Without a Mother's Love (37 page)

She smiled at the irony of her situation: she would rather be down here in the dirt and the dark than living in that house at Hill Top with those degenerate so-called gentlemen who had sought to control her life.

She wondered if they were still looking for her. She didn’t think so. She would wager that neither was interested in having her back or even in avoiding scandal. The Mextons were expected to behave scandalously. Well, she hadn’t let them down in that respect, she thought triumphantly. Except that she was a woman, and women were not expected to cause scandals. It was a pity they didn’t know what she had done. She would have liked to see the fury on Hesley’s face.

She tired significantly by the end of the day and her trails to the shaft became slower so that the time to fill the tub between journeys was shorter. But she kept going and heeded her neighbour’s advice on hauling. Her legs and back were screaming when she heard a thump and a yell from Mr Wilton.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Lump o’ coal.’

She scrambled over towards the candle.

‘Just fell out. Shift it, can yer?’

It had trapped his right arm and he was trying desperately to push it off with his free hand. Between them they rolled it away. He was wincing with pain.‘Might be broken,’ he wheezed. ‘Mek way and let me crawl out.’

Joseph, in the next stall, came to look. ‘Better get you up to the bone-setter,’ he said.

‘Go with him, Joe,’ his wife added. ‘There’s enough coal dug fer me ter fill another tub and then I’ll foller you wi’ the lad.’ She held her candle high. ‘Tek the lass an’ all.’

‘Fetch me snap tin up, will yer?’ Mr Wilton called.

Livvy crawled back into the stall and gathered the cans. She could hear the shovelling in the next stall and marvelled at the strength of the pit women. Perhaps if she mined coal every day she would become as strong as them. She wondered how long it would take her. She was certainly exhausted today - drained. She leaned back against the stone wall and closed her eyes.

She heard a man call her name. Joe, she guessed, but she was too tired to crawl out and reply. He wouldn’t wait. He’d get Mr Wilton to the surface as quickly as he could. She’d just rest a few more minutes, then go up with Joe’s wife and the little boy. She must have dozed for she thought she heard a voice, but wasn’t certain. ‘You still in there?
^’
A pause. ‘Come on, then, lad.’ No, it was a dream. All was quiet. She hunched her shoulders and slipped back into her doze . . .

She opened her eyes to total blackness and couldn’t think where she was. Her hands and feet were cold. After a few seconds she remembered.The candle stub on her headband had burned away. She scrambled towards the stall door and opened it into more blackness. Not a flicker of light from a hurrier or an open door or anyone. Cold fear clutched at her heart.

‘Hello!’ she called. ‘Is anybody there?’

Silence. She strained her ears for the grating of tub wheels or the distant creak of the shaft pulley. Nothing except a darkness so black she could not see her fingers when she held them up to her face. She waited for her eyes to adjust but they didn’t. She could not see or hear anything. It was then that she felt a sharp pain jab at her stomach.

Chapter 28

‘Really, Father, we can’t go on like this! The coal barge is late again. We’ll have to get some from Kimber Deep.’

‘But Mexton Pit depends on our trade.’

‘What can we do, then?’

‘All it needs is a decent manager.The colliers there are good workers.’

‘Is Hesley doing something about it?’

‘Why don’t you ride over and have another look?’

‘It’s Hesley who should be doing that.’

‘He’s not well, son. He has that Jessup fellow to do everything now - and he’s too busy talking to the railway company.’

‘But the mine will fail again if somebody doesn’t do something. ’

‘As I say, son, why don’t you see what you can do?’

Jared thought about this. It was not only Hesley’s loss if the mine closed.There were other furnaces and forges that wanted coal and were too small to pay Kimber Deep prices. More than that, the village would die. The mission would not be able to save it and the people might starve. He couldn’t let that happen. Surely Hesley wasn’t short of capital? All Mexton Pit needed was a bigger steam engine and a railtrack to the canal. ‘I’ll ride over this evening,’ he said.

‘Nights are drawing in,’ his father reminded him. ‘Go in the morning.’

‘No. Something’s wrong and I want to find out why. I’ll talk to the men first. There’s an alehouse in the village now, where they slake their thirst.’

It was a small place, a former cottage at the end of the terrace nearest the track to the new pit. After a day’s work and a two-mile walk home, the colliers were ready for a tankard of ale. Some went in straight away and stood in the back room behind the barrels with their blackened faces and clothes. Others went home first to the missus for a wash at the pump in the scullery and a plate of stew from an iron pot hanging over the kitchen fire. Then they put on cleaner trousers and flannel shirts, were given a copper or two by their wives, and joined their fellows in the front-room saloon.

Jared stepped inside. There was a fire going in the grate and a bucket of coal in the hearth. Several serious pairs of eyes, still rimmed with coal dust in washed faces, looked up. They were hostile, he thought, and became edgy. This was working men’s territory. He nodded briefly from side to side as he walked to the counter, looking for the engine-house keeper he had met before. He was not there.

‘How do, landlord?’ he said. ‘A pint of your best.’

The alehouse keeper liked his title. ‘Haven’t seen you in here before, sir.’

‘I’m from Tyler’s Forge. Our coal’s late again. Is summat up?’

‘There’s allus summat up here. Gin-house man’s not ’ere, though. Maybe trouble with t’ steam again.’

‘Aye.’ Jared picked up his tankard and turned around, leaning against the counter.The door opened again and a brawny young man came in.

‘’Ey oop, Sam,’ a drinker called. ‘Your missus let you off the leash?’

A ripple of amusement crossed the room, then someone added, ‘Old Wilton all right, is he?’

‘Aye,’ Sam replied. ‘Bone-setter says so. Nowt broke. Got a problem, though. We’ve left somebody down there.’

‘What - down t’pit?’

‘He’d tekken this lass to hurry fer ’im, wi’ ’im ’aving no missus now, like, and when somebody asked where ’is missus was, they said ’adn’t they ’eard she’d passed on? So nobody knew we’d left the lass there until my missus asked me if she were all right, like, on her first day.’ He stopped to draw breath and added, ‘If yer get me meaning.’

‘I think so, lad. Did yer say it were her first day? Aye, well, now she knows what it’s like, she’ll not let herself get left behind again.’

‘We can’t leave her down there all night,’ Sam said.

‘Why not? She won’t be the first. Who is she, anyway?’

‘Not their Sarah, is it? I’ve seen her about these parts recent, like.’

‘Nay, their Sarah’s a teacher now.’

‘She used to go down pit, though, when she were a nipper, like, afore the mission were set up.’

‘Aye, well, a night down there’ll be no hardship fer her then, will it?’

Sam looked worried. ‘It’s not their Sarah, though, is it? Are you gunna just leave her there?’

‘Have some ale, lad, and stop yer fretting. It’s only fer one night. Besides, the gin-house man in’t here so nob’dy can go down fer her.’

The men went back to their ale and tobacco.

Jared frowned. He didn’t think it would be Sarah but, even so, he didn’t like the idea of any woman being left on her own all night down a coal mine, even if she was used to it. He turned to Sam and asked, ‘Do you know the lass?’

‘She’s new. I think it were her first day.’

Jared addressed the whole room.‘We ought to fetch her out.’ He couldn’t ask any of these men to go down again.They were all tired out. He would have to go. ‘Take me to the engine-house keeper’s home, Sam,’ he said, and swallowed the remains of his ale.

The pit engineer had just finished his dinner and was lighting a pipe by the kitchen fire. His wife was in the scullery and her four children were helping with the pots and scrubbing the table.

Jared introduced himself.

‘Tyler’s Forge? I remember you. I can’t get the coal to you any quicker. I’ve only just finished fer the day, what with old Wilton hurting his arm an’ that.’

‘Yes, I heard. Trouble is, you’ve left his hurrier down there.’

The man scratched his head. ‘I can’t help that. If she can’t look after herself she shouldn’t be down there. She’ll not do it again, will she?’

‘She might be injured, too.’

He considered this, then grumbled, ‘I’ve just settled in fer the night, y’ know. I have to do everything round here now. It’s not like Kimber Deep, with proper supervisors and the like. The wages clerk’s always late, keeping the men hanging around when they want to get off ’ome, and we can’t get enough wagons to get the coal to the barges fast enough.’

‘How long has it been like this?’

‘Since the old master passed on and that Jessup took over.’

‘Is Jessup responsible for everything now?’

‘Just about. Why?’

‘You have your pipe. I can work a steam engine, if you’ll let me have your keys.’

‘Only if you don’t let on to Jessup I did this. He’ll have me out on me ear as soon as look at me.’

Jared thought that it was probably all Jessup’s doing that the mine was in such a poor state. He’d have a few things to say to him when he got the chance. Mexton colliers were some of the best in the Riding and he was frittering away their livelihood. ‘Don’t you worry about Jessup,’ he said. ‘Come on, Sam. You’ll help me, won’t you?’

Sam looked alarmed. ‘I’m not going down there at night on me own.’

Jared took a deep breath. Sam had been working hard all day and he was lucky to have his help.‘I’ll get the engine going, then you can work it for me. He can do that, can’t he, sir?’

‘You’ll have to show him first.’

‘I’ll do that, then go down.’ Jared had been down Kimber Deep several times. ‘Are your lanterns over there?’

 

Livvy thought she was dying. The pain in her belly was much sharper than anything she’d had before and it cut her in half when it struck. And she was bleeding. She could feel it and smell it as it soaked through her thick miner’s trousers. She yelled, which helped her to endure it. But no one came to help her. No one.

When she thought the pain would never fade, it eased and she fell back against the rough rocky wall, frightened and exhausted. This was worse than her childhood nightmares. She had grown out of them eventually, thanks to Miss Trent. Miss Trent . . . It was always when she was in despair, when things went wrong, that she thought of Miss Trent. Why must she always associate the hardships in her life with Miss Trent? She missed her dreadfully.

But as Livvy drifted in and out of consciousness, with the ebb and flow of the pain, she thought of the good times as well.Walking through the trees and in the pasture before evensong when Jared came riding over the hill and Miss Trent had left them to talk. Those had been the best of times.

If she was going to die she wanted to die remembering Jared, and how her desire for him had increased when he had refused her advances. Even though she had hated him for it when they had parted, she would have welcomed him back. Always she would welcome him.

The pain returned, making her screech.Tears of agony flooded down her cheeks. No one would hear her. No one would come for her until morning. She might bleed to death before then. She was so cold . . . and she could no longer think clearly.

She was under the sea. Yes, she had drowned and sunk to the bottom of the ocean where there was a black rocky cave full of blackened faces. She was a child again. Black faces frightened her. They had taken her mama and papa and they spoke in a strange language. But when she recovered consciousness it was not soft, hot sand under her back. It was cold black rock, hard and unyielding.The stony floor and walls of this dark cave dug into her flesh.

Perhaps this was Hell? She had been wicked, she knew. She had spurned her duty. She had married another man while her husband lived. God would punish her for that. Now she understood. She was on her way to Hell.The pain was her punishment. It returned with a vengeance and she fainted.

 

Jared thought he would never reach the bottom of the shaft. The engine cranked and hissed and the platform creaked and groaned as it swung about, slowing as he neared the bottom. He had been down Kimber Deep often, but never alone, and he understood why Sam would not do it. The lantern cast weird shadows and revived childhood stories of ghouls and ghosts that lurked in corners, ready to pounce.

‘Pull yourself together, man,’ he chided himself.

He climbed out. Sam had described the layout of the pillars and stalls to him, and he began his trek along the tunnel, feeling his way along the rough black walls.

‘Halloo!’ he called. ‘Where are you?’

Soon he had to bend his neck and then his back as he progressed. Twice he cracked his head on the roof and cursed, rubbing the bruise with his blackened hands. He was sweating. His body, folded almost double, was taut with tension. He wiped the sweat off his face, cursing again when coal grit scratched his eyes.

‘Halloo!’ he called again, and stopped to listen. Not a sound. Was Sam mistaken? Was no one here? Was this a futile journey? How foolish not to find out her name before he had come down. Well, he would search the tunnel to the end to make sure.

He had resorted to his hands and knees, crawling as best he could with the lantern in one hand, when he thought he saw a heap of ragged clothes piled against the wall. As he drew closer he saw it was a person, dressed in the thick trousers and tunic of a hurrier. Her head, covered with a close-fitting miner’s cap, had dropped on to her breast and she lay still.