‘I’ve been saving myself up.’
‘I bet.’ She pushed him off her and rose on one elbow to look down at him. ‘All right, let’s have it. What’s going off?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know. You come early off shift, straight up here, bang, you’re in. What’s going off?’
He said, ‘How do you know I’ve come early off shift?’
‘How do I know?’ she echoed slowly. ‘Well, I don’t reckon you brought your snap tin just in case you fancied a jam buttie while you were in the stirrups! So come on, Col. What’s it all about? I’m entitled to know who’s being fucked here, me or Gav.’
He wrinkled his nose in distaste.
‘You didn’t use to talk like that, Stella,’ he reproved.
‘Didn’t I? Mebbe I’ve grown up since last time we talked. Can you not see the difference?’
He let his gaze travel up and down her slim brown body, then took one of the pear-shaped breasts in his hand.
‘Mebbe an extra half-ounce there,’ he said, hefting it. ‘Otherwise no change.’
‘Cheeky bugger,’ she said, running her hand down the line of his flank. ‘You’ve not changed either, except you’re a bit rougher than you used to be. And you’re still expert at wriggling away from questions you don’t want to answer. Are you here because you’ve rowed with Gav?’
Mebbe.’
‘Is that all I’m going to get?’ she asked angrily. ‘What do you think you’re playing at, Col? That business in the Welfare the night you got jailed. Receipt for potato cakes, Jesus! And them phone calls. It is you, isn’t it? I can feel you on the end of the line.’
‘Can you? I hope I feel hard.’
She said, ‘Col, what are you playing at? All right, don’t tell me. Mebbe it’s best I don’t know. But I’ll tell you something. You’re out of place round here. You don’t fit. Why don’t you go off again …’
‘Back to sea? Every bugger wants that. I remember the fuss you made first time I went …’
‘I thought we had a future then, Col.’
‘I gave you a ring. And it was always good when I came back on leave.’
‘Oh aye. Made a change from poking some foreign tart up against a wall in the docks, did it? No! Listen for a change, Col. I knew it were over, long before we finished officially. You knew too, only you never could make your mind up to actually do owt, not without being pushed. I reckon your mam and dad knew too. They went right off me at the end, and I used to get on so well with them, especially your dad. Was it something you wrote to them? Did you have the nerve to tell them before you could tell me?’
‘I never said anything to them,’ he protested. ‘And it was you who chucked the ring back, remember?’
‘Aye, because if I hadn’t I’d likely be wearing it yet and getting nowhere!’ she cried. ‘For God’s sake, Col, face up to it. You’d given up on me. You didn’t come back to Burrthorpe because your girl was here, you came back because your dad jumped down that shaft …’
He rose to his feet in one sinuous movement.
‘Jumped?’ he said softly. ‘Who says he jumped? Why should he jump?’
‘All right. Fell! There, you see, that’s what gets you going, isn’t it? That’s what it’s all about.’
‘You think so?’ He stood astride her, looking down. ‘When I came back, all right, I was all uptight about me dad and worried about me mam. You get obsessed. There’s no room for owt else.’
‘And now there is?’ she said sceptically.
‘I think so. I think I’ll mebbe take all that advice and bugger off again soon. You’re right, I don’t fit round here.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ She rolled away from his straddling legs and stood up, ignoring his proffered hand. He regarded her with a frown of concentration, like a bullfighter before a difficult bull.
‘Come with me,’ he said abruptly, an order more than a request.
‘What? Are you daft? Leave Gav, you mean?’
‘Why not? You can’t love him,’ he said contemptuously. ‘What’s he got to offer you? This?’
He looked around the bright room.
‘This?’ she said angrily. ‘Aye, this. And what’s wrong with it, Col? I’m twenty-four and what I’ve got already is more than my dad’s ever given my mam, and she’s nigh on fifty-four. Gavin’s a good man, and he’ll get on. He’s got a good job …’
‘A gaffer’s job,’ sneered Farr.
‘Why do you say it like it’s something dirty?’ she demanded. ‘Mebbe I’ll take that kind of crap from some silly half-pissed bugger who thinks the Union’s Godalmighty, but I’ll not take it from you. What’s the Union ever been to you, Colin Farr, except an excuse to crack a few heads open in the Strike? What’s anything to you?’
‘You are. You’re everything.’
‘Listen to the way that you say that!’ she exclaimed. ‘Like a line in a play that you’ve got to say so you can see what happens next.’
He considered this, then nodded as if in acknowledgement of its truth.
‘What does happen next?’ he inquired with polite interest. ‘You and Gav live on here happy ever after, is that it?’
‘Mebbe not. But it’ll not be you I leave with, Col.’
‘Oh? There’ve been other irons in your fire, then? I’ve heard a few distant clangs.’
She began to gather her clothes together.
‘Always clever with words, Col, I can recall you at school. You should’ve taken the chance then and gone some place where being clever with words made you more than just a big-mouth.’
‘Stella, what am I going to do?’ he burst out.
His voice was so vibrant with emotion that she almost weakened. Then behind the candid, appealing gaze she thought she saw a glint of what could as easily be amusement as despair.
‘You’re going to get dressed and get out of my house,’ she said composedly. ‘It’ll not be long till knock-off and I want you long gone when Gav gets back. Me, I’m going to have a nice hot bath. It’s gone a bit chilly. Mebbe we should have lit the fire after all.’
She went out, knowing a good exit line when she spoke one. Upstairs she began to run her bath, all the time listening. Suddenly the phone rang. She rushed into the bedroom, but as she picked up the extension she heard Farr’s voice saying, ‘Hello?’
There was no reply. After a moment the connection was cut. Farr’s voice said, ‘You listening upstairs, Stella? Seems I’m not the only one you get funny calls from.’ Then he laughed.
She slammed the phone down. A little while later she heard the front door bang. She rushed to the window and peered from behind the curtains. He was already out of the garden and walking down the road, moving with cat-like ease and balance.
He didn’t look back.
With a sigh that was nearly all relief she went into the bathroom and lowered herself into the warm and scented water. She felt quite drained of strength, both physically and mentally. She didn’t want to think about what had just happened or what might happen next, and she readily gave in to the feeling of drowsiness that drifted over her with the tendrils of steam.
Some time later she woke to find the steam had all condensed and the water was nearly cold. She got out of the bath and towelled herself vigorously, enjoying the rough material against her water-tender skin. She was able to think now of her encounter with Colin, reducing it with each stroke of the towel to a fragment of pure sensuality. There was no getting away from it, compared with the other men she’d known, he pushed her into an extra dimension of pleasure. But it was not a dimension that played any significant part in her blueprints of possible futures.
She went into the bedroom where she was surprised to see how late it was. Fortunately the oven’s automatic timer was taking care of Gavin’s supper. She dressed quickly, but even so she was still making up her face when she heard the front door open and her husband’s voice call, ‘Hello, love. It’s me.’ She analysed tone and inflection, found
nothing to concern her, and called back, ‘I’m up here. Down in a tick.’
But as she began to descend, she heard his voice again and needed no analytical expertise to know there was trouble.
‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed from the living-room. ‘Stella!’
She went in. Her husband was standing before the hearth. In the grate the fire had been lit and was now just a bed of glowing embers. But it wasn’t this that had caused his outcry.
Before he left, Colin Farr must have put both his hands into the soot-furred chimney, then pressed them against the wall above the fireplace and drawn them slowly down. It looked as if two monstrous black arms were being raised in supplication or in threat.
‘Stella, what the hell has been going on here?’ demanded Gavin Mycroft.
Part Two
… I fell to quaking
At a fresh sight – a Lion in the way.
I saw him coming, swift and savage, making
For me, head high, with ravenous hunger raving
So that for dread the very air seemed shaking.
Chapter 1
Nothing in her conversations with her class or her reading of their essays had prepared Ellie for the sheer terror of her first descent in the Cage.
She was the only woman in the group of visitors which included two local councillors – one Labour, one SDP – two Frenchmen who had something to do with the EEC, and an elderly research student from Doncaster who bombarded the harassed-looking pit-manager with disturbing mnemonics like MINOS, MIDAS AND FIDO, and most sinister of all, IMPACT.
It was IMPACT that stayed in her mind as they entered the Cage and she heard a melodramatic hiss of compressed air as the drawbridge they’d just crossed was withdrawn. Somewhere a bell jangled. And suddenly they were moving.
The acceleration was rapid. In seconds Ellie felt the rush of air through the sides of the Cage brushing her face and winnowing the few strands of hair not tucked up beneath her borrowed helmet. No one spoke, not even the politicians. Ellie waited for the Cage to attain a steady speed but to her horror its acceleration did not seem to be stopping. Suddenly there was a great clap of noise like a huge paper bag exploding or the collision of air-waves as express trains pass in a tunnel.
Someone shrieked. Ellie suspected it was her but she didn’t care. Her mind told her it was only the counter-balancing up-cage on its ascent, but down here reason was not enough. Religion took over, or rather its poor relative, superstition. Her hands joined in a tangle of pleading fingers and her mind gabbled the childish prayer which had remained a pre-dormitive necessity well into her pyrrhonic adolescence.
Godblessmummyanddaddyandgrandadand grandmaandunclegeorgeandauntiemadgeand cousindickandtimmyandroverandsamuelwhiskers andmepleasegodthankyouverymuchamen.
In the light of the beams from their helmet-lamps the speeding walls of the shaft streamed past.
Suddenly everything reversed direction. The walls rushed by the other way, the Cage was now ascending! She knew it was an optical illusion, but again knowledge was ineffective against terror.
And now came a sudden jerk on the cable sending them all staggering. The walls reversed again. Once more they were falling. The cable’s snapped! Ellie told herself. She could hear one of her companions retching drily. Another jerk, then another. It’s the brakes, she assured herself. We’re slowing down. It’s only the goddam fucking brakes!
At last the Cage was perceptibly slowing. The shaft became visible as more than a speeding blur. There was light outside, a strident glare of orange and white neon strips. The Cage hit its restraints, bounced, and sank back into blessed stillness. A moment later the gate was opened and they filed out into the pit bottom, drinking deep breaths of the warm air that blew in their faces, their relief so great that it was some while before they became aware of the humid stench of it. Mr Kavanagh the pit-manager took his farewell at this point.
‘I’ll leave you with one of our most experienced deputies,’ he said. ‘Mr Satterthwaite here will show you round and answer your questions. Stick close and do as he says, and you’ll be all right.’
This Satterthwaite in whose tender care they had been placed looked to Ellie as if he might be distantly related to Andy Dalziel. Broad, solid, mean-eyed, square-jawed, he should at least come in useful if the roof fell in.
‘If you’ll follow me, gents,’ he growled with all the enthusiasm of a jailer inviting his charges into the exercise yard.
‘And lady,’ gallantly corrected the SDP councillor.
‘Oh aye,’ said Satterthwaite. ‘This way.’
So, I’m an alien, in a man’s world, thought Ellie. She recollected what Adi Pritchard had said about miners: social radicals, sexual fascists. Well, she wasn’t going to sit down under that!
Her determination to assert herself was not easily satisfied. The two councillors were engaged in a private competition as to who could show the most intelligent interest and any gaps they left were immediately filled by the student’s technically pedantic questions about automation, both proposed and effective. The Frenchmen, perhaps in reaction against their unconcealed terror during the descent, were now suffering from a bad attack of galanterie, which involved much après-vous-ing and the placing of guiding hands on shoulders, elbows and occasionally an area at the base of the spine which if not an erogenous zone was certainly border country.
Satterthwaite, whether through inclination or ignorance, replied to most questions with that great Yorkshire stand-by: Oh aye, which can be made affirmative, interrogatory, sceptical or satirical by an almost Chinese subtlety of intonation.
Ellie’s use of the patois picked up from her students clearly didn’t impress him much either. In the end she abandoned questions and concentrated on observation. One thing she failed to observe was Colin Farr. Of course most of the miners they saw at work were difficult enough to distinguish at close quarters under their patina of sweat and dust, and became totally anonymous at any distance. But when they saw a team of rippers at work Ellie knew at a glance even from several yards away that Colin was not among them. How did she know? she asked herself. The answer was at once unsettling and exciting. Stripped to the waist as these men were, his easy grace and fluidity of movement could only be even more distinctive. She turned away from the thought, found it followed her, so turned it inside out by using his grace and beauty as a foil against which to see this most hideous of man-created working environments.
An hour later, with every muscle in her body aching, she re-entered the Cage, her mind as heavy as her flesh so that she hardly felt any of the descending terror as she rode the pit this time.
She felt as if she could never be clean again. Even a good half-hour in the deputies’ showers only seemed to touch the surface, though a careful examination in the mirror revealed a state of pink cleanliness which suggested the trouble was mainly within. When she blew her nose and saw the state of her handkerchief, she realized that within covered the physical as well as the psychological, which in a way was a relief.
She said her goodbyes and thanks, then went to the car park. As she approached her Mini, a figure moved between the cars a couple of rows away. Even that slight movement told her who it was.
‘Hello, Colin,’ she said as he approached with uncharacteristic uncertainty. ‘I looked out for you down below. I thought you said you were on afters.’
‘Should’ve been,’ he said. ‘I got sent off yesterday. There was a bit of bother. Nowt to worry over. It’ll be sorted by tomorrow and I’ll be back down, worse luck. Any road, I thought as I were doing nothing, like, how’d you fancy that cup of tea at me mam’s?’
Ellie restrained herself from looking at her watch. She knew precisely what time it was, knew also that if she drove like the clappers, she might just be back within the outermost time-limit promised to her friend, Daphne Aldermann, in whose care she had left Rose.
On the other hand, Rose clearly adored Daphne and her spaciously elegant house with a fervour which, though politically repre
hensible, was socially very convenient. An extra hour of baby-sitting would probably not bother Daphne, or at worst only keep her back from some totally non-productive activity. Besides, Daphne, who at the very best might pass for a Social Democrat in the dusk with the light behind her, had collapsed in helpless giggles when Ellie had told her where she was going.
‘I’m sorry,’ she hiccoughed. ‘It’s just that … going down a pit … it’s so you!’
Ellie had managed a smile too. She was not after all one of the humourless Left. But Daphne owed her one!
‘I’d love a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘Hop in.’
The visit didn’t start too well because May Farr was unable to conceal that it came as a complete surprise to her.
‘I’ve not got much in, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘And the place is in a mess. Colin should have warned me. I might have been out or anything. They don’t believe we’ve got lives of our own to lead, do they?’
She smiled at Ellie, reassuring her that the irritation was aimed at her son and inviting her to join in her general analysis of the sex. She was a good-looking woman, in her forties, Ellie judged, perhaps already into the change which might account for her pallor and shadowed eyes. Her smile was Colin’s, open and charming, and she had the same easy grace of movement which a man might interpret as sensual.
Ellie tried to recall how long May Farr had been a widow. Were there any new men in her life, she wondered, or had she settled for the role of grieving widow-woman with doting son?
Thinking of roles, she suddenly realized she was playing one for all it was worth. It was the role of the dedicated teacher telling a proud mum how well her precious child was doing at school.
What the hell do I mean, playing teacher? Ellie asked herself in alarm. I am the bloody teacher! That’s the only reason I’m here, so let’s have less of this role-playing bit!
But at this moment she caught Colin’s eye and he gave her a conspiratorial wink which at the same time complimented her on her success and implied another level of relationship which his mother might not understand.
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