As Maggie listened to his regular breathing she questioned the force of her emotions. Why, when they had the power to tear her to shreds, could they not impinge themselves on him! Her body was not great enough to house the amount of passion that was re-creating itself within her during every second; it had to pass out and beyond her. Then why wasn’t it felt by him, against whom it was directed?
She had prepared herself for bed like a woman about to undergo an operation…it had to be faced and got over with. But lying in the dark, she had thought, This is my wedding night…and her mind went to the man in Newcastle. Now had it been him coming to her…For a space she forgot she was as she was and the woman inside her emerged, a strangely attractive creature, her hair spread loosely over the pillow, not in two tight thick plaits, and the nightgown she was wearing was of silk, replacing the cheap cotton one, and her body was shapely with the breasts pointing upwards; and there was a perfume about her, like a baby freshly powdered.
She was still in her inner self when Chris entered the room, and when he got into bed she shrank inwardly from contact with him. She felt herself like a girl who had been given in marriage to a monstrosity. But as the minutes passed and his hands did not grope towards her, her inner self sank into the fastness where it belonged, and anger and rage and desire and humiliation fought with each other for first place in her mind. And when, after countless minutes, equal in their suffering to painful eternities, she felt him turn on to his side away from her, she wanted to fling round, screaming and clawing at him. But a wave of humiliation, so great as to sweep all other emotions before it, beat her down and she lay motionless, her eyes wide and dry. She lay like this far into the night, while Chris moved restlessly and snorted occasionally.
And once, when his feet touched hers, she had to restrain herself from kicking wildly at them—the bedclothes and the night could not hide their ludicrous largeness, and her hate found a focal point in them. When towards morning he turned unconsciously to her and his arm fell across her waist, she allowed it to remain there, refusing now to be touched by the strangeness of the contact.
Chapter Five: There Are More Ways of Killing a Cat
It seemed to Ann as she stood in the lamp-house, listening to the never-ending questions of Mrs Thornton’s cousin, that she must have walked here in her sleep, that she must have been hypnotised. She gazed about her at the hundreds of lamps hanging from their hooks. They looked like long silver eyes and all seemed to be staring at her, asking her was she quite mad on this lovely sunshiny morning to be going down the pit? Why she, of all people, at any time, should go down?
She had been about to leave the house to go to the Store for the meat when Maggie had come in and asked her to go down the pit. She said she was going down with Mrs Thornton’s cousin who was on a visit from the South and wrote for magazines; Mrs Thornton couldn’t go with her, and Miss Wentworth, Maggie said, was a snooty piece, and she didn’t relish going with her alone, and she’d feel better if she had one of her own kind there…
At first she had just stared at Maggie in utter amazement. Then she had laughed, a shaky laugh, and said, ‘Me go down the pit! Don’t be silly, Maggie. Why, I’m scared to death of the pit. You know I am.’
Maggie had looked sort of down in the mouth, which somehow made her realise that this was the first thing she had asked of her, and she’d refused it! Why, she thought, couldn’t she have asked something different? She would have liked to please her, for since she had been married Maggie had tried so hard to be nice, and although she couldn’t make herself really like her things were easier all round when there was peace between them. But to go down a pit…oh no! Not for their Maggie or anyone else. No. No.
Then Maggie had begun to talk. She talked as Ann had never heard her talk before…about the psychological effect of facing up to fear. Somehow she had always known Maggie was clever underneath: she could remember her getting funny books from the library; but she had never imagined she could talk like this—it had been really interesting to listen to her. She said that likely the fear for David’s safety would go if she actually saw where he worked. She said a lot more that made sense, about more people being killed on the open roads in a week than were killed in the pit in a year. Things like that. She even made her laugh. Fancy their Maggie making anyone laugh. She had though, when she mimicked her returning from the pit and saying to David, ‘Weel, marrer, what’s your kebbel like?’ Weakly, she had said, ‘But what about David? He’ll be furious. You know how he feels about women going down.’
To which Maggie had replied, ‘We won’t be down an hour. He needn’t know; it isn’t at his pit. And when he sees you have lost your fear I should imagine he’ll be thankful.’
Yes, she knew as she listened to Maggie that there was sense in everything she said, for her fear of the pit was becoming something of a trial to both her and David. But now, standing here, she felt she had been stark staring mad to have taken the slightest notice of her; all the talk and reasoning in the world could never make her see the pit differently.
She looked towards the group of men. They were all listening to Miss Wentworth, whose voice, to Ann, was like background music to a walking nightmare, harsh, disturbing and endless. She was asking an old man about the lamp, and it was a relief to hear his guttural, clipped voice as he answered her: ‘Yes, ma’m; the main thing is this, this double gauze shield.’ He chuckled, a tolerant chuckle. ‘Aye, we see they’re a’reet…a man’s life may depend on his lamp burning reet.’
A man’s life! The heat was suffocating. Ann pulled at the clean white neckerchief around her neck, then eased up the cloth that covered her hair under the steel hat. She looked down at the short thick stick in her hand and at the long old coat that reached to her ankles. Added to everything else, she must look ridiculous. But looking ridiculous was nothing, it was the way she felt that mattered. She must get out and away, away from even the top of the pit. One of the lamp men had only one arm…that was why he was in the lamp-house…they gave them jobs like this when they were hurt down below. She must get away!
The old man was still explaining: ‘Yes, ma’m, that piece hanging down is the oil vessel…Oh, that, ma’m; that’s the pricker.’
There was the sound of machinery whirling somewhere near, and the sound of the voices began to whirl with it…Miss Wentworth’s and the old man’s, the deputy’s, and occasionally Maggie’s. She was wanting to attract Maggie’s attention, to tell her it was no good, that she couldn’t go down, when the party began to move again.
There was a lot of laughter that was not all light-hearted when, coming out of the lamp-house, they were informed that if they were not above ground by nightfall their tallies would still be hanging on the board.
Now they were outside in the yard, and there, towering to the sky, was the pit heap, as if aiming to outdo in height the wheel itself, the wheel that let down the cages into the earth.
‘Maggie!’ Ann clutched Maggie’s arm. ‘I can’t go. I’ve got to go home. I’m sorry, but I’m feeling a bit sick.’
Maggie did not look at her; she was looking ahead to where the others were moving towards the steps that led to the wheel-house, and she moved slowly in the same direction, her voice seeming to draw Ann with her as she said under her breath, ‘Don’t be silly; you can’t drop out now and let me down. You’ll spoil everything…make her embarrassed too. She mightn’t go down.’ Maggie’s tone was soft for her, even placating.
‘Why not? It won’t matter.’
‘Take a hold on yourself. If you ever want to conquer that fear this is the time to do it.’
As they crossed the yard eyes followed them, white eyes in black faces, in which there was neither pleasure nor pain, nor, it would seem, interest. Yet Ann felt their displeasure, even after their owners had passed from sight…The men didn’t approve of all this; she could see it. Too often she had seen the look in the eyes of her father and of other pitmen.
When she reached the high platform her knees
were on the point of giving way, and desperately she tried to take a pull at herself, for all around her were men, and coal. And there, rearing out of the centre of the platform, was the pit shaft; and level with the platform was a surprisingly small cage. For a second it was blotted out by a mist swimming before her eyes, and she groped at Maggie and whispered, ‘I can’t do it. I tell you it’s no good!’
‘Don’t be a fool! And all them men looking at you!’ The softness was gone now from Maggie’s voice.
‘It’s no use, I tell you.’
‘Go on!’ Unobtrusively, yet fiercely, Maggie pushed her towards the cage, where already crouched in an uncomfortable and unbecoming way was Miss Wentworth.
‘It’s all right, miss,’ said the deputy reassuringly, ‘you’ll be down in a minute; and it’ll go slow. Won’t it, Frank?’
The bankman in charge of the cage nodded; and like a marionette Ann stooped and sat on her hunkers, her knees touching Miss Wentworth’s; and the deputy moved in with practised ease, calling to a man as he did so, ‘You’ll come down with the other lady, Willie?’ Two iron bars were clipped into place across the gaping open sides of the cage, and they were off.
Ann began to pray as she had never done in her life before, gabbled entreaties that she wouldn’t faint, that she would be given strength to see the thing through, that nothing would happen whilst they were down.
As they dropped into the earth, the light from their lamps showed the rough-hewn surface of the walls not more than inches from the sides of the cage. The movement was slow, almost gentle, and in no way to be compared with the drop she had heard the men speak of. And when with a slight bump the cage reached the bottom her terror for a moment was stilled; only to return with sickening force when she stepped out into the ‘road’.
The road. How often she had heard her father speak of the road, when unconsciously she had created her own picture of it: a broad road, leading from a kind of hallway in which the cage landed; the road might narrow later on and men might have to crawl, but at its beginning the road was broad and high. But now she was standing in it, and it was little broader than a passage, about ten feet wide at most and seeming to be filled with a row of small trucks, which stretched away into the blackness and were lost.
She raised her eyes to the roof, about three feet above her head, and could scarcely believe what she saw: criss-crossed pieces of wood holding up huge boulders of rock, and these pieces of wood kept in place by pit props—just pit props—seeming to form a straight wall to the passage as they disappeared in the distance; and behind them lay masses of loose rock, not coal as she had surmised, but rock.
The deputy was some yards away explaining to Miss Wentworth the process by which the coal was taken to the surface in the very cage that had brought them down, when a well-known voice behind Ann said, ‘What in the name of God are you doing down here?’
She almost leaped from the ground, and she clapped her hands over her mouth to stop herself from screaming as she swung round to face Bert Taggart. She stood, hardly breathing for a moment, then gasped, ‘Oh Bert! I thought it was Davie.’
‘What are you doing down here?’
‘I’m with Maggie and’—she nodded to Miss Wentworth—‘her. Maggie asked me to come…she didn’t want to come by herself. But, oh, Bert…!’
‘Does Davie know?’
She shook her head: ‘No, no, of course not.’
‘You’ll get into a hell of a row.’
‘You won’t tell him, Bert?’
‘Not me…But I thought you were scared of the pit?’
‘I am; I am. Only Maggie…well, I thought if I saw it…and she said…Well, you know what I mean.’
‘Damned if I do.’
‘Hallo!’ Maggie’s surprise, too, on seeing Bert was genuine. She looked at him intently for some time before adding, ‘Christopher said you were going with the team.’
‘Aye, I was. But it meant losing a shift, and I thought better on it.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘They’ve got us scared, you see.’
‘We’ll be going now,’ said the deputy, ‘but watch your heads. You’ll be able to walk upright for some way, but duck when I call out if you don’t want to find yourself sitting on the rails.’
‘Aye, keep yer heids doon an’ your backsides up, an’ ye’ll be all right,’ Bert laughingly cautioned them. Then as Maggie moved away, he soberly touched Ann’s neckerchief, slackening it and leaving it loose around her shoulders—he did so with much the same attitude he would have used with a child. ‘Keep it slack until you come up; it’ll save you catchin’ cold. I’ll likely be gone when you come back; I’m onputting this end and my shift’s nearly up.’
She nodded and tried to smile, and wondered why Davie and Bert never got on; he could be so nice. But then all the Taggarts had something nice about them. She whispered to him: ‘Bert, nothing’ll happen, will it?’
He gave her a slight push, saying, ‘Why, no, lass. Go on.’
And she moved away in the wake of the others; and her attention was suddenly taken from herself, for, to avoid stepping into pools of water, she had to keep her lamp playing continually around her feet.
They were walking single file in no more than a breadth of three feet, for the coal trucks overhanging the track took up most of the room. But once past the end of the trucks the ground became fairly even and the deputy’s voice came to her as if he was speaking through a funnel, saying, ‘We’ll turn off here for a minute and see the ponies.’
She stopped. Oh no; that was one thing she couldn’t do, she couldn’t bear to see the ponies. She would let them go on. But this escape was denied her for a man coming up behind said, ‘You’d better not dawdle, lass; you’d better tag along. What you trying to do, get lost?’
‘No. They’re looking at the ponies; I don’t want to go in.’
He brought his blackened face down to hers in genuine surprise. ‘Why, miss? Why not for? They’d like to see you, they don’t often see a lass.’
He took her arm, determined to prove his point, and led her off the main road and along a passage. And she saw the ponies in their stables.
They looked fat and well-kept; but oh, the poor things! Down here all their lives, after having known the freedom of running wild. Oh, it was awful. Never to see the light of day again!
Ann walked silently past the man who had brought her in, and this time he made no effort to impose his will on her. She stood at the corner of the passage adjoining the roadway, and words of her father talking to Tom came back to her: ‘Stick to your pony, lad, and it’s ten to one you’ll escape half the accidents; the pony knows what’s afoot minutes afore you do. It’s a sixth sense they have. Many’s the life that’s been saved by a pony.’
Yes; but to keep them down here all the time. Oh, dear God! She looked about her, but her eyes could travel no distance at all before being checked by stones or props. And not only the ponies, but Davie and all those men spent half their lives in this place, and in others like it; and were really terrified, too, of being stood off—so many pits were idle. Yet she wished at this moment from the bottom of her heart that the Venus, and this one too, were idle, for then her Davie would be up above, and he’d get another job somehow. Yet this she knew was a vain hope; he’d always go back to the pit; his dream was of the day when they’d get extra shifts in and earn more money to make living a little easier…It wasn’t right somehow.
Never having tried to reason things beyond her ken, she could not explain why it wasn’t right; she had only her feelings to go by, and they kept telling her that to spend most of a lifetime down here to get money for food to enable you to live in the light for a short while wasn’t right.
The deputy, leading the way into the road again, looked at her and asked, half laughingly, ‘You’re not scared, are you?’ And when she didn’t answer, he said, ‘You’ll be all right, there’s nothing to be frightened of.’
Miss Wentworth, ignoring Ann, marched ahead on the heels of the deputy, but
the man coming out of the passage asked, ‘Are you afraid, lass?’
She nodded and swallowed.
‘Would you like to go back?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t be silly!’ It was Maggie speaking, crisp and businesslike. Then she smiled at the man, showing her large even teeth. ‘She’ll be all right. Leave her to me.’
The man walked away, reluctantly, it seemed, and Ann whispered, almost pleadingly, ‘It won’t work, Maggie,’ to which Maggie replied, ‘You’ve never given it a chance,’ and without further words placed her hand on Ann’s arm and pressed her ahead.
‘Keep your heads down now.’ It was the deputy’s voice again, and Ann obediently bent forward. The rails, now quite close to her, began to sing, a peculiar humming noise, and when the humming grew louder the deputy called, ‘There’s a set of tubs coming. Now don’t worry. Just stand in these little inlets here until they’re past.’
Needing no further warning, Ann darted into the hole in the rock side, and Maggie joined her. Alone and seemingly unguided, the tubs came careering out of the darkness, and their noise and proximity almost made Ann scream. And in her terror she clung on to Maggie. At last they were gone, their rumble becoming fainter and fainter, leaving a strange silence in their wake. And in the silence Ann whispered, ‘How do they stand it?’
‘Who?’ asked Maggie, moving into the road.
‘The men. All their lives.’
‘Well, they survive. Come on.’
‘Look, Maggie; I just can’t.’
‘Are you going to cause a scene?’ Maggie asked sharply.
‘It’s no good. Why are you forcing me? You seem so bent on it. I could go back alone.’
Maggie left her abruptly, and, as if still hypnotised, Ann slowly followed her.
Maggie Rowan Page 9
