After the Storm

by Margaret Graham

  He pointed to the flasks; his hand was still shaking from the vibrations of the cutter and his ears were ringing. He shook his head to clear it as Henry nodded, but the boy continued shovelling for a while longer since he wanted to get this last load done. Tom sank on his haunches. The tea was refreshingly cold and he spat into the darkness where the slag was heaped against the sides. Coal-dust swirled in the beam from their lamps and his uncle squatted next to him while Martin flopped to the ground.

  ‘D’you hear that Ma Gillow’s been killed in the black-out? Run over by an ambulance.’

  Tom shook his head. ‘Bet she didn’t read that in the tea leaves.’

  ‘Bet she didn’t read that the Yanks would come either,’ moaned Martin gloomily.

  Tom and Henry laughed and Tom nudged the boy with his boot. ‘Don’t you worry, your Penelope will stick by you. One look at the muscles you’ve developed and she’ll throw the nylons back at them.’

  Martin grinned wanly and Tom felt pity for the lad. Penelope sounded too nice to leave him in the lurch and he said so.

  Martin looked up. ‘Anyway, it’ll soon be over, won’t it, and then we can all go home.’ His voice sounded weary. ‘Now Italy’s given in and there was Alamein in ’42, it’s got to be over soon.’

  ‘There speaks the sweet bird of youth,’ yawned Tom. ‘1944 and it’s all over, is it? We shall see, my brave young poet, but in the meantime let’s be getting on with this here.’ But they stayed sitting for a while longer, listening to the sounds of the mine, thinking their own thoughts until Tom finally made a move.

  ‘How’s Grace?’ asked his uncle as they scrambled to their feet.

  ‘Due next month,’ said Tom and suddenly felt impatient to be out of the blackness and up with her as she rested after lunch, now that she had finished work in the factory. He loved to crouch by the chair, his hand across her swollen belly feeling the baby kick and then he would stroke her full breasts with their blue veins and want her and she would pull him to her.

  ‘Come on, let’s get on with it,’ he ground out as he hauled himself back into the narrow space.

  His uncle winked at Martin. ‘Wants a big load today, aiming to wet the baby’s head with champagne.’ But the noise of the cutter drowned out Martin’s reply and the creak from the pit-props, the warning fall of dust. Henry just felt a blast of air and was knocked off his feet as the trolley shifted beneath the rushing air and coal which roared down and spilled outwards towards his feet. It settled as he lurched back against the side, coughing in the flurry of grit and the smell of raw angry coal.

  It was minutes before he could find his breath and move, before he could tear with his hands at the pile of blackness. His Tom was in there and he couldn’t hear a bloody thing. He had called, he told the first rescuers but there had been no answer from Tom or the lad, no tapping, no nothing.

  His head was ringing from the waves of noise that had come with the fall and his stumps were bleeding on to the ground and he welcomed the throb of pain since it made him think of something other than the two who had been with him just a moment before. His foot kicked Tom’s bait-tin and he shoved it back into the slag.

  The rescue team were working methodically now, passing the coal back then listening for a tap or a cry but there was still nothing. He moved in to find a space to work but was gently turned away to one side.

  ‘Stay over there then, Henry, we’ll get at them quicker this way.’ A trolley was shoved passed him, taking the first load back and out of the way.

  And then the overman was there, edging along, bowed over, irritated at the lost production. He stood next to Henry, his mouth pursed.

  ‘No point in setting up the siren if there’s only two men involved.’

  The man at the rear turned, blocking Henry’s fist as he swung.

  ‘No, don’t waste your bleeding siren, any more than you waste your bleeding pit-props. Not enough props, not enough rest and you expect more bloody coal.’ The man spat at the ground. ‘This is the second accident today.’ His headlamp caught the overman in its beam, his face was too black to distinguish any features. ‘Aye, save your bloody siren, man. You should be sick of yourself and them out there. How many deaths, how many legs, hands, feet do you want?’

  ‘Leave it out, man,’ called the leader, his voice strained from wrenching and heaving his pick. The miner stared and Henry moved in closer until the overman backed away. Then they both ignored him as the struggle continued well into the night.

  Grace knew it had happened when Tom was not home and the bath water was getting cold by the kitchen fire. She pulled her coat around her and would have run to Betsy’s but she could only walk with her hands holding her laden body.

  Betsy was at the kitchen window and saw Grace come in past Beauty’s stable and when she did not stop to hand in a quartered apple she felt her mouth go dry and she turned to Joe. ‘It’s my bairn Joe, it’s my Tom.’

  He put her coat around her and took each of the women by the arm, making them walk at a gentle pace, for it had snowed during the day and was slippery.

  It was so quiet, thought Betsy, with the snow. There was no sound of striking boots, no wind to buffet them as they passed the alleys. It was a clear night and the stars and the moon were sharp and she felt as though she could reach out and draw them to her.

  As they walked down the hill, she could see the men clustered round the pit-head. More women were coming out of their houses now, their shawls drawn round their heads and no words were spoken as they slipped in the gates to the head. There were no lights because of the black-out but the moon was so bright and the snow so fresh it did not matter. Joe forced his way through to the Manager’s Office and shouted above the clamour of women’s voices as they called to find out who it was that was trapped.

  ‘Tom Ryan and Martin St John,’ Betsy heard and held on to Grace as she moved to run to the cage. She was moaning and pulling from Betsy, her face drawn apart with anguish and Betsy saw May and together they held her back and Bet stroked her hair as Grace said, again and again, ‘He should never have been a pitman, he should have been painting. He should have been painting.’ And she was screaming now, her mouth stretched wide as though it would tear across her face. Betsy held her close, her arms tight around the girl.

  ‘There now, hinny, he’ll be all right. The lad’ll be all right.’ She looked up at the sky and couldn’t see the stars and moon because of the blur in her eyes and hadn’t realised until then that her own pain had turned into tears.

  They waited by the office. Grace would not go in but stood shivering in the cold and Betsy chafed first her hands, then her arms and kept it up until Grace jacked over and her labour began. Bob was here by now, standing quietly with Joe, his face calm but his eyes watching every movement of the cage, every change of rescue team.

  An ambulance came for Grace and Betsy went with her but she wanted to stay to wait for her son.

  It was late that night when the team reached them. The air was fetid behind the coal wall and Tom was half buried. He had been unable to call because of the weight across his chest and had lain there in the pitch-dark, his fear catching him and the cold seeping into every part of him. I hate you, I hate you he had sworn with every breath at the coal which hung above him. It creaked and groaned and tormented him with its hanging weight. He couldn’t see or hear Martin or Henry but they would be on the other side, clawing at the fall as the rescuers were.

  As the pain in his foot increased and the cold made his kidney grip and send him into fever he looked at the girl who came running across the beck towards him, her hair kinked by overnight plaits, as he sat in the water on a summer’s day. Annie, Annie, his mind called and she laughed and said, ‘Hang on, bonny lad, I’ll come for you. Just hang on, Tom,’ and so he did.

  It was late that night when they reached him. Martin was dead and looked as Davy had done, with blood from his nose and ears and mouth. He was never going home again.

  Tom went to the hospital
and was washed and his leg was set. His ribs were bruised but not broken. He thought she was Annie until his fever subsided and the nurse was blonde with blue eyes and then he wept.

  Grace had a baby one hour after Tom was sent into surgery and she called him Robert.

  Bob sat with Tom while he lay in traction the next day and plumped his pillows and poured him lemon barley-water.

  ‘This is getting to be a habit, lad.’

  Tom turned and looked at him. ‘Poor little bugger, poor Penelope.’ He could say no more for minutes, then, ‘Thank God, Grace is fine. He’s a bonny lad, is our wee Bobby then?’

  Bob nodded, his face breaking into a smile, his eyes shadowed and dark through lack of sleep. There had been air raids the night before and plaster from the ceiling lay in the corner. He moved over and picked it up, throwing it into the bin before he sat down again.

  ‘You’ll take the checker job I got you, lad.’ It was not a question but a statement and Tom nodded. He’d been offered the surface job in ’42 but he had not taken it because he had to trade off for Annie’s survival.

  ‘Aye, Bob, I’ll take that now. She’ll be coming back, will our Annie. I know she will.’

  CHAPTER 26

  So far during this roll-call, there had been no beatings. The numbers though still did not tally with this morning but then they could not, could they? Annie’s hands hung open by her side, still raw from digging three shallow graves which would receive rigid bodies but no coffins. The gods had not been smiling, had they, for there were no boxes of adequate length yet again.

  Sweat dripped slowly from her bowed head on to the dusty earth, enlarging the already darkened patch and in the submissive silence her hair hung limp, her neck was raw and she felt and saw her feet swell and crack in the pounding heat. Feet really should have shoes, she thought. Shoes as clean as Sister Maria had always ordered for chapel. But not too shiny, Tom had laughed. Yes, she heard his laugh deep inside her head and she grinned in spite of sun-tightened lips. You’ll never improve if you don’t obey rules, she had been ordered to chant after one service, head bowed over dull shoes, breath visible in the autumnal cold of the conservatory.

  She eased her neck as much as she dared. Her hands were throbbing now and one foot was hidden by the collapsed body of Prue. How strange, she thought, I hadn’t noticed. She felt no pity, just relief for its shelter since Prue was no great weight any more. Cold, she pondered, daytime cold was quite beyond imagination and as for rebellion, that seemed merely a way of sapping energy already drained and wrung out like the sparse rice around which their lives revolved.

  Would you be proud of me now, Sister Maria? Would you write home to Sarah that I was a credit to myself, the school and my guardian as you did at the end of my first year? Don’t you worry though, I shall revive my friend as I did yesterday and she for me the day before but I can’t promise for tomorrow because she is a little under the weather, dear Sister Maria and your God seems to be busy elsewhere. Perhaps you could write on his report: Could do better if he tried?

  She listened to the count of the Japanese guard begin again. She did not dare to flick at the flies that were crawling over her lips and eyes for she would be beaten if she was seen.

  ‘Ichi, ni, san, yong.’

  One, two, three, four, she echoed in her head. Look at me now, Sarah. I’m learning a new language, experiencing new things, or isn’t this quite what you meant? God all bloody mighty, how much longer would this go on, the stupid fool has been told by the doctor that three died before lunch so, unless there’s been a few immaculate conceptions since then, how could the numbers bloody well tally?

  They always did this before a move, dragged them out into the compound three times a day instead of the morning and evening delight. Was it their way of saying sweet farewell she wondered? Along her row, a child cried out and was quickly muffled. She felt the tension that the noise created ease as the guard continued his walk, his boots clumping and throwing dust into the cracks which meandered in the baked ground. At her da’s allotment, ants had wriggled in and out of the summer-dried cracks that she had thought led to Australia; deep down and out of the other end. She must tell the doctor about that. How would she like her home town to be at the end of a Wassingham crack?

  She lifted her head slightly to ease the stiffness. He was in the row behind now and the commandant still stood rigid on his platform, pale lavender gloves immaculate, eyes straight ahead as though he found them too distasteful to set eyes upon. Likewise, you bugger, Annie thought. The guard was returning now to the front and then it was over. They were dismissed.

  She and Monica grasped Prue beneath the armpits and dragged her back to their hut, her heels bumping and kicking up clouds. Annie tightened her grip because Prue was slippery with sweat. They propped her up on the verandah against the wall of the hut. Monica was on duty at the hospital hut and wiped her arm across her face, pulled down the hat she had made from a pair of old shorts.

  ‘All right then, Annie, I’ll be off’ Annie nodded and reached for the old tin can which held the water that she and Prue had earlier strained through muslin before the heat of the day had really begun to bite. There were always a few worms left wriggling in spite of the filtering and she dipped her fingers into the brackish water and scooped out the two that she could see, squeezing them between her thumb and finger before grinding them beneath her clompers. Her skin crawled; she hated them.

  ‘Here, hinny, take this.’ She held Pruscilla against her and trickled some water into her mouth and over her breasts to take the heat out. She poured some on to her own hand and dabbed at Prue’s forehead, then waved the fan she had made from atap. She had split the bamboo and folded palm leaves round it, then fastened this together with pieces of rotan. It was a small copy of the tiles they had made to roof their huts when they arrived at their first camp after the march from Singapore. Nearly three years ago now, she mused, as she rubbed Prue’s hands then resumed her fanning, which made a welcome breeze. Dr Jones had asked her to make more for the hospital hut and it had kept her busy during the first long weeks of their internment when they did not know whether they were to be killed like the people they had seen as they passed a village. Weaving the rotan, pushing it down and threading back again, helped her not to wonder about death, about where they were, not wonder how long the war would take to end and who would win when that happened and if Georgie was still alive.

  They had been marched for two weeks after leaving Singapore. At first they’d been able to buy food from the natives in the kampongs but soon their money had run out and they lived on rice that the Japanese dug out of sacks and handed them, glutinous and stinking. They had stumbled and dragged one another along and been kicked when they fell and when they cried; killed when they would not bow their heads. Two elderly women had died like that, not shot but bayonetted. The children had been made to watch and had become quiet and Annie had sold Don’s watch to the headman of a village for four chickens and that night they had cooked them and the children had eaten a piece each and had walked better the next day.

  Natives had stoned them at one village, stoned the memsahibs and Mavis Anderton had cried then and said that nothing would ever be the same again.

  The hardship had not been as difficult for her as for most of the others. She had thought of Albert and Wassingham and told herself that she had always liked the heat and she should be grateful for that at least. It was different for Prue.

  Annie shifted Prue’s weight on her shoulder. ‘Come on lass,’ she murmured. ‘Three years in the camps and you’ve still got a punka wallah fanning you so open those eyes and throw me a rupee.’

  She eased her back. There was no one in the hut with its moist panting heat; they were outside as she was, sitting in the shade or hoeing the vegetable patch; teaching the surviving children over in the hut by the commandant’s office. Annie stroked Prue’s hair.

  ‘Come on, my wee lass,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t give up now, don’t leave me h
ere on my own.’ Louder she said, ‘One of the Dutch has some peroxide, we need most of it for the hospital but I’ve earned enough with the washing I did for Van Eydon to dye that streak in front. Give old bandy legs a thrill, eh, make him faint on parade for a change.’

  She felt a stir from the girl and smiled as Prue slowly straightened.

  ‘That, darling, is quite the best idea you’ve had in a long time.’ It was faint but it was good.

  ‘What a vain bitch you are,’ Annie laughed. ‘I’ll tell you one thing. We must write to the girls in Oxford, when this is all over, and tell them they’ve lost their bet. There is a new slimline you with a fetching streak in your fringe as well.’

  Prue pushed herself from Annie and sat up against the wall. Her eyes were dull and heavy-lidded and she had a sore at the corner of her mouth. ‘This will never be over, it’s nearly three years now and we won’t be alive much longer. It’s too hard and not worth the effort.’ Her head sagged on to her chest and Annie scrambled to her knees. A pebble cut into her leg, then scraped her ulcer as she shoved it to one side. The pain made her feel sick.

  She took Prue’s chin in her hand but she would not lift her head, so she took her hair and gently pulled until she could see her face, then shook her until she opened her eyes.

  ‘We’ll survive and it will be over. Lorna told us that “D” Day happened in June, you remember? They’ll come for us, you see. Just hang on, Prue. We must hang on. There’s India waiting for you and your da. Think of your da. How would he feel if you left him alone?’ Prue’s eyes were closing again and Annie took her chin in her hands, smoothed back the hair from her face.

  ‘What about me if you let go? Who’s going to drive me mad, keep me going? What would Georgie say if you let me die, because you weren’t here any more?’

  Prue’s eyes were open again now, but her mouth was slack with weariness. She was worn out with dysentery and malnutrition like them all but there was no way this girl was going to die. She was too young and it would be a waste, as Sarah would have said. And Annie would miss her too much.