Dead-Nettle

by John Buxton Hilton

  ‘I should think you do.’

  ‘Who’s working Dead-Nettle, then?’

  ‘Nobody you’d know.’

  ‘A comer-in? Not a Margreave man?’

  ‘Nobody knows where he’s from. He could even be one of your lot.’

  ‘Our lot?’

  ‘Nay, Edward,’ someone else said. ‘The old hand’s never been a soldier – not with a foot like that.’

  ‘What about his foot?’

  ‘He wears a big boot – moves his leg all in one piece.’

  And thereupon Gilbert Slack laughed – an unhealthy, bottled-up guffaw, that he seemed nevertheless to be having to force out of himself. He nudged his friend with his elbow, and he too started to laugh.

  ‘Old Peg-leg Lomas.’

  There was something about their laughter that did not seem genuine.

  ‘Old Peg-leg Lomas, trying to get rich on a Margreave stope? Where is he living, then? Likely to be in here tonight, is he?’

  ‘He’s living on the quarter. He’s done up the cottage.’

  ‘After a fashion.’

  ‘How long’s he been working it? Making a go iof it, is he?’

  Slack really wanted to know, but was trying not to let them see just how urgently. It was remarkable what insight and memory some of these Margreave onlookers had, when I finally persuaded them to talk to me.

  ‘He’s been here a week or two. He hasn’t freed the meer yet. Been roofing and dooring.’

  ‘And sucking around Esmond Fuller.’

  ‘Who’s Esmond Fuller?’

  ‘The new man who’s bought Margreave Hall.’

  Gilbert Slack finished his beer. ‘Harry, this is too good to put off until tomorrow. We’ll carry our stuff upstairs and then take a gentle canter round to Dead-Nettle.’

  The man who later described this scene to me said that if Slack had ordered Harry to come without finishing his drink, he was sure he would have obeyed without question.

  Frank Lomas and Isobel heard the hooves and voices outside on the rubble, and for a moment Lomas sat stiff-backed as if trying to wish away the interruption. But then there was hammering on the new wooden door, so imperative that it could no longer be ignored. He got up and lifted the latch.

  ‘Gilbert! Harry!’

  ‘Peg-leg! Who’d have thought the three of us would ever have got here?’

  Gusty handshakes and back-slapping; Frank Lomas was now all vacuous broad smiles.

  ‘To tell you the truth, Frank, I’d half a mind to bring my own dish to Dead-Nettle. But you’ve pipped me to it. And if there’s anyone I’d rather have seen get here before me, it’s you. Don’t I get an introduction?’

  He faced Isobel Fuller as if he had made more progress with her in ten seconds than Frank had in ten days. Her response to this whirlwind arrival was a mixture of plain disappointment and positive resentment. It was the end of her tête-à-tête with this slowly self-revealing man. She would not have gone so far as to admit that she felt as if these men were robbing her of Frank. But they belonged to a slice of his past of which she knew nothing and which, every instinct told her, had been less than worthy of him. And it was not merely that they were reminding him of it. They would drag him back to it if they could. They would revive in him some pride in the wildness of the years they had in common; if they had not happened along, he would never have looked back over his shoulder.

  She at once conceived a dislike of Gilbert Slack that was increased by every inflexion of his voice and every theatrical sweep of his hands. They were badly kept hands; Slack was clearly a man sickeningly vain of his appearance, but he overlooked his hands. And she knew in those first few seconds that he would do his best to rob her of Frank Lomas, for some purpose of his own – perhaps because he was one of those men who saw no greater challenge than another man’s integrity. And as for the other one, he was a mere loiterer at Slack’s elbow, as faithful as some yellow mongrel who refuses to be put off by a kick and an empty dish.

  ‘No, please don’t get up.’

  But she rose, and Slack gripped her fingers in an over-warm hand which maintained its grasp longer than it need have done. He looked as if he wholly misinterpreted her purpose in being alone here with Frank; as if he imputed to her, in all naturalness, the most squalid of motives – moreover as if he himself were more than half sharing her enjoyment of them. In fact, he looked at her as if he were experimenting with her in his own mind; as if, too, he knew that she was under no illusion about his thoughts. Then his eyes wandered casually over to Frank, as if to indicate that he was quite content to leave her to him; it was only fair – for the time being, at any rate. And Isobel Fuller found everything about Gilbert Slack revolting – the glistening grease on his hair, the sweating pores in his skin, above all his unquestioning confidence that no one would ever repulse him. He must have been repulsed on countless occasions, she reflected, but he was the sort of man to shrug it off as if he had barely noticed.

  ‘It might just run to a couple more bowls of stew,’ Lomas said.

  The man called Harry accepted his as a man who eats what happens to be going. Slack took a couple of mouth-fuls and then seemed to forget about it. Frank had lent him an old spoon, worn out of shape along its outside edge, with his army number stamped on the handle. Slack looked at it satirically.

  ‘Well, Corporal Lomas, it seems a long time now since that night on the Karroo.’

  ‘Yes. I shall never forget that moon.’

  ‘That bloody moon – I beg your pardon, Miss Fuller – we’d said that before, but this time we meant it. That was the night I told you about this place, Frank.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here,’ Lomas said, with painful sentimentality.

  ‘What a memory!’

  ‘I think I can remember every word you said, Gilbert – and you weren’t wrong in any detail that mattered.’

  ‘Well, you’ve beaten me to it, Frank. If you hadn’t got here first, I’d have been here prospecting. You’d better watch out that I don’t have the Bar Master nicking your stowe.’1

  ‘I don’t think you’d ever do that, Gilbert.’

  ‘So how are you going to tackle it, Frank? You’ll carry on driving the way the Drift runs?’

  ‘No. I see no future in that. The Old Man2stopped where he did because he knew he was wasting his time.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve always thought.’

  ‘So I shall drive trials in other places: up left, down left, up right, down right, in on the slant, down on the plumb.’

  ‘My plan exactly. You don’t want a partner, do you?’

  Isobel Fuller could have answered that for him. But even Frank Lomas showed his unease at the suggestion.

  ‘That would be two men’s eggs in one basket, Gilbert. There are other mines about, if you’ve got a fancy for one. Some of them might be a sight more profitable than Dead-Nettle. Why not take one of those? We might form a co-operative later, when we’ve something to smelt.’

  Gilbert Slack laughed.

  ‘Not for me, brother. I’m no miner. Too much like work for yours truly. I’ve always had a feeling about Dead-Nettle – but you’re here and it’s yours. I as good as gave it to you, that night we talked about it. I’d never go back on that offer. You had just saved my life.’

  Why? Isobel found herself wondering.

  ‘So how are you going to dig your tunnels, Frank?’

  1 A traditional ceremony by which a miner may claim another man’s neglected working. 2 The Old Man: a generic term in regional lore, referring to the previous miner and all his antecedents; also, confusingly, it is sometimes used to mean the waste he left behind.

  He pushed the remainder of his stew in the direction of Harry, who applied himself to it as if he had not noticed that it was a different bowl.

  ‘Gads,’ Lomas said. ‘I’m having them made, for wedging out the mother-rock. Fire-setting, maybe, to crack the walls. Quick-lime, perhaps.’

  ‘Not dynamite? Dynamite’s the thing
nowadays.’

  ‘I’ve heard enough shot-firing for one life-time – above ground and under.’

  ‘I know where I can get some for you. It would save you weeks of grafting.’

  But Frank had clearly taken against high explosive.

  ‘I’d rather do it my way. I may not get rich fast, but I mean to enjoy myself.’

  ‘Well – if you ever change your mind –’

  Shortly after that, Isobel Fuller announced that she ought to be going home. And here lay a problem to which Frank had found only a tentative solution, since she had a horse and he had none. He had assumed that he would walk with her on the leading rein until they were at least within sight of the Hall. It was Gilbert Slack who said that of course it would be no trouble for him and Harry to escort the young lady. Lomas suggested that he should accompany them on foot.

  ‘Then that’s three of us tied to a walking pace,’ Gilbert said. ‘And Harry and I are more than ready for our beds. We’ve been on the road all day. What’s the matter, Frank old son, don’t you trust us? There’s safety in numbers, when all’s said and done.’

  Isobel Fuller was at least as uneasy about the arrangement as Lomas was, but she felt as if her wits had deserted her, and saw no way out of the trap. There was no way, just no way at all, of disappearing from the sight of those two men. She could hardly change her mind now and say that she wanted to spend another hour with Frank; that would be a gift to Slack’s unpleasant mind. She thought of pretending that her horse was lame, which would give Frank the chance to come at his own speed; but Slack would see through the prevarication. She was a young woman who took pride in having thrown off the shackles of convention – at least, in outlook. Did it matter so much to her what Slack thought or might not think? Could she hate a man so much, after so short a time in his company?

  And there was safety in numbers; she had a horse well trained to her will which might also, in certain circumstances, be used as a weapon of defence.

  Lomas, of course, trusted his friends implicitly, but he was not a happy man as he watched the trio ride away from the cottage. Six pairs of hooves crunched into the gravelly gangue, and so dark was the night that within seconds his visitors merged into it.

  Chapter Six

  Lomas slept badly. There were problems on his mind to which he kept finding decisive solutions, only to come up against the sickeningly familiar snags as his brain swung in overlapping circles.

  He wished Gilbert Slack six thousand miles from here, back in South Africa, up-river trading in South America, gold-panning in frozen Canada. They had talked of all these things, believing themselves and each other for hours on end in the idle watches of the Transvaal nights. Yet there had been nothing insincere in Lomas’s welcome of the pair last night. They had been army friends, and Lomas, though I am inclined rather easily to call him simple-minded, was no simpleton; he knew what an army friend meant and what it did not mean. There could be absolute trust in bad spots, absolute honesty in the illuminating scepticism of platoon life, absolute loyalty in the face of the enemy, whether that meant Boer settlers or one’s own officers. There could be a united front against civilian populations that deserved no more than to be exploited. There had been almost passionate exchanges of confidence in the long hours of boredom, long distances from the sources of one’s heartbreaks. One listened for an hour and bought the right to talk in one’s turn. One gave assurances of blood-brother understanding – but later, both parties forgot. Especially Gilbert Slack; would Gilbert Slack clutter his brain for five minutes with someone else’s woes, unless these could possibly be turned to his own advantage?

  On the other hand, would Gilbert Slack ever forget, in all its trivial telling detail, any ancient tale or rumour that might be docketed for his future use?

  Lomas knew Slack as what was sometimes called an honest rogue – a cheat and rapscallion who attracted men by his very effrontery, whose iniquities were usually on such a small scale that his victims suffered little more than irritant damage. He was open-handed when it came to sharing out his quick profits. And he was a consummate raconteur of his own misdeeds.

  Gilbert Slack had had a good deal to do with Lomas’s being in the army at all. He had been the object of picaresque envy to the colourless lad from the pit-bottom who had suddenly heard drums, seen red coats and grasped that tropical moons were not beyond his own reach. And, in all fairness, Slack had not abandoned young Lomas when they were in the ranks together. Himself a trained soldier, he had kept the recruit out of at least some of the trouble that he might have been in. He had encouraged Lomas to keep company with him – for Slack liked an impressionable following, just as he was now wandering the kingdom to the silent adulation of Harry Burgess. Though, by God, Lomas hoped that there was more to himself than there was to Harry.

  Once, before going abroad, when they were under canvas on the Isle of Thanet, they indulged in a weekend’s wandering after a field-day in the Kentish marshes. On an afternoon of golden spring they had come into St Nicholas-at-Wade where, with a wink, Slack had taken him into the village store. There Gilbert had pleaded desperate thirst, and while the blousy shopkeeper went into the back quarters to fetch them glasses of water, he filled the pockets of his tunic with apples and potted meat, sardines and night-lights for midnight card-schools. Seeing Lomas’s unease as they put distance between themselves and the shop, he had rammed hard at the still active non-conformist conscience. ‘Not worried about that old bitch, are you? She’ll still be shovelling money into her till while you and I are wiping the blood out of our eyes with the backs of our hands.’ Slack often claimed to be redressing social unfairness. The world owed him a living, and he got what he could from those of its inhabitants who were slow enough to fall for his wiles. But he never put himself at any great risk. When Lomas took stock of the years, it was remarkable how rarely Slack had been even on the fringes of real trouble.

  Now Lomas was jealous of him: that was the kernel of the sleepless night. Blinded himself by Isobel Fuller, he had to believe that Gilbert Slack would be similarly overwhelmed. And so keen were his memories of Slack’s facetious charms that he could imagine Isobel being taken in despite her finer judgement. Slack’s glib tongue would not have been idle during that dark ride home.

  It was not that Lomas feared that Slack might attempt anything untoward on the way. Slack had had adventures with women, but it was never his way to take unconventional risks. The nearest that Lomas had ever heard him boast of sexual criminality was a ruse by which he had done a garrison prostitute out of her fee.

  He knew that Isobel was safe from actual assault. But he also knew that if Slack wanted to clear the decks for himself, there was one story that he could let slip with devastating finality. Lomas felt clammy and cold on his second-hand mattress at the thought of it. It wouldn’t stop short at a breakage with Isobel Fuller.

  Then he tried to comfort himself with the thought that Gilbert Slack would surely not stay long in Margreave. Hard labour for minimal returns had never appealed to Slack’s temperament. There was no one here who wanted him. His own father had thrown him out and disowned him. Lomas recognised now that the message he had carried to the grocer’s shop had been sent as a gesture of impudence. Even if you gave Slack the freedom of a mine with seams a yard thick glistening out of the wall at eye-level, neither the labour nor the hours would have appealed to him for long.

  Unless, of course –

  Unless Slack indeed saw the possibilities of Isobel Fuller, in which case he was capable of accepting temporary discomfort in the interests of a waiting game. And if that were Slack’s ploy, then one well-timed jibe would be enough to under-swipe Lomas’s chances. One of the gaps in Lomas’s conceptions was his inability to credit Isobel Fuller with any judgement of men whatsoever.

  He gave up before dawn any further effort to sleep, came down his ladder and collected his tools. It was physical work that he needed. Normally a man of inflexible patterns, his one thought this morning was t
o get out and be tearing with his hands at the rock-face. On any other morning, his first thoughts would have been to breakfast and wash up his three or four crocks, to rake out yesterday’s fire and lay the grate for a touch of a match this evening. In twenty minutes’fettling he would have his home as orderly as a barrack-room before First Parade.

  Not this morning. He snatched himself a hunk of bread and cheese, made no drink because he had no fire, satisfied himself with a glass of milk, lit his hurricane lamp and unlocked the door to the adit.

  There was comfort in the familiarity of the underground air, the damp intermingled smells of lime and clay, the primeval walls that indefinitely belonged to him. He went to a patch that he had already singled out for early attention – a spot where behind the semi-translucent calcite face there was a darker stain that might possibly be a pocket of ore. He hammered in the edge of a wedge and began to score out his area of action.

  He worked more clumsily than usual – I think there must have been something of the petrified personality of Gilbert Slack in his target patch – and once his gad slipped and gashed the back of his hand. It was one of those injuries where the sight of blood some minutes later was his first knowledge that he had hurt himself. He paused to suck his knuckles, then worked on.

  Half an hour later he had exposed the black shadow and saw indeed that it was a knot of pure ore, and a few minutes later succeeded in breaking some of it out, not stopping now to pick up the bits that were scattered on the mine floor. Already he had within hand’s reach as much as he could have gathered in half a day of chipping amongst the gangue; now was not the time to worry over splinters. Another quarter of an hour and he had the whole lump out – a piece about the combined size of his two fists. It would cover a useful corner of the dish.

  But after that – nothing. It was a single isolated blob of sulphide, thrown up in the solidifying fountain as the crusts of the earth were cooling. There was no more lead in evidence, behind or beside it. He collected together what he had gained and set to work levering out more of the parent rock near the same spot. For two hours he worked with no more result than a heap of worthless spar.