The Miner's Wife

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The Miner's Wife Page 2

by Diane Allen


  Even the cows knew better than to try their luck and rebel as Meg switched the stick around them, urging them into the cowshed, where she tied them up and gave them something to eat. She pulled up the stool and placed her head on their flanks, as she gently pulled on their teats and started to fill the metal bucket with creamy fresh milk. She drew comfort from the smell of the hay and cows, a smell that she had grown up with. She rested her head on the old roan-coloured shorthorn and started to cry as she watched her bucket fill. She knew she was lucky; she knew she was loved, especially by her mother. But she wanted more than to spend her life milking cows on the farm. Her tears fell down her face and she wiped them away with the back of her hand as she breathed in deeply, concentrating on the job in hand. She would do more than simply stay at home and be happy with her lot, of that she was sure; she’d make her way in the world and leave the farm behind.

  2

  ‘Here, you’ve forgotten your bait.’ Betty Alderson passed her eldest son, Jack, his lunch box and stood at the small cottage door, as he took it from her hands and then made his way up the stony track, following in his brother Sam’s footsteps to work at the lead-mines. She stood leaning against the doorframe and watched as both her sons disappeared up the brant hillside, to where she could hear work had already started. The sound of iron against stone echoed around the dale, as the ore from the earth was hammered and melted down, ready to be transported down the dale to its final destination.

  She sighed heavily as she looked around her at the grand view along Swaledale and the promise of another fine day; it was a shame that every day was swathed in a cloud of worry. It was like the cloud of dirt that hung about the smelting mill where Sam worked, along with tens of others along the fellsides, filtering in and out of her thoughts all day, finding her forever worrying whether she would see both lads home safely; or would she have a neighbour rushing to tell her news of one of them being maimed or, even worse, dead? Every day she went through the same ritual of worrying as she watched her lads go to work – the same work that had taken her Bill away from her and had left her a widow, with two young lads to bring up on her own.

  She’d never forget the day she’d watched her husband being carried down the fellside on a stretcher, his body broken, his clothes torn and his face so black she hadn’t been able to recognize him. She remembered the scream she had let out, as the miners – some of them close friends – placed Bill on the kitchen table, and the look on her two sons’ faces as they realized they no longer had a father. She never would forget the look in those innocent blue eyes of Jack and Sam as they cried and tried to make sense of why their father had left them. Why, of all the men down that pit in Arkendale, had Bill to be the one to check why the charge had not exploded, when he knew that he had a wife and two sons waiting for him at home? Still, that had been her man: always ready to help others and support folk, never thinking of himself or, on this occasion, his family.

  Robert Jacques, one of the owners of the CB mine that Bill had worked for, who lived in his grand house nearby, had not even given her the time of day when she had pleaded with him to let them stay in their cottage, but had seen her and her boys homeless after the funeral. If it had not been for the fact that her two boys had secured jobs with the Owd Gang – one looking after the pit ponies, and the other turning the ‘windy king’ – they would have had no money; and no home, if they had not initially been given a dwelling that had been left abandoned for something better by its last inhabitants. Betty would always remember looking around at the wattle-and-daub walls and at the ling thatch that acted as a roof, and wondering just how low she would get before giving in and asking for places in the poorhouse. But she was a proud woman and, one way or another, she had made her way in the world, taking in washing and even helping to sift through the spoil heaps that covered the fellsides for any lost ore to sell, no matter what the weather. With that, along with the ninepence a day that both boys brought home, they had survived.

  With both boys now men, and with them all settled in a decent house once more, life was starting to look better, as long as the mine kept going; and God forbid that there were no accidents within it. Both her boys were handsome young men, full of life, and she knew her Bill would be proud of them being in reasonable jobs, especially Jack at the smelting mill. They had always been there for her, teasing her and cheering her along when they could see she was down, and making sure that if there was nothing to eat in the house, then a fish or rabbit would appear. They were her lads and always would be, if she had her way, Betty thought, as she started to make the bread for the day.

  ‘Here, tomorrow’s Sunday, our Jack. We could make a bob or two helping locals with the hay, seeing as we won’t be at the mine. The farmers are always busy and looking out for somebody. And I don’t know about you, but I could do with an extra bit of brass. It’ll be Reeth Bartle Fair before long, and I wouldn’t mind going.’ Sam walked backwards up the incline of the fell, looking at his brother and waiting for a reply.

  ‘Just think about what you’ve said, numpty! It’s Sunday: nobody works on a farm around here on a Sunday. They go to church or chapel and pray to the Lord to keep the weather fine until the following day. Sometimes you worry me; if you had brains, you’d be lethal.’ Jack strode past his younger brother and laughed to himself. Sam was always conjuring up some plan in that empty head of his, and they always came to nothing.

  ‘I know, but there must be one of ’em that isn’t bothered whether he goes to hell or not, for the sake of getting his hay in dry. We’ve to find that one. Or I know, why don’t we borrow a pit pony and go over to the next dale and try our luck at asking Meg Oversby’s father if he wants a hand? You know you are dying to see her as much as I am, and it would be an excuse to see Meg, even if he did tell us where to go.’ Sam pulled on Jack’s jacket, stopping him in his tracks just before they reached the entrance to the mine, which was abuzz with miners, ponies, tubs of ore and folk shouting at the tops of their voices as the day’s work began. Hammers driven by water-wheels clanged up and down, breaking stones in search of the ore, and the noise echoed around the fellsides.

  ‘I’ll see. Now, you get to work, and mind yourself with them explosives.’ Jack knew that his brother thought nothing of carrying the alarming combination of matches, candles, gunpowder and tobacco for his clay pipe in his pocket – a combination that he warned Sam about every morning, and every morning he ignored his concerns. ‘Keep safe and I’ll give some thought to what you say.’ Jack watched as his brother made his way over the tramlines along which the tubs, full or empty, ran into the mine’s dark mouth.

  ‘Ah, I got you, with the mention of Megan. I know your answer already. But it’s me she loves, not you. You’ll have to fight me for her,’ Sam shouted back, and grinned as he saw the look on his brother’s face.

  ‘The trouble with you is that you are all gob. Get below in the dark place where you belong,’ Jack yelled back.

  ‘Better than burning in the fires, like you will today at that furnace of yours, dear brother.’

  ‘You’ll both have nowt to grin about, if I put a boot up both your arses.’ Albert Calvert, the blacksmith from Gunnerside, who had left his son in charge of his business in the village and was now building a new water-wheel to drive something called a compressor, shouted at them both. ‘You lads are not worth a penny in wages, and I’ll tell Sir George Denys, when next I see him.’

  ‘Bollocks! Tell him what you want; he never shows his face here, and wouldn’t ken us from Adam.’ Sam smiled as he entered the darkness of the mine, lighting the partly melted candle on his wide-brimmed felt hat to give him some illumination. Sir George Denys might own the mines, but he’d not know any of his workers if he fell over them – and that included the gob-shite of a blacksmith, with his fancy water-wheel to be housed in its own little engine house. It would never do the work of men, ever, Sam thought, even though Sir George had great faith in the new invention. He’d told the men gathered around his
plan that it was a compressor driven by air and powered by water from the fellside, which would soon obliterate the main pit face, making it faster to get to the precious ore and doing the same work of at least six men with picks and shovels. Sam would believe it when he saw it, but until then he’d no time for the cocky blacksmith who thought he knew everything, when really he knew nowt.

  Sam made his way down the length of the mine, his candle flickering as it hit pockets of dank air. He listened to the constant drip of running water coming through the centuries-old rock and felt the wetness as he gazed into the darkness, or stepped to one side as a tub full of waste or ore was driven past him. Down here he knew every piece of stone, every rock; he’d been down this tunnel since he was ten years old. And now he was starting on the new Sir Francis level with his fellow workmate, working in six-hourly shifts five days a week, mining nearly two hundred feet deep to get to the galena that would lead to a better life for everyone.

  He passed the young lad who was operating the windy king; he was sitting in the darkness all by himself, giving the miners ventilation at the end of the mine. That had been Sam’s first job and he remembered how frightened he had been, sitting in the pitch-black peering into the darkness and hoping for the fleeting illumination of a miner’s candle to come and shed light just for a second or two, when his candle had burned down and he hadn’t been able to afford another one from the tool shop. The tool shop that he still had to buy his candles from, and have use of its picks and spades, both of which were weighed monthly, to be charged for the amount of steel lost through constant usage. Sir George definitely knew how to make money out of his miners.

  ‘Alright, lad?’ Sam patted the ten-year-old on his head and then went on his way when the lad looked up at him with a black face and nodded. Poor little bugger, Sam thought, he should be out in the sunshine; you were six foot under soon enough, especially in this work.

  The tunnel inclined upwards to enable drainage, and so that the pit ponies had to make less effort with full tubs from the pit face, and Sam made his way to the face of the mine, where he could hear his partner already picking and drilling at the rock, with a pit pony and tub waiting patiently for the removed ore.

  ‘Now then, Sam, so you’ve decided to join me. I thought you might have run off with some fair-game floozy and given this up for a living.’ Robert Winn laughed and then carried on drilling at the rock that was falling around his feet. He’d heard Sam brag that many times about how many women and young girls he’d either slept with or made do as he wished, over the years they had worked together.

  ‘Oh, aye, and you’ll have been dining with Sir George himself, I suppose, this weekend? You’ve only come back because you’ve missed me, haven’t you?’ Sam picked up his shovel and started to fill the tub with the loose stone.

  ‘If that’s what tha wants to think, then you think it. But I’d rather be in bed with my old lass than looking at your ugly face.’ Robert exchanged his drill for a pick, then swung it at the pit face, making a fresh fall of rock around his feet. ‘I tell you what: I think it’s going to be a bloody long while before we hit this new seam. The old bugger might need his newfangled machine.’

  ‘Na, not with thee and me on the job; we are all he needs – me and thee and old Ned here, who never buckles, no matter what his load.’ Sam tousled the mane and ears of the fell-bred pit pony as he carried on loading the tub. He wished he was looking at the face of Meg Oversby, instead of Robert’s face and the pony’s backside. But beggars could not be choosers, and he needed the money if he was to get on in life.

  ‘Well, we’ll see. This new seam that he thinks is here is taking some finding, and what’s going out now is not worth our pay, let alone anyone else’s.’ Robert wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘I just hope he’s right and that this new seam is a big one when we hit it, else it’s going to be a hard winter for all us poor buggers.’

  Sam said nothing and kept loading the tub. If he could think of another way of making a living, he would; but at this moment there was nowhere else to go, and he had his mother to support. Tomorrow was Sunday; he’d think of that and try to brighten his gloom, and perhaps, with a bit of luck, he might catch a glimpse of Meg; and, even better, persuade her to meet him alone.

  Jack walked across the fellside to where the smelting house stood, nodding and touching his cap as he passed the men called the dressers – the poor souls who worked outside, exposed to the elements in all weathers as they hand-processed the ore from the stone, large pieces of ore going direct to be smelted, while rock was washed and pounded by the bouse-teams into small pieces until any lead was exposed. This was back-breaking work and Jack was thankful that although he fried in summer at the smelting house, at least he was not sodden and frozen all winter. His main problem was the foul, heavy fumes that stuck to his lungs and made him short of breath of a morning, when he climbed up the fell to work.

  The black smoke from the furnace was already drifting along the hillside, and the air was filled with the acrid smell of molten metal as he stopped to look around him. Swaledale and Arkendale had been taken over by industry, and water-wheels, mines and the tall chimneys of the smelting houses covered the fellsides, together with the criss-cross pattern of tramlines for the lead-tubs to run along. But most telling was where the fell and hillsides had been washed away by what all miners knew as a ‘hush’. This was where water had been dammed up and held back, then suddenly released down the fellside to expose any lead-veins near the surface. This had been done in both dales and had left considerable scarring on the high fellsides. No doubt nature would reclaim it and regrow the spoilt topsoil, but at present the surrounding fells looked raped of their beauty – and all because of the lead that lay beneath them.

  Lead-mining was a way of life on the fellsides now, but down in the lush green valley lay the farms with their fields full of golden buttercups, ready to be mown. That was where Jack longed to be: a holder of his own farm, nurturing the land, not ravaging it for what he could get out of it. But land cost money and he had even bigger dreams, which involved sailing to America, where land was nearly given away by the government. So every penny he earned had been saved for his trip, and the smelting house was his life for now and he’d have to be content with that. He sighed as he put a brick of peat into the wheelbarrow that was standing empty, next to a stack of dark, earthy peat from the moor to keep the smelting-house fires burning. He could dream, but for now he had ore to melt and ingots known as ‘pieces’ to be made, if he wanted there to be bread on the table for the three of them tonight.

  One day he would have his own farm; he didn’t know how, but he would.

  3

  ‘I only hope this weather holds.’ Tom Oversby looked up to the heavens and thought about his two hay fields with their grass mown, smelling sweet and dry and ready to be taken into the barn the following day. ‘There’s a wind getting up. Perhaps I should harness Blossom and get the hay in before it changes. But my father never worked on a Sunday and I have always vowed it to be day of rest, just like him.’ He turned from standing in the porch of Beck Side and sat down at the dinner table.

  ‘I don’t know why you stand on ceremony on a Sunday; it isn’t as if you ever go to church,’ Agnes exclaimed, with a tea towel in both hands holding a tray of Yorkshire puddings, as she placed the scalding-hot tin on the table, before putting a pudding on each of the dinner plates that were already filled with roast beef, potatoes and fresh peas straight from the garden. ‘I never get a day off, and you’d soon be moaning if Meg and I decided not to cook dinner.’

  ‘I find my God up the fell, woman, as well you know. And you women were put on this earth to look after us men, and well you know that, too – Sunday or no Sunday.’ Tom stabbed his Yorkshire pudding and looked across at Meg, who couldn’t repress a sound of contempt for her father’s views on womenfolk. ‘Aye, and you can hold your noise. I’ll have none of your lip while I’m eating my dinner.’

  ‘I never said owt, Fathe
r. If you want a hand getting the hay in, I’ll help you after dinner. It would be better got in than lying out wet, if it does rain.’ Meg looked at her brooding father.

  ‘We’ll see. With a bit of luck, it will keep fine. Folk would only talk if they saw me leading in on a Sunday. And you’d be worth nowt anyway.’ Tom put his head down and set about eating his dinner.

  Meg looked across at her mother and said nothing, but inside she was seething. She never would be worth anything in her father’s eyes, so his bloody hay could get wet, for all she cared. Trouble was, it would be at a cost to the farm and the farm animals, and that would affect every one of them come winter, when the only source of feed for the livestock was some fusty, bad hay. ‘The meat’s good, Mother. I think there will be just enough for another boiling of peas on the plants outside in the garden, and then we will have to wait for the second row that I planted.’

  ‘You and that garden – you’ve definitely inherited your grandfather’s green fingers. He’d be proud of you, if he could see what you’ve done with his little plot. Have you looked at it lately, Tom? We’ll want for nothing, this back-end. She’s planted cabbage, turnips, beetroot and cauliflowers and the onions are already huge, and there’s no better taste than these newly dug potatoes.’ Agnes smiled at her daughter; she deserved some praise, because when she wasn’t helping out around the farm, she was spending time in the square of garden that her grandfather had always planted behind the house. It was there, as soon as Meg had been able to walk, that she had helped him nurture plants and grow vegetables for the house.

 

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