by Dai Smith
Monkey Lips glanced from the cashier to the police inspector. ‘Young man, we have sufficient evidence of your lack of discipline.’ He paused to extend, slide down his upper lip, concealing the lower one. ‘You have appeared in this court before but obviously you aren’t prepared to learn from experience. The National Coal Board is determined to protect its staff from brutality and insults.’ Incurable neurosis writhed his lips again. ‘We fine you thirty pounds, and you shall remain on probation for a period of two years.’
Thought Gabe, bloody old chimpanzee.
The clerk of the Court bawled out, ‘Will you pay now?’
Leaning over the dock, ‘Give me a few days, sir?’ – Sir granted as part of Dove Street rigmarole.
‘Seven days to pay,’ announced Monkey Lips.
Chin tucked aside, he smirked to himself as he climbed down. That old stuff-pig, him telling me I’m short on discipline. Discipline’s for goofies who can’t think for themselves. Shitten-ringed old bastard, he scraped his way to where he is. They’re all scrapers. Justice, by the Jesus, more justice in the weather.
The probation officer beckoned him into a room below the court. A scrawny man, thin hair fighting off a centre parting along his flaky sunburned head. Gravestone teeth in his mouth, and, ‘Cigarette?’ pleasant as a visiting uncle.
‘Ta very much,’ he said.
‘Did you enjoy hitting that chap?’
‘What d’you mean enjoy?’
‘Were you infuriated or simply using the incident to hurt someone?’
‘I don’t get you, mister,’ he said. ‘Look, why not leave it there? See, they paid my water allowance, so I’m satisfied.’
The probation officer led him to a side door exit. ‘Gabriel, I would like you to appreciate my position. The less we see of each other the better I shall be pleased. That’s the best for both of us. All you have to do, stay out of trouble.’
There’s loads of luck in it, he thought. For two years I’ll have to watch my step. They can pick me up for twp things like crossing the railway line or fiddling a bus ticket. Any-fucken-thing. When I buy my Standard Eleven next Spring I’ll have to learn the Highway Code backwards. Soon they’ll pinch us for not pulling the chain in the lav. LAW? Double rupture the law and every chimp-brained magistrate since the one who played crafty with the Jews. They’re still chopsing about him and all, every Sunday in chapel.
He dry-spat on his palms. Anyone with a black cap in his pocket or a black staff dangling against his leg, he’s a menace to society. My kind of society, when I find it.
Four days after the court hearing, a Lower North fireman came up the conveyor face. Gabe knew he was coming, word having passed from collier to collier.
‘How old are you now?’ says Iago Eynon, resting on his knee-pads and aiming a chameleon’s tongue of tobacco juice at a roller carrying the rubber belt.
He hunkered closer to Iago, his cap-lamp killing the glare of the fireman’s at halfway. ‘Why then, any bother?’
‘No-no, boy. They’re inquiring in the office.’
I’ll be twenty-three next October.’
Iago poled slowly to his feet on his safety stick. ‘Manager wants to see you in the top pit cabin, near enough ha’ past two.’ He jabbed at the coal, ‘Lovely face slip that. Hole under a few inches and she’ll spill out like a bag. You can’t beat Lower North coal. S’clean!’ Iago gently toed the seam. ‘Righto, boy, don’t forget, ha’ past two in the cabin.’
He watched the fireman crabbing up the face. Another brilliant NCB official, he thought. Otherwise ignorant. Streamers from the roof glinted ahead of Iago’s lamp but he ploughed on, hooped forward, trailing his safety stick. The buggers are up to something. They’ll be waiting in the cabin. Gog-eyed Monte and his clique. Brainy Monte, his missis no thicker than a T-head rail. Poor dab always looks flummoxed. She’s in a worse state than Sue. But Monte Gog-eye, what he doesn’t know about production isn’t worth knowing. I expect he’ll warn me to keep my hands quiet. No choice, Monte, I’m on probation.
He stepped out of the cage seconds after 2.30 p.m. hooter skirled from the roof of the winding house; echoes were still pounding around the gullied mountain above Black Rand as he crossed directly to the officials’ cabin.
Iago Eynon and two other firemen stood behind the colliery manager. Gabe grinned amiably. They were like a photo from COAL magazine. As if they went grouse shooting together. Monte, you clever sod, something’s hatching behind that shiny snake-eye.
The manager removed his white pit helmet, decorous as an undertaker doffing at a funeral. He placed it on the table, folded his hands upon it, friendly, smiling. The off-centre pupil of his left eye swole behind his spectacles.
‘Shwmae there, Gabe. I suppose you’re wondering why I wanted to see you?’
Iago rubbed the underside of his chin. ‘Don’t jump to conclusions now, boy. Mr Leyshon don’t intend victimising you at all.’
He licked coal dust off his lower lip. ‘Aye, right, OK, no messing about, ah, let’s hear the news.’
The manager accentuated some downright nodding as if saying Here we are, man to man. Then, ‘Gabe, I’d like you to drive the cutter in Lower North. As you know, Billy Holly drives the cutter by night. I want you to help him behind the Longwall until you get the of it.’
‘Behind the cutter, Mr Leyshon?’
‘Exactly, until you can drive the machine. In due course you’ll be more or less your own boss. That’s important, Gabe, surely? It’s a damn good job anyhow, one of the most skilled jobs in the pit.’
He said, ‘I’m happy filling out coal.’
‘Colliers are two a penny in a conveyor face. I want a reliable cutter operator.’
‘Find someone else, Mr Leyshon.’
‘Now listen, Gabe, I won’t have you dictating to me…’
‘Nights! Bugger night shift.’ He felt the eyes of the firemen ganged behind the manager: Keep your dagger looks to yourselves.
‘I’m afternoons regular,’ complained a wizened official.
Gabe shrugged. This little short-arse with about nine kids, afternoon shift was good enough for him. ‘Your problem, man. Maybe it suits your missis.’ He regretted the insult, but when you speak out of turn you either back down or bash on regardless, so he jerked a reverse V-sign at the fireman: Up your pipe.
The little fireman ranted, ‘I know what I’d do if I was Mr Leyshon!’
The manager waved his hands for peace. ‘Look here, I’m afraid you’ll have to go on night shift until I find another man.’
He said, ‘For how long?’
Monte Leyshon returned superior irony, dry brown hair puffed across his forehead, his strange eye starred behind his glasses. ‘Until I find another man.’
‘I’ll see our Lodge sec.’ he said.
Iago rolled his chew to his jaw teeth. ‘What kind of talk’s this? Don’t sound a bit like the Lloyds, boy. Lodge can’t do nothing for the simple reason Mr Leyshon isn’t down-grading you at all. My own son, he spent a few years behind the cutter. More’s the pity he smashed his elbow that time, put paid to him proper. By now he’d be on cross shifts with Billy Holly, cutter-man himself.’
He hardened his stomach against rebellion. They had him back-pedalling. Troublemakers never lasted on day shift, not without blessing from the Lodge. Committeemen carried constitution on their tongues. Before nationalisation troublemakers were sent up the road. Principle older than the NCB. These officials were a breed, connivers from their socks up. They had him where they wanted him. Reading the situation as true, nevertheless, ‘You can stuff the job,’ he said.
‘Fortnight’s notice, that’s the alternative,’ confirmed the manager.
Old Iago Eynon cluck-clucked. ‘It’s a bad thing to sack a man, Gabe-boy. Means they’ll stop your dole for six weeks. Paid up your fine yet? If not, how you going to? Use a bit of common, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘Well?’ from Monte Leyshon.
Gog-eyed bastard, he thought, he is
n’t bothered either way. Me neither. There’ll be a Standard Eleven outside our house next Spring. ‘Right, I’m on for a quid a week extra,’ he said, ‘on account of the night shift.’
‘Ten shillings. Consider yourself lucky.’
‘Make it a quid, Mr Leyshon.’
‘Ten shillings.’
The puny afternoon shift firemen protested again, ‘Bloody big-head, I wouldn’t have him in my district.’
And, ‘Thinks he’s chocolate since he boxed for the Coal Board,’ said another official, confident beyond need of malice.
The manager rose from the table. ‘I don’t expect the cutter to run up and down the faces like clockwork. There are sure to be snags occasionally, resulting in overtime. You’ll make a pound a week over and above the rate.’
He conceded, ‘Fair enough.’
‘Good, start Monday night.’
Soaping himself under the shower, he thought, Christ, I must be easily led. It’s the bloody probation. By the time I buy my car I’ll be down on my knees every night. Ah, by the loving Jesus…
Still carping at himself, he met Iago Eynon on the steps outside the baths. ‘I’m on night shift reg’lar myself next week,’ says Iago. Getting on a bit now for rushing about the place. ‘My legs it is, aye, bloody rheums.’ Wry self-regard crossed Iago’s blue scarred face. ‘See, boy, I’ll be overman by night.’
‘Give us a fag then, Iago. Might be I’ll do you some favours once I’m on the cutter job.’
The fireman upended a solitary kinked Woodbine. ‘Genuine now, Gabe, you and Billy Holly will make a go of it al’right. Like Monte Leyshon said, Billy’s his own boss, y’know, give and take now and agen.’
He grinned his teeth, ‘Come off it, you fucken old hypocrite. Why didn’t you tell me when you came up the face this afternoon?’
‘Not my place to, boy. Mr Leyshon says where and when in this pit. He’s paid for doing it.’ Iago unstrapped his knee-pads. ‘Fair do’s Gabe, you took it better than I expected.’
He pressed a derisive thumb lightly on the old fireman’s nose. ‘See you Monday night on top pit.’
Nationalism brought new washery plant, pithead baths, canteen, ambulance centre, and a crescent of brick buildings, the kind of neat, spartan administration compound attached to light engineering factories. Situated at the upper left corner of a quincunx of pitshafts, Black Rand held favour for wages and generally safer conditions. All five collieries bore the stamp of a power industry planned for the millennium. At Black Rand, mown sward bordered a tarmacadamed road out to the motorway, the grass perhaps symbolising greater permanence than red ash footpaths to the canteen and pit-head baths.
Airgun slugs had pocked the large green and white sign:
NATIONAL COAL BOARD
BLACK RAND COLLIERY
NUMBER THREE EASTERN AREA
The designation irritated Gabe. His first shift on nights and he felt readier for bed than changing into pit clothes. Eastern Area be buggered. They’ve organised everything, these NCB experts. Whole country’s floating on paperwork. You could paddle Wales across Europe on a raft of pulp. Call it democracy, more expensive than pee-tee actresses standing in a queue from Golau Nos to Scotland. Dent somebody’s teeth for trying to swindle your earnings, then you cop two years’ probation plus £30. Plus you’re shoved on nights. All paperwork for the blue-eyed cuthberts. More mistakes are made on paper than with bombs. Me, I’ll make plenty. Twti mistakes though. We’re ruled by paperwork. Words and figures, out-and-out killers. They finish off kings, popes, politicians, millions of ordinary people, aye, even God up there. Some day I’ll have my cut price quota in Tymawr cemetery, along with Tommy Lloyd’s and Mansel’s and Martha Lloyd’s. Number Three Eastern Area: Rubbish. As if the pit got lost somehow, until the NCB went popping along to find it again.
He met Billy Holly in the lamp-room. A lean man, pale, auburn haired, Billy had deformed feet and dire righteousness, the kind of spleen which succumbs to raging temper. Billy was respected for his outbursts. He drove the longwall coal cutter. He could ‘make it talk’ they said, but, handicapped from birth, Billy was merely concerned to spare his frailty. When conditions were bad he served colliers a skimped undercut which had the appearance of a good clean cut to the full extent of the jib. After a couple of feet, colliers were hand-cutting, cursing Billy Holly, but dispassionately, because a 4' 6" undercut might have collapsed the roof. Puncher, mandrel and shovel work with a chance to make money was better than day-wage clearing and packing roof muck. And safer.
‘Howbe, Cochyn’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to learn about the cutter from you.’
‘I heard Cochyn enough when I was a kid.’
‘Doesn’t mean a thing, man.’
Billy explained, rocking thoughtfully on the heels of his stumped feet, ‘Point is, if you’re going to be bloody chopsy, well, see, I can shake you up good and proper if I’ve a mind to, only we got to work together.’
‘No argument, I’m on your side.’ He lifted the sack of sharpened cutter picks off Billy’s shoulder. ‘I’ll lug these.’
Billy’s neat pursey mouth exuded complacent grunts. ‘Been hoping you’d offer, though I wasn’t going to ask, not first shift.’
The top pit banksman opened the gate. They stepped into the cage behind Iago Eynon and a group of repairers.
‘Last bon down as usual,’ from the banksman as if talking to himself.
Billy told him politely, the way of rebuking a pest, ‘Mind your own poxy business.’
The banksman passed it off, having no authority bar the safe, standby grumbling of his job.
Then a fireman came running from the officials’ cabin. The banksman grimaced false teeth. He swung the gate open again.
Angry, wheezing short, scrapy breathing, the fireman shouldered around to Billy Holly, accusing him of negligence – the cutter was in the fireman’s district, buried under a fall. No spare labourers to clear the machine.
‘How much muck is there?’ asked Iago.
Billy’s forbearing gesture with womanish, claw-fingered hands, ‘Wait, listen, before carrying on any more, let’s find out who shifted the cutter since last Saturday morning.’
‘Bloody cutter’s where you left it up near the gate road. Who’s going to drive it? No bugger, not till young Gabe here takes over on afternoons.’
‘Ah, now I think I can explain…’ began Billy.
‘Fucken dead loss you are,’ said the fireman.
He saw Billy’s eyes retreat, glitter inside slits. The bones seemed to contract under his brow and cheeks. Billy’s steel tipped boots went Tap-tap-tap tap-tap-tap like the disregarded menace of metallic beetles. Proud Cochyn, he thought, bending his knees, tightening his legs as the cage slowed to ear-filling pause then glided delicately to pit bottom.
They stepped out, the firemen rowing Iago, demanding to know who was going to clear the fall. Iago chewed tobacco, waiting for his colleague to finish. Meanwhile the pit bottom hitcher hand-pushed a full tram of debris into the cage, clanged the gate shut, pressed the green button and the thick heavily greased guide ropes squelched as the cage lifted into darkness. Suddenly the sack of cutter picks was snatched off Gabe’s shoulder; Billy Holly held it dangling at arm’s length, the weight of it canting him as he hobbled around the two officials.
‘Watch out,’ warned Iago, stepping aside.
Snorting from his small hooked nose, Billy advanced, crouched over, wild to land a swinger with the sack of picks on the fireman’s head. The fireman backed away, between the guide ropes and beyond, to the brink of the pit bottom sump.
‘Stop him!’ ordered Iago. He pushed Gabe. ‘You! Get on, boy, quick!’
He yelled. ‘What am I supposed to do, crack him on the chin? Do your own dirty work, Iago!’
Iago appealed, ‘Just stop him.’
Taking for granted that he wasn’t personally involved, entitled to dramatise, he charged past Billy, then a sharp about-turn, ‘I’ll take care of him!’ and he grabbed the
fireman’s lapel. ‘Move! Out on the main or you’ll be in that sump and you won’t come up again.’
The fireman blustered, ‘This all you’re good for, hitting a man old enough to be your father? Carry on, you’ll land in worse trouble!’
He realised the man feared Billy more than himself. Sample of guts, at least for a Black Rand official.
Billy was screaming, ‘Lemme gerrat him! I’ll show him who’s a dead loss!’ He dodged the loaded sack, but Billy missed anyway. The fireman wriggled free, running around to the wide, traffic side of pit bottom. Billy almost fell into the sump with the momentum of his attack. He lost grip on the sack of picks. They leaned over, watching it bubbling to the bottom of the sump. Sixty sharp picks in four feet of black water. It took them an hour to hook the sack out with a length of wire, guaranteeing the event as legend in all five Golau Nos pits.
Iago Eynon brought labourers from another district to help clear the fall. Three o’clock when Billy started the longwall cutter, Gabe behind the machine, scooping away hot, fine gumming as it churned out from the jib, thinking, we’ll never get ’round to a bust up, me and old Cochyn. One thing, this is slightly cushier than filling out coal. Unless I cop pneumo. Or bloody deafness. What if a paratrooper worried about diseases? He wouldn’t learn to live rough and kill without warning. Similar down here. You can’t have coal and pure spit. You can have House of Lords, you can have the House of Commons, two loads of crap for sure, so why respect? Why respect any system? I’m a Lloyd, therefore I’m against respectfulness. Definitely too. Us Lloyds are entitled.
He shovelled, musing, dreaming, squaring his manhood.
In front of the cutter, shuffling backwards, bent kneed, bent backed, Billy Holly kept his right hand on the bull-nosed machine, near the control chipper. He watched the roof, overhanging coal slips, timbering, and he dragged the heavy electric cable ahead as the cutter crept forward, steel tow rope lapping on its drum housed in the nearside of the Longwall. Billy would listen, chipper raised, stalling the machine, listen for wrong-sounding creaks from the roof, the jib clearing itself under the seam, its snarling roar diminishing as the picks spun free, chaining around at constant speed like rattling bracelets above the heavy drone of the electric motor.
