by Follett, Ken
As she pinned the hat to Maud’s dark hair Ethel said: “There’s a scandal below stairs this morning.” Maud collected gossip the way the king collected stamps. “Morrison didn’t get to bed until four o’clock. He’s one of the footmen—tall with a blond mustache.”
“I know Morrison. And I know where he spent the night.” Maud hesitated.
Ethel waited a moment, then said: “Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“You’ll be shocked.”
Ethel grinned. “All the better.”
“He spent the night with Robert von Ulrich.” Maud glanced at Ethel in the dressing-table mirror. “Are you horrified?”
Ethel was fascinated. “Well, I never! I knew Morrison wasn’t much of a ladies’ man, but I didn’t think he might be one of those, if you see what I mean.”
“Well, Robert is certainly one of those, and I saw him catch Morrison’s eye several times during dinner.”
“In front of the king, too! How do you know about Robert?”
“Walter told me.”
“What a thing for a gentleman to say to a lady! People tell you everything. What’s the gossip in London?”
“They’re all talking about Mr. Lloyd George.”
David Lloyd George was the chancellor of the Exchequer, in charge of the country’s finances. A Welshman, he was a fiery left-wing orator. Ethel’s da said Lloyd George should have been in the Labour Party. During the coal strike of 1912 he had even talked about nationalizing the mines. “What are they saying about him?” Ethel asked.
“He has a mistress.”
“No!” This time Ethel was really shocked. “But he was brought up a Baptist!”
Maud laughed. “Would it be less outrageous if he were Anglican?”
“Yes!” Ethel refrained from adding obviously. “Who is she?”
“Frances Stevenson. She started as his daughter’s governess, but she’s a clever woman—she has a degree in classics—and now she’s his private secretary.”
“That’s terrible.”
“He calls her Pussy.”
Ethel almost blushed. She did not know what to say to that. Maud stood up, and Ethel helped her with her coat. Ethel asked: “What about his wife, Margaret?”
“She stays here in Wales with their four children.”
“Five, it was, only one died. Poor woman.”
Maud was ready. They went along the corridor and down the grand staircase. Walter von Ulrich was waiting in the hall, wrapped in a long dark coat. He had a small mustache and soft hazel eyes. He looked dashing in a buttoned-up, German sort of way, the kind of man who would bow, click his heels, and then give you a little wink, Ethel thought. So this was why Maud did not want Lady Hermia as her chaperone.
Maud said to Walter: “Williams came to work here when I was a girl, and we’ve been friends ever since.”
Ethel liked Maud, but it was going too far to say they were friends. Maud was kind, and Ethel admired her, but they were still mistress and servant. Maud was really saying that Ethel could be trusted.
Walter addressed Ethel with the elaborate politeness such people employed when speaking to their inferiors. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Williams. How do you do?”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll get my coat.”
She ran downstairs. She did not really want to be going for a walk while the king was there—she would have preferred to be on hand to supervise the housemaids—but she could not refuse.
In the kitchen Princess Bea’s maid, Nina, was making tea Russian style for her mistress. Ethel spoke to a chambermaid. “Herr Walter is up,” she said. “You can do the Gray Room.” As soon as the guests appeared, the maids needed to go into the bedrooms to clean, make the beds, empty the chamber pots, and put out fresh water for washing. She saw Peel, the butler, counting plates. “Any movement upstairs?” she asked him.
“Nineteen, twenty,” he said. “Mr. Dewar have rung for hot water for shaving, and Signor Falli asked for coffee.”
“Lady Maud wants me to go outside with her.”
“That’s inconvenient,” Peel said crossly. “You’re needed in the house.”
Ethel knew that. She said sarcastically: “What shall I do, Mr. Peel, tell her to go and get knotted?”
“None of your sauce. Be back as quick as you can.”
When she went back upstairs the earl’s dog, Gelert, was standing at the front door, panting eagerly, having divined that a walk was in prospect. They all went out and crossed the East Lawn to the woods.
Walter said to Ethel: “I suppose Lady Maud has taught you to be a suffragette.”
“It was the other way around,” Maud told him. “Williams was the first person to introduce me to liberal ideas.”
Ethel said: “I learned it all from my father.”
Ethel knew they did not really want to talk to her. Etiquette did not permit them to be alone, but they wanted the next best thing. She called to Gelert, then ran ahead, playing with the dog, giving them the privacy they were probably longing for. Glancing back, she saw that they were holding hands.
Maud was a fast worker, Ethel thought. From what she had said yesterday, she had not seen Walter for ten years. Even then there had been no acknowledged romance, just an unspoken attraction. Something must have happened last night. Perhaps they had sat up late talking. Maud flirted with everyone—it was how she got information out of them—but clearly this was more serious.
A moment later, Ethel heard Walter sing a snatch of a tune. Maud joined in, then they stopped and laughed. Maud loved music, and could play the piano quite well, unlike Fitz, who was tone-deaf. It seemed Walter was also musical. His voice was a pleasant light baritone that would have been much appreciated, Ethel thought, in the Bethesda Chapel.
Her mind wandered to her work. She had not seen polished pairs of shoes outside any of the bedroom doors. She needed to chase the boot boys and hurry them up. She wondered fretfully what the time was. If this went on much longer she might have to insist on returning to the house.
She glanced back, but this time she could not see Walter or Maud. Had they stopped, or gone off in a different direction? She stood still for a minute or two, but she could not wait out there all morning, so she retraced her steps through the trees.
A moment later she saw them. They were locked in an embrace, kissing passionately. Walter’s hands were on Maud’s behind and he was pressing her to him. Their mouths were open, and Ethel heard Maud groan.
She stared at them. She wondered whether a man would ever kiss her that way. Spotty Llewellyn had kissed her on the beach during a chapel outing, but it had not been with mouths open and bodies pressed together, and it certainly had not made Ethel moan. Little Dai Chops, the son of the butcher, had put his hand up her skirt in the Palace Cinema in Cardiff, but she had pushed it away after a few seconds. She had really liked Llewellyn Davies, a schoolteacher’s son, who had talked to her about the Liberal government, and told her she had breasts like warm baby birds in a nest; but he had gone away to college and never written. With them she had been intrigued, and curious to do more, but never passionate. She envied Maud.
Then Maud opened her eyes, caught a glimpse of Ethel, and broke the embrace.
Gelert whined suddenly and walked around in a circle with his tail between his legs. What was the matter with him?
A moment later Ethel felt a tremor in the ground, as if an express train were passing, even though the railway line ended a mile away.
Maud frowned and opened her mouth to speak, then there was a crack like a clap of thunder.
“What on earth was that?” said Maud.
Ethel knew.
She screamed, and began to run.
{ V }
Billy Williams and Tommy Griffiths were having a break.
They were working a seam called the Four-Foot Coal, only six hundred yards deep, not as far down as the Main Level. The seam was divided into five districts, all named after British racecourses, and they were in Ascot, the
one nearest to the upcast shaft. Both boys were working as butties, assistants to older miners. The collier used his mandrel, a straight-bladed pick, to hew the coal away from the coal face, and his butty shoveled it into a wheeled dram. They had started work at six o’clock in the morning, as always, and now after a couple of hours they were taking a rest, sitting on the damp ground with their backs to the side of the tunnel, letting the soft breath of the ventilation system cool their skin, drinking long drafts of lukewarm sweet tea from their flasks.
They had been born on the same day in 1898, and were six months away from their sixteenth birthday. The difference in their physical development, so embarrassing to Billy when he was thirteen, had vanished. Now they were both young men, broad-shouldered and strong-armed, and they shaved once a week though they did not really need to. They were dressed only in their shorts and boots, and their bodies were black with a mixture of perspiration and coal dust. In the dim lamplight they gleamed like ebony statues of pagan gods. The effect was spoiled only by their caps.
The work was hard, but they were used to it. They did not complain of aching backs and stiff joints, as older men did. They had energy to spare, and on days off they found equally strenuous things to do, playing rugby or digging flower beds or even bare-knuckle boxing in the barn behind the Two Crowns pub.
Billy had not forgotten his initiation three years ago—indeed, he still burned with indignation when he thought of it. He had vowed then that he would never mistreat new boys. Only today he had warned little Bert Morgan: “Don’t be surprised if the men play a trick on you. They may leave you in the dark for an hour or something stupid like that. Little things please little minds.” The older men in the cage had glared at him, but he met their eyes: he knew he was in the right, and so did they.
Mam had been even angrier than Billy. “Tell me,” she had said to Da, standing in the middle of the living room with her hands on her hips and her dark eyes flashing righteousness, “how is the Lord’s purpose served by torturing little boys?”
“You wouldn’t understand, you’re a woman,” Da had replied, an uncharacteristically weak response from him.
Billy believed that the world in general, and the Aberowen pit in particular, would be better places if all men led God-fearing lives. Tommy, whose father was an atheist and a disciple of Karl Marx, believed that the capitalist system would soon destroy itself, with a little help from a revolutionary working class. The two boys argued fiercely but continued best friends.
“It’s not like you to work on a Sunday,” Tommy said.
That was true. The mine was doing extra shifts to cope with the demand for coal but, in deference to religion, Celtic Minerals made the Sunday shifts optional. However, Billy was working despite his devotion to the Sabbath. “I think the Lord wants me to have a bicycle,” he said.
Tommy laughed, but Billy was not joking. The Bethesda Chapel had opened a sister church in a small village ten miles away, and Billy was one of the Aberowen congregation who had volunteered to go across the mountain every other Sunday to encourage the new chapel. If he had a bicycle he could go there on weeknights as well, and help start a Bible class or a prayer meeting. He had discussed this plan with the elders, and they had agreed that the Lord would bless Billy’s working on the Sabbath day for a few weeks.
Billy was about to explain this when the ground beneath him shook, there was a bang like the crack of doom, and his flask was blown out of his hand by a terrific wind.
His heart seemed to stop. Suddenly he remembered that he was half a mile underground, with millions of tons of earth and rock over his head, held up only by a few timber props.
“What the bloody hell was that?” said Tommy in a scared voice.
Billy jumped to his feet, shaking with fright. He lifted his lamp and looked both ways along the tunnel. He saw no flames, no fall of rock, and no more dust than was normal. When the reverberations died away, there was no noise.
“It was an explosion,” he said, his voice unsteady. This was what every miner dreaded every day. A sudden release of firedamp could be produced by a fall of rock, or just by a collier hacking through to a fault in the seam. If no one noticed the warning signs—or if the concentration simply built up too quickly—the inflammable gas could be ignited by a spark from a pony’s hoof, or from the electric bell of a cage, or by a stupid miner lighting his pipe against all regulations.
Tommy said: “But where?”
“It must be down on the Main Level—that’s why we escaped.”
“Jesus Christ help us.”
“He will,” said Billy, and his terror began to ebb. “Especially if we help ourselves.” There was no sign of the two colliers for whom the boys had been working—they had gone to spend their break in the Goodwood district. Billy and Tommy had to make their own decisions. “We’d better go to the shaft.”
They pulled on their clothes, hooked their lamps to their belts, and ran to the upcast shaft, called Pyramus. The landing onsetter, in charge of the elevator, was Dai Chops. “The cage isn’t coming!” he said with panic in his voice. “I’ve been ringing and ringing!”
The man’s fear was infectious, and Billy had to fight down his own panic. After a moment he said: “What about the telephone?” The onsetter communicated with his counterpart on the surface by signals on an electric bell, but recently phones had been installed on both levels, connected with the office of the colliery manager, Maldwyn Morgan.
“No answer,” said Dai.
“I’ll try again.” The phone was fixed to the wall beside the cage. Billy picked it up and turned the handle. “Come on, come on!”
A quavery voice answered. “Yes?” It was Arthur Llewellyn, the manager’s clerk.
“Spotty, this is Billy Williams,” Billy shouted into the mouthpiece. “Where’s Mr. Morgan?”
“Not here. What was that bang?”
“It was an explosion underground, you clot! Where’s the boss?”
“He have gone to Merthyr,” Spotty said plaintively.
“Why’s he gone—never mind, forget that. Here’s what you got to do. Spotty, are you listening to me?”
“Aye.” The voice seemed stronger.
“First of all, send someone to the Methodist chapel and tell Dai Crybaby to assemble his rescue team.”
“Right.”
“Then phone the hospital and get them to send the ambulance to the pithead.”
“Is someone injured?”
“Bound to be, after a bang like that! Third, get all the men in the coal-cleaning shed to run out fire hoses.”
“Fire?”
“The dust will be burning. Fourth, call the police station and tell Geraint there have been an explosion. He’ll phone Cardiff.” Billy could not think of anything else. “All right?”
“All right, Billy.”
Billy put the earpiece back on the hook. He was not sure how effective his instructions would be, but speaking to Spotty had focused his mind. “There will be men injured on the Main Level,” he said to Dai Chops and Tommy. “We must get down there.”
Dai said: “We can’t, the cage isn’t here.”
“There’s a ladder in the shaft wall, isn’t there?”
“It’s two hundred yards down!”
“Well, if I was a sissy I wouldn’t be a collier, now, would I?” His words were brave, but all the same he was scared. The shaft ladder was seldom used, and it might not have been well-maintained. One slip, or a broken rung, could cause him to fall to his death.
Dai opened the gate with a clang. The shaft was lined with brick, damp and moldy. A narrow shelf ran horizontally around the lining, outside the wooden cage housing. An iron ladder was fixed by brackets cemented into the brickwork. There was nothing reassuring about its thin side rails and narrow treads. Billy hesitated, regretting his impulsive bravado. But to back out now would be too humiliating. He took a deep breath and said a silent prayer, then stepped onto the shelf.
He edged around until he reached the
ladder. He wiped his hands on his trousers, grasped the side rails, and put his feet on the treads.
He went down. The iron was rough to his touch, and rust flaked off on his hands. In places the brackets were loose, and the ladder shifted unnervingly under his feet. The lamp hooked to his belt was bright enough to illuminate the treads below him, but not to show the bottom of the shaft. He did not know whether that was better or worse.
Unfortunately, the descent gave him time to think. He remembered all the ways miners could die. To be killed by the explosion itself was a mercifully quick end for the luckiest. The burning of the methane produced suffocating carbon dioxide, which the miners called afterdamp. Many were trapped by falls of rock, and might bleed to death before rescue came. Some died of thirst, with their workmates just a few yards away trying desperately to tunnel through the debris.
Suddenly he wanted to go back, to climb upward to safety instead of down into destruction and chaos—but he could not, with Tommy immediately above him, following him down.
“Are you with me, Tommy?” he called.
Tommy’s voice came from just above his head. “Aye!”
That strengthened Billy’s nerve. He went down faster, his confidence returning. Soon he saw light, and a moment later he heard voices. As he approached the Main Level he smelled smoke.
Now he heard an eerie racket, screaming and banging, which he struggled to identify. It threatened to undermine his courage. He got a grip on himself: there had to be a rational explanation. A moment later he realized he was hearing the terrified whinnying of the ponies, and the sound of them kicking the wooden sides of their stalls, desperate to escape. Comprehension did not make the noise less disturbing: he felt the same way they did.
He reached the Main Level, sidled around the brick ledge, opened the gate from inside, and stepped gratefully onto muddy ground. The dim underground light was further reduced by traces of smoke, but he could see the main tunnels.
