Hungry Hill

by Daphne Du Maurier

  Hal would hear the whistle of steam and the clanging of wheels on the rollers, and sometimes the sound of running feet under his window as the men hastened to catch the trucks. It would still be dark outside, with the stars shining.

  "Poor devils," whispered Hal to Jinny, feeling in some queer, obscure fashion that he was to blame for their early rising in the bleak raw morning, and then his conscience would prick him as he arrived himself at the counting-house shortly before nine, having ridden out in all probability in the Rector's trap.

  The women and children in the dressing-sheds who had the work of washing the ore would look up as he drove past, and he would have the feeling that they laughed at him, and resented him too, believing that he had the place by favour and did not need the money.

  At the end of each month, when the books had to be made up and the returns sent in, Hal would find himself working overtime to get through with the stuff on his desk, and then he too would catch the six-o'clock truck with the miners in the village, Jinny rising bright and early to keep him company and see that he ate his breakfast before leaving. The first time he did this the men stood apart from him in the truck, joking and talking amongst themselves.

  There was a fellow called Jim Donovan, son of Pat Donovan who kept the farm beneath the hill, and the first of his family, by his talk, to become a miner.

  "Sure, it's the truth," he said, "we owned the land for miles around in the old days," looking over his shoulder at Hal as he spoke.

  "That's right, Jim," said his mates, "you had it on lease from the devil."

  "No devil at all," answered Jim, "my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather, he was nothing less than a Chief, living below there at the castle, and as for knowing a pig from a sow, I tell you he wouldn't have soiled his hands with either. He had a thousand men to work for him, and the King of France was his best friend."

  "That's true," said one of the men; "the French were always for helping us, and the Spanish too. I had it from my father."

  "Who was it, then," asked another, "who shot a landlord for interfering with the smugglers? That's another true story, and happened in Doonhaven."

  "It was one of the Donovans," said Jim, "and small blame to him either. What right had the landlord to spoil the livelihood of innocent men? I'd shoot anyone who did the same to me."

  "And be strung up by the redcoats in the garrison," laughed his friend.

  "Oh, I care nothing for them," said Jim, waving his hand. "We'll be rid of the lot of them before you can turn round. And then I'll invite you to shoot hares on the island."

  If Hal had been in Canada he would have joined in the fun, and chaffed Jim Donovan, as he had done his fellow-ranchers. But back at home it was different. These men could not forget he was a Brodrick, whose father owned Clonmere and the mine also, and they believed him stiff and proud. Should he try to joke with them they would feel awkward and shy, or imagine he did it out of condescension, to stand in well with them for some ulterior design. And so, in spite of smiles and valiant efforts to seem friendly and natural, Hal would achieve no more than a "Good-day," and a remark about the weather.

  It was part of his work, as clerk to the manager, to supervise the payment of wages every Friday. It was the day he hated most in the week. He would have to sit in the counting-house, beside Mr. Griffiths, with a stack of coins in front of him, reading the names out from a sheet of paper, and then handing the required amount to the manager as each man in turn stepped forward to take his pay. The wages seemed so pitifully small, the coins so few in number. Every Friday morning his heart would sink as he heard the tramp of men queuing up outside the door of the counting-house, and then Mr.

  Griffiths would take his place beside him and the names would be called. The skilled miners first, and the engineers, descending in scale to the surface men, and the dressers, and the women and children.

  "Pat Torrens," he would call, and a man would step forward, lean and grey, his skin like wrinkled parchment, and a great Adam's apple moving in his throat, big pouches under his eyes. Two pounds.

  Two pounds for working eight hours at a stretch, on his back perhaps, in the damp, low levels beneath Hungry Hill, and coming to the surface to change his clothes in the draughty shed where the wind whistled through the open doors, home to his cabin or cottage to eat potatoes and salt fish and sleep before the reeking turf fire, and then back again, down to the black rock-face and the wet walls of the mine.

  Hal would hand over the little pile of coins, avoiding the man's eye. Surely Pat Torrens must think to himself, "This is one of the men I'm working for.

  Every ounce of stuff I break out of the rock and bring to the surface, with my sweat and labour, turns into gold when it is sent across the water to Hal Brodrick's father. He lives in a great house and has servants and carriages and sits on his backside all day. He does not even have the running of the mine, like the manager. He just lies back and puts the gold into his pockets." Pat Torrens would shuffle from the counting-house and Hal would call the next name on the list.

  And so on and so on for an hour or so, finishing with the women and children. One or two little fellows of not more than nine years of age, coming forward for their two-shilling piece, the reward for standing barefoot on the tin as it was washed in the "buddle," or for breaking large pieces of ore with a hammer outside the dressing-sheds.

  One Friday morning, when the last had been paid, Hal turned to the manager in anger and disgust.

  "Surely it's not right?" he said. "They ought to get more. Why, when every man, woman and child in the mines has been paid, it's barely a tenth of what goes to my father."

  Mr. Griffiths stared at him.

  "The pay is good," he said. "I've known it lower in other mines. They don't expect more. Of course your father must make his profit. He's the owner, isn't he? Don't tell me you're a Radical-you'll be preaching revolution next."

  "I'm not a Radical, or a revolutionist," said Hal. "I don't care a twopenny damn about politics. But I feel ashamed, that's all."

  "Oh, come," said the manager, getting up and reaching for his coat, "that's all false sentiment. You keep the books in order, and forget the moral side of it. Besides, the day will come when you will be the owner yourself.

  You can give all your profits away then, if you feel like it."

  "Yes," said Hal, "but that's just the point. I shan't want to. I'll be thinking of sitting back and taking my ease, the same as my father."

  He would drive home in the evening, turning his back on the sight and sound of the mines. The tall chimneys, black against the hill, would point their fingers to the sky, and a glare of fire would come from the open doors of the boiler-houses. He would hear the winding rattle of the drums in the shafts, and the ceaseless throb of the engine pumps. There would be the inevitable pungent smell in the air coming from the dressing-sheds where the ore was cleansed. And once away, along the road, with the chimneys out of sight, and the smoke from the furnaces blown eastward, and the tramping miners gone below on night-shift, there would be no other sound but the steady clop-clop of Tom Callaghan's mare taking Hal back to Doonhaven, and on his left the smooth, untroubled waters of Mundy Bay. Hungry Hill would rise above him, white and silent under the moon, and away yonder the pin-prick lights of Doonhaven danced and flickered.

  Yes, thought Hal, and for all my brave talk to Griffiths about the hard work and low pay of the miners, all I want really is to be living in comfort in Clonmere, because of them, with Jinny dressed for dinner as my mother used to do, and a butler waiting on her instead of that half-witted girl. I want to enjoy the mines, as my forebears did, and forget the cost.

  I don't want to go back to my poky little house in the village street and know that Jinny has cooked my supper for me and is feeling tired and worn.

  He would leave the trap with Patsy at the Rectory, and walk through the village to his house.

  A smell of cooking would greet his nostrils as he entered, a thing he detested and which it was i
mpossible to smother in so small a house, for all the care that Jinny took.

  She came, dear girl, running to meet him, with her bright eyes full of love, and her hair a little untidy, her face flushed from bending over the stove.

  "Your favourite supper," she said, beaming, "herrings and cauliflower cheese. I've been given a new recipe from mother's precious book. Oh, and the chimney's been smoking in the sitting-room; we'll have to have it swept. Kitty and Simon called from Andriff; they left us a lovely melon and some grapes. So good of them. And Simon wants to buy one of your pictures, the little sketch of Doon Island from the creek."

  "He doesn't really," said Hal. "He just does it out of charity."

  "No, dear, he does not. You must not be so proud. He thinks you have great talent. Kitty told me so."

  "He's the only one that does, then."

  "No, Hal, that's naughty. Your wife is proud of your work."

  "It's more than I am. I'm a rotten painter, and a rotten husband."

  "Don't be so grumpy, love. Come and sit down and rest in your chair, even if the fire is smoking, and I'll bring you your supper on a tray."

  Hal flung himself down and stretched out his arms to her.

  "Why should you wait on me?" he said, drawing her on to his knee. "It's I who should look after you.

  I'd like to see you with your hair smoothed back, Jinny girl, and a low-cut frock, instead of that old apron and your little hands all sticky with cooking."

  "I'll smooth my hair for you, and I'll wear my wedding-dress, and I'll wash my hands in milk, if you will promise to be a good boy."

  "I am a good boy."

  "You know what I mean by a good boy."

  "You mean I'm not to help myself to the whisky bottle in the cupboard? Don't worry, sweetheart; it's empty."

  "Oh, Hal, and I asked you to keep some, in case of chills and colds."

  "The winter's over, there won't be any chills and colds. I'm a brute and a swine, and I don't deserve you, Jinny girl. Why should you love me?"

  "I don't know, Hal, but there it is."

  She smiled, and he did not move, but stretched out his legs to the smoky fire, thinking of the great hall at Clonmere and the fire-place there, where no fire had ever been lit. Presently she came back with their supper on a tray, the herrings a little over-cooked, bless her, but he swore they were excellent, and she sat down at his feet afterwards and took her mending, while he stared into the fire and played with her hair.

  "It's embroidery you should be doing," he told her, "not my old bocks."

  "And if I let your socks go undarned," she asked, "who would do them?"

  "You ought to have a lady's maid," he said, "and half-a-dozen servants to look after you. And me, dressed in a dinner-jacket, be coming into my drawing-room with a flower in my buttonhole, having dined on a saddle of venison and drunk old brandy."

  "That means you didn't care for the herrings," she said in distress.

  "It means nothing of the sort," he said, kissing the top of her head. "It means that I let my imagination run away with me when I look at that funny little top-knot of yours, pinned out of the way of your cooking. You have a neck that I can encircle with one hand. I wonder Patsy has never run amok and felled it with his axe when killing your mother's chickens."

  "Ah, get along with you. Would you take your great hand away? I can't see the hole in your sock."

  "Let it alone, darling."

  "And you go barefoot?"

  "I would have you sit beside me in the chair and watch the pictures in the fire."

  She laid the mending aside, and curled up beside him in the old leather chair that had come from the Rectory, and they said little to one another, but listened to the clock in the corner, left by Doctor Armstrong, and heard the soft rain patter against the window, and saw the smoky turf sink lower on the hearth.

  Up at the Rectory Tom Callaghan was writing to Herbert Brodrick at Lletharrog.

  Dearest old Herby, You can't think what a real pleasure it was to get a letter once more from one of the family. It is years since I saw you, but I have photographs of you and the brothers as mementos of the past. It was so good to read your kind words about our dear Jinny, and that she has been a blessing to poor Hal. I never now say a word about either of them to Henry when I write, as no matter what I say he always speaks about the hopelessness of Hal's case. ' I am glad to say Hal is, I think, one of the most charming fellows I ever met-in fact his daddy over again, only with the one drawback, and he is getting over that too… There are no babies as yet, but I tell Jinny they will come along by-and-by. They are certainly one of the happiest couples it has ever been my good fortune to see'.

  Hal was not a great newspaper reader. He took little interest in the affairs of the day. On winter evenings when he came back from the mines all he wanted to do was to sit with Jinny in front of the fire, and listen to her prattle, or laugh with her over the happenings in the counting-house. Therefore when he went one day to Slane, in the early spring of '94, to make purchases for Jinny and the household, and stood before the bar in one of the public-houses and turned over the pages of the Slane and County Advertiser, it was news to him, and something of a shock, to read a long column in the middle page about the large tin deposits in Malay, and the companies that had been formed to work them; and how, in the opinion of the writer, the discoveries would kill the home markets.

  Life was so much a matter of routine these days-the day up at the mines, the keeping of the books, the going home to Jinny and the baby-that the rise and fall of prices had conveyed nothing to him, and when old Griffiths shook his head and spoke gloomily about the future Hal had put it down to the man's natural pessimism, that could see small hope in mining prospects, for either tin or copper. When Hal had read the article, he turned to the financial page to see the current price of tin. It was able84 a ton. It had been able100 six months ago. Yes, old Griffiths had reason to be gloomy. Hal, content and preoccupied with his own home life, had neglected to watch the fluctuations of the trade that gave him his livelihood. He wondered what his father thought about it. That evening, when he returned home, and found his father-in-law, the Rector, seated in the living-room nursing the solemn John-Henry, he asked him if he had read the article in the Slane Advertiser.

  "Yes, Hal, I have," said Tom Callaghan, "and I think the writer of the article speaks sound sense. We shall see some changes before very long."

  "What do you suppose my father will do?"

  "Henry always was a shrewd business man, Hal.

  You may depend upon it he has been watching the Malay business and the drop in price in the last six months. He was one of the first owners to change over from copper to tin, more than fifteen years ago, and the people in Cornwall followed suit, at least those who struck lucky and also had the capital to do so."

  The Rector hesitated, and, Jinny coming in at this moment to bear John-Henry off to bed, he waited until she had left the room, and then looked up at his son-in-law.

  "You haven't heard any rumours, then?"

  "No, Uncle Tom," said Hal. "I never listen to gossip anyway. Rumours of what?"

  "That your father intends selling the mines very shortly?"

  Hal shook his head.

  "It's the first I've heard of it," he said, "but perhaps Griffiths would not say anything to me, out of delicacy. As for the men, they fabricate fresh tales every day. Last week I heard Jim Donovan tell his pal there was gold at the foot of Hungry Hill, and it all belonged to him."

  "Jim Donovan has "folie de grandeur" like others of his family. No, Hal, it's no idle gossip I'm repeating to you. I had a talk with Griffiths after church on Sunday, and he says letters have been coming from across the water, which presumably you haven't seen, from some director of a London company, also letters from your father and from your father's solicitors, and negotiations are in progress."

  Hal lit his pipe, and stirred the fire with his foot.

  "After what I have read today I can't blame him," he s
aid. "My father, I mean. If the price of tin falls much further I suppose it will not pay him to continue working the mines. But what fool of a fellow has he induced to buy them off him?"

  "Speculators," said Uncle Tom, "people who know nothing of the land or the country, and will drive the mine for all they are worth, to get every ounce out of the ground before the crash comes. I'm not a prophet, but that's what will happen, you may depend upon it."

  "It will be queer," said Hal, "to think of the mines no longer belonging to the family. My great-grandfather would turn in his grave."

  "From all I have ever heard of him he would do nothing of the sort," said the Rector. "Copper John was no sentimentalist. He would rub his hands in satisfaction to think that his grandson Henry was getting rid of it all, in the nick of time, with his fortune intact. Not like some of the Cornish families, who have gone bankrupt. No, Hal, you Brodricks don't all run to sentiment and dreams. There are some hard-headed fellows amongst you."

  "It's a pity I'm not one of them," said Hal.

  "I'd have done more for myself, and for Jinny as well."

  A few days later it was all over Doonhaven that Henry Brodrick had sold the mines to a London company. Mr. Griffiths took Hal aside and showed him the letters, and a copy of the agreement.

  "Seventy-four years," said Hal, "and now it's finished. All the tears and the sweat and the foresight and the labour. It's funny, I've never had a lot of feeling about the mines, Mr. Griffiths. I've considered them a blot on the landscape, spoiling the rugged grandeur of Hungry Hill, but now they're to be handed over to strangers I feel resentful. I wish that it didn't have to happen."

  "It won't affect you, Mr. Brodrick. The new company will take over the staff, you know."

  "Yes… That's not quite what I meant, though."

  "Well, your father is a very clever man, that's all I can say," said the manager. "He's made the bargain of a life-time. And you needn't worry.

  You'll reap the benefit of it all one day."

  He doesn't see the point, thought Hal; he doesn't see that the mines were part of the family, like Clonmere. And now one is sold, and the other is barred and shuttered. It's queer. It's the breaking up of things.