Netherwood (6 page)

Arthur, his mind still a ferment from Eve’s outburst, violently disagreed with Amos, but had no appetite for another fight. For a while no one spoke and the silence that fell between them was soothing. Arthur hoped Lew would keep his mouth shut. He took comfort too from the familiar rhythm of other men’s footsteps ringing out with their own in the darkness. Hordes of men were walking towards the colliery, but they were matched by the numbers walking away from it, the night-shift workers, their eyes livid white against their coal-blackened faces. Some of them nodded silent greetings as they passed, but none of them spoke, or were expected to. It was no time of day for pleasantries.

Arthur, Lew and Amos swung left off the main road and on to the track that led directly to the colliery. The winding gear towered up ahead of them into the early morning sky. A man who wanted to be heard had to raise his voice now above
the hiss and whoosh of the steam that powered its engine. Lew, unfortunately, had thought of something to say.

‘I know what I’d do if I were a Grangely man,’ he said.

‘Oh aye?’ said Amos. ‘What’s that then?’ His face was clouded with contempt; Lew had a tendency to repeat whatever opinion he thought would reflect best on himself. Amos would take Arthur’s wrong ideas any day in preference to Lew’s borrowed ones.

Lew laughed grimly and said, ‘I’d get back to bloody work.’ He glanced at Arthur, sure the older man would agree, but Arthur strode alongside him, looking ahead, saying nothing.

‘Tha knows nowt, Lew Sylvester,’ growled Amos.

‘I know this,’ said Lew, recklessly defiant, still banking on Arthur’s support. ‘I’d rather ’ave a roof over my ’ead tonight than not.’

Amos hawked and spat. ‘If they cave in at Grangely, it’ll be bad for us all,’ he said. ‘Tha can never see t’bigger picture, Lew. Tha’s ’ad too many blows to thi ’ead.’

It was all so predictable, thought Arthur. Lew was stung, again, into surly silence and there’d be no more out of him now on the subject. He was a fierce-looking, powerfully built young man, whose face had been knocked ugly by countless illicit bare-knuckle fights, organised and promoted by his older brother Warren, a shady character who made his living exploiting in various ways the weak and the feckless. Lew was a harmless soul but he was tall for a miner, and broadly built, and Warren had shoved him into the ring when he was still a boy. If he won, Warren paid him. If he lost, Warren only paid himself. So there was some truth in Amos’s jibe because regular maulings seemed to have had the effect of gradually slowing Lew’s responses. He wasn’t exactly simple but neither was he quite all there, was the general consensus. Certainly he was no match for Amos, and too often he found himself retreating into wounded silence in the older man’s company.

It didn’t help that he was the younger of the three by fifteen years. With a gap between them of half a generation, casual disdain was all he could expect. Amos had set the tone on Lew’s first day at the pit, greeting him with expansive
bonhomie
then sending him off to the stores for a long stand. Lew, waiting fruitlessly amid the comings and goings for upwards of an hour, had finally, tentatively, spoken up.

‘Erm, I still need a long stand, mister,’ he said.

‘Tha’s ’ad one,’ said the stores manager. ‘Nah bugger off,’ and a red-faced Lew had run the gamut of jeering miners who had chanced upon his humiliating initiation. Of course it wasn’t personal; similar indignities had been endured by every man at the colliery – even Amos, on his first day, had waited for almost an hour in the boiler room for a bucket of steam. But somehow the balance between Lew and Amos had never been adequately redressed, as if the younger man had lost his dignity on the first day and still hadn’t entirely regained it.

It was Arthur, as usual, who finally took pity on Lew this morning as they joined the crowd of miners at the time office. The cloud created by his clash of words with Eve had evaporated on arrival at the pit. He knew what was expected of him here and this, being profoundly comforting, in turn enabled him to talk Lew out of his sulk. He steered clear of the subject of Grangely Main though, sticking to the safer topics of the ten-shilling birthday bonus and a knur-and-spell match at the weekend, until Lew’s pride was restored by the attention. Sidney Cutts, the colliery timekeeper, called out their numbers and handed out two brass checks per man: one square, one round. Arthur waited until Lew had pocketed his before heading off with him to the lamp room and, from there, up the wooden steps to the pit bank and the great two-deck cage at the top of the shaft. The banksman took their round checks – the square ones were for the return journey – and they
stepped in. Amos was there already, and he acknowledged Arthur and Lew by making room for them beside him. There was a moment for everyone to settle and brace, then the cage dropped like a stone down the shaft and no one spoke then because no matter how many times a man went down a mine, the plunge of the descending cage seemed to leave his stomach at the pit top and made conversation all but impossible. But goodwill had been restored between the three men, which was how Arthur liked it at the start of a shift; there was discomfort enough at the coalface without ill-feeling squeezing in alongside them.

It was cold in the mine at the foot of the shaft’s yawning mouth but the further into the labyrinth the miners went, the warmer the air became until their thick clothing, until recently entirely necessary, became almost unbearable. Just before they left the main roadway they all stripped down to vests and shorts, hanging their discarded jackets, shirts and trousers on a wooden girder to collect at the end of their shift; even so, as they progressed further into the mine, sweat sketched pale lines on their limbs and faces. They were heading for Harley End, the farthest-flung tributary of the great Netherwood seam, almost three miles from the entrance to the pit, and they each carried the same items: a lamp, a pick and a shovel, a snap tin and a two-pint dudley, full of water.

It took them three-quarters of an hour to reach the cramped chamber where they were to spend their shift. The three men knew the seam so well that they reached it in half the time than would have been possible for a newcomer. This was the furthest outpost of New Mill’s coal production – anything beyond three miles meant a man might spend as long walking as he did mining, and there was no profit in that.

Lew peeled off his vest and took a deep drink from his dudley. He sweated more than his colleagues – was famous for it, along with his gormlessness – and sometimes worked naked but for his boots, rather than endure the clammy embrace of sopping-wet singlet and shorts. Amos and Arthur were already on their bellies at the foot of the seam by the time Lew was ready to work, but he joined them soon enough, contorting his big body into the L-shape required to hack at the coal from the bottom up.

They were hand-holing – cutting underneath and around the coal with the pick, supporting the seam with wooden sprags as they went. It was difficult work, not least because of the limited space, and it called for technique as much as strength. They laboured alongside each other, their heads and shoulders inching into the space they were creating under the seam. Amos grunted with each swing of his pick, a habit which used to annoy the others but which they had long since accepted. Arthur liked the noise now; it acted as a metronome by which he paced his own swing.

From time to time, as the shift passed, the men would knock out the sprags and let a section of coal drop, using their shovels to break it up and heave it into the waiting tubs. It was good stuff in the Netherwood seam: bright coal, they called it, because of the way it shone. It was clean-burning, too, and so was much in demand. More than that, it was famous; it had caused a sensation at the Great Exhibition in 1851, when the Hoyland family sent a three-hundredweight lump of it for display. It sat there like a monolithic black diamond, securing by its very presence the reputation of Netherwood coal in London and beyond. It was still the very devil to extract though; poor coal gave itself up much more easily than this superior product and five hours into their shift, Arthur, Lew and Amos dragged themselves upright, having advanced only six yards along the coalface. Four tubs had gone, two more
awaited collection, and they sat beside them, backs against the wall, facing the seam.

Amos pulled a pocket watch out of his shorts and consulted it.

‘Just gone eleven,’ he said, although no one had asked the time.

‘Right,’ said Lew, pushing himself into the standing crouch that the space demanded. ‘My belly thinks my throat’s bin cut.’

He reached along a rocky shelf and took down the three snap tins they’d lodged there at the beginning of the shift. His own contained the same meal his mother put up for him every working day: two slices of bread, thickly spread with white lard and scattered with a crust of salt. He took the slices between black fingers and wolfed them down in great, wet mouthfuls, then signalled the end of his meal with a prolonged belch. In a body of men not known for standing on ceremony, Lew was particularly uncouth.

‘My bulldog’s got better manners than thee,’ said Amos. Arthur laughed.

Lew, whose prodigious appetite was never sated by the contents of his own snap tin, now eyed Arthur’s speculatively. The smell of beef dripping – a superior version of his own meal – hung in the air, and it wouldn’t be coming from Amos, Lew reckoned, because his missus had passed away and he fended for himself, poor bugger.

‘Tha worse than t’bloody rodents, Lew,’ said Arthur, but he held out the tin. Eve had managed to press six slices of bread into it, and he knew there was plenty more where that came from. Lew took a piece, Amos declined. Lew set about chewing with obvious relish.

‘I swear it tastes better down ’ere than it does up there,’ he said.

‘Soft bugger,’ said Amos. He was silent for a moment, then he took out his old watch again.

‘Ten minutes to ’alf past,’ he said.

‘Twenty past, then,’ said Arthur, who knew where this opening gambit was heading.

‘Aye, well,’ said Amos. ‘Long walk back, see? We’ve to be setting off by twelve at t’latest. There’s nowt to be done ’ere in ’alf an hour. We could call it a day, walk back slow, no ’arm done.’

He had a point, but not one that Arthur was willing to accept. Amos, with only a dog at home to feed and shelter, had a tendency to be cavalier at the tail end of a shift, but Arthur never was. Half an hour longer at the coalface meant more money in his pocket. He shut the snap tin and moved from his sitting position on to his knees. Lew watched silently, waiting to see how things panned out.

‘One more crack at that seam then,’ said Arthur, as if Amos hadn’t spoken. ‘There’s coal in them there ’ills.’

‘Aye,’ said Lew. Amos glared at him, a wasted gesture since Lew was now looking down the tunnel at the looming bulk of a stocky little pit pony. A new, much younger voice cut through the darkness.

‘I’m to take these tubs but not leave new ’uns,’ said Tommy Hart, a lad of fifteen, who sat like a drayman behind his pony. He’d been put in charge of Sparky today, everyone’s favourite among the New Mill ponies, a lionhearted little Shetland who knew every yard of the underground workings. Once, when a rockfall had blocked the main route back to the shaft and Tommy’s lamp had guttered and failed, Sparky had led the terrified boy to safety, walking for miles through long-abandoned districts until they reached the entrance to the mine. Tommy had held Sparky’s tail all the way, and as they went they’d collected other lost souls until a stream of men and boys were trailing behind the pony, entirely dependent on him for escape. He achieved legendary status that day, and still reaped the rewards in the form of regular
treats from the miners. Now, as Tommy clambered down, his movements awkward in the confined space, Arthur fed Sparky the apple from his snap tin.

‘Tha’ to take these, but not leave new uns?’ said Amos, in mock-bewilderment. ‘Now, why’s that?’ His nostrils twitched like a hound after a fox. The scent of moral victory was in the air.

Tommy began to tug at the pony’s halter, coaxing him round to face the other way. He was a placid little steed and he did as he was bid then stood quietly as Tommy busied himself, coupling the tubs of coal to the sling gears on either side of the pony.

‘Mr Gilford says there’s no time to collect another load this far out, an’ you’re to make your way back,’ said Tommy. ‘’E says you’ll be paid fair an’ you’ll lose nowt by finishin’ now.’

‘Mr Gilford says that, does ’e?’ said Amos, prolonging his moment. ‘Mr Gilford, our esteemed pit deputy?’

Tommy nodded innocently. With the two tubs attached, he took hold of Sparky’s halter. ‘Walk on,’ he said, and the Shetland heaved the load into motion.

Amos grinned at Arthur. ‘Better do as t’boss says,’ he said. And Arthur, magnanimous in defeat, grinned back. The three men gathered up their lamps and tools and began the long walk back to daylight.