World From Rough Stones

by Malcolm Macdonald

  The navvy who had deserted the horse now reappeared, this time with a boy beside him. Both ran to the tubs and tipped them straight out onto the track. For the first time the horse looked around, surprised at this break in routine.

  Hard behind them came a giant of a man, the ganger. It could only be Lord John. He was naked to the waist and plastered with rock dust, so that he moved and stood like a stone carving brought to life. His skin showed bare only around his eyes and on his brow and along the forearms that had wiped them. He halted, blinking at the lowering sun before he turned east, toward the moor.

  "You! Slen!" he called to a navvy running down from the top.

  "Aye?" The other halted.

  "Where's Gaffer?"

  "Ower Rough Stones, or Todmorden. 'E'll not be back while mornin'."

  "Then go an get 'im. Tell 'im there's a fall o' five 'undred ton or more at yon west driftway."

  "Reet. Any deed?"

  "Pengilly trapped."

  The man called Slen turned and ran with a long, loping stride he could sustain for hours. The horseman and the lad re-hitched the horse to the upline end of the tubs and started for the dark of the tunnel. Lord John searched both banks of the cutting with eyes just grown used to the light. He saw Nora.

  "Wench," he called.

  "Aye?"

  "Can tha run? Art crippled?"

  "I can run."

  "Up bank then to't top o't cuttin. Theer's a farm there, a furlong distant." Nora was already scrambling toward the top. He lifted his voice to follow her. "Beg as many wet sacks as tha can run with. Don't load thissen down."

  "I'll not be gone long." Already she was at the top.

  "Farmer's a sour crab. Tell'm there's men deed and men a-dyin' an we need sacks to cover't gunpowder."

  She kicked off her boots and pounded barefoot along the cattle track to the farm. It led among great banks of spoil, twisting, turning, denying her any distant view. What she at first took to be the farm proved to be an almost completed chapel—a small, eight-windowed building with Wesleyan Providence 1839 carved in plain script over the door head. Of masons or other workmen there was no sign. She turned to the field opposite and at once saw the farmer. He stood with his back to her but glanced about at the sound of her approach. He scanned her quickly up and down, from bare feet to dirty bonnet, before he turned back to his oats.

  "Are you't master?" she asked, gasping for breath.

  "An if I am?" He did not turn but reached a scrawny brown arm for more ears of ripening oat.

  "Praya sir, there's trouble in't tunnel an they're feared for't gunpowder goin' off and can they 'ave some wet sacks?"

  He pulled the oat ears and tumbled their seed into his palm. "They can blow the'selves to Kingdom Come and on to 'Ell, see if I care! An' thee's trepassin'," was all he said.

  "But sir! There's men a-dyin'."

  Ponderously he lifted the seed to his nose and sniffed. "All of 'em I 'ope. Men! They're bloody vermin. I 'ate 'em."

  "But they want aid!" Nora was shocked at his callousness.

  "They shoulda thowt on that last randy—when they tore down my hedges and fired the poultry run."

  "Ah, well," said Nora, searching for a different argument. "'T'int just the men, see. If powder was to blow, it'd take all't browside wi'it. This land o' thine an' all."

  The man threw back his head and laughed, scattering the oats to the wind. "Oh ah! What they got buried then? Liverpool Arsenal? Enough powder to blow th 'illside! Th'art talkin' to a Waterloo gunner, lass."

  "Ye'll not 'elp then?" Still she could not believe it.

  He turned to her and spoke in a different tone. "I'll 'elp thee. Pretty young wench likes o' thee shouldn't lack for 'elp."

  That was when she saw the crucifix around his neck. Without thought she spoke. "I'll tell't priest on thee." And she made to leave.

  "Yer what?" His voice told her she'd struck home.

  "I said I'll tell't priest tha left men deein' when I 'ast thee for 'elp."

  He paused long enough to see that she meant it. "Tha'd best tak three or four. Up in th'yard. Ask fer Tom. Tell'm what tha wants."

  She was running before he had finished. Mawrode Farm said a notice on the gate, decorated at each end with a crucifix. Tom, old and spiritless, took her to a rat-infested shed built lean-to big cow shippen. She snatched the top three sacks off the pile and turned—only to face the farmer, blocking the door. He grabbed them from her and held them for inspection, one by one. Two, almost whole, he threw back on the pile. The third, well tattered, he gave back to her.

  "Two more like yon, Tom," he instructed.

  Exasperated at his slowness, she joined the old man in his search. Dust of hemp, dried mud, and rat dung danced in the air. The papist farmer's hands circled her waist.

  "Piss off," she said, hammering down on his left wrist. He laughed.

  She and the old man found two more tattered sacks simultaneously. She snatched them and ran, rolling them about the one she already had. At the gate she paused only to soak them at a stone trough half filled with hot green water. Living things in it nudged her fingers.

  Tom, without a glance at her, returned to scraping the yard with his wooden shovel. The farmer watched her all the way out of sight.

  Soaked from bosom to ankle with sticky water squeezed from the rotting sacks, she slithered and slipped down the bank to the rock of the cutting wall, where the makeshift ladder led down to the track bed. As she reached the permanent way the horseman and tubbing came clattering out, laden again.

  "'E sent us fer wet sacks," she said, hoping the man would take them.

  "Tak 'em in," he nodded at the tunnel. "Fire's oot but they might still want it."

  "Me! In there!"

  He began to tip the first tub. "I canna," he said. "Don't linger. 'Tis bad luck, a wench in a drift. Stop where th' rail stops."

  Unwilling, she set off into the gloom. In a curious way it grew light ahead of her as she walked, so that pitch black had turned paler by the time she reached it. A dusty, mineral smell grew stronger as she followed the long left-hand curve. Soon the wide brick vault of the mouth gave way to the cramped tunnel of the drift itself. Here she caught the first sounds of iron shovels scraping on the rock. It was feverish, with none of that measured rhythm of navvies on a twelve-hour stint.

  The warm sacking grew dank and chill in the gloom. The best place to walk was on the continuous course of stone beneath the rails. She was surprised that light still filtered this deep into the tunnel, for the entrance was long out of sight around the curve. The frenzied shovelling was now close at hand, so close that she wondered whether or not they were at work in the dark. The dust caught at her throat and made her cough. There was also a reek of wet, charred wood.

  She was almost at the fall before she saw the candles. The swirl of the dust brought them into and out of visibility. She could not see the men she heard so clearly; but from time to time, a black shape darted between the lights and her.

  "Eyoop!"

  Lord John stepped toward her from the dark. He held a shaded oil lamp where its light fell upon her.

  "I've gotten yon sacks," she shouted over the din.

  "Grand," he called. "Feel before thee with thy foot."

  She slid her foot along the rail. It came up hard against a low wall of stone.

  "T'end o't line," he said. "Stop there."

  She edged to one side, to find the debris-littered rock of the tunnel invert. Now her eyes began to make out faint detail. Her tongue had grown claggy with dust, and the grit crunched between her teeth. She could see that most of the men were working at one part of the fall, for they were in a kind of cavern, much larger than the driftway she had come in by.

  Suddenly, amid the broken shuttering and the tumbled rock she saw an arm, then part of a naked body. Both were the same grayish ochre as the rock. It moved. She gave a little cry. Two of the men stopped their digging and stared in her direction.

  By chance the injured ma
n rolled over. Blood was running from his nose. He moaned. One of the men staring at her returned to the task of digging him out. The other began to walk toward her.

  Lord John tugged at the sacks. "Over 'ere," he said.

  "'Oo let a bloody wench in't drift?" the approaching navvy asked.

  Lord John, ignoring him, held forth a guiding hand. "Can tha see, lass?" he asked.

  "Fookin' wench. No right in a drift."

  "You—Visick!" Lord John spoke without looking at him "There's Pengilly there trapped. So less o' thy bloody gassin'."

  "'Tis ill luck." He hunched his shoulders and lurched forward.

  Still Lord John ignored him. "We've 'ad today's ill luck see tha. Get Pengilly out afore 'e croaks." He turned as he led Nora to the opposite end of the cavern and added as a slight placation: "She stopped afore't line."

  Visick argued no further.

  "They's nobbut three," Nora said, wondering now if it was any use at all. "'E were tight as a packorse girth yon 'usband."

  "Three'll do. Lay 'em on't barrels. That's gunpowder i' them barrels."

  "Eee," she said. The thought of that vast power so close by was daunting. Her eyes were now well adapted to the dark and she could make out fine detail—not just where she was looking but all around. She could see a pile of burned shuttering, now a sodden mass of wet charcoal, perilously near the explosive. Lord John arranged the sacks.

  "So," he said. "Safe! Aye—tha'd best steam back out sharp like. There'd be trouble if tha stayed. Wait for us by…"

  "Trouble now," Nora interrupted.

  Visick had come up to them again. "If she stops, we're out. Down fookin' tools 'n out."

  "She's already goin' ye ignorant friggin fugitive. Lass!"

  She turned. "Aye?"

  "See thee by't tunnel mouth. Not be long while we're done 'ere."

  "'Appen."

  Unseen by her, he smiled at the suggestion that she might not wait.

  Chapter 4

  The sun was well down by the time they emerged. As daylight and fresh air hit them, they hacked and coughed and spat the grit from their throats. Lord John was among the last to come out, leading the stretcher party. Dust shrouded the unconscious man, unstained by fresh bleeding.

  Now that John stood close by her, and in daylight, he seemed unreal. She knew she was tall for a girl, but he towered at least a foot above her. And his body was like a tree trunk. Such men, she thought, had vanished with her infancy. She wondered what he really looked like under all that dust.

  "Eee, sorry lass!" he said. "It took a blue month." He cleared his throat and spat a shimmering gobbet high into the evening sunlight. It landed on the shoulder of a navvy, who wiped it absently, without looking round. "Eay! Yer chest gets fair closed up wi't dust. What's tha name?" His eyes appraised her; she could tell he fancied what he saw.

  "What dost mean?"

  "What they call thee?"

  "Oh. Nora. Nora Telling. Tha'rt Lord John, I know. Why'd they call thee Lord?"

  He heard the tremble in her voice. "Tha'rt didderin wi't cold! Soaked to't buff. I should of known. Should of thowt. Breeze can be brim if tha'rt wet."

  They walked again when the stretcher party had gone by.

  "Aye," she said. "It's what they call a Robin Hood breeze. It were warm while't sun went be'ind yon bank."

  "Cuttin!" he corrected her. "Not bank. We did that. None o' nature's work. Well—thou come along of us an' dry. I daresay a good 'elpin of beef'll warm thee, eh?"

  "Beef!" For her it was a distant memory.

  "Aye. When'd tha last eat?"

  "I 'ad a shive of bread an a latherick o' bacon yesterday noon."

  "Well—tha'rt wi't navvy in folk now. Tha'llt get a bite to eat, an' warmth. An' beer. An' company. An' a shakedown."

  He walked tall, with a patrician confidence. No man's my master, was his air. Just to be beside him was a kind of warmth; and though she had eaten so little, she felt a new vigour as she matched him stride for stride.

  It was exciting, too, to walk among these men. They were like an army of prizefighters: well fed, well boozed, and fearless. With their sinews of iron, they had punched that great hole in the mountain behind. Then she remembered the one who had complained at her being in the drift.

  "Won't they mind?" she asked.

  As he wondered what she meant, his eyes roved without stealth over the wet clothes that clung to her. "Mind?"

  The apathy in his voice and the frankness of his inspection warmed her. She liked the thought that this man wanted her. That hasty scrabble back in the graveyard with what-they-call-him had, she now realized, done nothing for her. She shivered with pleasure at the notion of passing the night with this Lord John.

  "'Im yonder." She nodded at Visick.

  "Oh—'im what threatened blue murder in't drift! Nay! There's fifteen men 'ere mebbe owe thee their lives this neet. They'll not mind. Where's tha boots?"

  "I kicked 'em off up on't brow. Got shut on 'em. They was done."

  "Mebbe 'is'll fit thee," he nodded toward the stretcher. "Them Cornishmen is all little."

  "Is 'e dead?" she asked.

  "Nay. Lost a leg. Dead drunk that's all. That's what kept us that long. Couldn't find 'is leg. There's two men still lookin'. 'Appen 'is boots'll fit thee. If they find it. It'll be a week or two while 'e needs boots I fancy."

  "Poor bugger," she said. "All that blood."

  "They got more blood than what we 'ave. Cornishmen. All that fish. Ever see a man from Hull bleed?"

  She hadn't.

  "They got a lot o' blood an all. Same thing. I sent for't surgeon. If 'e'll come."

  They were almost clear of the cutting now. The gangs were thinning out as men in ones and twos stopped off at makeshift homes beside the line. Some were rough shelters of heaped boughs and tarpaulin; some were stouter huts of dry stone and turf. A few navvies had made pitched roofs of kyanised sleepers borrowed from the pile at the mouth of the cutting. In the breezeless evening, wet greenstick smoke rose from a dozen fires. Women stood alone by their hovels or in subdued groups, watching the stretcher party go by. Even the children were momentarily hushed. Only the babies cried on, heedless. She smelled meat—beef, mutton, boiling bones. Her flesh suddenly craved and she weakened at the knees.

  John spoke again. "'Ow did'st badger yon sacks from 'im up there? Yon farmer. Tight as a nun's arse, 'e is."

  "Aye!" she agreed. Already it seemed an age ago. "'E weren't goin' to give us owt. I told 'im th'ole brow'd blow up under 'im, but 'e jus laughed."

  John laughed too. "Aye, tha were fetchin' it far there."

  "Then I saw as 'e 'ad a cross round 'is neck, so I thowt as 'e might be a papist. Cross on a chain it were. So I told 'im I'd go an' tell 'is priest 'bout 'im leavin' men dee as was in peril o' their lives an' askin' 'elp. So then 'e give us't sacks. Even then 'e sought through forty to pick out't worst—them as was all rovven an' tore."

  John stopped and stared at her, as if he searched for something caught in her eyes. "Thou said that to 'im!"

  "What?"

  "'Bout goin' to't priest?"

  "Aye. Why? I'd of gone an' all."

  "Well—tha'rt a gel of real calibre, Nora."

  The way he said it made her proud. Her father had always said of his loom that it was "of real calibre." But, because it might appear that she was putting on airs to admit to such understanding, she said, "Oh aye. We used to 'ave one o' them but me sister went an' give it to't ragman."

  He ignored this deviation. "I take off my 'at. There's not many now with such spirit. Talkin to a gaffer like that."

  "Gaffer?" She had never thought of the farmer as a gaffer. "'E were nobbut a 'usband, ill-thriven farmer. Ignorant as thee an' me. I've spoken to thy gaffer, though."

  "Mine?"

  "Aye—Mr. Walter Thornton. 'E saw us agate this workin o' thine."

  John laughed. "Thornton! 'E's no gaffer o' mine. Railway engineer. Company servant. I'll tell thee, Nora…" He paused.

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