The Stars Look Down (70 page)

Indeed, when the men started in full time and double shift on the 10th February, Arthur forgot his worries in the glorious activity and liveliness and bustle about the pit. After the
long spell of slackness he felt the pulse of it like his own pulse. It was worth living for, the throbbing, magnificent vigour of the Neptune. This was what he wanted—work for everyone, fair work, fair pay and fair profit. He was happier than he had been for months. That night on his return to the Law he went triumphantly to his father.

“We’re working full time on both shifts now. I thought you’d like to know, father. It’s full steam ahead at the pit again.”

A silence, quivering with suspicion, while Barras peered up at Arthur from the couch in his room where, driven by the cold weather, he kept vigil by the fire. The room was intolerably hot, doors and windows tightly sealed, with Aunt Carrie’s aid, against the electricity. A sheaf of scribbled papers lay half-concealed beneath his rug, and beside him a stick, for with its help he could hobble a little, dragging his right foot.

“And why not?” he muttered at last. “Isn’t that the way it ought to… ought to be?”

Arthur flushed slightly.

“I daresay, father. But it isn’t so easy these days.”

“These days!” The eyebrows, now grey, twitched with venom. “These days—ah! You don’t know the meaning of days. It took me years and years… but I’m waiting, oh, waiting…”

With a dubious smile towards the prostrate figure: “I only thought you’d like to know, father…”

“You’re a fool. I do know, I know everything but what you say. That’s right, laugh… laugh like a fool. But mark my words… the pit will never be right till I come back.”

“Yes, father,” Arthur said, humouring him. “You must hurry up and come back.”

He waited in the room a moment longer, then excusing himself he went quite cheerfully in to tea. He was very cheerful for the next few days. He enjoyed his meals, enjoyed his work, enjoyed his leisure. It struck him with a kind of wonder how little leisure he had lately had; for months and months he had been bound, body and soul, to the Neptune. Now in the evenings he was able to relax and take up a book instead of sitting bowed in his chair tensely pondering on where business might be found. He wrote to Hilda and Grace. He felt himself refreshed and reinvigorated.

All went swimmingly until the morning of the 16th of
February when he came down to breakfast and picked up the paper with a sense of well-being and ease. He breakfasted alone, as his father had done in the old days, and he began his grape-fruit with a good appetite, when all at once a middle-page heading in the news arrested his eye. He stared at the heading as though transfixed. He put down his spoon and read the whole column. Then with no thought of breakfast he flung down his napkin, shoved back his chair and rushed to the telephone in the hall. Snatching up the instrument he called Probert of Amalgamated Collieries, who was also a leading member of the Northern Mining Association.

“Mr. Probert,” he stammered. “Have you seen
The Times
? They’re going to decontrol. In the King’s speech. On March 31st. They’re introducing legislation immediately.”

Probert’s voice came back: “Yes, I’ve seen it, Arthur. Yes, yes, I know… it’s much sooner—”

“But March 31st,” Arthur cut in desperately. “Next month! It’s unbelievable. They pledged themselves not to decontrol till August.”

Probert’s voice answered, very round and comfortable:

“You’re no more staggered than I am, Arthur. We’re precipitated into trouble. It’s a bombshell!”

“I’ve got to see you,” Arthur cried. “I must run over and see you, Mr. Probert, I must. I’ll come straight away.”

Taking no time for a possible denial, Arthur snapped up the receiver. Flinging on a coat he ran round to the garage and started up the light two-seater which now replaced the big saloon. He drove in a kind of fury to Probert’s house at Hedlington four miles up the coast. He arrived in seven minutes and was shown immediately to the morning-room, where, in a deep leather chair beside the blazing fire, Probert sat at leisure, smoking an after-breakfast cigar, with the paper on his knees. It was a charming picture: the warm, deep-carpeted room, the dignified old man, adequately fed, bathed in a lingering perfume of coffee and Havana, snatching a moment before the labours of the day.

“Mr. Probert,” Arthur burst out, “they can’t do this.”

Edgar Probert rose and took Arthur’s hand with a suave gravity.

“I am equally concerned, my dear boy,” he said, still holding Arthur’s hand. “Upon my soul, I am.” He was tall and stately and about sixty-five, with a mane of perfectly white hair, very black eyebrows and a magnificent presence which, as a member of the Northern Mining Association, he used
with wonderful effect. He was extremely rich and much respected, and he contributed largely to all local charities which published their lists of subscribers. Every winter his photograph appeared, noble and leonine, on the posters appealing for the Tynecastle Oddfellows Hospital and beneath it, in large type: Mr. Edgar Probert, who has so generously supported our cause, asks you once again to join with him…. For thirty years on end he had bled his men white. He was a perfectly charming old scoundrel.

“Be seated, Arthur, my boy,” he said, waving the cigar gently.

But Arthur was too agitated to sit down.

“What does it mean?” he cried. “That’s what I want to know. I’m absolutely at a loss.”

“I am afraid it means trouble,” Probert answered, planting his feet apart on the hearthrug and gazing abstractedly towards the ceiling.

“Yes, but why have they done it?”

“The Government, Arthur,” Probert murmured, “have been taking a big share of our profits but they have no desire to take any share in our losses. In plain language they are getting out while the going is good. But frankly, I’m not sorry. Strictly between ourselves, I’ve had a private communication from Westminster. It’s time we put our house in order. There’s been a storm brewing between ourselves and the men ever since the war. We must dig ourselves in, stand together as one man and fight.”

“Fight?”

Probert nodded through the balmy incense of cigar smoke. He looked very noble; he looked like the Silver King and Dr. Barnardo rolled into one, only kinder. He declared gently:

“I shall propose a cut of 40 per cent. in wages.”

“Forty per cent.,” Arthur gasped. “Why, that’ll bring the standard below pre-war level. The men will never stand that. No, never on your life. They’ll strike.”

“They may not get the chance to strike.” No animosity behind the words, merely that same benign abstraction. “If they don’t come to their senses promptly we shall lock them out.”

“A lock-out!” Arthur echoed. “That’s ruinous.”

Probert smiled calmly, removed his gaze from the ceiling and fixed it rather patronisingly upon Arthur.

“I imagine most of us have a little nest-egg from the war
tucked away somewhere. We must just nibble at that until the men see reason. Yes, yes, we must just nibble at it.”

A little nest-egg! Arthur thought of the capital laid out upon equipment and improvements at the Neptune; he thought of his present full-time contract; and a sudden hot rage came over him.

“I won’t lock out my men,” he said, “I won’t do it. We’re working double shift and full time at the Neptune. A 40 per cent. cut is madness. I’m prepared to pay reasonable wages. I’m not going to close down a going pit. I’m not going to cut my own throat for anybody.”

Probert patted Arthur on the back, more patronising than ever, remembering Arthur’s scandalous war record, despising him as an unbalanced, cowardly young fool, and masking it all with that priestly benevolence.

“There, there, my boy,” he said soothingly. “Don’t magnify the situation. I know you are naturally impetuous. You’ll get over it. We shall have a full meeting of the Association in a week’s time. You’ll be all right by then. You’ll stand in with the rest of us. There’s no other course open to you.”

Arthur stared at Probert with a strained look in his eyes. A nerve in his cheek began to twitch. No other course open to him! It was true, absolutely true; he was tied to the Association in a hundred different ways, bound hand and foot, He groaned.

“This is going to come hard on me.”

Probert patted him a little more tenderly.

“The men must be taught their place, Arthur,” he murmured. “Have you had breakfast? Let me ring for some coffee?”

“No thanks,” Arthur muttered with his head down. “I’ve got to get back.”

“How is your dear father?” Probert inquired sweetly. “You must miss him sadly at the Neptune, aha, yes, indeed. Yet I hear he is making marvellous headway. He is my oldest colleague on the Association. I hope we shall see him there soon, the dear man. You’ll give him my warmest regards!”

“Yes.” Arthur nodded jerkily, making for the door.

“You’re sure you won’t have some coffee?”

“No.”

Arthur had the stinging conviction that the old hypocrite was laughing at him. He got out of Probert’s house somehow and tumbled into his car. He drove very slowly to the Neptune, then he entered his office and sat down at his desk.
With his head buried in his hands he thought out the situation fully. He had a going pit wonderfully equipped and working full time on a reasonable contract. He was willing and ready to pay his men an adequate wage. Probert’s wage offer was derisory. With a choking heart Arthur picked up a pencil and worked it out. Yes. Balanced against the cost of living, the real value of Probert’s offer was a pre-war wage of under £1 a week; for the pump-men alone it came to pre-war equivalent of sixteen shillings and ninepence per five-shift week. Sixteen shillings and ninepence—rent, clothes, food for a family out of that! Oh, it was insanity to expect the men to accept it; it was no offer, merely a gage thrown out to promote the struggle. And he was bound to the Association; it was financial suicide even to think of breaking away. He would have to shut down his pit, throw his men out of work, sacrifice his contract. The grim irony of it all made him want to laugh.

At that moment Armstrong came into the office. Arthur looked up with nervous intensity.

“I want you to start overtime immediately on that coking coal, Armstrong. Take as much out as you can and stack it on the bank. Do you understand?—as much as you can manage. Make every effort, use every man.”

“Why, yes, Mr. Barras,” Armstrong answered in a startled voice.

Arthur had not the heart to enlighten Armstrong then. He made a few more calculations on his pad, threw down the pencil and stared away in front of him. The date was the 16th of February.

On the following day the Association met. As a result a secret circular was dispatched to all district mine owners discreetly indicating the approaching lock-out and urging that reserves of coal should be built up. When Arthur received this confidential document he smiled bitterly. How could he build up four months’ output in a bare six weeks!

On March 24th the Coal Decontrol Act became law. Arthur served notices upon his men to terminate the contracts. And on March 31st, with half his contract obligation unfulfilled, the stoppage began.

It was a wet, sad day. In the afternoon, as Arthur stood in his office staring gloomily at the last tubs coming outbye in the pouring rain, the door opened and, quite unannounced, Tom Heddon walked in. There was something almost sinister in Heddon’s silent entry. He stood, grim and formidable,
with his back to the shut door, facing Arthur, his compact figure slightly bent as if already burdened with the load of the approaching lock-out. He said:

“I want a word with you.” He paused. “You’ve served notices on every man in this pit.”

“What about it?” Arthur said heavily. “I’m no different from the rest.”

Heddon gave a short, bitterly sarcastic laugh.

“You’re this different. You’re the wettest pit in the district and you’ve served notices on your safety men and pumpers.”

Striving to keep control of himself, Arthur replied:

“I feel too badly about this to quarrel with you, Heddon. You know my obligations compel me to serve notices on all grades.”

“Are you looking for another flooding?” Heddon asked, with a curious inflection in his voice.

Arthur was very near the end of his resistance; he was not to blame; he would stand no bullying from Heddon. A wave of nervous indignation broke over him. He said:

“The safety men will carry on.”

“Oh, will they?” Heddon sneered. He paused, then rasped with bitter emphasis, “I want you to understand that the safety men are carryin’ on simply because I tell them to. If it wasn’t for me and the men behind me your bloddy pit would be flooded in twenty-four hours. D’you savvy that—flooded and finished! The miners you’re tryin’ to starve into the muck heap are goin’ on pumpin’ to keep you fat and cushy in your bloddy parlour. Just bite on that, will you, for the love of Christ, and see how it tastes.”

With a sudden wild gesture as though he could trust himself no longer Heddon swung round and banged his way out. Arthur sat down by the desk. He sat there a long time until darkness came stealing into the office and all but the safety men had left the pit. Then he rose and silently walked home.

The lock-out began. And through the long dreary weeks it drearily dragged on. With the safety of the mines assured there remained only to stand aside and contemplate the struggle between the men and the spectre of want. Day in, day out, with a heavy heart Arthur saw the limits to which this unequal conflict could be pushed—the gaunt cheeks of the men, the women, yes, even the children, the darkness that lay on every face, the streets without laughter, without play. His heart turned within him in a cold pain. Could man inflict this cruelty upon man? The war to end war, to bring
great and lasting peace, a new and glorious era in our civilisation. And now this! Take your pittance, slaves, and toil in the underworld in sweat and dirt and danger, yes, take it or starve. A woman died in childbirth in Inkerman Terrace—Dr. Scott, when pressed by the coroner, used a word, tempered officially to malnutrition. Margarine and bread; bread and margarine; sometimes not that. To raise a sturdy son to sing the song of Empire.