An Orphan's Secret

by Maggie Hope

  At first Wesley had gone with Sally Hawkins in a spirit of defiance. He was getting his own back on Meg and she was well aware of it. But his visits to Sally had become more frequent, until now he was considered a rare visitor in his own home. An unwelcome visitor at that.

  ‘Well,’ Alice said now as the row of cottages by Old Pit came into sight, ‘you’ve managed fine without him, haven’t you?’

  ‘I have,’ Meg acknowledged, smiling. She had good reason to feel pleased with herself. Goodness knows, it was difficult for any woman on her own in a colliery village miles from nowhere to earn a living, but she was managing, just. She had started a little business, making home-made pies, born of a chance compliment, a remark from one of the new mothers she was ‘helping out’.

  ‘By, Meg, you make a tasty meat pie.’

  So now every morning she was busy turning out pies: meat pies, tatie and leek pies, and bacon and egg pies. And doing nicely, an’ all. But she still took in some washing, especially for the retired folk of Old Pit. It had been taken over by the union and now it housed aged miners and their wives, or else widows. She and Alice were bringing back the clean washing they had washed and ironed for the old people the day before.

  Now they waited by the end of the row, looking back as they waited for Kit to catch up with them yet again.

  ‘We can manage fine without men,’ Alice reasserted, ‘we’d be far better off.’

  Meg bent and swung four-year-old Kit up in the air, round and round until he was chortling with glee.

  ‘What, our two little men an’ all?’ she cried.

  The grim expression on Alice’s face relaxed and she bestowed a loving smile on Tucker, now rising eight, and tall and strong, always into trouble of one sort or another. She and Tucker had a special relationship. In her mind he was the child who took the place of any she might have had herself. For Alice was determined she would never marry. Would never, never, put herself at the mercy of any man.

  ‘Mebbe not these two,’ she said. ‘Though I might change me mind one day if they don’t behave themselves!’

  Meg laughed and put Kit down. She lifted her end of the bath of clothes while Alice picked up the other. They walked up to the door of Mrs Dobbs’s cottage. The old lady was still living there, seemingly no better and no worse than she was nine years before when Meg had first started to help her out.

  ‘Play outside, Tucker, and watch out for Kit, see he doesn’t wander too far away,’ she said.

  ‘Aw, Mam, he’s such a babby,’ Tucker protested. ‘Walter’s here, he’s staying with his grandma, we were going to look for conkers.’ Walter was Tucker’s marra, the two boys had it all planned to leave school the same day and go down the pit together.

  ‘You can take Kit with you then,’ Meg insisted. ‘Not far, mind, don’t go out of earshot.’ The boys scampered away.

  The cottages had been spruced up for the aged miners. The roofs all showed patches of new slating and the broken windows had been repaired. Even the doors had a new coat of green paint, donated by the owners. And inside the walls had been lime-washed and the woodwork scrubbed by miners’ wives, even the one where Mrs Dobbs was already living. Meg knocked at the door, and without waiting for an answer, lifted the sneck for her and Alice to enter the low-ceilinged kitchen.

  ‘How are you today, Mrs Dobbs?’ she asked, smiling at the old woman, still sitting in her chair by the black-leaded fireplace as she always was whenever Meg called. Only now there was a good fire in the grate, the coals from an allowance donated by working pitmen.

  ‘I’m grand,’ the old woman answered, ‘in fine fettle, I am.’

  Meg and Alice took out the old woman’s clean linen and Meg put it away in the chest of drawers by the bed. Mrs Dobbs lived in one room now, couldn’t negotiate the narrow, steep staircase.

  She and Alice tidied round for her. ‘While we’re here, like,’ Meg said. They had just finished making the bed, spreading a clean, white bedspread over the blankets, when the door burst open and Tucker flew into the room.

  ‘Mam! Mam!’ he cried, his eyes wide and his normally rosy complexion white with shock.

  ‘What? What’s the matter?’ Meg’s heart jumped in her breast and began pumping painfully.

  ‘Kit! Kit, he . . .’ Tucker stopped, panting heavily, and edged back towards the doorway. ‘It wasn’t my fault, Mam,’ he cried. ‘Me and Walter, we were just gathering conkers from that tree by the old slag heap.’

  Meg stared at him, not daring to ask. Oh, God, she thought, what had happened to Kit?

  ‘Kit, tell us about Kit!’ Alice ran to the boy and took hold of his upper arms. ‘What’s the matter, Tucker?’

  ‘He – he fell down the old shaft, Auntie Alice. The wood was rotten and it gave way. It wasn’t my fault.’ Tucker was sobbing now, casting glances at his mother, more fearful of the trouble he was in than the fate of his younger brother.

  But Tucker was left standing there forgotten as Alice and Meg ran out into the road and up by the small, weed-grown slag-heap to the old colliery workings, to the old shaft which was covered with rotten planks of wood. And there, at one side, was the evidence. Broken planks of worm-infested wood with a gaping hole just big enough for a small boy to fall through. Meg stared at it in horror, unable to comprehend what had happened. Then she began tearing at the planks which had been rotten when she was still a child. They came away bit by bit, the cover wholly disintegrated.

  Walter stood beside her, shaking with fright. ‘I heard him cry, Missus,’ he said. ‘He’s not dead.’

  ‘Dear God, no!’ cried Alice, lending a hand to clear away the wood. But both women stopped abruptly when a large piece fell into the shaft. They listened for it to hit the bottom or else water, and it seemed a lifetime before they finally heard the soft ‘plop’ echoing up, a hollow, unnerving sound which only intensified their dread.

  ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ a man’s voice called out, and Meg and Alice turned to see a stranger dismounting from a sturdy Dales pony. Behind him a straggling line of retired miners were approaching, all of them bent and aged but all responding to the cries of distress from the women.

  ‘Wait, I say,’ said the stranger again. ‘You don’t want any more falling in, do you? It might hit the child. It’s better if I do it. Stand back a bit.’

  Meg and Alice fell back, instinctively responding to the note of authority in his voice. By this time three or four of the old men had reached the edge of the pit shaft.

  ‘Best make a circle round the shaft,’ suggested one, and the stranger nodded his agreement, quickly catching the old miner’s plan and deferring to him. Miners were used to disasters, they were good at coping with them.

  The men formed a circle round the ancient shaft, thankfully smaller than more modern ones. Squatting on their hunkers, a movement which would have been beyond most old men but not these who had spent their working lives mostly working in that position, each one took hold of a plank, their gnarled hands easing it away gently, carefully, until at last the old cover was completely gone and they could look down the deep hole.

  There was nothing, no sign of Kit at all. Meg pushed forward, crying out in her anxiety: ‘Kit! Kit!’

  The stranger took hold of her, restraining her as she craned down into the depths, blinking her eyes rapidly, trying to sharpen her vision. Nothing. There was nothing. Even the water at the bottom couldn’t be seen in the blackness. Only a rusting iron ladder, leading down to the first platform, and from there the top of another, leading even further down.

  ‘Hey, lads, you’re not playing a game wi’ us, are you?’ An old man got to his feet and glared sternly at Walter and Tucker, standing close together behind the pitmen.

  ‘Tucker?’ said Meg in the wild hope that this was a game, a cruel game. Oh, she would forgive them willingly if it was a game and Kit was to pop his head round a bush and shout, ‘Got you!’

  ‘No, Mam,’ said Tucker. ‘He fell in. We saw him, didn’t we, Walter?’ />
  ‘Aye, we did,’ Walter asserted. ‘An’ I heard him shout an’ all.’

  ‘When did you hear him shout?’ asked the stranger. ‘While he was falling, was it?’

  ‘No, Mister, after. It was after. We saw him go down but we were up the track picking conkers. An’ we ran up here, then Tucker went for his mam and I heard him shout. Well, he cried, really.’

  ‘I’ll go down,’ said the stranger, and started to unbutton his coat and take off his hat. He rolled up his shirt-sleeves. ‘We can’t see properly from here.’

  ‘Wait on, lad, it’s no good going off at half cock,’ an old man stepped forward and said. ‘We’ll get organized first, like. Tom, hadaway and fetch a rope. We’ll have to secure this ladder from the top. A lantern an’ all, he’ll be wanting a light.’

  ‘Aye, right, Bill.’ The youngest-looking of the old miners set off for the colliery row, hurrying straight through a patch of nettles and rosebay willow herb in a bee line rather than going round by the path. Meg watched him, shivering now and cold without realising it. A steady drizzle began to fall and the stranger picked up his coat and put it round her shoulders.

  ‘Call down to him,’ he suggested, ‘he might answer you. What’s his name?’

  ‘Kit. Christopher,’ Alice said quickly, for Meg had moved forward to the rim of the shaft again, the coat clutched round her. She knelt on the ground, then lay full length so that she got as close as possible.

  ‘Kit! Kit, son, are you there?’ she called.

  ‘We’ll all call,’ the gentleman said, for vaguely in the back of her mind she recognized him as such. The miners and Alice all took up the cry, even Walter and Tucker joining in.

  ‘Kit! Kit!’

  They waited anxiously for an answer. Nothing, nothing at all. Bill, evidently the leader of the group of retired pitmen, shook his head.

  ‘I doubt that . . .’

  ‘Wait! Was there something?’ Meg thought she had heard a sound. A whisper, a moan, something.

  ‘Just the wind, I think,’ Alice put in.

  But by now Tom was back with a sturdy hempen rope and a Stephenson lamp, already lit and glowing behind the wire gauze. He also had a tallow candle.

  ‘Here, Mister, stick this in your hat band,’ he said, holding out the candle, and the gentleman took it and secured it to the front of his hat which had been lying discarded on the grass. He thrust the hat firmly on to his head and prepared to descend the ladder.

  Bill had tied the rope to an iron ring in the ground which had been hidden from view by rank grass and nettles. The pitmen knew there had to be one there and only a second’s search found it. He then tied the rope to the top rung of the iron ladder and was ready.

  ‘Mind,’ he said, ‘this thing’s fair flaked away wi’ rust. I would gan down meself, but you’d stand a better chance. Me lungs have given out, I couldn’t climb up again.’ He formed the rope into a coil and tied it round the stranger’s waist, tucking the coil into his belt.

  ‘Pay it out as you go,’ he advised, ‘then if the ladder gives out, you’ve got some back up. Now mind, this ladder only goes to the first platform. If he’s not there, you’ll have to go on to the next. I’ll be honest, I don’t know how many there are. But the ladders’ll likely be better further down. Give us a shout any road. Now, gan canny, I don’t want to have to climb down after you, like I said, I’d never get back up again. It’s a young man’s job is that.’

  In his earnest wish to instruct the stranger in the best way he could, the old miner was talking to him as he would a workmate. Now, belatedly, as he stepped back to allow access to the top of the ladder, he noticed the white shirt and riding breeches.

  ‘Begging your pardon, like, Sir,’ he mumbled, a bit red in the face.

  The stranger smiled and paused with only his head showing above the rim of the shaft.

  ‘Whatever for?’ he asked.

  Meg and Alice and the two boys huddled together, Alice with her arm around her sister. ‘He’ll be down there,’ she whispered, trying to comfort her. ‘You’ll see. Walter said he heard him shout, didn’t he?’

  Meg nodded, clinging to the shred of hope flickering within her.

  Steadily, step by cautious step, Jonty descended into the black hole of the shaft, paying out the rope as he went. The ladder had looked quite short from the top but he was beginning to realise that had been an optical illusion. The light wavered and almost went out. Rain was coming down steadily now. A good thing he had the Stephenson safety lamp, old though it was and dim the light it cast.

  At last he reached the first platform and thankfully stepped off the ladder into the brick-lined recess in the wall. The candle flared away from the rain and he looked round him. The hole was not very big, not big enough to take a man above six feet tall, but it was two feet deep and capable of holding a small boy terrified out of his wits and unable to call out. But it did not.

  ‘Anything there?’

  He poked his head out of the hole and looked up at the square of light, so far above him. The shape of a man’s head was silhouetted against the sky.

  ‘No, nothing,’ he said, and drew his head back in before the rain really did put out his candle. ‘I’m going on down.’

  ‘Watch yourself, lad.’ The call came echoing eerily down to him as he wound the rope round the top rung of the second ladder and climbed on to the first rung.

  Further and further he went, sure he would reach the second platform any time, incredulous that it was so far. And then his rope gave out. He peered down. Only a few yards more. He fastened the end of the rope to a rung.

  ‘This is what they mean by being at the end of one’s tether,’ he murmured drily, feeling an urge to lighten the tension.

  ‘Are you there yet?’ came the call from above.

  ‘Not yet,’ he answered, and climbed down the last few yards unsecured. He stepped off on to the platform, desperately hoping the boy would be there. He didn’t at all fancy going any further down. Nothing. There was nothing. He shone his candle all round the recess, but there was nothing but a decaying wicker basket, a corf, in the corner. He bent over it and touched it, and it crumbled in a puff of dust.

  He got to his knees and peered over the edge of the platform. Surely the bottom couldn’t be very far away? These old pits hadn’t been so deep. Why, this place must have been built early in the century.

  Faintly, in the distance, he saw a glimmer of light, the reflection on water of the candle in his hat. And there were two more ladders to go before he got there. God knows how deep the water is, too, he thought. He looked up at the patch of sky, the black silhouettes of heads at its perimeter.

  And then he heard it, a faint moaning, coming from somewhere below and to his right. Quickly he took off his hat and held the light in the direction of the sound. There was something against the grey stone, something black. He leaned perilously over, stretching as far as he could. A shelf of some kind was projecting from the wall. No, it was a timber, at least a foot across, set into the wall. For what purpose it had been put there by the original shaft-sinkers he couldn’t begin to guess, but it was there, and crouched hard against the wall, with one leg stuck out at a very peculiar angle, was a small boy. With both hands he was clinging to the timber support, his head down and his hair glistening in the rain. He whimpered again, softly.

  ‘Kit?’

  The boy didn’t move, except for a convulsive sob.

  ‘I’ll get you lad, just be a good boy and stay still.’

  Kit raised his head and looked up, his eyes wide with fear.

  ‘Don’t move, lad. Hang on there. You’re doing grand, just hold on to the wood. We’ll get you out, I promise we will, just hang on.’

  Kit clutched at the timber and stared upwards. ‘My leg hurts. I want me mam,’ he said, his voice scarcely above a whisper.

  ‘Aye, she’s waiting for you, lad, just you be brave.’

  ‘I don’t know you, I want me mam,’ Kit repeated.

  �
�I’m Jonty, a friend of your mother’s. Now, I’ll just have to go back up for a rope, and then I’ll get you. Look, I’ll leave the candle on the ledge. It’ll be all right if you can see a light, won’t it, lad? Kit?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Jonty put his hat with the burning candle on the edge of the ledge where Kit could see it, praying it wouldn’t go out before he got back. If it did the child might panic and goodness knows what might happen then. He climbed back up the ladders at a speed that paid tribute to his fitness, not even pausing for a rest at a platform.

  ‘He’s there,’ he said. ‘He’s alive, though I think he’s broken his leg. Now, I’ll need a good thick plank and another rope. And something to tie his legs together, make sure we don’t compound the damage.’

  ‘Oh, thank God, thank God!’ cried Meg, and promptly fainted clean away.

  Twenty-One

  ‘Kit? Kit? Are you there, son?’

  Jonty stepped stiffly off the ladder on to the second platform, his movements hampered by the plank tied to his back. The candle had gone out. He had only the light from the Stephenson safety lamp swinging at his belt. Luckily, he had thought to bring lucifers down with him and he lit the candle again before peering down to the jutting piece of timber where he had left the young boy.

  ‘Kit?’ he said again, and wide eyes peered at him out of the gloom. The child sobbed, convulsively.

  ‘I’m coming for you, son,’ Jonty said swiftly. ‘Just you be still now.’

  This time he was better prepared. The rope securing him to the top of the shaft was knotted to another which took him all the way to the second platform with some to spare. Jonty had listened patiently to Bill’s instructions on the best way to reach the lad and bring him up to the surface. Even though he had a fair idea himself what to do, he deferred to the old man’s superior knowledge of situations such as these.

  ‘Don’t rush, Sir,’ Bill had said, and the other aged miners nodded in agreement. ‘More haste, less speed like. Don’t make a move till you’re sure it’s the right one.’