by A. J. Cronin
But there was no second cheer. Immediately beyond, by the light of torches, it was seen that the main road ran into a dip or trough which was full of water and impassable.
Dirty, covered with coal dust, wearing no collar and tie, the inspector stared at Jenkins.
‘Oh, my good God!’ he said hopelessly. ‘If only we’d known this before.’
Jenkins remained unmoved.
‘We must expect difficulties. We must blast a new road above the trough.’
There was something so sternly inflexible in the manager’s words that even the inspector was impressed.
‘My God!’ he said, exhausted to the verge of collapse. ‘That’s the spirit. Come on, then, and we’ll blast your blasted roof.’
They began to blast the roof, to blast down the iron-hard whinstone into the water so that the trough might be filled and a road established above water level. A compressor was brought down to supply the drills; the finest diamond drill bores were used. The work was killing. It proceeded in darkness, dust, sweat, and the fumes of high explosive. It proceeded in a sort of insane frenzy. Only Jenkins remained calm. He was there, the motive, the directing force. For a full eighteen further hours he did not leave the Penygroes Shaft. Yet he ordered the others to take some rest.
Emergency cots and blankets had been brought into the long ‘lamp-room’ in the pit yard, and here, with the inspector and other officials, I stretched out and got six hours’ sleep. Fresh from this respite, the inspector pleaded with Jenkins to knock off.
‘Take some sleep, for God’s sake. You’re killing yourself.’
But the manager shook his head. All that day, and the next, he snatched only an odd half-hour on his office couch.
The whinstone blasting was proving incredibly difficult, an almost insuperable task. As the hours moved on, with only the slowest progress, insensibly hope began to fade. Nothing was said, but the expressions of the rescuers reflected a growing desperation.
On the evening of the third day, Jenkins told me to spell off for the night. As I passed through Pengelly on my way home the streets were deserted, every door closed, not a single child at play. Many of the shops were shuttered. A still agony lay upon the terraces, the stillness of despair. From opposite ends of the street two women approached. They were friends. They passed each other with averted faces. Not a word. Silence: even their footsteps silenced by the snow. Within the houses the same silence. In the houses of the entombed men the breakfast things were laid out upon the table in preparation for their return. It was the tradition. Even at night the blinds remained undrawn.
I returned to the pit early next morning. They had lowered the water level in the main shaft – not the Penygroes shaft – sufficiently to allow divers to descend. The divers had to contend with a maximum head of eighteen feet of water in the levels. In spite of this they fought their way along the levels as far as the fall. They made an arduous, exhaustive search. No one knew better than they how useless their search would be. All that the divers found was thirty-eight drowned bodies.
The divers came back. They reported the absence of any living soul. They reported that at least another month would be required to de-water the levels completely. Then they started to bring out the bodies: the drowned men, roped together, dangling out of the mine into the brightness of the day they did not see, laid silently on stretchers, and given to their womenfolk in that snow-trodden yard.
Everything now was concentrated on the approach by Penygroes. Yet any hope that remained seemed forlorn. It was fully realised that the men unaccounted for might never have reached the waste. Moreover, eight days had now elapsed since the date of the disaster, and it was a slender chance that these men might still be alive. Nevertheless, in a fresh frenzy of endeavour, efforts above the trough were redoubled. The rescuers spurted, strained every nerve. Six days after blasting was begun the last charge was fired, they broke through and regained the old main roadway beyond the trough. Exhausted but jubilant, the rescuers pressed forward. They were met, sixty paces due west, by a complete fall of whinstone roof. They drew up hopelessly.
‘Oh, my God!’ the inspector moaned. ‘There might be a half mile of this. We’ll never reach them, never. This is the end at last.’ Utterly spent, he leaned against the whinstone rock and buried his face in his arm.
‘We must go on,’ Jenkins said with sudden loudness, and a note of hysteria in his voice. ‘We must go on.’
At that moment, when all seemed lost, a faint, unearthly sound was heard in that unfathomable darkness, an almost ghostly tapping: TA, TA … TA, TA … TA, TA, TA, TAP, like a weak tattoo beat out upon a tribal drum.
‘For God’s sake, listen…! Can’t you hear it…? The jowling.’
Jowling is the name given to that method of signifying one’s position by striking the rock face with a hammer – many men have been saved by jowling their rescuers towards them. Everyone stood stock-still, with straining ears. Feebly, wearily, as though by one long since exhausted, the tapping was repeated.
‘By God, you’re right,’ cried the inspector. ‘They’re there… close to us… just through the rock. They hear us.’
‘Stand back, behind there,’ shouted Jenkins through cupped hands.
A final wild blaze of effort, then, with a rending crash of whinstone, we were through, through to the imprisoned men.
There they lay, huddled together, with their backs against the branch wall, silent and spectral forms, clothed by their own comradeship, a few guttered-out pit candles at their feet.
But they were alive, every man of them; yes, the boy was alive as well, crying softly to himself as we came forward.
‘They were all too weak to stir themselves, nor would I permit them to be moved until I had administered to each one a pint of strong bouillon laced with brandy, glucose solution, and a hypodermic of strychnine.
‘They’ll recover, Doctor?’ Jenkins asked anxiously.
‘Yes … every one of them.’
Slowly, carefully, we brought them out. News of the rescue had preceded us and as we came forth to the surface there arose in a great volume of sound, soberly, yet spontaneously, swelling to the sky from the huge congregation assembled on the troubled wasteland of the Common, that favourite hymn, ‘ O God, our help in ages past.’
It was a moment of emotion that rent the heart, a sight I shall never forget. Yet through it all, the triumph of achievement, the gladness of reunion, one could not forget these thirty-eight coffins, ranged in the hall of Emmanuel Chapel, not a hundred yards along the street. The mass funeral was held the day before we left. Tredegar. I attended it. A sad leave-taking of the valleys of South Wales. Yet it brought home to me, who from custom had perhaps grown heedless and indifferent, the endless hazards faced by these brave men.
Years later, in a famous London club, a plump, pink-cheeked habitué, having finished an excellent dinner and a pint of burgundy, was standing, newspaper in hand, his back to a glowing fire, holding forth to a little coterie on the damnable iniquity of the current miners’ strike.
‘Another sixpence an hour,’ he complained. There’s no satisfying these cursed blighters. What the devil do they want?’
‘Only the right to live!’ I interposed mildly.
I was a new member at the time and should certainly have held my tongue. Instead, I told of this disaster, and of these thirty-eight ‘cursed blighters’ who had no further need of those extra six pennies an hour which their comrades had dared to claim.
Part Three
Chapter Twenty
London in springtime: could anything be more fascinating, more enchanting for two people who had never before been there in that delicious season? Against the azure sky the outline of the city – shops, houses, churches, towers, and temples alike, crowned majestically by the dome of St Paul’s – stood clear and glittering in the balmy air. The Thames, sparkling in the sunshine, glided beneath its graceful bridges. In Kensington Gardens, where well-dressed children trotted beside proud, bestr
eamered nannies, the lilacs and pink chestnuts were blooming around the statue of Peter Pan. On the Serpentine, pleasure boats splashed and circled. Throughout the West End, in Piccadilly, Bond Street, and May-fair, overstuffed with the loot of cities, with gold and silver, jewels and precious ornaments, with silks and costly stuffs, exotic fruits and flowers, the fashionable throng paraded elegantly. The windows of the most exclusive clubs, fronting St James’s, were filled with loungers, ogling the pretty women, toying with the finest coronas, betting thousands of pounds on Good wood, Ascot, and the turn of a card – egad! The King, God bless him, was in residence; they were changing the guard at Buckingham Palace, changing money in the Bank of England, changing their winter underwear for fabric of a finer weave. Soon, in the warm dusk, open landau letters would purr softly towards the smart restaurants, bearing to the ballet, to the opera, to all the theatres, dark handsome gentlemen in evening dress, with lustrous ladies in low-cut gowns. And we, yes, we were part of all this gorgeous, this glittering parade… Was it not truly wonderful!
In the third floor back of a seedy Fullham Road boarding-house, facing the gasworks and the blank brick wall of the local Tube station, my wife and I exchanged a ghastly smile. Surrounded by cheap luggage, by a little of clothing and soiled baby’s napkins, plunged in despair at our vain attempts to find a practice and deafened by the yells of our first-born, we were endeavouring to heat his evening ‘bottle’ on a methylated spirit stove. Never was there an infant so contrary at feeding time, so allergic to any but one variety of food … bread. He adored the product of the baker and would bury his toothless gums on the driest crust, with the drooling voracity of an aged cannibal battening upon the choicer cuts of roast missionary. Good sweet milk, however, he abhorred – the very sight of it drew from him ear-splitting protests.
At last, after many straggles, he was fed, tucked into his portable cot, and, with the help, of his thumb, asleep. And his mother and I, facing each other over an impromptu meal of sardines and biscuits, laid out on a suitcase covered with newspaper, discussed our situation in subdued whispers.
‘If this goes on,’ I brooded, ‘we’ll be selling matches in the streets.’
For six weeks now, while our small capital dwindled, we had been seeking a suitable practice which we might purchase in this great city, something which would give us a foothold on the ladder of success. It was not, as we had so optimistically fancied, an easy task. True, the various agencies which specialize in the transfer of medical ‘goodwill’ supplied us freely with fulsome particulars of practices for sale. We would set out together with high hopes to view the prospect. But after five minutes’ conversation in a shabby waiting-room, my spirits would fall, and, making an excuse, I would quickly get away.
‘Another dud,’ I would grunt. ‘His books are cooked, his surgery was empty, and did you smell his breath?’
We had never imagined that there were so many alcoholic or broken-down doctors in London, or so few houses that were not dingy and damp, with cavernous basements and attics like mousetraps. Naturally, it would have been different had we been in a position to disburse thousands of pounds for a high-class connection with a fine Queen Anne house in Wimpole Street. But, alas, our limited means made our choice a restricted one.
The week before we had thought ourselves fortunate in finding a charming little house and practice in Chelsea. The doctor was charming too, an agreeable, if rather silent, gentleman with quite the Harley Street manner, and the price he asked was absurdly low. I was about to leap joyfully at the opportunity when a streak of native caution caused me to take the long journey to Tailstock Square and make inquiries at the Medical Association headquarters. I returned to my wife with a pale face.
‘My God, what an escape! Our charming friend comes up on trial next month for criminal abortion. All his patients have left him! He’s certain to be struck off. And may get penal servitude as well!’
Small wonder, then, that I had now begun to be acutely anxious. And it was with an air of gloomy skepticism that I took from my pocket the latest communication from the agents and handed it to my wife.
‘This came in at noon. It doesn’t match up to our rosy dreams. But if you can believe him, it seems promising enough.’
An elderly practitioner, Dr Herbert Tanner, who had the excellent F.R.C.S. degree, wished to retire. His practice was in Bayswater, a rather run-down quarter given over to boarding-houses, but very near the best residential districts in town. At one time the income had been considerable, but, owing to the incumbent’s advancing years, it had lately somewhat fallen off. The doctor’s residence was included in the sale.
We went there early next morning. The house was a rather severe terraced dwelling painted battleship grey, but occupying a corner lot, on a bus route – and excellent site for attracting casual patients – and, although narrow and old-fashioned, it had not too many stairs. We approved of Dr Tanner, too – he seemed, like his practice, honest and sound.
Unfortunately, the price asked by the good doctor, while a very fair one, proved more than double the amount of our small capital, scraped together with great difficulty during the previous four years. Our hearts sank. Now that we seemed fated to miss this opportunity, it took on new attractions.
‘Nothing like it will come into the market for months,’ I groaned, at my wits’ end, as we took the bus back to our lodging. ‘You know the junk we’ve been looking at Oh, if only we had that extra cash.’
Unlike the best heroines of romantic fiction, my wife had no jewels to sell, and at all her consoling suggestions, in my state of tension, I snapped her head off. How forbearingly, then, as ever, did she suffer my irritation! And finally she brought out what was, in truth, a far more sensible plan than anything I could have conceived.
‘Why don’t you go down and explain our position – make a clean breast of it to Dr Tanner. Say that, if he gives us time, we’ll pay him everything.’
I glared at her and at our unfortunate infant, whom she was holding on her knee and endeavoring to nourish with a bowl of pap, which, naturally, he was dribbling all over his face. Then suddenly my expression altered, as though all at once I saw her as a wise wife and a beautiful mother, fondling the most priceless babe in the world.
‘I believe you’re right.’ I took my hat and went out.
Herbert Tanner was something of a character – a doctor of the old school, a gaunt, clean-shaven, ruddy man of seventy, with a thatch of white hair and bushy white eyebrows above rather fierce eyes. He spoke his mind to his patients, stood no nonsense from anyone, and had once fought a husky cabby outside the surgery for ill-treating his horse. It appeared a stiff job to ask a favour from such a man.
Yet it proved amazingly easy. Dr Tanner had taken a liking to us – or perhaps we flattered ourselves and it was merely pity! He found in me some resemblance to his only son, also a doctor, who had been tragically killed in action in the war. In answer to my stammered explanations he remarked quite simply that he was prepared to trust us. He would accept our amount down and the balance could be paid quarterly out of receipts.
When I told my wife the news, she wanted to rush out and fall on the old man’s neck. There are good people in the world,’ she exclaimed. This one kind action, this chance freely and generously offered to us, held more inherent goodness than all the fine words and phrases, more than all the sermons we had ever heard.
Within a month the transfer was completed, Dr Tanner had moved out to a rural retreat in the Cotsworlds, and we, with palpitating hearts, had moved in.
‘It’s all or nothing now,’ I barked, as I lay flat on the floor tacking down the consulting-room carpet. ‘We’ve staked everything. We’ve got to succeed or we’re finished.’
It is my defect to feel things intensely and express them perhaps too forcibly, yet at that moment the new sense of responsibility, of strain and impending struggle, which suddenly supplanted our earlier jubilation, thoroughly justified my remark. We had put down every penny we poss
essed, our house was only half furnished; in brief, our very survival depended upon our ability to make good.
At first no patients came at all, and we began to wonder fearfully if the old doctor’s clientele intended to repudiate us utterly. Then, towards the end of the third day, the surgery bell rang. Sitting biting my nails, in a new swivel chair (not yet paid for), I jumped up as if I had been shot and bolted towards the door. Half an hour later I returned to my wife, pale but triumphant, and gloatingly displayed three shillings and sixpence in my perspiring palm.
‘My first London fee.’ My voice actually shook as I transferred to her the pitiful yet momentous coins. I added ravenously, ‘Go out like a good lass and get some chops. And bring a loaf of brown bread for the brat.’
For months the uphill struggle continued. Winter came, and I had never known one so desperately cold. On our lovely Trademark uplands we had revelled in the deep snow and thrilled to the clear arctic blue of the burnished sky. Here there was sleet, slush, and poisonous yellow London fog, which penetrated everywhere, making one cough continually, piercing the marrow of one’s bones. Our water pipes froze, then burst, flooding the basement, turning the kitchen into a swamp.
My wife had no help whatsoever, did all the housework and the cooking, attended to our son, admitted whatever patients came to the house, even made up the medicines and stock solutions required. Often the endless stairs from basement to attic got the better of her, and she would pause, her hand to her side, and gasp out something in language picked up from me and, alas, far, far removed from those prayerful invocations with which she had once thought she might convert the heathen.
If only it hadn’t been so cold, so beastly, so damnably cold! Except for a gas fire in the consulting-room, we used no heating in the house at all Going to bed at night, we dressed up in all our warmest clothes, as though for a polar expedition; then, for the look of things, put our pyjamas on top.
