A Sovereign for a Song

by Annie Wilkinson

  ‘It’s worse than they thought. The headgear’s seriously damaged and the signalling apparatus from the mouth to the bottom’s broken. One of the cages is smashed to atoms, and as you can see, the enginemen are trying to secure the wire rope to those rails and beams that extend across the mouth of the shaft; no easy feat considering it weighs several tons. They’ll have the devil’s own job to lower the cage from there. The balance is against them. So it’s going to be some time before we know any more. Robert’s down there, probably having sacrificed his life on a fool’s errand. And for whom are you waiting, Ginny? You look as distressed as I’ve ever seen you.’

  ‘My father’s trapped down there, in case you’d forgotten. I’m waiting for news of him, and everybody else.’

  He looked at her sharply. ‘Oh, my duplicitous little hinny. That look on your face is not there on your father’s account. I’ve a notion it’s there for that brute who was so insulting to me the other day.’

  She gave him no answer. He lifted her hand and kissed it, holding it for a moment or two while he examined the chaffed skin and broken nails. ‘You’re beginning to look like a collier’s wife, drab and old before your time. If I’m right and that man is your object, I warn you, Ginny, it’s hopeless. Think again. He can never give you what you need. He won’t transplant to London, and you’ll never settle here now you’ve had a taste of the metropolis, and the adulation of the crowd. You’ve shown far too much promise to throw yourself away on someone who can only hinder you. Forget him, Ginny.’

  She snatched her hand away and turned her face from him. He sighed. ‘Still, the question is probably academic. It’s unlikely the poor fellow has survived, although one couldn’t wish him dead, of course. We’ll talk later. I’m taking Helen home. This is no place for her, and I doubt if there’ll be any news for hours. It’s pointless to stand here.’

  She looked at him, and the smile he gave her as he turned to go froze the blood in her veins. She’d seen the same smile when he’d given her comfort and reassurance after their baby’s death. She stood motionless, overcome once more by the feeling that the baby had died because Charlie had willed it so.

  Emma joined her as the Daimler was reversing out of the mud. ‘Did you tell him you’re staying here?’ she whispered. Ginny, face taut with apprehension, shook her head. Emma began to tell her what the priest had said. Ginny was too preoccupied to take it in, but the mention of Martin’s name behind her made every nerve quicken, and she strained to hear Mam Smith’s voice.

  ‘Before he went down he said, “Pray for me.” That’s him that reckoned there was no God after Maria died. I said, “I pray for you every day of my life, son, and I always will.”

  Massive volumes of black smoke still issued from the pit mouth, bearing silent witness to the force of the explosion. Ginny sank to her knees and held her face in her hands, praying to God to remove the curse of Charlie from her life, praying to God not to let him win this time. She would go away, she bartered frantically, if only He would keep Martin safe. She would go away and never see him again.

  After what seemed an eternity of watching, they saw the enginemen carefully lower the cage, and, after a long agony of suspense, winch it slowly up again. Ginny held on to Emma when she saw Tom Hood and Martin supporting Mr Vine between them. The doctors examined the half-suffocated manager and one of them got into the ambulance with him. The only man without a relative awaiting him was driven away.

  Martin and Tom stopped to exchange a few words with officials and press. As soon as they were released, relatives and friends surged forward to greet them. To all enquiries they shook their heads – Martin grey-faced under the coal dust, Tom Hood grief-stricken, with white tracks down his face where his tears had washed away the grime.

  Emma and Ginny huddled round their mother as if to shield her from the knowledge that her husband was lost. Martin clasped his son and then his mother-in-law in long, fierce embraces, looking all the while at Ginny. He called to her mother, ‘I’ll hev to come and see you, Mary Ann. There’s a lot I’ve got to tell you, but not here.’

  ‘I’m glad to see you looking so well, Martin,’ Ginny called to him, almost sobbing with relief.

  When the Government Inspector of Mines declared the pit too dangerous to allow any more exploring parties down and ordered the shafts to be sealed with her man still below and maybe alive, Ginny’s mother tried to run up the incline to the pit mouth, and it was as much as two burly policemen could do to restrain her. Mrs Hood, knowing her son was lost to her for ever, became delirious. Friends carried her home unconscious, with Tom following in a state of near collapse himself. Martin hardly knew which party to help, but in the end went with Tom, half carrying him, leaving Mam Smith to help Emma and Ginny with their mother.

  They couldn’t move her. She walked up and down the length of the cordon like a creature demented, with a policeman tracking her to prevent her breaking through again. Ginny and Emma tried to take hold of her to drag her away but she thrust them off with the strength of a madwoman. Finally, fearing that she had lost her reason, they waited for her to wear herself out with raving and pacing so that they could take her home. They were surrounded by other mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and children, weeping and crying out in as much distress.

  It was almost dark before they saw Martin again, and by that time most of the watchers had dispersed. He sent Mam Smith home with Philip, then took Ginny’s mother by the shoulders, forcing her to look into his face. After several minutes of persuasion she became calmer, and, looking utterly crushed, she walked home with them.

  Deathly pale under the grime, young Arthur stood up as they went in and helped his mother into a chair. Sally, who had been sitting on the hearthrug, shuffled towards her to rest her head on her lap. Lizzie, who had been washing crockery, stood still.

  ‘You’ve heard about your dad, I suppose?’ Martin asked Arthur.

  ‘Well, he’s not got out. I can guess that much.’

  ‘Did you know we found him alive?’ Martin murmured. Arthur stared and shook his head. Martin went on, ‘He was with young Joe Hood, behind a fall of roof. There was a bit of a gap at the top, so we shouted to them to crawl over. Your dad could have done it, but the lad was hurt that bad he couldn’t move, and your dad wouldn’t leave him. It was going to take us hours to shift the stone and coal to get them both out.’

  ‘How can they block it up, knowing they might be alive?’ cried Ginny’s mother, tearing at her hair.

  ‘They’re not alive now, Mary Ann. They can’t be. I’ve explained that. They can’t have escaped the afterdamp. It was rolling right towards them. We were lucky we weren’t suffocated.’ He turned again to Arthur. ‘We felt all the air sucked away – it’s a wonder it didn’t put the lamps out. The rush came straight after. We thought at first the ventilation was interfered with, so we went a few hundred yards, and then we came on it. It was just the same as a cloud, bloody terrifying, man. We saw it before we got to it, rolling towards us and moving so fast we’d no choice but to pass through it. We crawled on our hands and knees towards the shaft, and when we’d got a fair way the air began to come right again; we could breathe. We saw Bob Dyer and some I didn’t know, but they were all dead. Mr Vine would have been dead an’ all, if me and Tom hadn’t dragged him to the shaft.’

  ‘I carried two of my marrers on stretchers to the cart shed today,’ said young Arthur, ‘two lads, not much older than me, with their hands just about burned off, as if the last thing they’d done was put them up to shield their faces.’

  Their mother shrieked.

  ‘That didn’t happen to your man and Joe, Mary Ann,’ Martin soothed. ‘They died of the afterdamp. At least it’s merciful.’

  ‘I’ve carried two good lads to that cart shed today. I’ve seen what the explosion’s done to them, and I’ve seen their families come and identify what’s left, and I know this much,’ said Arthur, looking directly at Ginny, ‘I hate the owners, and I hate anybody that’ll have any
thing to do with ’em.’

  She flushed, and Martin put a protective arm around her. ‘Ginny says she has nothing to do with the owners, and I believe her.’

  ‘More bloody fool you, then,’ said young Arthur.

  Chapter 23

  Ginny sent a telegram to the Burns the very next day, and another to the impresario who had wanted to engage her after her last performance. Whilst awaiting an answer, she made herself useful at home and in the village. Her mother was in bed most of the time and fit to do nothing. ‘I wish I could go to sleep and never wake up,’ she kept saying, and reminders that she had children who needed her seemed to have no effect.

  Young Arthur may not have wanted to demean himself by swallowing anything Ginny had bought, but within the space of two days she saw pride bow to hunger and, face taut, he silently fell to and ate as much of her providing as the rest of them.

  The pit was not only blocked, but a channel was dug from Annsdale Beck to flood it and put out the fires. Those who had seen no bodies to convince them that their loved ones were dead had the fresh anguish of imagining them trapped and drowning. After that, few people were working in the village, and the able-bodied, Martin and young Arthur among them, were soon seeking work in neighbouring pits.

  The trustees of the last disaster fund were predictably slow in coming forward with help from the residue of it, and people either too poor or too feckless to pay into union or provident societies were soon in real want, sometimes relieved by help from family, neighbour, or private charity. The Board of Guardians began to give some outdoor relief for those in the last extremity. The workhouse loomed as a spectre to be shunned as long as possible.

  Ginny went into the Co-op and cleared the slates of families in the deepest distress. She took Maudie and the baby under her wing, visiting them every day to make sure they wanted for nothing that practical kindness could supply. Maudie amply rewarded her with wholehearted gratitude.

  The inquests were held at the Cock Inn. Emma soon came with the news that the landlord had seen a sharp rise in his profits, but he wasn’t such a fool that he couldn’t foresee an even sharper drop as soon as the coroner’s business was finished and all the entourage left. The Cock was to go under the hammer and Emma would be without a job herself before very long.

  ‘Never bother, you’ll be all right. I told you I’ll help you, and I will.’

  Emma’s face was taut. ‘You can’t help everybody for ever. Nobody’s money stretches that far.’

  Ginny shrugged, apparently unconcerned. ‘Well, there’s bound to be a new landlord, and he’ll be glad of a good barmaid.’

  ‘That’s if there’s enough left of the pit to pay anybody any wages.’

  Martin was at the inquests almost every day, listening to scores of testimonies whenever he could get in, and hearing them second-hand whenever he couldn’t.

  ‘The place is packed,’ he told them. ‘The owners have got a QC, and the manager’s got a separate one, just to represent him. There’ll be no blame sticks to them if they can help it. The deputies and under managers hev a barrister, and we’ve got one to watch the case an’ all. There’s two Mines Inspectors there, the one for this county, and one from Yorkshire. And reporters, the place is rotten with them.’

  Within the next few days a hundred and twelve numbered corpses were seen by the coroner and jury, and identified for the court by relatives and friends. The hundred and thirteenth still lay in the hospital mortuary, unclaimed, and the coroner and jury went to the hospital to see it there. Ginny asked Martin about him.

  ‘His name’s Andrea Lazlos. He’s a Hungarian, or he was. He’s lived in the pit yard for the past three months with two others. They had no other friends and no relatives; they were probably saving money to send home. That’s all anybody seems to know about him.’

  ‘An’ that’s all anybody seems to care,’ she said.

  ‘Aye, I suppose so,’ he replied. ‘Most people have enough trouble of their own without taking any on that doesn’t belong to them.’

  Lazlos. She could never forget him, burned and delirious, crying out in his pain in the midst of strangers, with no one to understand his last utterances or speak a word of comfort to him in his own language.

  ‘Mr Last Loss,’ she remarked to Emma, ‘lost his own country and his home and family, and finally lost his life in a strange land without a soul to mourn or bury him.’

  ‘Aye, it’s a bad job, but he doesn’t belong to anybody here, so I suppose the parish’ll bury him. And he’s past feeling it now.’ Emma was too preoccupied with her own troubles to spare much concern for the fate of Mr Lazlos’s remains.

  Remembering her own loneliness when she first went to London, Ginny could not dismiss him so easily from her mind. He haunted her. In the end, she went to see the priest.

  ‘I will ask them. I promised I would, and I will. But I can’t do it before Joe’s requiem,’ he said, as soon as his housekeeper had shown her inside.

  She nodded. ‘It’s not that I’ve come about. It’s Andrea Lazlos. I want him to have everything he’d have if his own family was here. A requiem, like, and a proper burial with a headstone.’

  ‘He’ll have a proper burial and a requiem anyway.’

  She flushed, and the words burst out before she could check herself. ‘You don’t want to take my tainted money, that’s what it is. You’ve heard a lot of talk about me and Charlie Parkinson.’

  His look was open and serious. ‘Nothing of the sort, but I do think any money you have would be better spent on the living. Especially your own family.’

  ‘I want Mr Lazlos to have everything I said. I want him to have a headstone so if anybody comes looking for him, there’ll be something to find.’

  She arrived home to find a telegram waiting for her.

  ‘I thought it was news of John, but I should have known that would be too good to be true. It’s for you from your London friends, I suppose.’ Her mother handed her the message and displayed no further interest in it.

  Ginny read, ALL IN HAND. WILL WRITE LATER WITH DEFINITE ARRANGEMENTS. GEORGE.

  When all the identifications were completed and the bodies released for burial, the court began in earnest to take testimony that might help them to determine the cause of the explosion. A QC arrived from London to observe the case on behalf of the Home Office, and to question witnesses as he saw fit. The court was hushed as Ginny watched Martin give evidence.

  ‘Did you hear any shots fired before the first explosion?’

  ‘I was too far from the dip to hear any shot fired that day, but I know shot-firing’s done as a matter of course. It’s caused fires before.’

  ‘With the pit still full of men and boys?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In direct contravention of the Mines and Quarries Act?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She heard him tell the story of his escape and his experiences with the rescue party, but nothing was as harrowing as hearing of him finding her father and young Joe Hood alive, then having to abandon them to save their own lives. ‘We heard a rapping and came to a place where there was a fall of roof. We called out and Arthur Wilde answered us. We shouted to him to climb over the fall because there was a gap at the top he could just have got through, but he said one of the pony drivers lay injured with him and couldn’t move, and Mr Wilde wouldn’t leave him. We said we’d get back and free them both but we couldn’t, because of the second explosion.’

  They left after Martin had given his evidence. Outside, he looked grey and drawn. He took her hand. ‘We could do nothing. I knew we were leaving them to their deaths. The last words your dad said were, “Tell Nance I’m sorry about our John and Ginny. Tell her I always loved her.” ’

  Late that afternoon, whilst Emma was at the hospital and her mother was resting in bed, she answered the door to Charlie. Young Arthur looked towards them with a face like the wrath of God.

  ‘The answer’s no, Charlie, no to everything.’ She made to close the do
or but he prevented her.

  ‘I shall keep calling until you do me the courtesy of hearing me out. It will do me no harm, and it will be a kindness to your neighbours, give them something other than the disaster to spice their conversation. Come with me now, Ginny, and I promise that if I can’t persuade you this time, I’ll go back to London without you.’

  ‘Wait there.’

  She appeared at the door two minutes later with Lizzie at her side. The Vines’ yellow Daimler almost blocked the street, and Ginny could feel a hundred spying eyes on her from neighbouring windows.

  ‘We’re not getting in that with you, Charlie,’ she said. Lizzie pulled a face of disappointment. Instead, they walked out of the village, towards the Durham Road as Charlie talked incessantly of the brilliant career she had, the expectation of a more brilliant one still, the glamour of the halls, the adulation of the audience, the delights of London life and all the money she could make.

  Lizzie listened entranced, eyes shining. ‘Oh, I’d love that. That’s just what I’d like to do!’ Ginny caught the quick, bright glance and half-hidden smile flashed in Charlie’s direction.

  ‘Would you?’ He smiled delightedly at her. ‘Bravo! And no reason why you couldn’t, with a little help. You’re a clever girl, I’m sure, and I’ve no doubt you’re talented. You must persuade Ginny to come back to London with me, and we can help you to get your start on the stage.’