‘Call out your names. Yuri take note,’ Glyn ordered.
Alf turned his head.
‘There’s a gap to the left of Richard, sir,’ Alf breathed heavily. ‘Look, there’s light shining through from the other side.’
Glyn blinked hard and blinked again. Alf was right. A flickering but unmistakeable light was shining at the head of the hole Richard was crawling through. ‘Any sign of fire damp?’ he demanded of Yuri.
Yuri shouted to the Cossacks who’d been monitoring Richard’s progress from the perimeter of the fall.
They answered.
‘No sign of gas, sir.’
‘That hole looks large enough to haul a man through.’ Glyn hoped the uncertain light wasn’t playing tricks on him.
Alf grinned, his teeth showing white in the gloom. ‘Shall we give it a try, sir?’
Richard’s trousers were torn through. He knew because he lost more skin from his knees every time he crept forward. His shirt and jacket were thick, but like his moleskin trousers, not thick enough to resist tearing or cushion his body. He gritted his teeth and continued to shuffle towards the light, inch by painful inch, until his elbows and knees felt raw. Every time another shower of dust rained on him he froze and thought about the tons of coal above his head – and the miners he’d worked with who’d been entombed in shafts because Management had balked at the expense of recovering their bodies.
The light drew closer … and closer … shadowy figures reached out to him.
‘Your Excellency …’
Hands grasped his shoulders and pulled him forward. He pushed the ends of the ropes he carried through to the trapped men and smiled at a face that grinned back at him. ‘Hold on to this and tie them together so we can set up a pulley. Time to widen the hole and get you out.’
Men both sides of the fall cheered, precipitating another shower of dust.
‘Pull me through and get the smallest man up here so he can be pushed out of this hole.’
A young boy was bundled towards him. Richard fastened him firmly to the rope and tugged it.
‘First one, coming through.’
John Hughes answered. ‘That’s music to my ears, boy. Don’t waste time, get the next one ready. No heroics, I want everyone out here safe and sound and in one piece.’
‘How many alive and how many injured?’ Glyn shouted in Russian.
‘Five injured, fifteen alive. Next one coming through is injured. I’m guessing multiple breaks in his legs,’ Richard answered in Russian.
Yuri helped Alf retrieve the first boy. ‘Thanks be to God.’
‘Thanks be to Richard and Alf.’ Glyn felt another tug on the rope. A young man momentarily blocked the light before he was pulled and pushed towards Alf.
Above ground, Three Firs Mine
June 1871
Alexei finished wrapping a corpse and lifted it into a troika with the help of a miner. They set it alongside a body Vlad had covered.
‘These two dead weights are as much as I can take in the back, sir, without risking overturning,’ Vlad warned.
‘Take one of the fitter miners with you in the front seat, Vlad.’
‘I thought you’d be coming back to the town with me, sir.’
‘There’s too much to do here. Send the troika back even if you don’t bring it yourself. If Mr Edwards gets those twenty miners out we’re going to need transport to get them to the hospital quickly.’ Alexei watched Vlad drive off before returning to the pithead. The cage was moving up again. He ran over in time to help lift out a man.
‘His legs are crushed, sir.’
‘I thought all the injured were up.’
The miner grinned. ‘This is the first of the men from behind the fall, sir. One of the Welshmen crawled in and made a hole big enough to get them all out.’
‘Mr Edwards?’
‘No, sir, Mr Parry. He must be a good man to risk his own life to save Russians.’
Alexei fought the emotion rising in his throat but his voice was still hoarse. ‘Yes, he is. A very good man.’
Hospital, Hughesovka
June 1871
‘You should have seen Richard, Mrs Edwards,’ Alf said as Sarah bandaged his hand. ‘The way he took control and snapped orders. He wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody. Only concerned with getting those miners out alive. I didn’t know the boy had it in him.’
‘An emergency can bring out the best in people, and no can foretell how anyone will react until it happens. Stretch your fingers for me, Alf. The bandage isn’t too tight, is it?’
‘No, but it’s too big considering I only have a scratch.’
‘A scratch from underground left to fester can turn septic and poison the body in no time.’
‘I suppose so. Thank you, Mrs Edwards, although I’m sure you have a lot worse than me to look after.’
‘Not until the next batch of injured arrive from the mine. Frankly after hearing what happened and seeing the broken and crushed arms and legs I’m surprised only two died.’
‘They were killed in the first fall before Mr Hughes and Mr Edwards went down. All the others owe their lives to them and Richard.’
‘And you, Alf, I’ve mastered enough Russian to recognise praise from the Cossacks. They said once Richard forged a path through to the men who were trapped you worked like a demon until you freed every one.’
‘They exaggerated. If you’ve finished, Mrs Edwards, I’ll go off now and see if my supper’s cooked.’
‘They looking after you in the bachelor dormitory?’ Richard and Anna had been disappointed when Alf had moved out of the house but she could understand him wanting to move in with his fellow colliers and away from Glyn who was his boss.
‘The cooks are looking after all of us, Tonia’s a nice girl.’
Sarah supressed a smile. She’d heard rumours that Alf had found a woman. ‘Rest that hand. Don’t try using it until you come back here the day after tomorrow so I can check the wound and dress it again.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Matron!’
‘Must go. Take care.’
‘You too, Matron.’
Nathan was in the main entrance. ‘The last three patients are outside waiting to be unloaded. How have you coped?’
‘Fine, the broken limbs are all comfortable and resting. I sent for Ruth and put her in charge of them while I’ve been dressing wounds.’
‘Two more miners in this convoy have crushed legs. I hope I won’t have to amputate but I won’t know until I operate. Can you assist?’
‘Yes. The theatre’s ready.’
‘Richard and Glyn are with me. Their hands are skinned. Tell the girls to see to them while we’re in surgery.’
Glyn Edwards’ house, Hughesovka
June 1871.
Sarah didn’t leave the hospital until all the patients had been treated and were sleeping, including the man who’d had both his legs amputated. She entrusted the ward to Ruth, Yulia, and two of the Cossack girls, after giving them instructions to sleep in four-hour shifts and call her in an emergency. Concerned about the amputee, Nathan had stretched out on a couch in the office in case he should be needed and she wondered if he’d sent a second message of apology to Vasya.
When she crossed the road, she glimpsed a shadow that looked suspiciously like Alexei flitting around the corner of the hospital. She decided he was probably hoping to steal some time with Ruth but she was too tired to investigate what wasn’t her business.
After washing in the banya she wrapped herself in a robe and carried her clothes into the house. The hall clock struck three when she climbed the stairs. Only three hours and she’d have to rise again.
A light shone under Richard’s door. She tapped it quietly and whispered his name. When there was no reply, she opened the door.
Richard was lying in bed, grimacing in pain.
‘Is it your hands? Nathan said you’d skinned them.’
Richard shook his head. ‘My chest.’
‘Coal dust?’
‘No.’ He folded back the eiderdown and unbuttoned his pyjama jacket.
‘Dear Lord, Richard, did the girls see this?’
‘I thought it was a scratch.’
‘You miners and your scratches.’ She opened his jacket and examined the shredded skin that curled over an angry expanse of raw flesh blackened by coal dust.
‘I tried to clean it in the bath house.’
‘By the look of it, all you succeeded in doing was getting dirt ingrained in the wound. Don’t move. I’ll get the medical box.’
Sarah returned with the box and a jug of hot water. She turned up the lamp and set to work. It took half a painful hour – for Richard – to irrigate and clean the wound, and twenty minutes to bandage him.
‘I didn’t hurt you too much, did I?’ Sarah asked as she fastened the last of the bandages around Richard’s chest and pinned it in place.
‘No more than you did when the Paskeys floored me.’
‘Is that the last of the “scratches”? Or should I look for more.’ She untied the string on his pyjama bottoms and checked his lower abdomen. The skin was clean, unblemished but her light, gently probing touch had the same effect as when she’d nursed him in Merthyr after the Paskeys had beaten him.
He looked up at her, reached out, pulled her head down to his, and kissed her. A long, lingering kiss that carried sharp painful memories of Peter and the exquisite erotic relationship they’d shared. The way his lips had felt when they’d touched hers … the touch of his hands on her bare skin … the expression in his eyes when he’d gazed at her …
The intense loneliness that had crippled her since Peter’s death seemed more agonising than ever. Could it … would it be so wrong of her to seek solace with a boy who suddenly seemed a man?
She untied her robe and slid into the bed beside him.
Richard was terrified of the passion Sarah engendered in him, of losing control, but most of all, of failing her. She’d taken the initiative and it felt right. If he’d been capable of rational thought he might have reflected she was the one who’d been married. She’d made love before; she knew what she was doing. But lost, aroused, overwhelmed, all he was certain of was that he was a quivering, confused novice.
Slowly, surely, she moved over him, careful to avoid his wounds as she straddled his thighs. She guided him inside her, moving her body closer and closer to his, tantalizing yet holding back until he climaxed.
Afterwards he felt spent, exhausted, yet he wanted to stay locked within her for ever. When she finally lifted herself away from him, he felt bereft. He reached out and caught her by the waist to prevent her from leaving his bed. Ignoring his pain he pulled her towards him until he was nestling into her back, his head buried in her lavender-scented hair.
‘Please, don’t go,’ he whispered.
‘I have to. That was insanity, Richard. You’re a child …’
‘I’m a man, and if that was insanity I hope I never regain my senses.’ He kissed her shoulder, her neck, caressed her breasts. She turned to face him. He kissed her lips and that kiss led to another – and another – until the urgent need they generated in one another left no time for protests – or even thought.
That time he took the lead; keeping pace with her until they both sank back before plunging headlong into sleep.
‘Are you in pain?’ Praskovia sat up when Glyn left the bed.
In the subdued light of the open fire she looked like a Renaissance Madonna with her long red hair flowing over her shoulders and naked breasts, her eyes drowsy, seductive, beautiful, desirable – and she was his. That was the problem, but he didn’t want to talk about the questions it raised until he’d found a solution.
‘I didn’t mean to disturb you, please go back to sleep.’ He picked up his robe and slipped it on.
‘Are you in pain?’ she reiterated.
‘No.’ He held up his bandaged hands. ‘I can’t even feel the cuts and bruises. Ruth did a good job of cleaning them and Nathan gave me something to dull the pain.’
‘Then what?’ She moved close to him as he sank down on the edge of the bed.
‘Today, underground …’ he began. ‘Have you ever been in a mine?’
‘Once with my father. Misha and I were curious. When we asked questions about what it was like he took us down, but only as far as the entry chamber. I was so petrified I couldn’t stop shaking. It was just how my father described the evil world of witches and goblins in his fairy tales. Everything dark, horrid, damp, stinking, and dirty. It was easy to imagine fearful things lurking in the shadows beyond the lamplight.’
‘I’ve never considered a pit frightening, but then I’ve never been caught in a fall before today. I grew up on tales of mining tragedies – explosions, pit props that shattered, and splintered coal faces. It was impossible not to when you worked in the industry in Wales. I can even recite the number of casualties in any given year. One hundred and forty miners killed in Risca in 1860, one hundred and seventy-eight in Ferndale in 1867, fifty-three in Ferndale last year. To me they seemed like someone else’s tragedy. Firedamp, explosions, falls, and dead miners left to rot in abandoned seams because it was deemed too expensive to bring them up for a Christian burial – none of it seemed relevant to me. Until now the pits I went down were simply places to work. I never thought I’d end up entombed in one.’
She wrapped her arms around him. ‘You won’t.’
‘I wish I could be as certain as you.’
‘Everyone said the twenty miners who were trapped would have died if it hadn’t been for you and Richard.’
‘Richard, not me. He was the one who risked his life to wriggle through a dangerously small hole to reach the trapped men without sparing a thought as to what would happen to him if there was another collapse. It was pure luck the second fall didn’t kill someone. But despite Richard and Alf’s best efforts and my poor ones, two men are dead, three out of the twenty who were trapped are so severely injured they might not recover, and there’s injured besides …’
‘The deaths and injuries aren’t your fault, Glyn. Mr Hughes has only just bought that mine from my people. Cossacks have always been reckless when it comes to safety. They think it’s manly to laugh at danger. You only have to consider the way my father died. One of the miners told me the pit prop that collapsed and brought the rocks down on his head had been cracked for weeks yet no one bothered to repair it.’
‘That’s no excuse. I should have checked that mine the minute Mr Hughes bought it.’
‘When you had so many others to assess? You and Mr Hughes never stop working. Look in the mirror. You haven’t regained the strength you lost when you had cholera. You asked Alf and Richard to examine the mine today. If they’d declared it unsafe you would have closed it. Remember, no one forced those men to go underground. Every one of them knows mining’s a dangerous business.’
‘Hunger doesn’t give a man a choice where he works?’
‘Men work where they can and close to where they live. Here it’s always been the mines. We’ve had worse disasters but we’ve never had anyone as brave as Mr Hughes, you, Richard, and Alf prepared to risk their lives to save others. Even Alexei did what he could up top, sending for the doctor organising transport …’
‘You know a lot about what happened.’
‘I went to the hospital this afternoon to see if I could help. When the first miners arrived they told us how you’d insisted they go up top to safety so you could concentrate on rescuing the men who were trapped.’
‘How did they know Richard risked his life?’
‘They didn’t, but people came to the kitchen door later to tell us.’ Careful to avoid his hands she wrapped her arms around him. ‘Are you coming back to bed?’
‘I should. I probably won’t be able to keep my eyes open in the morning.’
‘Morning is almost here.’
He picked up his pocket watch from the table, opened it, and peered at its face in the firel
ight. ‘At best we’ll have another hour or two in bed. I didn’t thank you for refraining from bombarding me with questions when I came home.’
‘You may have been on your feet but you were sleeping.’
‘I was exhausted.’ Wanting to check on the injured as well as have his hands seen to, Glyn had stayed in the hospital until two o’clock. He recalled returning to the house, hugging Praskovia, and falling into bed. She was right, he might have been upright, but he’d been sleepwalking. His last memory was of her tugging off his boots as he lay face down on the bedcover.
‘Have you slept at all?’ she asked.
‘A little. I think I’m thirsty.’
‘The brandy decanter’s on the table.’
‘In my present state that would finish me off. I’d prefer kvass, or even better, water.’
Praskovia slipped on her robe, left the room by the back door, and reappeared a few minutes later with a tray of cheese, ham, bread, a jug of water and another of kvass.
‘I didn’t ask for a midnight feast.’ He noticed there were two plates and glasses.
‘We’re both awake.’
After she set the tray on the table he lifted her onto his lap. ‘When I was underground watching an overhang of rock that looked as though it could come crashing down at any minute …’
‘On you?’
‘Me, Mr Hughes, Richard, Alf, the miners who were helping us – all I could think of was you and this room. I couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing you again, never touching you, never kissing you …’ He broached the concern that had been keeping him awake. ‘If anything should happen to me, Praskovia …’
‘It didn’t and it won’t.’ She laid her fingers over his mouth. ‘Never mention such a thing again, Glyn. Never talk or even think about it because if you do, it will happen and I will lose you.’
‘Superstitious nonsense.’
‘It’s true.’
He picked up a slice of ham. ‘I see you have old wives’ tales in Russia as well as Wales.’
‘Old wives know about life, especially when it comes to giving advice to young girls on how to look after their men.’ She buried her fingers in the thick hair at the nape of his neck and massaged his taut muscles.
A Foreign Shore Page 5