saran of the women near their time on whom she was keeping an eye. ‘All of ’em my customers, same as that Mrs Harris was till she got it into her head about them old stificates. Humph, after me bringing her into the world before stificates was thought of, and before ever they thought of bui
lding that hospital. Now, there was a nice woman, Saran.’

  ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘Mrs Harris’ mother…. Oh, here’s your mother at last. Will you take a drop – just a drop – in some hot water, Saran?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘No, p’raps you’d better not. What about you?’

  ‘No, none for me,’ said Saran’s mother.

  The midwife didn’t press her. ‘I expect your husband will be surprised when he comes home and finds that the baby’s here before him,’ she said as she sipped her ‘drop of short’. ‘Is he fond of children?’

  ‘I’ve never asked him,’ Saran replied shortly, for she felt like having a sleep now it was over. The midwife understood.

  ‘Well, I’ll be off now. I’ll look in to see you in the morning, Saran. Not that there’s anything to worry about, for between us we’ve made a good job of it, a better job than them with their stificates could ever do. Humph, stificates, indeed.’

  ‘She don’t talk any less than she used to,’ said Saran’s mother.

  No reply from Saran, who was sleeping as sweetly as the children, so the mother went downstairs to get things ready by the time Glyn reached home, but she wasn’t able to get things ready, after all, for she died; and she must have died quietly, for she didn’t wake Saran, who slept until Glyn got home from work to find the old woman dead in a heap on the stone floor she had evidently been trying to scrub when her life came to an end. Poor old Glyn hardly knew what to do, so he sent a boy up to tell old Marged to come down at once, for Saran was talking foolishly about getting up, but Marged when she got down there soon put a stop to that nonsense.