The dust-filled air was thick and heavy as he gulped at it, and he could hear one or two others choking and coughing and moving. For a moment, relief that he wasn’t the only one alive in the blackness was paramount, then concern for his brothers brought him heaving and kicking the rest of his torso and legs free. One of his boots made contact with something which groaned, and Andrew’s voice, rasping and dazed, muttered, ‘That’s right, finish the job the damn roof’s done on me, why don’t you?’
‘Andrew.’ He crawled to the sound, feeling his way. ‘You all right?’
His answer was another muffled groan, followed by, ‘I think me leg’s broken . . . hell.’ Another groan and then, ‘I’m caught fast.’
He felt his way along Andrew’s body and clawed at the grit and rocks covering his brother’s legs, but although the right one came clear of the rubble, the left was held fast by a slab of rock. Doug Lindsay, the miner who had been working on Andrew’s left, came crawling up, saying, ‘By, I thought we were all done for, this time.’
‘Doug.’ Matt reached out and caught hold of him. ‘Andrew’s leg’s held.’ He guided the man’s hands in the blackness and between them they heaved the rock clear, bringing a stifled scream from Andrew in the process.
The next moment though, Andrew gasped, ‘I’m all right, see to George and the others. How bad do you reckon it is?’
‘The fall was just behind me,’ Doug muttered softly, ‘and I reckon plenty came down.’
Matt knew what that meant. The exit was blocked and their only hope was the rescue workers clearing from the other side. There had been several men working some distance behind Doug. They would raise the alarm – if they were in a position to do so.
More moans and curses were coming from his right and then, wonder of wonders, they saw the flicker of a lamp. No sight could have been more welcome. Three miners crawled towards them pulling a fourth behind them, and at the same time there was a movement from the mound of slack to Matt’s right and George coughed before heaving himself on to his hands and knees, shaking his head like a boxer coming round from the knock-out blow. ‘What happened?’ he asked weakly.
‘Whilst you’ve bin taking a little nap the rest of us have bin having a picnic.’ Andrew might be down but he wasn’t out.
But then even he became silent when, in answer to Matt’s enquiry about the men further down the tunnel, one of the three shook his head, adding, ‘It’s blocked both ways. It’s come down either side of us and we shouldn’t talk. There’s not much air.’
As though in confirmation of this the lamp’s light became dimmer.
‘Bert?’ Matt muttered, nodding his head at the man the others had been hauling and who hadn’t moved.
Again he received a shake of the head and now he crawled back to Andrew, removing his own shirt and making a rough pillow for his brother’s head before sitting with his shoulders resting against the wall of the tunnel. George joined him, settling himself and putting his hand to his jaw. ‘Damn tooth.’ He shut his eyes. ‘Dora wanted me to have it out this morning but I didn’t want to lose a shift.’
How was that for irony, Matt thought, his head buzzing slightly. Instead of losing a shift he could lose his life. And then he rebuked himself sharply. None of that. Once you started thinking like that you’d lost the fight. They were still alive, all except poor old Bert, and they didn’t know for sure if the others either side of the fall were gone. All they could do now was wait and hope the rescue team were in time. They’d work like the dickens, he knew that. Likely most or all of them had brothers, fathers or sons or other male relatives in the accident, but even if they hadn’t they’d be just as keen to get to their mates. His da had been on the late shift this week, so he’d be one of the rescue workers.
The men were quiet now, each one aware that the precious oxygen was running out and each time they breathed they replaced the little there was with carbon dioxide from their own lungs. But there was nothing they could do about it.
How long would Tilly mourn him before she got herself another fella? She was made for loving, was Tilly, with her big breasts and hips. A man could lose himself in a lass like Tilly and think he was in heaven. Would she be sorry she hadn’t let him have his way when they brought his body up and she looked at his face? Would she wish she’d lain with him and let him love her?
He brought his wandering mind under control with a mental oath.
He wasn’t going to die
, damn it. None of them were. How would his mam feel if her three lads were taken in one fell swoop? They had to live and that was the end of it. One thing was for sure though, if he got out of here whole in mind and body he was asking Tilly to marry him the minute he saw her again. If he’d been in his right mind he would have done it weeks ago instead of acting like a skittish lassie. Andrew was right, it was time he had a place he could call his own and a warm accommodating body to come home to at the end of a hard-working day. Tilly was ripe for marriage and she would make a grand miner’s wife. She was strong and robust and hard physical work wouldn’t bother her. What he’d been waiting for, he didn’t know, but he was done with dallying. He’d ask her, God willing.
Having settled the matter which had plagued him for some time he became aware that he could hardly see the others; the lamp was fading fast. It was comforting to feel the bulk of George at the side of him; he wondered what his brother was thinking about. Likely both Andrew and George were thinking of their wives and bairns. As Andrew had said earlier, they saw themselves in their bairns and a part of them would live on in them. He didn’t have that, he hadn’t created life. There was no one living because of him. Although . . . that wasn’t quite true.
The buzzing in his ears was louder and he wanted to sleep. He was tired. He couldn’t remember ever being so tired. He struggled to remember what he’d been thinking about and then it came –
Constance
. Constance was alive because of him. He’d always been a bit embarrassed in the past if him saving her had come up, but now it was a good feeling, knowing the lass would grow up and have bairns of her own one day because of what he’d done that night so many years ago. She was a bonny little bairn, as bonny as a summer’s day with those great blue eyes and cloud of golden hair, and her nature was as sweet as they came. He hadn’t seen much of her since Christmas though. Once upon a time she’d accompanied her gran every Saturday to the house but recently Mrs Gray had taken to visiting on her own.
His brow wrinkled. He’d missed her, even though he hadn’t realised it till now. Somehow their old easy camaraderie had melted away in recent months and now he felt as though he had lost something precious. Why had she stopped coming?
He continued to mull the matter over in his mind until the humming drone in his ears blotted it out. His chin fell on to his chest and so it was that his last conscious thought was not of the girl he intended to marry, but Constance.
Chapter 3
Vincent McKenzie was recovering from the biggest shock of his life. He had been at the colliery fifteen hours, not because he was part of the rescue crew – why would he risk his own life saving men who hated him, and he them? – but because of his status as master weighman. As such, along with the deputies and under-manager and manager, he had a duty to the owners to show his face at such times. That was the way he saw it. And so he’d done his bit and waited while the rescue workers did theirs, and minutes ago the last of the trapped miners had been brought to the surface.
The fall had been a bad one, but amazingly only four men had lost their lives, although several more had been injured. Most of the shift working in the affected area were ‘walking wounded’, however, and the management would expect them to turn up as normal the next day, even though a pocket of men had been unconscious through lack of oxygen when they were found. And of course Matthew Heath had to be among the lucky ones who’d walked away unscathed.
Vincent pulled the collar of his coat more closely round his neck, his eyes narrowing against the bitter cold.
But it was Hannah appearing from the crowd waiting at the pit gates for news and throwing herself on Heath when he’d emerged which had turned his stomach and made him feel as weak as a kitten for a moment. Of course it hadn’t been Hannah; after the first paralysing impact he’d realised it was Hannah’s daughter, but his guts were still churning from the incident an hour since.
How long had it been since he’d last caught sight of the girl? he asked himself now. A long time, possibly a good five or six years, thinking about it. The thought of Stephen Shelton’s seed living on had been a thorn in his flesh at one time, but once Heath had begun work at the colliery and he had been able to hit him where it hurt – in his pocket – he had felt easier. He saw to it that Heath’s tubs of coal were downgraded or rejected whenever he could, and the subsequent fines and reduced pay-packet carried through to the letter. Once or twice he’d cut his wages by half and there wasn’t a thing Heath – or any of the other miners he penalised – could do about it. Since he’d taken the job as weighman he carried a cosh in his pocket and kept his eyes skinned once he was clear of the village and on his way to and from the cottage. Weighmen seemed to be prone to ‘accidents’ of the fatal kind. His predecessor had been found on a dark night with his head bashed in.
‘That’s the last one up now.’ Collins, the under-manager, joined him, tucking his muffler into the collar of his expensive coat as he spoke. ‘Damn nuisance, this. It’ll affect end-of-month profit, as if we haven’t got enough trouble with the unions bleating about pay and conditions. Look out for troublemakers, McKenzie, and see to it they’re discouraged from becoming too vocal.You understand me?’
Vincent nodded. He understood all right. Any known agitators would find their tubs discarded over and over again until they came to heel. And if they had the temerity to complain about this treatment they’d face the sack, which meant they were thrown out of their tied cottage. During the Durham strike the year before, he’d provided the owners with a list naming the most militant miners in the colliery, and subsequently received orders to get rid of two of them as an example to the rest of the herd. The feeling of power as he’d watched the families he’d chosen to go, being evicted from their homes, had been heady.
Collins walked off without a goodbye but Vincent didn’t expect one. The under-manager had recommended him for the position of weighman eight years ago but that didn’t mean he liked him, nor he Collins. Vincent knew he’d got the job because he had always made it plain he knew which side his bread was buttered; furthermore he had no allegiance to any of the men under him and no family connections. He’d always been disliked by his fellow man, now he was hated, but that didn’t worry him. He had made their hate work for him. He was sitting pretty in a comfortable home with good food and clothes, and he wanted for nothing. And if Collins and the owners looked down on him, he didn’t mind that either, as long as he was paid the hefty commission he earned for every tub of coal he rejected for the owners. He had a tidy bit put away for a rainy day already.
Vincent followed the thin, stringy figure of the under-manager out of the pit gates. Twilight had long since come and gone and the night was raw, a bitter wind swirling the odd snowflake in its midst. Wrapped up as he was in a good thick coat which would have cost the average miner a month’s wages, Vincent didn’t feel the cold, neither was he really aware of his surroundings as he took the familiar route home. In his mind’s eye he was seeing Constance as she’d looked when the shawl covering her head had slipped and her golden hair had gleamed in the lamplight. She was Hannah to a T, or Hannah as she had been before she’d let Shelton get his dirty hands on her, and she looked much older than her age. If he hadn’t known, he’d have put her down as fifteen or sixteen.
A feeling he’d long since thought was dead stirred in him, a mix of desire and hope and fear and a hundred and one other emotions he couldn’t put a name to. He stopped dead as it caused his heart to beat faster, surprise that he could feel this way etched on the features which had coarsened since his youth.
Hannah’s daughter.
Excitement caused him to sweat under his greatcoat and brown tweed jacket lined with silk, both of the best quality. He always dressed as well as any fine gentleman. It denoted his position, and furthermore got up the nose of his former class-mates who had taunted and rejected him as a bairn and made his life hell. One of them had muttered something about folk who ‘aped their betters’ when he’d been walking past a group of miners outside the colliery office once. He hadn’t said anything at the time, but John Potts had been one of the men evicted from their homes last year and he hadn’t been sniggering when he’d walked the road with his pregnant wife and six bairns.
Vincent strode through the village as he always did, eyes straight ahead and face set, although at this time of night there was no one about and lights shone behind closed curtains. He didn’t glance to the left as he passed Cross Streets although he was vitally conscious that Hannah’s daughter was there living in the grid of streets as her mother had once done. But much had changed since then. The site to the east of Cross Streets had been built up in latter years and this area – Elliott and Hunter Streets, which were named after the colliery owners, and Victoria, Gregson and Blackett Streets – was referred to as ‘New Town’ by its inhabitants.
He paused, when after passing the Methodist Chapel and the Queen’s Head Hotel he reached the crossroads, the right branch of which would take him home. He turned, looking back at the way he had come, and had the mad impulse to retrace his steps and bang on the Grays’ front door then demand to see Constance.
What was she to Heath? The thought which had been there since he’d seen the girlish figure with her arms round the man’s waist and her head pressed against his chest burned in his brain. What was their relationship? Knowing the story of her parents’ demise and Heath’s part in her own deliverance she’d be grateful, of course, and likely she’d grown up thinking of him as a kind of hero, a brother figure perhaps? Or was it more than that?