‘Where’s you goin’, Gardiner?’ Roy’s voice cut across Geoff’s thoughts as he came sauntering out of the dining room. ‘Want a game of footie?’
Geoff was about to refuse, to say loftily that he would rather go over to the Gardens, when he remembered that he must keep in with Roy if he wanted to get away from the Home for a whole day without any fuss. Besides, all work and no play make Jack a dull boy, Geoff told himself virtuously. He grinned at Roy. ‘Why not?’ he said cheerfully, turning towards the back door. ‘Who’s picking sides then?’
It was dark in the narrow passageway along which Clem Gilligan and his pit pony were making their way, the darkness only dimly illuminated by the miner’s lamp on Clem’s head. Ahead of him, he could see the lights of the main tunnel which would lead him to the dropping off point for the coal in the trucks clattering along behind him.
Clem sighed. By his calculation, this should be his last drop off before the change of shift which meant that he could return to the outer world once more, after he had fed and watered the pony.
The thought of the June evening waiting above ground was as good as a long, refreshing drink of cold water – which was something that Clem could have done with right now. It was always hot in the pit of course – the deeper you went, the hotter it grew – but there was no satisfaction in the stuffy, dusty heat down here. Above ground, he would be glad of the sunshine – if it was still sunny, that was. Trapped below, you simply could not tell. It had been fine when he came to work that morning, but by now the blue skies might have clouded over and rain might be pattering on the slate roofs and cobbled streets of the village.
Clem brought his line of trucks to a rattling halt at the collection point and unbuckled the pony’s harness. He led the small creature to the underground stable block, rubbed him down with a handful of hay,
fed and watered him and then, with a valedictory slap on the pony’s neck, he turned away and began to walk back towards the cage. As he walked, with his empty bottle and food tin banging against his side, he wondered how his mam was today. She had been ill for a long time, though no one seemed to know what was the matter with her. She was rarely up when he left for the early shift but by the time he got home he would find her moving about the tiny kitchen, preparing the evening meal.
Clem swung into the cage with a great many other men whose shift ended at this time and waited while the last workers pushed into the already crowded space, eager to get back to the surface. Through the throng, Clem saw Billy Evans and grinned at him; he and Billy lived quite near each other and often walked back together after the day’s work was done. Billy, however, came from a mining family and had lived in the village all his life, unlike Clem and his mother. They had moved to the pit village when Clem’s father had found that he was no longer capable of doing the heavy work which navvying entailed. He had got a surface job at the pit but the consumption, which had already begun to attack his lungs, increased inexorably month after month until, towards the end, he was just a frail little figure, sitting at home in the chimney corner while his wife and son worked at any job which would bring in a few shillings. Cleaning in the big houses and taking in washing, sorting coal and running errands, were just some of the ways in which mother and son attempted to keep body and soul together.
Sean Gilligan had died two years ago and, almost as though his wife had been keeping her own illness a secret for his sake, it soon became apparent – to Clem
at any rate – that Bridget Gilligan was very ill indeed. She had struggled on for almost a year, doing any work she could manage, but as soon as Clem was sixteen and had got himself a proper job in the pit, with a regular wage, she had stopped even pretending that she could work outside the home. When you considered that they were newcomers to the village, the neighbours had been wonderful, Clem thought now as the gates clanged shut behind the last man to board. Because he had not worked in the pit for long enough even to be considered for a pension, and because his illness had been upon him when they first moved to the village, Sean’s death would have been a mortal blow to the family finances had the neighbours not rallied round. But rally round they had, even the mine owner conceding that Clem should start work down the pit a full year before he would normally have been allowed to do so. The villagers had had a whip round to pay for the funeral, and Bridget Gilligan was constantly astonished and touched by the generosity of people she knew to be by no means rich.
The tiny cottage, little more than a lean-to on the end of a row of sturdy two up and two down dwellings, had been cheap to rent. But Clem thought now that the draughts which whistled under the ill-fitting door and around the window frames could not have helped his mother’s condition. For the hundredth time he told himself that now he was a man – or at least almost so – he should do his best to block up the draughts and make the house more habitable. The trouble was, he was always busy. When his mother had been fit he had only been responsible for bringing in the water from the well, the fuel for the fire and other such chores. Now that
he saw her so weak, however, he did everything he could to help. He had grown expert at cooking vegetables, washing the clothes and cleaning the house, and never grudged time so spent, though in summer he often longed for the freedom to play football or cricket with lads his own age, to explore the countryside, perhaps even to work for a bit of extra money on one of the surrounding farms.
The cage clanged to a stop by the winding house and the men filed out to pick up their tallies and hand in their lamps and shout greetings to friends as they left the yard. Billy fell into step beside Clem and the two of them wrestled amicably for a moment before Billy apparently recalled that he was no longer a carefree lad and began to talk about the day’s work.
‘Comin’ out this evening?’ he said presently, though without much hope. He must have realised, from past experience, that Clem rarely joined the others once his shift was over. ‘There’s strawberries just about ripe at Tatlock’s place,’ he said. ‘He’ll pay a penny a basket to pickers and no one notices if you eat the odd one or two.’
Clem swallowed; the thought of strawberries was delicious to one who usually ate mainly bread and potatoes, but nevertheless he shook his head. ‘You know I’d come with you if I could, la’,’ he said ruefully. ‘But by the time I’ve had me dinner and seen to whatever me mam needs doing, I’m that tired, it’s all I can do to get up the stairs and climb into me bed. You on earlies again tomorrow?’
They had reached the little end cottage and Billy stayed his step for a moment, staring at the open door. ‘Your mam’s got visitors by the looks of it,’ he said. ‘Were you expecting company?’
Clem stared at the half-open door, a frown creasing
his brow, and was about to answer that so far as he knew no one was calling on them, when the door swung right open and two men came out, halting in the doorway when they saw Clem. One was Dr Dickinson; the other, a smartly dressed, middle-aged man with a small case in one hand and a black Homburg hat in the other, was a stranger. Clem opened his mouth to ask what was happening but the doctor stepped forward and took hold of his shoulders, giving them a slight squeeze as he did so.
‘Clem, my lad, you’ve known for a while that your mam was a very sick woman. Earlier today she was taken bad – so bad that Mrs Wetherspoon sent for me to do what I could.’ He paused, clearly reluctant to go on, and Clem gently disengaged the older man’s hands and went past him into the low-ceilinged, dark little kitchen. He did not know quite what he expected to find there but he knew, with every fibre of his being, that something terrible had happened – something so terrible that not even kind Dr Dickinson could bring himself to speak of it. He looked across to the shabby little sofa where his mother had so often lain, but found it empty. His eyes took in the rest of the room: deserted. He made for the stairs, taking them two at a time, the dread in his heart increasing until it seemed to fill his whole body. He told himself that Mam must be really ill, that there would be no one in the bedroom because she would have been taken to the nearest hospital, there to be made better at last. He entered his mam’s bedroom, which was separated from his own by a thin, wooden partition, and saw that she lay on the bed, very small and very still. Her hands were crossed upon her thin breast and her eyes were closed, yet even while one part of his
brain accepted that she was gone, that this was just the shell of his mam, all that was left of her mortal frame, another part insisted that such a terrible thing could not have happened so quickly. What would he do without her? His life had revolved round her for so long now that he could not envisage going on alone.
A hand touched his shoulder, making him jump. The doctor had followed him up the stairs and now turned him away from the still figure on the bed and propelled him gently out of the room. ‘She’s been in constant pain, lad, for longer than she’s let any of us see,’ the doctor said gently. ‘It’s a merciful release to go quietly as she did. She was sitting by the window peeling potatoes when the breath just slipped from her. Mrs Wetherspoon came in to ask if she’d like a few turnips and found her gone.’
Clem stared bleakly up into the doctor’s strong, understanding face. He wanted to protest, to explain that without his mam his life would not be worth living, but found he could not do so. All he could manage was a small tight smile as he turned away.
The day after his mother’s funeral which had been paid for by a whip round amongst the members of the small mining community, Clem Gilligan packed his few belongings into the old ditty bag which his father had brought back from the war and set off along the road which led eventually to the nearest city. He had cried over his mother’s loss until no more tears had come and had then decided that there was no point in remaining in the village any longer. He hated working underground, but coming back to a cold and empty house was more than he could face. Every stone of that place made him think of his parents, and though he could not pretend that he had known much
happiness while living there, he could not bear the sad memories which assailed him every time he went in through the door.
Besides, it was high summer, a good time to go on the tramp and start a new life. The weather was fine and he could sleep in haystacks, earning a few coppers on the way by working for farmers or small tradesmen who might need a husky lad.
He had no idea where he was heading, save for the nearest big city, and no idea how he intended to earn his living when he got there. At the moment, he felt so bereft and alone that he could not imagine any future, let alone a happy and successful one, but he had enough common sense to realise that this feeling would pass.
‘Time is a great healer,’ the rector who had presided at his mother’s funeral service had told him, his watery blue eyes behind his spectacles full of sympathetic understanding. ‘I know that right now all you can feel is sadness and loss, and you’re thinking you’ll never feel any different. But if you think your mam – or your dad for that matter – would have wanted their boy to go through life mourning for them, you couldn’t be more mistaken. They’ll expect you to miss them, of course they will, and to think of them often as you go through life. But you’ve a great many years ahead of you, God willing, and you’ll find comfort all around you. Folk will want to help you and it’s your duty to let them do so, to appreciate such help and to reward the givers of it by showing a cheerful face and spirit. Are you staying in the village? I know you’ve no relatives here, but your parents were well liked and respected and a mining community looks after its own. You could do a great deal worse than to take a room in the house of a
kindly local body. There’s old Mrs Pratt, she’d see you were well fed and looked after for a few shillings a week, if you’d a mind to stay on.’
Clem had murmured something appropriate, had said he would think things over, but even then he had known he would not stay. And now that he was actually on the road, with the sun burning hotly on his shoulders and a light breeze stirring his dark locks, he was already aware of a lightening of the burden he had carried for so long. Besides, he had not burned his boats; the pit would be waiting for him should he change his mind, as would a room in the house of kindly Mrs Pratt. He could count this as a sort of holiday, a time for deciding what the future should hold for him.
Half smiling at his thoughts, he continued to tramp along the dusty road.
Within three days of setting out from the village, Clem knew he had done the right thing. On the first and second day, the weather had been pure summer, with sunshine from dawn to dusk and the wild flowers on the wayside verges breathing out their sweetness as he brushed against them. There were dog roses, white as snow, pink as a seashell and a dark, dramatic cerise colour in the hedges, fighting for supremacy with the coral and gold of honeysuckle. The air was heavy with scent, and bees, drunk with honey, seemed to accompany him along each winding lane. After almost two years in the pit, Clem felt that this was some sort of fairyland and also felt almost guilty for enjoying it when his mother could not.
But on the third day it rained, slanting, silver rain which came down steadily from the lowering clouds
overhead. Rather than get soaked to the skin, Clem took shelter in the hollow of a huge oak tree and sat there perfectly content for several hours, so still and quiet that the little animals of the countryside never even noticed him and went about their business, unaware of the watching eyes.
That night a haystack would have been a wet bed indeed so Clem stayed in the hollow oak, using his spare clothing to wrap himself in, though in truth, despite the rain, the night was mild enough to make coverings largely unnecessary. And for the first time since leaving the village, he dreamed.
He was sitting by a river bank – he thought it was a river – with a sloping meadow behind him and the water softly lapping below. It was a warm and somehow dreamy summer’s day and he was not at all surprised, upon looking sideways, to see that his mother sat beside him. She looked young and happy, very different from the way she had looked since his father’s death, and when she saw his eyes on her she turned to face him, smiling at him, her expression full of love.