Smoke

by Dan Vyleta

  Charlie’s voice is incredulous. “I never heard a word about any of this.”

  “You wouldn’t have. It was all carefully hushed up. A nobleman committing murder—impossible! Imagine the scandal, the implications if the story spread. So they bought off the witnesses and forbade all mention of the affair. Even the trial was held in secret. Mother only found out because, somewhere along the line, Thomas’s mother broke her vow of silence and sent her a letter.”

  “Trout must know. Our headmaster. But he hasn’t told the other teachers. If he had, they’d have used it against Thomas.”

  They are speaking in whispers, too low to be overheard. All the same, a cry issues from Thomas’s bed. When they run to his bedside, they find his face wet with blood or tears.

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  Lizzy comes and goes. She makes little attempt to speak to Livia, and Livia finds herself avoiding her, avoiding Thomas. Moving away from them, sitting in darkness. Lizzy is the only one who always lights a lamp.

  On occasion, though, Livia will linger and watch Lizzy tend to her patient, draw infection from the wound, spoon soup into the feverish boy. There is something more to Lizzy’s movements than solicitude. Even when she’s wiping off his pus. It worries, fascinates Livia.

  Periodically, too, she forces herself to lend a hand in turning Thomas, or in changing his sweat-drenched bedding. When they are done, still squatting at his bedside, Lizzy makes a comb of her fingers, and runs it through Thomas’s tangled hair. Her eyes are on Livia. She speaks abruptly.

  “You really don’t like him, eh? Well, can’t help your heart.” Lizzy spits, unselfconsciously, not intending any insult, merely clearing her throat. “How about Mr. Cooper, though? You’re sweet on him, ain’t you?”

  “Sweet?”

  The moment Livia says it she knows the tone is wrong, mistress speaking to servant. But here she is, a beggar in this house. Livia tries to summon the meekness she has spent years growing in herself. It never came naturally.

  It doesn’t come now.

  “He is a fine young man” is all she manages.

  Lizzy snorts and for a moment Livia feels it, the commoner’s derision for a life where one does not dare put feelings into words.

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  Thomas’s fever begins to ease. He remains weak, withdrawn, sleeping through three hours out of every four. But he’s on the mend. It forces Charlie and Livia to discuss the future. They have shied away from it thus far. Part of it is that Charlie reproaches himself. He says, “I should have stayed on top. Found out what was going on. Or made my way back to school and talked to Trout.”

  Livia does not answer, hugs herself standing invisible in the blackness of the cave, a step from him, thinking: We would not know one another if you had stayed on top.

  But Charlie’s thoughts remain far away.

  “I could write to Ireland,” he says. “To my parents. Explain the situation, ask them for their help. The miners will post the letter.”

  “Will they? Mr. Mosley would have to go to the post office in town. I doubt he keeps much correspondence. Somebody would notice. Better to keep quiet for a little longer. Lie low. Disappear.”

  “Now you sound like Thomas. Suspicious.”

  She wants to tell him that it is more than that. That she has found something here, in the darkness, something she does not understand yet. But what she says is: “That’s because Thomas is right. He is in danger. They shot off half his face.”

  But Charlie is too honest to let it go at that.

  “If he’s wrong,” he says, “your mother will be going mad with worry. For all of us, but above all for you.”

  Her reply is curt. “Mother won’t miss me. I’m a disappointment to her.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  She feels an anger burn in her so rich and thick it must coat her skin in suds. The feeling is quickly smothered by confusion when she feels something soft brushing her cheek, searching it, finding her mouth. Charlie’s lips are dry on hers. She moistens them with her tongue. Livia does not realise how close they are standing until she feels her chest pressed into his. It unlocks something in her that makes itself heard in a sigh, a whelp, the sound of a pup when you touch its belly while it’s sleeping. The sound scares her. She recoils, sniffing the air; feels a greed rise through her body, up the ladder of her rib cage; finds him once more, explores him with her face, her mouth, and for the first time in her life feels the need to nip, to bite another’s skin, cram his breath into her lungs. It lasts a moment. Then she remembers herself, walks away, licking her lips, her teeth, hunting for the taste of sin and finding only Charlie: the taste of sweat and coal dust, with a hint of the cold cabbage soup they ate for lunch.

  It leaves her with another riddle.

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  It is Francis who helps her solve it. The silent son. She hears his voice for the first time when he comes to look in on Thomas and stands whispering to Lizzy. She herself is sitting some yards away, near the doorway of the sick chamber, leaning her back against the tunnel wall. She does not try to follow the conversation. Her ears are latched on to a different sound, issuing from the cracks and crevices of the rockslide that separates them from the mine proper. Beyond lies the lovers’ cave. Of late it has drawn her. Its sounds are distant; soft. Talk, sighs. Quiet laughter. And, once in a while, a smothered moan that tugs at her very skin. It takes her a while to put a name to it. The sound of letting yourself go. It is not a sound she can imagine herself ever making.

  Francis approaches. His step is near-silent but she hears him all the same, can gauge the distance at which he comes to a stop. She is like a bat now, attuned to the dark.

  The comparison makes her smile.

  “Are you getting on all right?” he asks.

  “I thought you were mute.”

  “Only on top. Down here I’m a regular chatterbox.” They are speaking in whispers, are barely audible to themselves. And yet she can sense purpose underneath his banter. “I want to show you something. Out there, in the mine. But you’ll have to change into miner’s clothing.”

  “Now?”

  “Soon. At the end of the shift. It’ll be safest then.”

  On his instructions, she locates a shirt, jacket, cap, and breeches in one of the storerooms, then changes in the dark. How odd that she can do so, not even closing the door: strip half naked, with no thought to her modesty. Francis remains where she left him, out in the tunnel near the rockslide. He asks whether she is ready and instructs her to tuck her hair beneath the cap. The next moment he has taken hold of her hand. It’s so intimate a gesture, she feels herself stiffen.

  “You don’t need to be afraid of me,” he reassures her. “It’s nothing like that. I already have a girl. A real talker, just like me. Hush now. It isn’t far.”

  Without further explanation he tugs her after him, first through the twisting path between the fallen rocks, then out into the lovers’ cave and the corridor beyond. Nothing stirs.

  He lights his lamp, rushes almost to the point of running, tugging her down a series of corridors. Once he stops short, smothering their light, and waits for a group of haulage women to pass in the distance, each bent double and pushing their loads. Not one of them shoots them a glance.

  “They shouldn’t be here,” Francis rasps. “Their shift is over. And Father tweaked the work rosters for the next shift, to make sure nobody’d be around.”

  “Did they see us?”

  “Let’s hope not. Management has its people in every work crew. They spy on us, make sure we don’t slack off. No politics allowed, no talking, a quarter hour for lunch.” He curses softly, rekindles the light. “Never mind. We are almost there.”

  Soon after, they arrive: a long, narrow room, well supported by timbers. A dank animal smell hangs in the air; the sound of breathing, oddly heavy and many-mouthed. Much of the space is given over to a row of wooden pens. As the lamplight strafes them, it picks out the outline of a snout. Tender pink
flesh frames the flared holes of two nostrils. A whinny sounds.

  “Horses?” Livia asks, uncertain.

  “Pit ponies. Here, let’s give them a treat.”

  Francis digs in his pocket, retrieves a few carrots. He passes one to Livia. When she lifts it up to the window of the first pen, a pony’s head emerges out of the shadow, teeth bared. Its lips brush her fingers as the animal tears the carrot from her grasp. It turns to eat, like a dog protecting its bone. In the pen next door, its neighbour kicks its hoofs against the wooden gate. It has sniffed the carrots and wants its share.

  “What do you think of them?” Francis asks, as he goes along, distributing treats.

  “They are stunted and dirty. Their legs are bandy.”

  “Mam says it’s because they get no sun.”

  “You don’t take them up?”

  “Rarely. The lift terrifies them. Some literally die of fright. And when they get outside, well, some of them go mad. They will run till they drop with exhaustion. Others just stand there, shivering, closing their eyes against the sun.”

  She searches his face while he says it. He, in turn, is looking at her very closely, as though waiting for her verdict.

  “It’s sad,” she says at length.

  The young man nods. “Yes.” His eyes are expectant, waiting for her to say something more.

  “Why take me here, Francis? It’s an awful risk to take, just to show me some sick animals.”

  He nods, shrugs, keeps his eyes on her.

  “What do you think of it?” he asks obliquely. “Our life in the mine?”

  She starts answering, falters, feels herself back away from the light of his lamp. There’s a thought that has grown in her, almost without her noticing. Now it wants out.

  “You’re free,” she says. “I did not understand it at first. Your love of total darkness, the reluctance to light any lamps—it’s not just fear of gas, or of discovery. It’s a way of life. Almost a religion. You are building a kingdom. Beyond the rule of Smoke.” She pauses, eyes the ponies. “And yet, it is doomed.”

  He nods, keeps the lamplight on her face across the three-step gap she has opened up.

  “Yes, we are free down here,” he says at last. “But man is not meant to live in the dark.”

  He reaches forward suddenly, encircles with his left hand the glass of his lamp, keeps it there. Shadows fill the room, swallowing her; his hand glowing red, leaking pink at the fingers; beyond it the light sits white in his twisted face.

  It’s hot, she realises, the glass is burning his skin. But why…?

  As though in answer a cloud of dark rises out of Francis, his pain converted to sin. He lets go of the lamp, steps over to her, wafting Smoke threads at her like incense. She sees it but cannot smell it; remains unmoved in her blood. All at once she is back with Charlie, mouth locked to mouth, her body tingling with Smoke.

  “It does not smell, nor infect,” she whispers. “It’s as though it’s dead. But how can that be?”

  “We think it’s the coal dust. It filters it somehow. So it’s everyone smoking for themselves. Unseen, unheeded. Miners dying, fighting, making love. All alone.”

  “But that’s good, surely. Better than on top.” She looks for the word, finds it. “Tidier.”

  “Tidier? Yes, perhaps. My brother, Jake, he has a word for our life down here. He calls it ‘democracy.’ ”

  Democracy. She knows the term, has read its definition in one of her father’s translations from the Greek. Democracy, Aristotle says, is the rule of the many: hence of the poor. It leads to chaos, greed, and desolation.

  “Will you take arms?” she asks suddenly. “Rise up?”

  “How can we? Yours is a race of angels. Fair cheeks, hands like marble; linen as white as the day it was spun.” He shakes his head, in wonder not anger. “Down here we can curse you and plot revolt. But up in the sun? Oh, there too we have our jokes. We laugh and mock. But who is so coarse not to be shamed by your skin? God chose you, made you special. You rule us not by force but through this simple fact.” He leans closer, eager now that she understand him; a quiet man talking. “We must cower underground, just to learn boldness.”

  His voice is so earnest, his words so carefully chosen, he reminds her of one of her schoolmasters, Professor Lloyd, who teaches philosophical theology. But Francis is a commoner, a miner’s son, unschooled in Discipline. He has never studied Leibniz’s theodicy or Kant’s Three Discourses on Smoke.

  “How long did you go to school?” she asks in wonder.

  “Four years. Got my numbers and letters. They aren’t good for much, though. There’s no money for books.”

  “And yet today you had a lesson for me.”

  He smiles at that. “A time may come when we will need to understand one another. Your people and mine.”

  He does not explain who these are, his people and hers. There is no need. The poor and the rich. A week ago she would have said: the corrupt and the righteous.

  “I am only a schoolgirl,” she says quietly. “What can I do?”

  “You are the next Baroness Naylor,” Francis answers. And then he bows to her. She did not know a bow could combine mockery and admiration. Before she can respond, he has turned around to lead her back.

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  They don’t speak again until they have entered the lovers’ cave. It remains empty of people. She knows this from its sounds; the quality of the air: Francis has once again doused the lamp. Livia finds she does not mind. It is oddly comforting to have returned to the dark.

  “How long have we been down here?” she asks.

  “Six days.”

  The number gives her a shudder. Six days buried under the earth. And yet it seems much longer to her. She must have lain down to sleep a dozen times. Catnaps; her natural rhythm when divorced from the sun.

  “Is anyone looking for us?”

  He answers slowly, picking his words with great care.

  “Yes. There is a rumour you’ve been in the village. Someone’s spending an awful lot of money to find you. The men who know you are here, they have given us their promise. A holy oath. But it’s an awful lot of money, and some have more mouths at home than they can feed, and others have a child that wants the doctor.” A moment later he adds: “Lizzy says your friend is better. Able to stand. To walk.”

  “So that’s why you came to me today! We are placing you in danger. We will go, of course.”

  He presses her hand at that, lifts it up, touches his forehead with it as though receiving her benediction.

  “My father will fetch you.”

  She hears him walk away. Even his gait has a certain elegance to it, a gentle purpose. It makes her smile. Were he a few years younger, and a little more handsome, she might grow to like him almost as much as Charlie.

  “Do you ever take her down here?” she whispers after him, gesturing sightlessly into the cavern. “Your girl. The one who won’t stop talking.”

  His voice reaches back to her, so soft she might be imagining it.

  “No. When the time comes…on our wedding night—I want to share her Smoke.” Then: “There is life in Smoke, Miss Naylor. Communion. What people do down here, that’s something else.”

  He says no more. And leaves her wondering what it would do to her, kissing Charlie out in the sun.

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  She seeks him out soon after and tells him that they have to leave.

  “As soon as possible, Charlie. We are endangering the miners.”

  If Charlie is surprised, he does not show it.

  “Thomas is better” is all he says. And: “We’ll have to think about where we want to go next.”

  They are sitting on the floor, in a storeroom beyond the main hideaway, where they can talk without disturbing Thomas’s sleep. Their hips and shoulders are touching, get in each other’s way. It would be more comfortable if she threw an arm around his shoulder, leaned her head into his neck. She is about to, when he speaks again.

  “You ha
ve changed,” he says, “down here.”

  “Have I? How?”

  He does not have to think about the answer: “You’re happy here.”

  “I was happy before.”

  “No, you weren’t. You thought of happiness as a kind of Smoke.”

  It isn’t until later—after she’s gotten up and walked away in a huff—that she realises Charlie is right. And that he’s worried.

  Worried she’ll change back in the light.

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  She takes the thought for a walk, back to the edge of the lovers’ cave, still empty but for that laboured, slurping whistle peculiar to the space. The breath of the mine. When she reenters the sickroom some time later, it too seems emptied of people. Before she can confirm her intuition, she hears Thomas’s voice cut the quiet with his whisper.

  He is not talking to her.

  “Well, go on then,” he says. “After all, I owe you my life.”

  There is no answer, only a sound, soft and spongy. It is followed by a giggle, then the sound of flat feet running out the door. Lizzy. At once Livia realises she’s been witness to a kiss. She does something then she has not done in all the time she has been in the room: light a lamp. Her hands are unaccustomed to it. When she finally manages to put match to wick, she sees that Thomas has sat up, hunching forward on the bunk bed. A bandage still covers his head, but it is a simple wrapping rather than the thick layers he was swaddled in before. His face is sunken, haggard; the features overlarge, as though pasted on. It makes it hard to tell a smile from a smirk.

  “Listening in, Miss Naylor? How naughty of you.”

  She grows angry at once: a trickle of Smoke seeping from her nostrils. Down here, she lacks the will to drown it in meekness.

  “You are a cad, Mr. Argyle.”

  He shrugs at that, blinks into the lamplight, raises his chin, for her to better see him.

  “And tell me—have I grown very ugly?”

  She locates her scorn, finds it like a garment she hasn’t worn since summer. It belongs to the world of light.