Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

  ‘Don’t you be long,’ he screams after me, ‘for God’s sake don’t be long.’

  Above, in the darkness, I hear a sound that resembles the ripping of cloth. It is this noise that stones make when they are being crushed and broken by the weight that is moving above them. I must hurry, so that the fireman may be saved and to see if there is any hope for Griff.

  I drag myself along a few yards, rest some seconds to ease the pain, then drag along again. I must have crawled more than two hundred yards before I saw a light in the distance. I could not shout, so I had to crawl close to the repairer who was at work there. He was some seconds before he understood the message that I was croaking, then when he did he became so flustered that he wasted some time hurrying back the way I had come before he realised it was useless going by himself. I lay in the darkness while he ran back to call the help that came very quickly. Soon the roadway was brightened by the lamps of scores of men, who hurried along and took me with them, and this time we had plenty of light to see what had happened.

  I could see that at least another twenty tons had fallen and the hole under which we had been at work was now higher than ever. The place was all alive again, creaking above and around us. Posts back in the gob were cracking – cracking – as if someone was firing a pistol at irregular intervals.

  The fireman was as I had left him. He had his back against the side. His right foot was free but the left one was held tightly under a large stone. We could see no sign of Griff. They lifted a rail from the roadway, then used it as a lever to ease the stone off the fireman so that he could be taken back from the danger. He was only slightly hurt because the weight had only been sufficient to hold him and the main body of the stone was resting on others. He would not sit down but wandered amongst the men continually telling them of his own fright and moaning, ‘Who would have expected this?’ They lost patience at last and someone told him to sit down and not delay the work.

  Above the men who strained to clear the fall, huge stones several tons in weight had started to fall, then had pressed against other stones that were moving and each had checked the downward movement of the other. They had locked each other in that position and now remained balancing – partly fallen – but the slightest jar or movement of the upper top would send them crashing down to finish their drop on the gang of men underneath. There was a continual rolling above us like thunder that is distant. Little stones flaked from the larger ones and dropped on the backs of the men as they worked below. Each time a stone dropped all the men leapt back, for a smaller stone is often the warning from a bigger one that is coming behind.

  Several of the men stood erect, with their lamps held high and their eyes scanning the moving stones up above. They kept their mouths open, so that the warning shout should issue with no check. The others, busy amongst the fall, tumbling and lifting whilst they searched under the stones, did not hesitate when a warning came – they sprang backwards at once and made sure that no man stood directly behind the other to impede that swift spring.

  Men can lift great weights when fear forces their strength. These stood six in a row, then tumbled big stones away until only the largest one in the centre was left. This one needed leverage, so a man knelt alongside to place the end of two rails in position; they had to be careful not to put the end on a man’s body. Several men put their shoulders under the rails then they prised upwards. As the stone was slowly lifted they blocked it up by packing with smaller stones, then started to lift again. When the stone was two feet off the ground they paused; surely it was high enough. There was something to be done now that each man dreaded; then, as if their minds had worked together two men knelt down and reached underneath. Very carefully they drew out what had been Griff.

  We retreated with our burden and left the sides to do what crushing, and the roof to do what falling, they wished. The pain of my back had been severe all the while, when the excitement slackened I felt sick and could not stand alone. I leaned against one of my mates for support and he placed his arm around me gently, as if I was a woman.

  We all know the verdict well enough, but refuse to admit it. Griff seems to be no more than half his usual size. Someone takes his watch from the waistcoat hanging on the side. They hold the shining back against what they believe is his mouth. Thirty yards away another stone crashes down on top of the others and the broken pieces fly past us whilst dust clouds the air. The seconds tick out loudly through that underground chamber whilst forty men watch another holding a watch; when he turns around someone lifts a lamp near so that they can see. The shining back is not dimmed. We had all known, yet somehow we had dared to hope.

  As we are going outwards I notice that the fireman tries to isolate me; he wants to talk. I avoid him and keep in the group. Some distance along. I hear a queer sound and look back to see that he has collapsed. His legs have given under him and he cannot stand. He is paralysed with fright. Two of the men place their hands under him and they carry him along behind the stretcher. They have to lean inwards to avoid the sides and bend their heads down because of the top. The fireman senses the hatred that is in all our minds and he sobs continually but no one asks him if he is in pain.

  When we reach the main roadway the journey of empty trams is waiting. We place the loaded stretcher across one tram and four men sit alongside it. The fireman is lifted into another tram and the rest of us scramble on.

  Suddenly the fireman tries to reassert himself.

  ‘All of you going out,’ he complains, ‘didn’t ought to go, not all of you. That fall have got to be cleared so’s to get the coal back first thing.’

  It was as if he had not spoken. The rider knocked on the signal wires. We start to move outwards slowly, for the engineer has been warned that it is not coal he is drawing this time. The fireman starts his mumbling again and we realise that he will tell the manager that the men refused to listen to him. Already he has started to cover his tracks.

  Outside, it is dark and raining. The lamps on the pit- mouth are smeared where the water has trickled through the dust on the globes. There is a paste of oily mud and wet small coal that squelches under our feet. The official limps away to the office. We notice, and comment on the fact, that he walks quickly and with hardly any difficulty. He gets inside the office and we hear him fastening the door before he switches the light on. He intends to be alone when making his report. We hand our lamps in, telling the lamp-men to note the damaged ones and we answer their inquiry as to ‘Who is it this time?’ They return our checks but put Griff’s in a small tin box. A smear of light is brightening the sky but it is raining very heavily when we start on that half-hour’s journey to his home. We feel our clothes getting wet on our bodies and the blankets on the stretcher are soaking. Water rushes down the house-pipes and it bubbles and glistens in the light of the few street lamps.

  All the houses near have their downstairs lights on, for news of disaster spreads quickly; besides, it is time for the next shift to prepare. The handles of the stretcher scrape the wall when we take the sharp turn to get through the kitchen door. This is the only downstairs room they have, so we prepare to wash him there. Neighbours have been busy, as they always are in this sort of happening. A large fire is burning, the tub is in, water is steaming on the hob and his clean pants and shirt are on the guard as if he was coming home from an ordinary shift.

  I see no sign of Griff’s wife. I remember her as small and quiet; a woman who stayed in her own home and was all her time tending to Griff and their five children. I do hear a sound of sobbing from upstairs and conclude that they have made her stop there, very wisely. Sometimes I hear the voices of the children too, but they are soft and subdued, as if they had only partly wakened and had not yet realised the disaster this dawn had brought to them.

  I think that is all. I have relived that night fifty, yes, a hundred times since it happened, and each time I have felt that I hated the fireman more. Had that stone hit my back a little harder I would have been compelled to spend
the rest of my days in bed with a broken back – and would have to exist on twenty-six shillings a week as compensation. Had I been a yard farther back I would probably be in similar state to Griff – then I would have been worth eighteen pounds, bare funeral expenses, as I would have been counted as having no dependants.

  If I appear stupid at the inquiry, as a workman is expected to be, then I will answer the set questions as I am supposed to answer them and ‘the usual verdict will be returned’.

  Griff was my mate, and nothing I can do will bring him back to life again, but his wife and family are left. He would have wished that I do the best thing possible for them. If I remain quiet, they may be paid about four hundred pounds as compensation – which is the highest estimate of the value of a husband and father, if he is a miner. They will think that one of the usual accidents robbed them of the father, but if they are told he should not have died, it will surely increase their suffering.

  If I speak what is true, the insurance company will claim that they are absolved from liability because we should not have worked there. Had we refused we should probably have lost our jobs. The insurance solicitor will be present – ever watching his chance – and will seize on the least flaw in the evidence.

  So this afternoon I shall go to the office and draw two pay envelopes that should contain about two pounds sixteen each. One is mine, the other I will take to his house. There five silent children will be waiting whilst their dazed mother is being prepared to go to the Hall and testify that the crushed thing lying in the kitchen was her husband and that he was in good health when she saw him leave the house.

  If the verdict is anything except ‘Accidental Death’ that pay packet may hold the last money she will have – unless it is the pension and parish relief.

  Later, tonight, I shall have to face another fear; I shall have to go again down that hole and restart work, but at four o’clock I will be at the inquest, shall kiss the Bible, and speak ‘The whole truth and nothing but the truth’ – perhaps. Would you?

  GAMBLERS

  Leslie Norris

  On the hills outside the town, near the river and, further out, on the bleak moor, lie bundles of enormous masonry. The gaunt towers, the unlit, vaulting arches, the great walls of cut stone, are ruined and empty, their heavy margins flawed and irregular where parts have tumbled away. When I was a kid I used often to stand near a single fallen block, looking at it. It was a frowning grey, grass grew about its edges, a golden lichen furred its tiny crevices. Sometimes I’d climb on top of it, lie back, stare to the tops of the dark walls around, ominous, heavy, without purpose. I could not imagine any use for them at all. They were all that remained of the ironworks which had been the reason for the town. I had never seen them working. Perhaps there were old men who had known this, perhaps they had worked there.

  I used to wander often about the works, particularly on gloomy days when the sky had the colour and something of the weight of those dull stone ruins and the rain beat without ceasing on those streaming walls. I knew the galleries, their floors covered with a soft dust of powdered limestone mortar, I had examined the cogwheels, taller than I was, rust-covered, much too heavy to think of shifting, that lay abandoned and broken against the walls of mills and cooling towers. It was in the works that I learned to fix a night line. One of the streams coming off the mountain had been channelled underground beneath a maze of ovens and engine rooms. It emerged just below the works, through a low tunnel. You could follow it, walking along a ledge of stone deep into the mountain, your hand on the exquisite, damp curve of the arched roof, until your nerve failed. I never went in far. Some people said there were rats in there. One warm day, sitting on the grass at the tunnel’s mouth, I saw three trout swim out of the darkness. Easy and sinuous, they lay facing the current. The water was so clear that I could see their freckled colours, their red and black spots. An uncle of mine showed me how to set a night line. Every evening I’d get a few yards inside the tunnel, my baited hook ready, tie the line to a nail I’d hammered into the wall, lower the line gently into the water. A couple of lead shot about eighteen inches up from the hook kept the worm in an enticingly natural position. I’ve caught many a breakfast that way. But that was years later. The only other people to use the old works as much as I did were the gamblers.

  There is a sense in which life itself was a gamble in our town. Hardly a man had work. In the whole length of our street, only two men could say they were employed, yet there was an air of urgency about the place, and a reckless, bitter gaiety. People kept busy. Many of them were serious gamblers; undeterred by lack of money, they could speak with authority of bloodlines and handicaps, were walking libraries of form, knew the idiosyncrasies of all the race tracks in England, not one of which they had ever seen. They used to lay complex and intricate bets, trebles, accumulators, little side bets on the way, their ramifications causing hours of study and demanding a mastery of reckoning that accountants could envy, and all for an outlay of sixpence. Using matches for stakes, or perhaps cigarettes cut in halves, they would play card games of desperate intensity and skill. They searched for evidence of good fortune wherever they thought it could be found, in racing, in decks of cards, in the spin of a coin. The first gambler I knew was Owen Doherty.

  The Dohertys lived near us, and Owen was the oldest of nine boys. He was shabby and elegant, walking slowly and straight-backed through the world, his thin, Irish face with its high cheekbones expressionless. I never saw Owen Doherty laugh at anything that was funny, although occasionally he’d give a high sharp bark of contempt at any opinion he thought particularly futile. He was much older than I, over twenty years older. I admired him because he was the best pitch-and-toss player in the district.

  The young men used to play pitch-and-toss with pennies, or more probably halfpence, in a narrow lane behind the houses. I used to go down and watch them. From time to time, when I was very small, they’d send me away, since the game was illegal, liable to be interrupted by a patrolling policeman, and I at five or six would be a handicap to them and a source of information to the police. But I’d not gone far, continuing to watch from a tactful place higher up the lane.

  The game was very simple. The boys used to take their coins between finger and thumb and aim them, with an underhand swing of the arm, at a mark about fifteen feet away. They used a small stone or a peg in the ground at which to aim. The player whose coin landed nearest the mark would collect the coins, place them on the flat of his hand, and toss them, glittering and spinning, into the air. A complicated system of heads and tails, which I never completely understood, decided the winner. Oh, to see Owen Doherty step up to the line, glare about him to demand the silence necessary for his total concentration, take the edge of his jacket in his left hand so that its drape should not impede his throw, lean forward, and sweetly aim! And later, as he placed the coins fastidiously along his palm and thin fingers, examining them so that their positions were absolutely right, holding them, waiting for the wind to die away before he threw them up, then we’d watch, knowing such artistry rare and sacred.

  Only once did the police ever raid this game, as far as I know, and I was older then. I was at the head of the lane, bouncing a tennis ball on my right foot and counting aloud to see how many times I could manage it, when I heard yelps and shouts at the other end and the coin-tossers raced past me, going flat out. I looked down the lane and there was Sergeant Wilson, red-faced, pounding towards me at a frightening speed. I took off at once, despite my innocence, and had overtaken all the fleeing criminals long before they’d had time to scatter. I turned right at the top of the lane, sped along Victoria Street and doubled back through Albert Road. Then I sat on our window sill, looking virtuous and innocent, as I had every right to. I wasn’t even breathing hard. I was about fourteen then. This race was the cause of my graduating to the card games, hard, serious, for real money, that were held most nights in the old works.

  Every boy in our town would have known the differ
ence between a three of spades and a cup of tea at a very early age. I certainly did, but my knowledge stopped right there. For some reason I could never understand even the simplest card games. I would have been hard put to it to give a blind man reasonable exercise in a game of Snap and the satisfaction of Brag, Pontoon and Bridge have never been known to me. I was teaching Muirhead, our cat, to jump through a hoop. She was refusing consistently, and mewing in a conciliatory manner. Pretty soon, I knew, she would bite and scratch. I was glad when the boys came up. They told me that I was just the fellow they wanted for their card school. Flattered but realistic, I told them that I couldn’t play cards and that I had no money.

  ‘No, no,’ said Owen. ‘We don’t want you to play. We want you as lookout. The way you went past us this morning, why there can’t be a policeman in the force to live with you. What do you say? A shilling a week, for three evenings’ work. Up at the old works.’

  We worked out a neat ploy. A disused railway track, its metal and sleepers long ago lifted to leave only the cinder ballast, led through the works, and I was to use it as a running track, supposedly training there while keeping a sharp lookout for policemen. Gareth Stephens had an old pair of shorts he’d grown too big for and he gave them to me. I liked them. They were of white silk, with blue lines round the waist and down the outside of the legs. Wearing these, a white vest and a pair of gym shoes, I began my employment, jogging along, practising my starts, occasionally stopping for deep breathing and bending and stretching. I grew to like it very much. I trained sincerely, revelling in the increasing strength and stamina I began to recognise. I trained every night and on Saturday morning, forgotten were the card players, forgotten the plan by which, if the police ever came, I was to trot gently and inconspicuously towards the gamblers where they sat on stone benches under one of the great arches, warning them by whistling ‘The Last Round-up’. Even so, it should have been easy. Down before me, below the slope of the mountain, I could see the roofs of the town small and far away. There was no cover on the mountain, not a tree, not a bush. The scattered remnants of a few low stone walls, which had once contained the fields, the moor had long taken back and could certainly not have hidden a policeman. But nothing had happened for so long; I had been nearly two summers training in front of the works, and I had become unwary. I had become engrossed in my running, the running had taken over. So that one Friday evening, cloudless, in late July, I was suddenly astonished to see five stout blue bodies a couple of hundred yards away.