Ravenscliffe (17 page)

‘I shall be,’ she said, controlling the sobs as they threatened to rise in her again. ‘I am. You do. But I can’t leave, because Seth has gone and I can’t ’ave him come back to an empty ’ouse.’

Ah thank God, thank God, he thought, that was all. He had thought she meant she couldn’t do any of it – move house, love him, change her name from Arthur’s to his. Relief made him giddy and he had to keep himself from laughing.

‘Should I look for him?’ he said. ‘While you wait here?’

She shrugged. ‘Eliza looked before. But you could.’

‘He might be up at Ravenscliffe already, I suppose?’

‘Never in this world,’ she said bitterly. ‘That’s t’last place ’e’d go.’

‘Well then,’ he said, patient, soothing. ‘Where d’you suggest I start?’

‘Never mind,’ she said, her voice weary. ‘You go up to t’house. I’ll just wait ’ere.’

Seth had spent a pleasant morning. True, it hadn’t started well: the industrious bustle of packing the house, the chaos of too many people in too small a space, the prospect of a move he didn’t want to make and – hanging above all of this like a great shadow – the fact of his mam’s marriage to a stranger. A stranger, moreover, who offered him, like the answer to everything, a book about a botanist: as if that was all it took to make things right. So the mutinous boy had left them all to it, slipping off without eating breakfast – to heighten his own misery and generate maximum concern – and making sure he visited none of the places they would be likely to look. He wandered across the common, cutting switches of hawthorn and witch hazel and whittling them into arrows with his knife until he had enough to fill a quiver; he tied them into a tidy bundle with a stalk of dry yellow grass, and hid them in the hollow of an oak. They could wait there for him until he had managed to make a bow. Then he spent some time with the old ponies: they loved a bit of a fuss – they missed the miners, Amos said. He’d told Seth their names, but they all looked alike and their names were confusingly similar too, all single syllables – Sal, Jack, Patch, Flash – and he could never remember which was which. The ponies had gone after a while when their
investigations had conclusively proved there was no stash of apples or carrots. They turned from Seth all of a sudden, trotting away with some urgency, as if they’d just remembered a previous engagement and were already late for it. It had made him laugh and he had been surprised at the sound: surprised he could laugh, when he was so miserable. This, in turn, made him determined to revive the misery, so he headed for Ravenscliffe and sat on a wide tump of pale, sharp grass overlooking the house. He thought about his dad and how much life had changed since he died, and the tears rolled easily then. He wanted his dad more than anything in the universe: wanted him more, now he couldn’t have him, than he ever had when Arthur was alive.

And it was thinking about Arthur that reminded Seth of something he had entirely forgotten. In all the drama of Uncle Silas arriving and his mam wanting to move house, Seth had forgotten about his plan to sign up at New Mill. He would be twelve in a week and a half, and at twelve, he had promised himself, he would become a miner: the living torch-bearer for his dead father’s memory. Everyone was against it, Seth knew this – Amos, Anna, his mam, they’d all told him he should stay at school, he was a clever lad, he could use his brain and do something better with his life. He’d heard their words, he’d even looked at them as they spoke, but he hadn’t listened. He couldn’t do better than follow in his dad’s footsteps; it would be an honour and a privilege. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself: young, inexperienced, but bravely setting forth into a man’s world with a Dudley and a snap tin. He would come in from work every day too tired to speak, the whites of his eyes bright against the coal dust that caked his face. He would be like the ghost of his dad; he would remind his mam of what she’d lost.

‘Bloody Norah, lad. You pick yer moments.’

This wasn’t the warm reception Seth had anticipated from the colliery manager. Early signs had been so promising, the pit yard a much jollier place than he’d been led to believe; men that he knew hailed him cheerfully as he passed, there were red geraniums in wooden tubs and carefree boys with brushes larked about, flicking each other with whitewash as they painted the brick walls of the workshops. Seth had expected something much grimmer and hard-edged, but here was a place where he already felt at home. The scene had warmed his heart and his suffering spirits had soared with the joy of his noble mission. And then he had encountered Don Manvers, who glared at him as if he was a thief, caught red-handed and made to account for himself.

‘Arthur Williams’s lad, right?’

Seth nodded. ‘Aye,’ he said. His voice was small, but he stood proud.

‘Tha couldn’t be any bugger else wi’ them ears,’ said Mr Manvers. He laughed briefly, then resumed his crossness.

‘What’s tha want? Tha’s got ten seconds.’

Seth wasted three of them, then managed to stutter out that he wanted to come and work at New Mill, like his dad.

‘’ow old are you?’

‘Twelve, Mr Manvers. Well, I shall be, a week Wednesday.’

‘Oh aye?’ He spoke with a slow, sceptical drawl. ‘An’ what does yer mam ’ave to say about it?’

‘She doesn’t mind,’ said Seth. ‘She thinks it’s a right good idea.’

‘Does she now?’

Seth nodded, proud of his cunning and the quick-thinking lie.

‘I’ll tell thi summat for nowt,’ said Mr Manvers. ‘There’s not a mother in this miserable world who’s ever thought it a “right good idea” for ’er son to start at a pit. Only them
that ’as no choice comes ’ere, lad. An’ I reckon you’re not one of ’em.’

Seth – crushed, humiliated, wrong-footed – stood his ground.

‘All right,’ he said, red-faced and defiant. ‘Me mam doesn’t like it, but it’s what I want.’

‘Look,’ said Mr Manvers. ‘Arthur Williams were a fine worker an’ there’s a place ’ere for thi, if tha really wants it. But best talk again to thi mam. I don’t want Eve Williams comin’ down ’ere to play merry ’ell wi’ me for signing you up. All right?’

Seth contained his triumph in a brief manly nod. Then Mr Manvers cocked his head as if to size him up and said: ‘What’s tha up to now, lad?’

‘Nowt, Mr Manvers,’ said Seth.

‘In that case, get thissen a paintbrush and lend an ’and. We’ve t’king comin’ in three hours. Go on – make thi’sen useful.’

So Seth had spent a happy few hours with a tin of whitewash and a crowd of lively boys not much older than himself. Thoughts of Ravenscliffe, Daniel, his dad – all were banished in the collective endeavour to make New Mill pit yard fit for a royal visit. Seth felt foolish for having thought the paint and the flowers were the normal way of things: he was grateful – profoundly so – that he hadn’t given away this misunderstanding to Mr Manvers. That was the sort of stupid blunder that could dog a person for years. And then, before he’d been made to leave – ‘Are you still ’ere? Get thi’sen gone!’ Mr Manvers had said, but with a smile, not angrily – Seth had stood in a line with the others along the cinder track as the colliery band played a welcome overture and the king drove into the yard in Lord Hoyland’s Daimler.

By the time he walked back to Beaumont Lane it was nearly two o’clock and the house, when he pushed open the door and stepped inside, was completely empty of furniture, though he could hear Eve’s footsteps on the floorboards upstairs. Funny, he thought, how you always knew a person from their footfall. His mam’s was brisk and clipped. Eliza skipped or ran. Amos strode, so that the next step was always a little longer coming than you expected. Seth looked about the kitchen and was aware, as he did so, that he felt fine: calm, not distressed. Now none of their things were here, he could see that a house was something you could walk away from. He decided he’d leave his mark, though, before he left for the last time and he went through the kitchen and into the parlour and, crouching low in a corner of the room, he scratched SETH into the brown painted wood of the skirting board with the tip of his penknife. It was a poor effort, the letters scrappy, the word on a tilt. He wished he could start again and make a better job of it, but Eve’s boots were clattering down the stairs now so he stood, slipping the knife into a pocket out of her sight. She started speaking before she reached the bottom and her voice was bright, but brittle: familiar to Seth, who knew when she was being careful with him.

‘Is that you Seth? Where’ve you been, love? Everybody’s worrying about you and nob’dy more than me – and what’s that on you?’ She was in the parlour with him now, looking at the flecks of white paint that speckled the grey of his shorts. He could have told her everything, of course: that it was whitewash from New Mill on his clothes and he’d had the time of his life this morning and seen the king to boot, and how he didn’t mind the move so much any more. He could have told her all that to ease the blow of his other news – but he didn’t. Instead he set his face into a scowl
and said gruffly: ‘I’ve been up to t’pit to sign on. I start a week on Thursday.’ He didn’t know why. He simply couldn’t help himself. And he watched with a sort of odd pleasure at the pain he had inflicted: at the wounding power of words.

H
alf a mile underground five men gathered at the foot of the mineshaft. They’d swept the floor as well as they could and strung Union-flag bunting along the first few yards of the walls on either side of the main roadway. They hadn’t had time to whitewash anything down here so, apart from the flags, it was its usual dismal self, and just as well, thought Sam Bamford. Speaking personally, he couldn’t see the merit in making the pit out to be something it wasn’t. Bad enough to do up the yard like a church garden party without starting on the pit bottom as well. If the king wanted to see a working pit in action, then that’s what he should be shown: not geraniums and flags and painted brickwork. The headstocks had been painted yesterday, too – the first time in anyone’s memory – by a couple of youngsters who, carrying ropes, canvas and buckets of paint, climbed them like monkeys, rigged up a couple of rudimentary harnesses, then casually swung their way down, daubing the wooden beams with black paint, which had dried to a high glossy shine. There was a flagpole, too, bearing the Royal Standard, which was currently tied tight and couldn’t be unfurled until the king arrived. The white pole rose sixty feet up at the entrance to the pit yard, incongruously
grand, sent up to the colliery from Netherwood Hall. It was a blessing, thought Sam, that they hadn’t been given more notice, or else Don Manvers would’ve had them waxing and polishing the cobbles and laying red carpet up the steps to the pit bank.

It was Sam, though, who’d had the bright idea of involving the pit ponies in the underground reception committee and two of them – Ace and Queenie, chosen for their good manners and irresistible, heavy-lashed eyes – now formed part of the guard of honour. They stood placidly in line with the waiting men, red rosettes and ribbons tied to their newly blacked harnesses, enjoying the attention and the novelty of coming out of their underground stables, not to haul wagons of coal but simply to stand and be petted.