Fields of Gold

by Fiona McIntosh

  The bell sounded. ‘All right, Bryant. No need to explain, son. Right, let’s wind them up; they’ll be damp and wretched today.’

  ‘Will do,’ Jack said, grateful for the release, pulling on his gloves and reaching for the levers.

  Jenner left as Pearce arrived to relieve Jack. ‘Make no trouble now, Pearce. If I hear or see anything amiss, you’ll be out of work for more than just a shift.’

  Pearce nodded. ‘I’ve got nothing more to say to Bryant.’

  ‘Keep it that way.’

  Jack ignored Pearce’s arrival as he began the series of lever motions that would coax the steam engine to wind the wire rope that would raise the dozens of men. He imagined them wiping the sweat from their eyes and wearily stepping from the side platforms known as sollars to their standing rods which would gradually lift them, in ten-foot increments, with each stroke of the engine. It was a slow process.

  Jack glanced out of the window, waiting for the first miners to emerge. They’d be dirty, fatigued and wet from the sweat of their toil and the heat of the tunnels. Jack was careful to ensure that each crew had warmed water waiting for them in the concrete bath formed in the floor of the ‘dry room’ to rinse off. Their clothes would have dried stretched over the huge pipes that sent steam from the boilers to the mine’s main engine. The entire huge room would be warm and dry and the miners could take a short rest on the long bench before contemplating their walk home in the freezing gales.

  Waiting for the final signal, Jack imagined the sense of relief that Billy and his fellow miners must feel at the end of each shift to look up and see daylight after so many hours in darkness.

  Jack heard the bell. Time to work. He began pulling at the levers but he thought he heard an unusual soft groan from the machinery. Frowning, he momentarily wondered whether it was coming from the counterweights or the beams. He paused, hoping to catch the sound again, but he heard nothing more. He re-started the lever process. He envisaged the process as he worked, picturing how the rods would dip and pause as more men clambered aboard. And so it went, his hearing attuned for the bell that sounded the signal to wind again, and then Jack would respond, lifting the miners closer to their families.

  He glanced at the dials once more. The engine was working smoothly, achieving four and a half strokes per minute, as it should. That curious sound he’d heard earlier must have been a once-off peculiarity.

  Then suddenly – and without any warning – the engine lurched to a faster speed. There was no time to think, only to react.

  In a blink Jack became the engine’s slave, following precisely what he’d been taught and had practised time and time again until he could do it with his eyes shut. Without even a split second’s hesitation, he reversed the engine to shut off the steam. It was absolutely the right procedure, but nothing Jack could do could reverse the fatal problem that had likely been in the making for some time.

  He waited just moments – although it felt like an eternity – while the great crown wheel turned three quarters of its normal revolution before it shuddered to a halt as he needed it to. A truly unfamiliar sound of shrieking machinery rent the engine room. This was followed by a terrifying judder as a fatal crack spread devastatingly through unseen metal, ripping through its forging and tearing apart structures until, moments later, the engine lost its load.

  Jack sprang back, horrified, as an estimated twenty-four tons of men and machine crumpled, plummeting in a sickening avalanche of timber, metal, rock and flesh.

  Jenner burst in, yelling, but Jack hardly registered his words. Pearce was flattened against the window, staring out, uselessly trying to see how many men were still at the surface.

  ‘The engine’s gone,’ Jack said numbly, in deep disbelief. ‘It’s gone,’ he confirmed, too traumatised to allow himself to picture what was unfolding beneath him.

  ‘Bryant!’ Jenner bellowed.

  Jack looked up, stunned, his lips bloodless, face as pale as his white shirt, suddenly dripping with sweat despite the cold. ‘It’s gone, sir,’ he repeated.

  ‘Then all hands to the shaft!’ the captain roared. ‘It’s going to be a slaughterhouse down there!’

  Beneath the surface, the world had permitted what looked like hell to wake and yawn. Men and boys lay twisted and dying beneath tons of rock, machinery and equipment. Luckier ones had died instantly, smashed on the lower levels or crushed beneath boulders or huge timbers. Still luckier ones had clung to whatever they could and whatever had held long enough to get themselves onto the old-fashioned ladders that were now swinging back and forth, threatening to collapse as well. The majority were consigned to a slow, lonely and agonising death awaiting rescue that came too late, or a new, miserable life – some people without limbs, others having lost sight – in which they were no longer capable of earning and would be forever a burden on their families.

  The accident was heard for miles around – as far as the town of St Just – and women began to converge on Levant, running with babies in arms, or infants clinging to their skirts. Their wails penetrated the eerie new silence surrounding the mine, and echoed the shrieks of gulls that seemed to taunt them over the lonely coast.

  6

  More than a hundred men were unaccounted for when Jack and his fellow rescuers clambered down the ladders in a desperate attempt to recover the injured and dying. The first cheers of relief were heard as around twenty miners answered their urgent calls. Each one was clinging to sollars, rods, or ladders, too terrified to move in the inky darkness for fear of falling or slipping; or too injured to help themselves.

  Jack Bryant worked like a man possessed, refusing food, even a sip of water, until the captain ordered him to take a mug of sweet, milky tea. Jack had swallowed it angrily, a wild look in his stormy blue-grey eyes; a mixture of fury and fear. Pearce was making it clear to all who would listen that Jack was directly responsible for the deaths of so many men.

  Jack ignored the abuse hurled his way each time he surfaced with another injured victim sprawled across his shoulders. He couldn’t worry about his already tattered reputation just now, although he did at one point see his father’s thin-lipped, baleful countenance glowering at him from a small hillock near the anxious relatives.

  Charles Bryant had arrived with crates of new candles and lanterns to help set up some proper lighting. He was watching now as his grim-faced son arrived with a man battered seemingly beyond recognition.

  Jack ignored his father and the people who hurled their anger towards him; his only focus was to continue running up and down the ladders, finding every survivor that he could. He was looking for one man in particular and couldn’t rest until he’d been found.

  Billy Jenner was alive when Jack discovered him crushed beneath a huge piece of timber at one hundred and ten level, his fluffy golden hair slicked with blood and the deep red of the earth that wanted to claim him. Jack, his heart aching to see his mate so smashed and broken, screamed for assistance, and men arrived quickly at the news that another brave miner had been found alive. Now Jack insisted on carrying Billy himself as gently and tenderly as he could. With silent, helpless tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on his cheeks, Jack begged him to conserve his energy, but Billy continued to jabber in his ear.

  ‘I should have listened to you, Jack. We should’ve sailed off somewhere together. One of those exotic places with dark-haired, dark-eyed beauties.’

  ‘Hush now, Billy. Save your strength,’ Jack urged, forcing his voice to remain strong. Just hours ago they’d been laughing about the future; Jack wasn’t sure there would be a future for Billy but he couldn’t let on.

  But Billy knew, it seemed. ‘It hurts, Jack. It hurts everywhere,’ he murmured breathlessly. ‘Keep me conscious. Don’t let me die down here. I want to see the clouds again.’

  ‘You’re not going to die. I won’t let you. I’m going to get you out and you’re going to breathe that fresh Cornish air coming off the sea, all right?’

  ‘All right, Jack
. I trust you. You know I love you, don’t you, mate?’

  ‘Don’t get soppy on me.’

  ‘Needs to be said,’ Billy said, struggling to get each word out. ‘We’re brothers, despite different bloods.’

  ‘And looks.’

  Billy wheezed a weary half-laugh.

  He sounded so weak, Jack began to panic. ‘Don’t talk, Billy, just listen and hold on. Your mum and your sisters are there waiting for you. Your dad, too. He’s hurt but he’ll mend. You’ll both mend. You’ll fish again together. We all will.’

  ‘It’s a long way up,’ Billy groaned.

  ‘And I’m taking you there.’ Jack gritted his teeth as he struggled to lift Billy’s dead weight onto his back. ‘Hold onto me, hold tight.’

  ‘I’m not sure —’

  ‘You can! When this is done and you’re fit again, we’ll kiss the ground of Cornwall goodbye and we’ll sail off. We’ll go to Australia, Billy! It’s hot and dry there. Gold runs out of shallow mines. Gold and even diamonds, they say. Opals and pearls and …’ He felt his friend slump. ‘Billy!’

  ‘Yes,’ Billy croaked.

  ‘We’re almost there,’ Jack lied. ‘I can see the sky, Billy, and there’s sunlight reaching down already and a cool draught touching my face. The Australian women even have all their teeth!’

  Billy tried to laugh but it came out as a groan. ‘Jack, I think you’ll have to do it for both of us. Goldmining, eh? Go seek a fortune for us both, Jack.’

  Billy fell silent then and Jack climbed grimly, relentlessly, his mouth pulled into a snarl of effort, his anxiety increasing with each difficult step until hands reached down and hauled him up the last couple of feet.

  He gripped Billy’s hand and pulled it against his cheek instinctively, covering it with his own large hand. ‘I’ll see you soon, mate. We made it. You’re on the top now. They’re going to take care of you and mend you. All right, Billy?’

  ‘Thanks, Jack,’ Billy whispered, his eyes fluttering open to slits and a gentle smile creasing his cracked, bleeding mouth. Jack made no attempt to wipe away the tears.

  Billy took his last breath moments later, before his mother even reached him through the crowd. Jack told himself that his friend was simply resting, and fixing Billy’s face, now in repose, into his mind, he kissed his friend’s head tenderly, then walked away. Jack could hear the screams as he began his next descent but told himself they could be any woman’s agony, for far too many sons of Cornwall had suffered today.

  He didn’t dare pause. Didn’t let the thought enter his mind that it was Billy’s mother screaming her anguish that her favourite child was dead. No, Jack refused to believe Billy was gone. He told himself to just keep moving; find the men who had been at the mercy of that engine and not rest until he could account for each of them.

  Despite his courageous efforts, so many of the men he carried died not long after he’d got them into the embrace of their families. It was as though they’d held on just long enough to feel the fresh air on their skin and to see the faces of those they loved before they succumbed.

  And with each man he lost, Jack’s heart cracked a little wider and his soul turned darker.

  Five days later, more than thirty families in the close community of St Just were burying their men; five of them were from Jack’s own village, whose atmosphere had turned frigid and still. Funerals were being held all over the surrounding region, while scores of families were grieving over their seriously injured members. Many would be permanent invalids, and while their women were glad they were alive, it meant their father, brother or son couldn’t help support the family any longer and destitution beckoned.

  One nine-year-old boy had remained conscious on level ninety for almost three days in the blackness, pinned on his belly under the weight of his father’s corpse. The traumatised boy was recovered with only minor physical injuries, but he had lost the ability to speak.

  Those with broken limbs, bruising, or especially those miners with invisible injuries, felt guilty and never drew attention to their woes. The headaches, nausea, dizziness, even the few cases of what family members believed was insanity were kept quiet. These sounded like trivial repercussions when so many had died.

  The shock of that day hung heavy over the streets of St Just, bringing misery and heartbreak at every turn.

  Jack had all but lived at the mine since the accident, not wishing to face his own family, and hoping his demons could be held at bay by using every hour God gave him for the rescue effort.

  But today Pendeen was gathering to bury one of its own sons. Jack had returned home to bathe properly, shave, and put on his dark suit that now hung from his broad but suddenly hollow frame. His mother was nowhere to be seen and the grandfather clock’s loud tick had lost its familiar comfort and instead gave an ominous quality to an already strained atmosphere.

  Jack took a deep breath, smoothed his Brylcreemed hair, cleared his throat and knocked on the door of his father’s study.

  Charles Bryant finally emerged, but despite the sharp cut of his dark suit and his pristine white shirt, he too looked like a broken man. For a moment Jack’s hopes flared that somehow from out of this dreadful accident they might unearth a common bond that only miners could share.

  ‘Dad, I —’

  ‘Not now, eh?’

  Jack held his tongue, wanting to pummel his father with clenched fists for damning even that fragile opportunity to help one another.

  They walked in silence down the hill, their gait almost identical, although Jack stood taller.

  ‘Your mother’s gone ahead. She’s helping with the arrangements.’

  There was nothing to say. Jack noticed that even the birds were still and quiet. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful day; crisply cold, no wind, sharply bright. Billy was to be committed to the ground in the Wesley church and Jack imagined the entire village would turn out to farewell him.

  Billy’s uncle met them at the church gate. Jack didn’t need to guess why; he could see those who had gathered to show their respects were staring at his approach, none of their gazes even vaguely sympathetic. He couldn’t see his mother anywhere.

  ‘Jim,’ Charles said sombrely, raising his hat.

  ‘Charlie,’ the man said, ignoring Jack. ‘Er, listen, Charlie,’ he began, clearly embarrassed. ‘Thanks for coming.’

  Bryant nodded as if he was surprised his old friend would mention it.

  ‘Charlie, I’m sorry but I don’t think it’s a good idea for Jack to be around just now.’ He looked down. ‘You’re welcome, of course, Charlie. This is not …’ He shrugged, unable to finish.

  ‘Not a witch-hunt?’ Bryant demanded. ‘How long have we known each other, Jim?’

  ‘Charlie, listen —’

  ‘How long?’ Bryant repeated, his deep voice suddenly deeper.

  ‘We go back a long way.’

  ‘We grew up together. We mined together. You helped me wet the head of my son and I did the same for your nephew. And when you needed a loan last year, who did you come to?’ Now his voice became quieter – it was the tone Jack dreaded because it meant that his father was really angry. ‘We are men of Pendeen, James Jenner. We don’t turn on each other.’

  Jenner looked pained. ‘It’s not me, Charlie. And it’s not you either. But the timing is bad. Everyone believes your son —’

  ‘My son,’ Bryant cut in, his face inches from Jenner’s, ‘is a professional. He graduated from the School of Mines higher than anyone before him. No doubt you’ve heard the initial report that Jack acted in accordance with correct procedure. The records will show that this catastrophe was an accident. The metal cracked on the main beam, man! It had nothing to do with the engine, or the winding.’

  Jack kept the surprise from his expression, hardly daring to breathe as he glanced at the two men, his father pale with compressed rage.

  ‘Dennis Pearce was there,’ Jenner hissed.

  Charles poked Jack’s chest. ‘Ask him what you all want to kn
ow.’

  ‘What?’ Jenner looked astonished.

  ‘Ask Jack, and be sure you look him in the eye.’

  Jenner finally regarded Jack fully, raising his gaze with deep embarrassment, but before he could say anything, Jack saved him the trouble.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Mr Jenner, on my mother’s life, sir, I’m not the one who made Helen pregnant. I took precaution and she knows it.’

  Jenner’s head snapped up. ‘Did you tell Pearce that?’ he demanded.

  ‘He didn’t really give me a chance.’

  ‘Charlie, there’s a lot of pain here. Billy’s mum … well, she’s not going to recover from this.’

  ‘Billy’s mother has five sons, John. I have one. And he’s done nothing wrong. He’s as much a victim of this accident as any of the injured folk. The fact that he stands here whole doesn’t mean he isn’t grieving as deeply as the next. He was there. He was responsible for the daily safety of those men. The mine’s machinery let him down but all of you are determined to smear the blood of thirty men on his hands. It’s an absolute bloody disgrace!’

  ‘It goes deeper, Charlie,’ Jenner said, looking around as the families began to file into the church quietly. ‘The boy didn’t go to war and now this. It’s —’

  His father’s voice turned wintry. ‘You know he was turned down and why. Billy didn’t exactly see action either but I don’t see anyone accusing him of being a coward.’

  ‘Let’s just go,’ Jack said. ‘I’ll pay my respects to Billy later.’

  Jenner looked at Jack with an expression of gratitude mixed with helplessness, but Jack said nothing more.

  His father gave Jenner a final glare. ‘I won’t forget this,’ he muttered as he stomped away from the churchyard.

  Jack hurried after his father, unsure of what to say, and wondering why they were no longer heading uphill to the house but taking a detour towards the sea.

  ‘Walk with me,’ was all Charles Bryant said. Jack held his tongue, confused and excited by his father’s unexpected support.