Under World

by Reginald Hill

  They drank tea and ate some cake, a plentiful supply of which existed after all. Ellie and May Farr made polite and not too obtrusively stilted conversation and the young man relapsed into a watchful silence which he finally broke by announcing he still had some work to do on his motorbike.

  ‘You’re not bringing bits into my kitchen, said his mother emphatically. ‘There was more oil there than in the Persian Gulf yesterday.’

  ‘No, Mam,’ said Colin Farr long-sufferingly, and went out.

  Ellie viewed his departure with some surprise. Why was she being left alone with this woman? Why had Farr brought her here in the first place?

  She caught May Farr’s eye and they exchanged polite smiles and she realized that much the same thoughts must be going through the older woman’s mind.

  She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. In every sense it was time she was gone.

  ‘I really must be on my way,’ she said, wondering as often before why one was conditioned to sound apologetic about something which could only be a mighty relief to the hearer. ‘A friend’s looking after my daughter and I reckon that she’ll have been driven to breaking-point by now.’

  ‘You’ve got a girl? How old is she?’

  Ellie told her and saw May Farr deduct Rose’s stated age from her own estimated one.

  ‘Just the one, is it? So far, I mean.’

  ‘That’s right. And you? The same?’

  ‘Aye. Just Colin. So far.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …’ but Ellie’s confusion faded as she saw the woman was laughing at, and with, her.

  ‘What’s your husband do, Mrs Pascoe?’ May Farr now asked with that uncomplicated because perfectly natural curiosity which was typical of Yorkshire.

  Ellie hesitated. She had consciously avoided any reference to Peter’s profession when taking her class, fearful that their discussions on questions of Law and Order might be inhibited or even distorted. But she had never had to speak the lie direct.

  Now she heard herself saying vaguely, ‘Oh, a boring office job, files and form-filling, the usual thing,’ and feeling surprisingly treacherous.

  ‘Is that your husband?’ she asked as a (she hoped) not too obvious diversion, indicating a framed photograph standing next to the clock. It was a snapshot, slightly out of focus, of a thin man with wind-tousled hair against the background of an unruly sea. He was looking straight into the camera with shadowed, introspective eyes and just enough of a twist to the lips to suggest he had been instructed to smile.

  ‘Billy never cared to have his picture took,’ said May Farr. ‘I’ve not got above four photos of him taken since we were wed.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t look as if he was enjoying the experience,’ said Ellie.

  ‘He never found it easy to enjoy himself, Billy,’ continued the widow, half to herself. ‘He always seemed, I don’t know, suspicious of happiness. Even before his accident.’

  Ellie said, ‘Accident?’

  She’d heard of only one accident, the fatal one. Clearly May Farr wasn’t referring to that.

  ‘When he did his leg in. Didn’t Colin mention it?’

  ‘No. The mine, was it?’

  ‘What else?’ said the woman bitterly. ‘His leg were crushed. They did wonders on it at the hospital by all accounts but it still left him hardly able to bend his knee. But you don’t want to hear this, Mrs Pascoe. You’ve got to get back to your kiddie.’

  ‘A few more minutes won’t hurt,’ said Ellie. ‘She’s in good hands.’

  May Farr hesitated. Why does she want to talk to me about her husband at all? wondered Ellie. Someone outside her own tight little community, perhaps? Shit! There I go again, patronizing. She’s probably got friends here at least as understanding, loving and trustworthy as mine.

  Then it came to her. It wasn’t Billy Farr the woman wanted to talk about, it was Colin. The teacher role hadn’t completely reassured her. She saw an older, married woman, perhaps moving out of her class for a bit of rough, and felt that some kind of warning-off was needed.

  And was it? Ellie was distracted from this outrageous line of thought by May Farr’s resumption.

  ‘They gave Billy a job on top,’ she said. ‘He didn’t say much, he never did. It were always hard to know what were going on inside Billy. Colin’s the same. You can never be certain. Never.’

  There it was, the first warning.

  ‘He felt it, I could see that, ending up on top at his time. Not just the money, but his old workmates. Oh, he felt it. Then Colin jacked it in, the pit I mean. Said he wanted to go to sea. I don’t know where he got the idea from. I never wanted him to go down pit in first place and there were no need. He wasn’t stupid at school, could have done anything. But like I said, there’s never any knowing with our Colin and there’s even less telling. Once he decides something, it’s wasted breath trying to get him to change.’

  Second warning. Ellie said, ‘But you must’ve been glad he was out of the pit. Both of them in fact.’

  ‘Glad? Aye, part of me was, at first anyway. But you don’t get owt for nowt in this world, especially not happiness, Mrs Pascoe. Price I paid for having them out of pit was Colin not coming home except once in a blue moon, and Billy sitting quiet as a cat staring into the fire or wandering off by himself with Jacko, that were his little terrier. I never knew what he were thinking, Colin neither. They both had dark hidden places inside of them, Mrs Pascoe. Not bad, I’m not saying bad, but dark. Mebbe if you work down the pit a bit of it gets inside you after a while.’

  Third warning. Why not cut the cackle and say that Col was mad, bad, and dangerous to know?

  The door opened and the young man in question appeared looking none of these things. Indeed, with tousled hair and an oil stain on his cheek, he looked about sixteen.

  ‘Mam, here’s Wendy,’ he announced.

  A painfully thin young woman entered wearing baggy jeans and a loose knit sweater which emphasized her skinniness. Her eyes were almost feverishly bright and she was smoking a cigarette which the yellowness of her fingers suggested was neither the first nor the last of the day.

  ‘Didn’t know you were entertaining, May,’ she said, looking at Ellie with open curiosity.

  ‘This is Mrs Pascoe, she runs the course at the college that our Colin goes to. This is Wendy Walker. She runs our Women’s Group.’

  ‘The Strike Support Group? The Women Against Pit Closures?’ said Ellie.

  ‘Aye, that’s what we are now. It’s us the University should be spending its time on, not these lads.’

  ‘Yes. How many are in your group?’ asked Ellie, irritated with herself. For some reason she’d never even considered the possibility that May Farr might be a member of the Support Group. She’d fallen into the old chauvinist trap of defining her solely in terms of her relationship with men: the grieving widow, the protective mother.

  ‘Twenty at best, more like ten what you might call hardcore,’ said Wendy.

  ‘You may have met a friend of mine who’s done some work with the Groups. Thelma Lacewing.’

  ‘Thel?’ Wendy’s mouth widened into a nicotinous grin. ‘You a mate of Thel’s? She were all right. She’s got a grand throwing arm!’

  Colin reappeared accompanied by a tall, gangling man with a not unattractively long face, like a sad sheepdog’s. He was clasping a carrier bag out of which smiled the fullmoon face of a cauliflower.

  ‘Here’s Arthur,’ he said. ‘You ready for off?’

  It was clearly Ellie’s dismissal. She rose swiftly before May Farr could protest at her son’s rudeness and said, ‘I must dash. Look, I’ve really enjoyed meeting you. Thanks for the tea. I hope we can meet again some time. You too, er …’

  ‘Wendy. Give my best to Thel. Next time she comes, get her to bring you. It’s always good to make contact with the outside world!’

  The thin woman’s tone was both friendly and mocking.

  Outside Ellie said, ‘You didn’t introduce me to your friend
.’

  ‘Friend? Oh, him. He’s no friend of mine. Arthur Downey. Bloody deputy. He were my dad’s best friend once. He’s been sniffing around Mam ever since Dad died. He looks just like a bloody great lanky hound, doesn’t he? Luckily she’s got more sense. Good job someone in our family has.’

  They were at the car. To her surprise he opened the door and got in the passenger seat.

  ‘I’m sorry, Col, but I’ve really got to rush.’

  ‘That’s all right. Drop me along the road somewhere. I could do with a good walk. Get the taste of that sodding hole out of my lungs.’

  She started up the car and set off.

  ‘Do you really hate the pit that much?’ she asked.

  He laughed harshly and said, ‘Bloody right I do. There’s precious few as loves it, that’s for sure. But I always hated it, hated it and feared it from a kid.’

  ‘Then why did you go down?’ she asked.

  ‘Not much else to do round here,’ he said.

  ‘Come on,’ said Ellie. ‘Your mam said you were pretty bright at school.’

  ‘You have been having a right cosy chat, haven’t you? Did she get out the photo album and let you see me in my nappies?’

  ‘She loves you and worries about you very much,’ said Ellie quietly. ‘But she didn’t need to tell me you were bright. So what happened? This isn’t the bad old days when there really were no choices.’

  ‘You think not?’ He shrugged. ‘All right. I were bright enough at school to get something better than the pit, everyone reckoned. Not that there was much better round here. Clerking mainly with a lot less money and the chance of being made redundant any day. Oh aye, the big unemployment rush was starting when I did my O-levels. They said, Stay on at school, another two years and then mebbe college. I told ’em to get stuffed. I was sixteen and fed up with being a kid. They said, Be sensible, listen to our clever advice or you’ll end up down pit. I don’t know which were worse, the bloody pit being a threat or an expectation! I got mad and said, If I go down pit it’ll be because that’s what I decide to do, not what you buggers tell me I’ve got to do! And I went off that day and got myself set on.’

  ‘What did your parents say?’

  ‘Mam was furious. She’d not hit me for three or four years but she made my ears ring that day, I tell you. Dad were always a quiet man. He just said, “You’ve made up your mind to go down. See you make up your own mind to come up.” I soon found out what he meant. I hated it and everyone told me I’d not stick it, so I had to stick it, didn’t I? And I did stick it for nigh on three years till my dad had his accident. Did Mam tell you about that? He ended up with a locked knee and one leg shorter than the other. He didn’t get much compensation either. This deputy, Satterthwaite, said the lads had been larking around during their break when it happened. They often do muck about a bit, you’ve got to do something else you’d go mad. But not Dad. He’d just sit there quiet. Downey were there too. He could’ve said something, but he reckoned he was looking the other way. Bastard! He’d just got made up and I suppose he wanted to show Satterthwaite he knew which side his bread were buttered now. So there wasn’t as much compensation as there should have been. Union took it up but they got nowhere as usual. Not that the money bothered Dad too much. It was ending up on pit-top that got to him. He’d been a collier all his life. He had more pit-sense than all the deputies put together. They all used to turn to him for advice. Except Satterthwaite. That’s why the bastard resented Dad so much. For him to end up with a surface job at his age really finished Dad. You could see it in his eyes. All that he knew was useless to him now. It wasn’t just his leg that got shattered, it was his whole picture of himself. That’s when I came up too, when I saw that.’

  He fell silent. Ellie was driving very slowly, not wanting to take the youth too far, not wanting to stop him talking.

  ‘I went and joined the Merchant Navy, don’t ask me why,’ he resumed. ‘I’d never given it any thought before and the nearest I’d ever been to the sea had been a week at Brid one summer. Mebbe it was because I thought it’d be as far away from mining as I could get.’

  ‘And was it?’

  ‘Sometimes. Sometimes it seemed worse. At least at the end of a shift down pit you’re your own man. But yeah, it mainly was a bloody sight better, and it was good having your money saved for you as there was bugger-all to spend it on. Come the end of a trip, you could have a right good time.’

  Ellie tried to imagine what a right good time looked like to Colin Farr. Booze and birds? It seemed more likely than books and Beethoven. Was she being culturalist?

  She said, ‘But you came back?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Because your father died?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And you stayed because of your mother.’

  ‘Aye,’ he repeated, but this time he didn’t sound so sure.

  ‘Did she ask you to stay?’

  ‘No! She wanted me to go off again,’ he exclaimed. ‘She said she’d be fine and the last thing she wanted was to see me back down the pit. But I said no, I’d stay.’

  ‘That was very thoughtful,’ said Ellie.

  ‘No, it wasn’t! It had nowt to do with Mam, or at least not directly,’ burst out Farr. ‘There were stories. About the way Dad died. I overheard a lad saying it were suicide. I half killed the bugger before they got me off. After that most of ’em were a bloody sight more careful. But I knew they’d still be on with their stupid bloody gossip behind my back. And I reckoned the further off I was, the braver they’d get. So I stayed.’

  ‘To protect your mother?’ said Ellie.

  ‘I suppose so. Incidentally. But mainly to show them buggers that I didn’t care. But they better had, if they didn’t want to end up in the gob with a broken jaw.’

  ‘In the gob?’

  ‘The hole left where they’ve taken the coal out of the seam. Don’t you read those bloody essays you make us write?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Sorry. Colin, what’s been going on today?’

  ‘Nowt,’ he said harshly. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, come on!’ said Ellie. ‘Why’d you take me to meet your mother and then leave us together?’

  ‘Mebbe I wanted to give her a chance to discuss your prospects and ask if your intentions were honourable!’ he sneered.

  Containing her anger with difficulty, she brought the car to a halt by the roadside but didn’t switch off the engine.

  ‘It’s been an interesting day, Colin,’ she said very formally. ‘Thank your mam again, will you? And I’ll see you next week.’

  He sat looking gloomily out of the window without speaking. She stole a glance at her watch. Daphne would be in that state of icy politeness which in the privately educated daughters of C of E archdeacons passes for rage.

  ‘Colin …’ she began.

  His reaction was astounding. He turned towards her, placed his right hand on her left shoulder and thrust his left hand with considerable force up her skirt between her legs.

  For a moment simple astonishment excluded outrage. She looked at him, eyes and mouth rounded in a dramatic mask of surprise. His face was very close but he made no effort to kiss her. His hand was pressed hard against the narrow gusset of her panties, but the fingers were still.

  Then outrage came and she hit him, an openhanded slap across the face with as much force as the swing-limiting confines of the Mini permitted.

  Immediately he withdrew his hand, released her shoulder, and turned his head to stare out through the windscreen once more.

  It took another moment for Ellie to regain her powers of speech.

  ‘And what the hell was all that about?’ she demanded.

  ‘Nothing. I thought you might fancy a quick jump,’ he said indifferently.

  ‘Oh no, you didn’t!’ she retorted. ‘Don’t give me that! Even when you were pissed out of your mind in some dockland knocking shop, your approach’d be subtle compared to that!’

  ‘You think s
o?’ he said. ‘All right, you’re the clever one. You tell me what I was after!’

  ‘I don’t know! You were watching me, weren’t you? You just wanted to see what I’d do. You wanted, I don’t know, to shock me, defile me even, is that it?’

  ‘Defile?’ he savoured the word. ‘Sort of sacrilege, you mean? Like gobbing on a crucifix, something like that?’

  He was mocking her and she did not feel in any state to trade verbal blows.

  ‘Get out,’ she said. ‘Just bloody well get out!’

  He climbed out of the car and closed the door gently behind him.

  She set off instantly, accelerating rapidly. She never once glanced in her rear-view mirror for fear of seeing him. But after she had driven half a mile she had to pull into the side of the road once more.

  With awkward tyro movements, she lit a cigarette. She was shaking, she was amazed to discover. She tried to tell herself it was rage, but she knew it was not. It was the aftermath of that moment of sheer nerve-fracturing terror when she had been absolutely certain he was going to rape her.

  ‘Oh, you bastard,’ she said. ‘You cocky little bastard!’

  It was five minutes before the shaking stopped enough for her to drive back to town.

  Chapter 2

  The following Sunday Pascoe drove to a newsagent where he wasn’t known and bought a Challenger. Sitting in his car, he turned with scarcely a pause past the page with the topless blonde and settled down to the first episode proper of Watmough’s memoirs.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said after he finished, and immediately began the unpleasant task of reading the article again.

  It outstripped his expectation in several ways. The language was even more lurid than he’d guessed, details were given of Pickford’s assaults on his victims which had never appeared before, and there were quotes from recent interviews with relatives, plus the revelation (with address) that Pickford’s widow had remarried and gone to live in Essex. These were obviously the work of Monty Boyle, but it all came out under the imprimatur of Neville Watmough.