No Man’s Land

‘Come on,’ said Luke. ‘You’ll see.’

The boys followed Luke as he led them over to the big shed-like building that housed the stores for the mine and produced two keys from his pocket.

‘Where did you get them?’ asked Adam, starting to feel worried.

‘One of the deputies left ’em lying around an’ Davy ’ere was sharp enough to nab ’em without anyone noticin’, said Luke, pointing to his friend, a boy of his age but of much smaller stature with curly sandy hair and a round cherub-like face that reminded Adam of the carvings in the church in Islington that he used to go to with his mother. Davy was constantly getting into trouble, letting off fireworks or pilfering from the village store, and relied on his false air of innocence to escape punishment. His twin brother, Harry, looked nothing like him. He was tall, dark-skinned and serious, and had a precocious talent for playing the violin that he had never been able to properly develop as he had been required, like his brother, to join their father and uncle down the mine on the day following their fourteenth birthday. The strike had given the boys their longest holiday since then even if it had also made them cold and hungry.

Luke fitted one of the keys into the lock on the door of the stores and they went inside, leaving Harry outside to stand lookout.

Luke and Davy lit candles and began to pick their way up and down the narrow lanes between the tall stacks of equipment piled up on all sides – ropes and rails and wheels and steel and timber roof props – before Luke gave a triumphant whistle as he halted in front of a tall cupboard at the far end of the shed which had the word ‘DANGER’ painted in big red letters on the door under an image of a skull and crossbones.

The second key opened the padlock and the door swung open to reveal shelves of the various explosives used for shot firing in the mine. Luke carefully selected two sticks of dynamite.

‘One should be enough; t’other one’s just in case,’ he said as he relocked the door.

‘What the hell are they for?’ asked Adam, now feeling seriously alarmed. He was angry too. ‘You should have damned well told me, Ernest, that you were planning to blow up the mine before you hauled me out here,’ he told his friend, taking hold of his arm. ‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come.’

But Ernest shook him off and laughed. ‘Who said anything about blowing up the mine?’ he said. ‘We’re going fishing. That’s what we’re doing.’

The roads were still deserted as they rode their bicycles out of the town, heading past the football pitch into the open countryside. Away from the valley bottom the early spring sunshine was burning off the mist and the clean cold air filling Adam’s lungs gave him a sudden feeling of exhilaration as the boys increased their speed, weaving in and out of each other’s paths but somehow never colliding. They halted at a crossroads a few miles from Scarsdale, arguing about which direction to take.

‘It’s up there,’ said Davy, pointing to the left where the road narrowed as it climbed up into a beech wood and disappeared. ‘I know cos this ’ere is the cross lanes where they ’ad the iron gibbet back in the olden days. They used to ’ang the ’ighwaymen up ’ere in chains after their executions as a warnin’. Pitch on their faces; tar on their bones. Imagine the wind blowing through the bars of the cage rattlin’ their skeletons; imagine the sound o’ it in the moonlight,’ he said, dropping his voice to an enthusiastic whisper.

‘You’re makin’ it up,’ said Luke, pushing Davy playfully back with his hand. ‘I think you’re maybe right about the lake, but the rest is nonsense, ain’t it, ’Arry?’

‘Nay, it’s true,’ said Davy’s brother. ‘Our granddad told us about the gibbet the year afore ’e died; ’e said ’e’d seen it ’ere when ’e was a kid.’

‘An’ I s’pose you’re sayin’ that’s what’s we’ve got comin’ to us for stealin’ the dynamite?’ said Luke, grinning.

‘Nay, ’angin’s too good for the likes o’ us,’ said Davy, shaking his head in mock despair.

Laughing, they got back on their bicycles and pedalled hard to put the cross lanes behind them and reach their destination.

They slowed down once they reached the wood. They had to as the road quickly became no more than a dirt track and they bounced along in single file over the exposed tree roots until they reached a rise and stopped, looking out in wonder at the still waters of a semi-circular lake ringed by weeping willow trees whose leafy branches were trailing down into the water.

The boys waited while Luke lit the fuse on the first stick of dynamite and threw it into the lake. Almost immediately a column of foaming water exploded upwards from the surface and with it came scores of fat fish glinting silver in the sunlight. They flew up through the air before cascading back to float stunned or dead on the surface, ready and waiting for the boys who were already wading out into the water with the nets that they had brought from home extended in front of them.

They sorted through their catch on the shore, looking for the green-scaled perch with black stripes down their flanks and a spiked dorsal fin on their backs. The rest they threw back. Adam was told off to gather twigs and branches for the fire while the other boys descaled and filleted the fish ready for cooking.

‘Perch are the best to eat. And this lake’s known for them. The carp taste of mud and the chub are full of forked bones and taste of mud too,’ said Ernest, grinning happily as he took the wood from Adam and built the fire.

Adam watched the quick way the boys worked together preparing the meal with a twinge of envy mixed with regret: there had been no opportunity for him to learn how to live outdoors back in London. Over the course of the last year he had come to love the countryside around Scarsdale, gazing out at it with pleasure every day from the window of the bus, but he still felt like an outsider looking in, utterly ignorant of how nature or agriculture actually worked.

But Adam’s despondency was fleeting, chased away like a stray cloud by the delicious scent of the cooking mixed with the smell of smoke from the fire. Ernest had come equipped, producing a frying pan and flour and a bag of lemons from his knapsack, and the breakfast was the best and most satisfying meal Adam had eaten in as long as he could remember. The food prepared by Ernest’s mother had always been bland, and quantity as well as quality had sharply deteriorated since the privations inflicted by the strike had begun to bite into the family’s income.

Afterwards Adam lay back on the mossy bank with his eyes closed, using his rolled-up jacket as a makeshift pillow, and let the sunlight warm his face as it dappled down through the branches of the willow trees. He idly listened to the laughing voices of his friends, not taking in the words but letting them intermingle with the sound of birdsong and the tap-tap-tapping of a woodpecker further back inside the wood. The mine and the strike and the unresolved issues in his life seemed faraway and inconsequential, subsumed for now in a deep contentment. And later, in the midst of war and misfortune, he thought back on that moment lying beside the lake as the one where he had been most completely happy, wanting for nothing, at peace and in perfect harmony with the world around him.

In April the union voted to return to work. An Act rushed through Parliament by the Liberal government had appeared to answer the miners’ demands. But it soon became apparent that they had achieved far less than they had hoped. The new law set up district boards made up of employers and employees to agree a minimum wage in each district, and when the Scarsdale Board failed to reach agreement, the Chairman, Sir John Scarsdale, used his power under the Act to set a five-shilling minimum.

At demonstrations all over the north the miners had chanted their slogan: ‘Eight hours’ work, eight hours’ play, eight hours’ sleep and eight bob a day,’ and now they felt betrayed. The sacrifices they had made during the strike had been for nothing and they wanted someone to blame. Daniel Raine provided the obvious scapegoat.

Edgar had long ago come to regret bringing in his cousin to run the local branch of the union. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that the cousin who had stepped off the train from London was not the same man as the firebrand strike leader that he had read about in the newspaper, and only a personal dislike of Whalen Dawes and a stubborn unwillingness to acknowledge his own mistake had kept him from switching his allegiance before now. Where Edgar led, the rest of the miners followed and in quick order at the next union meeting Daniel was removed as secretary and replaced by Whalen, who also took over as checkweighman. Not one miner spoke out in Daniel’s support.

Returning to the house at the end of Station Street, Daniel told Adam to pack his bags as they were leaving the next morning. He’d seen what was coming and, knowing that they couldn’t continue to live at Edgar’s, he’d found them temporary lodgings in a widow’s house close to the pithead. He’d also been to see Hardcastle, the pit manager, and got a job working as a tub-filler underground. Once he’d learnt the trade he could become a collier but until then money was going to be tight.

They left at sunrise, hoping to avoid awkward goodbyes, but Edgar was already downstairs, eating his breakfast at the table.

He got up and helped the carrier load their meagre belongings into the pony cart that Daniel had hired for the move, and then shook Daniel’s hand.

‘I wish thee the best o’ luck,’ he said. ‘I know we ’aven’t seen eye to eye recently, but that doesna mean we aren’t still o’ the same blood, an’ if there’s anythin’ you need …’

‘Thank you, Edgar,’ said Daniel. ‘You’ve been very good to us but it’s time we stopped being a burden; we should have found our own place months ago but there was always something else to think of. You know how it is.’

‘Aye, I do,’ said Edgar warmly. ‘I do indeed. An’ I wish thee luck too, young man,’ he said, turning to Adam and putting out his hand.

‘Thank you,’ said Adam. But he wouldn’t take Edgar’s hand, acting as though he hadn’t seen it as he climbed up beside the carrier. He was angry, and shaking hands would have meant condoning Edgar’s treatment of his father. If Edgar was feeling guilty about what he’d done, then he would have to live with it; it wasn’t Adam’s responsibility to salve his conscience.

And Adam was frightened too: frightened for his father going down into the pit to work; frightened of what would become of them. If they couldn’t live, they would have to go to the workhouse and Adam thought he would rather die than go back there. He sat tense and unhappy as the pony trotted down the empty road in the grey early-morning light past the sleeping terraced houses, its hooves ringing out on the hard tarmac.

He looked over at his father, leaning forward on the box with his brow furrowed and his unseeing eyes focused on some inner struggle, and felt a sudden wave of protective love flood through him. They had drifted apart in the year since they had come north. It had not been Daniel’s intention to allow his preoccupation with his work to create a gulf between him and his son, Adam realized that, but nevertheless that was what had happened. And as Daniel had withdrawn from his son’s life, Adam had filled the space with new friends and interests which he did not share with his father. He felt guilty when he realized that he had begun to see the parson as a new father figure in his life. The comfort and softness of the Parsonage and the conversations about history and politics were experiences that Daniel could not provide. Adam had grown up and grown away and it was hard now for him to reach out across the emotional barrier, but he forced himself to try, laying his hand on top of his father’s, causing Daniel to look up, called back for a moment from his own inner turmoil.

‘It’s not your fault, Dad,’ said Adam. ‘It was in London but not this time. You worked night and day for the men and they’re plain ungrateful to throw it back in your face like they have. And Edgar’s the worst of them,’ he went on, raising his voice as his anger got the better of him. ‘He’s got a lot of nerve, pretending like everything’s all right after what he’s done.’

‘No, you shouldn’t blame him,’ said Daniel quietly. ‘He thought that he was getting a class warrior when he brought me up here and he deserves credit for putting up with me for as long as he has once he realized I’d changed my spots. I’ve got a lot of sympathy for him, in fact. He wants the best for his people and God knows they’re not getting the best now: they work in terrible conditions for far too little money. But the trouble is Sir John hasn’t got enough to give them what they want. The mine’s old and the coal’s not good enough to fetch good prices and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Facts are facts. Of course Sir John should have offered the men more when they went back, but it was never going to be as much as they wanted. I’m glad I’m out of it, to be honest with you. Let someone else try their hand at making one and one add up to three.’

They relapsed into an uneasy silence. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the past, it didn’t change the fact that they would have far less money now. Adam didn’t know if his father had any savings but they couldn’t amount to much.

‘I wish there was something I could do to help,’ he said. ‘Maybe if I got a job on the screens with Ernest? Then at least we’d have a bit more to go around.’

‘No,’ said Daniel, practically shouting the word. ‘The only thing that keeps me going is that you’re doing so well at school and knowing that you’re going to make a better life for yourself than I’ve had. Don’t worry, Adam – we’ll be all right. I’ll make sure we are.’

Adam saw no reason to believe his father, but he knew there was no point in arguing. The pony had halted in front of their new home, a small squat house in a dismal narrow street close to the mine. Its peeling paint was blackened with soot and the grimy windows looked as though they had never been washed. Adam shivered as his father opened the door and they went inside.

The house belonged to a miner’s widow whose husband had died from tuberculosis several years before. She still wore her widow’s weeds and moved about the dimly lit rooms in a state of permanent misery, living as far as Adam could tell on an unchanging diet of cold tea and porridge. A sampler invoking the Lord to ‘Bless This House’ gathered dust over the mantelpiece in the parlour above a faded photograph of the widow and her late husband on their wedding day. Even the aspidistra in the corner, the hardiest of indoor plants, wilted miserably, waiting to die.

Daniel and Adam had the upstairs rooms and shared use of the kitchen. There was a permanent smell of mouldy dampness in the air that fires could never quite chase away, but Daniel did his best to brighten the place up, pinning coloured pictures from penny magazines over the mildew stains on the walls and bringing home two matching armchairs to stand on either side of the fireplace – bargains bought from a family that was moving away and had no further use for them.

He never complained, although Adam guessed from the stiff way his father walked that he wasn’t finding it easy to adapt to the hard manual labour and the cramped conditions inside the mine. And it was strange for Adam too seeing his father come back from work all black and dirty from the coal. He winced when he washed his father’s back, seeing the cuts and abrasions – the physical toll exacted daily by the pit.

It was strange: adversity seemed to soften rather than harden Daniel, and in the evenings, father and son were often happy, sitting side by side in front of the fire, toasting bacon on a fork and catching the fat on their slices of bread. They played chess on a handmade board and Daniel listened while Adam told him about the heroes and villains of long ago, just as Adam had listened to his mother reading him the same stories when he was a boy, so that sometimes the dead world of the ancients seemed more real to them than the mining town lying quiet outside the window.

And when Adam had finished his storytelling, they talked about issues such as whether the senators had been right to assassinate Caesar – Daniel thought they were but Adam was less sure; and whether the Roman Empire had been doomed from the beginning. They argued sometimes until the candles had almost burnt away, and Adam smiled, thinking how unlikely such conversations were to be taking place in these shabby rooms in this shabby little house in the middle of nowhere, while the widow snored down below.

But later, lying in bed, Adam would see the lights sprawling over the dark ceiling from the lamps swinging in the hands of the late-shift miners as they came tramping down the road outside on the way to work, their voices rising and receding as they passed the house. And he would feel fearful of he knew not what, like a weight was pressing down on his abdomen, a sense of foreboding that would keep him awake late into the night.

Chapter Nine

The day began much like any other. Daniel was working the early shift and the house was cold and silent as Adam got dressed and gathered his books for school. He had an exam to take and he was nervous, hoping he would do well. Outside, the women in their workaday aprons were gathered on their front doorsteps gossiping. They stopped talking as he went past, looking after him as he went up the road. They weren’t hostile but they weren’t friendly either. Adam had lived in Scarsdale long enough to no longer be upset by their response. He wasn’t one of their own and he never would be – he spoke differently to them and he didn’t work in the mine. But nevertheless, the old sense of not belonging added to the free-floating anxiety that he hadn’t been able to shake off since he woke up. He felt burdened by an invisible weight, the same feeling he had sometimes when a sixth sense told him it was going to rain but the heavy clouds stayed hanging overhead, refusing to open. Not that that was the case today – it was a bright June morning and he increased his pace, breathing the fresh air deep into his lungs in a largely unsuccessful attempt to lift his spirits.

The siren sounded just as he reached the corner. The mournful inhuman cry, the signal for disaster, broke out from the pithead and reverberated through the town. Adam was shocked by the noise and yet it also felt like something he had been expecting ever since the day his father left the safety of the checkweighman’s office, forced to try to earn his living underground.

All around doors were opening and people were spilling out into the street, pulling on their coats as they headed down the hill towards the mine. Everyone was talking – asking questions and getting no answers and passing out of hearing as Adam stood, rooted to the spot, looking back at the headstocks. They seemed like huge alien shapes lit up by the morning sun, hostile visitors from some other planet.

Voices rose and fell as rumours flowed up and down the hill, until suddenly Adam heard a name he recognized – Oakwell: the district where Edgar worked and now his father too; the district where he’d disgraced himself, fainting in front of Rawdon Dawes and his vile father. Just the other day Daniel had told Adam that he’d been sent there. He’d seemed pleased, stupidly pleased, happy that he would be working where the coal was more plentiful so that there would be more money in his pay packet come Friday evening, but what he didn’t say and Adam knew from Ernest was that the Oakwell seam was deeper and narrower and less safe than the old ones – it was where the two miners had died in the winter.

Adam began to walk towards the mine, carried forward ever more quickly by the press of the crowd that was surging tide-like down the hill. At the pithead there was chaos, although the cage appeared to be operating normally and there was no smoke billowing out from the opening or other outward sign of the trouble down below. Atkins and a group of deputies were making ineffectual attempts to keep an open corridor for rescuers to get to and from the shaft, and a man with a camera was getting in everyone’s way taking pictures. Some of the women were crying, desperate for news, but no one seemed to have any definite information about what had happened or who was dead or trapped.

Adam didn’t hesitate. He bore no resemblance to the sweating, shaking version of himself that had climbed the pithead stairs on his last visit, feeling as though they were the steps up to the gallows. Now he waited until the cage was almost full and then rushed forward, joining the throng of rescuers inside. The banksman was too distracted by the growing hysteria of the crowd to notice the late arrival and slammed the gate shut with a clang. Forty-five seconds later Adam was released out into the mine.

As soon as the cage lifted back up, the men at the bottom went back to filling coal tubs with water from the sump at the bottom of the shaft. The full tubs were then wheeled to the stables where they were coupled up in lines to the limbers of the pit ponies whose boy drivers drove them away into the mine, passing other ponies that were coming back up the tunnels the other way pulling trains of empty tubs ready for refilling.

All around, the lights of the miners’ lamps were dancing in the blackness like white dots as the men moved to and fro, but, unlike up above, their hectic activity seemed cohesive and organized as they battled against a common enemy: invisible, inaudible, but utterly real away down the black tunnels beyond the stables. And the enemy was winning – or at least that was the impression that Adam was getting from listening to the snatches of passing conversation that he was able to pick up from the out-of-the-way corner into which he had retreated while he worked out his next move.

‘Fire’s like a bloody dragon; it’s got a thirst that canna be quenched.’ ‘Like lookin’ in the mouth o’ hell, it is.’ ‘I pity the poor bastards that got caught …’

It made Adam sick to his stomach to hear what the men were saying. He felt sure that his father was one of the poor bastards they were talking about, and he knew he had to try to reach him, even if there was nothing he could do to help when he got there; even if it was already too late. He felt no fear, just desperation because he realized that he had no chance of finding his way to the Oakwell district unaided: he’d be lucky to get round the first corner before he was trampled by one of the pit ponies. His only hope lay in hitching a ride on one of the water trains that they were pulling. But no driver would take him willingly – he had no right even to be in the mine. If he revealed himself he would be thrown back in the cage and sent back up to the surface in a second. His only chance was to stow away in one of the tubs.

His mind made up, he left his bag of books on the floor and began to edge his way carefully along the wall. Without a lamp of his own he was invisible in the darkness. Up ahead he could hear familiar voices: it was Joe the ostler talking to Rawdon Dawes. They were at the door of the stables, their faces lit up garishly by their lamps, standing next to a pony that seemed larger than the others and angrier too. It was neighing and stamping its feet, shaking its leather harness so that the shafts connecting it to the water tubs behind were creaking and clanking.

‘Don’t ride ’im, Rawdon, you ’ear me? I’ve told thee before – ’e’s a wild one; ’e’s not like t’others,’ said the ostler. There was a desperate urgency in his voice, mixed with what sounded like frustration, and he was gripping Rawdon’s shoulder as if to reinforce his words. But Rawdon was pulling away, anxious to be gone. The ostler was a small man, almost a foot shorter than Rawdon although three times his age, and there was something comical about the two of them, pulling each other backwards and forwards as they argued.

‘I wish you didna ’ave to take ’im but t’others are all out,’ the ostler continued mournfully.

‘I know,’ said Rawdon impatiently, getting on to the bumper of the first tub and taking hold of the limber chains connecting it to the pony. ‘You’ve already told me that, Joe, remember.’