Demelza

by Winston Graham

  A silence fell on the company. It was not that the engine had never stopped before: it was halted monthly for the boilers to be cleaned, and there had been any number of breakdowns. But the silence was heavy with the knowledge of what it brought.

  With an impulse foreign to himself, Francis took up a piece of chalk and on the side of the boiler chalked the word resurgam.

  Then they filed out of the house.

  Over at the Sawle end of the mine the smaller engine “Kitty” was still chattering and thumping. Captain Henshawe raised his hand. The signal was seen, and Kitty thumped and muttered herself into silence.

  All that was left was the water pump, but it used no fuel and needed little attention, so it was allowed to go on.

  The last shift of the tut-workers had been told to come up at twelve, and as the group of men walked slowly toward the offices the miners were appearing in twos and threes at the mouth of the engine shaft, carrying up their picks and shovels and drills for the last time.

  A mixed company, they formed a long slow caterpillar to file past the purser and take their last wages. Bearded or clean-shaven, young or middle-aged, mostly small and pallid, wiry and uncouth, sweat-stained and mineral-stained, grave-eyed and silent, they took their shillings and made their “marks” of receipt in the cost book.

  Francis stood there behind the purser, exchanging a word with one or another of the men, until they were all paid. Then he shook hands with Captain Henshawe and walked home alone to Trenwith.

  The engineers had gone back to their engines to go over them and decide what could be dismantled and sold for scrap, the purser was adding up his books, and the manager and the grass captain began a wide tour of the buildings to take final account of what stock was left. Henshawe changed into old clothes and a miner’s hat and went down to make a last inspection.

  With easy familiarity he climbed down the shaft to the forty-fathom level, and there stepped off into the tunnel in the direction of the richer of the two bearing lodes, the “sixty” level.

  After walking about a quarter of a mile, he began to drop with the tunnel, picking his way past mounds of dead ground and climbing down ladders and across slippery slopes through mazes of timber used to shore up the roof and sides. He plowed through water and at length heard the steady pick, pick and bang, bang, bang of men still at work.

  There were about twenty tributers left. If they could mine a few more shillings’ worth it would all add up on their accounts sheet with the company and would help in the struggle with poverty that would soon begin.

  Zacky Martin was there, and Paul Daniel and Jacka Carter, Jim’s young brother, and Pally Rogers. They were all stripped to the waist and sweating, for the temperature was hotter than the hottest summer’s day.

  “Well, boys,” said Henshawe. “I thought I’d come tell you that Big Bill and Kitty have stopped.”

  Pally Rogers looked up and wiped an arm across his great black beard.

  “We reckoned ’twas about time.”

  “I thought I’d tell you,” Henshawe said, “just to let you know.”

  Zacky said, “We should have a few days. There’s been no weight of rain.”

  “I shouldn’t bank on too much. She’s always been a wet mine. And how will you get the stuff up?”

  “By the east shaft. The Curnow brothers are keeping the horse whim going. Well have to haul it as best we can to there.”

  Henshawe left them and went on as far as he could until he reached the flooded eighty-fathom level. Then he turned and went back, found his way through more water to the poorer west lode, and made sure that nothing of value had been left. A few rusty tools, a clay pipe, a broken barrow.

  It was two o’clock by the time he came up. The unnatural silence greeted him all around. Kitty still steamed a little in the quiet. A few men were pottering about the sheds, and about twenty women were out washing clothes in the hot water from the engine.

  Henshawe walked into the changing shed to put on his own clothes, and saw a half dozen men gathering at the shaft head. He thought of shouting, and then realized that it was the relieving men going down to take over work from their partners. He shrugged his shoulders and turned away. Tributers were a hardy breed.

  • • •

  By eight the following evening, the water had risen, but the lode was still untouched. Mark Daniel sent one of the others up to tell those who would come down and relieve them.

  Up above it was a ghostly night, dark and gossamer-damp, marking the silence and emptiness of the mine buildings. Usually there were dozens in the changing sheds, lights in the engine houses, the engineers to pass a word with, all the reassurance of companionship. But there was no heat, no talk except the exchange of a muttered word among themselves, no light except from two lanterns.

  They blew them out after lighting their candles and stolidly took to the ladders: Nick Vigus and Fred Martin and John and Joe Nanfan and Ed Bartle and sixteen others.

  By four in the morning, some of the lode was covered. They were working in water, and there were deep lakes in low-lying parts of the plot behind them. There was, however, a ledge around, and at a push they could still get away by the east shaft. Nick Vigus went up ahead to tell the newcomers the situation. There was a consultation, and Zacky Martin and the others decided to go down, for there was a chance of a few hours more.

  At seven a fall of stone and rubble into one of the pools brought them to a halt. They spent another hour tugging away a few last buckets of ore up the side of the tunnel until they could attach it to a rope and get it pulled along the back of an exhausted lode to the east shaft. Then they climbed up a few feet and sat and watched the water lapping around the long black cavern that had been their working home for months past.

  One by one they picked their way out, through the old workings and out of the mine.

  Zacky Martin was the last to leave. He sat on the edge of the underground shaft and lit his pipe and stared down at the water, which rose so quietly that it hardly seemed to rise at all. He sat there nearly an hour, smoking and rubbing his chin and occasionally spitting, his eyes under their candle thoughtful and steady.

  It might be weeks yet before there was a full house of water, but already the “sixty” was gone. And that was the best.

  He came to his feet, sighed, and began to pick his path in the wake of the others, past deserted windlasses, broken ladders, pieces of timber, and piles of rubble. It was a honeycomb, the upper part, a crazy twisting and turning with tunnels going off in every direction, most of them blind, where earlier miners had driven in search of fresh ore. There were underground shafts to trap the unwary and great hollow caves with dripping roofs.

  Eventually he came out at the main shaft at the “thirty” level. Pick and shovel over one shoulder, he began to climb up it for the last time, taking it in slow, steady stages from platform to platform, as became an old-timer. The quietude struck him again.

  He reached the surface and found that the November day, hardly breaking when he went down, had fallen into a wet mist. It covered the countryside in a blanket, and only near things were clear.

  Everybody had gone home. The Curnow brothers had stopped the water pump, and the ore they had raised those two days was dumped in heaps beside the east shaft. It would have to be accounted later, but nobody had the heart to begin it. Even the fat, familiar figure of the purser was not to be seen.

  After resting a minute or two, Zacky picked up his shovel and pick again and turned to go home. As he did so he saw Paul Daniel waiting by the engine house.

  “I thought I’d make sartin you was out,” Paul said, rather apologetic as Zacky reached him. “You was a long time after the rest of us.”

  “Yes,” said Zacky. “Just had a last look around.”

  They walked off together toward Mellin.

  And then the mine was quite deserted and alone in
the mist. And the silence of its inactivity and the silence of the windless misty day was like a pall on the countryside. No rough boot jarred upon the old paved way between the office and the changing shed. No voice called from the engine house or shouted a joke across the shaft. No women clustered about the engine to get hot water for their clothes. No bal maidens or spallers talked and chattered on the washing floors. All was in place, but nothing stirred. Grambler existed but no longer lived. And in its vitals the water was very slowly filling up the holes and the burrowings of two hundred years.

  The mine was still and the day was still and no man moved. Only somewhere up in the mist a seagull was abroad, and crying, crying, crying.

  Book Two

  Chapter Sixteen

  On Friday, April the third, 1789, a ticketing took place in the upstairs dining room of the Red Lion Inn. The low-paneled room was already set out for the customary dinner that was to follow.

  There were about thirty men, grouped in chairs around an oblong table raised on a wooden dais by the window. Eight of the men represented eight copper companies. The others were managers or pursers of the mines offering the ore. As was the custom, the chair was taken by the manager of the mine who had the largest parcel to offer, and that day, it fell upon Richard Tonkin.

  He sat at the middle of the table, with the ticket offers in heaps before him and flanked by a representative of the miners and the smelters. The faces of the men were grave and there was little of the good-humored raillery of prosperous times. Copper—the refined product—was fetching fifty-seven pounds a ton.

  As the clock struck one, Tonkin got up and cleared his throat.

  “The auction is open, gentlemen. There are no further offerings? Very good. I have first to dispose of a dole of ore from Wheal Busy.”

  With the two men beside him to supervise he opened the first lot of tickets and entered the bids in a ledger. One or two men shuffled their feet and the purser of Wheal Busy took out his notebook expectantly.

  After a few moments, Tonkin looked up.

  “Wheal Busy ore is sold to the Carnmore Copper Company for six pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence a ton.”

  There was a moment’s silence. One or two men looked around. Ross saw an agent frown and another whisper.

  Tonkin went on. “Tresavean. Sixty tons.”

  He opened the second box. There was another consultation as the figures were written in the ledger.

  Tonkin cleared his throat. “Tresavean ore is sold to the Carnmore Copper Company for six pounds seven shillings a ton.”

  Mr. Blight of the South Wales Copper Smelting Company got up.

  “What name did you say, Mr. Tonkin?”

  “Tresavean.”

  “No. The name of the buyers.”

  “Carnmore Copper Company.”

  “Oh,” Blight said, hesitated, then sat down.

  Tonkin picked up his list again, and for a few minutes the auction went on as before.

  “Wheal Leisure,” Tonkin said. “Parcel of red copper. Forty-five tons.”

  The man on Tonkin’s right leaned across to look at the bids.

  “Wheal Leisure ore is sold to the Carnmore Copper Company for eight pounds two shillings a ton.”

  Several men looked at Ross. Ross looked at the end of his riding crop and smoothed down a piece of frayed leather. Outside in the yard they could hear an ostler swearing at a horse.

  There was some talk at the table before Tonkin read out the next name. But he had his way and went on, “United Mines. Three doles of ore. Fifty tons in each.”

  Entries in the ledger.

  “United Mines,” said Tonkin. “First parcel to Carnmore at seven pounds one shilling a ton. Second parcel to Carnmore at six pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence. Third parcel to the South Wales Smelting Company at five pounds nine shillings and ninepence.”

  Blight was on his feet again, his raddled little face sharp under its wig, like a terrier that has been shown the bait once too often.

  “Sir, I dislike to intervene. But may I say that I do not know of the existence of any such smelting company as the Carnmore?”

  “Oh,” said Tonkin. “I am assured it exists.”

  “How long has it existed?” asked another man.

  “That I could not say.”

  “What proof have you of its bona fides?”

  “That,” said Tonkin, “will very soon be put to the proof.”

  “Not until next month when payment is due,” said Blight. “Then you may find yourselves with all these parcels of ore still on your hands.”

  “Aye! Or collected unpaid for.”

  Tonkin stood up again. “I think, gentlemen, we may ignore the last danger. Personally I do not see that as mining agents we can afford to offend a newcomer among our clients by—by casting doubts on his good faith. There have been newcomers in the field before. We have always taken them on their merits and have not been disappointed. It is not five years since we first welcomed the South Wales Copper Smelting Company among us, and that firm has become one of our largest buyers.”

  “At starvation prices,” said someone sotto voce.

  Blight was on his feet again. “We came into the field, I may remind Mr. Tonkin, vouched for by two other companies and with a guarantee from Warleggan’s Bank. Who is standing guarantee here?”

  There was no answer.

  “Who is their agent?” demanded Blight. “You must have had contact with someone. If he is here, let him declare himself.”

  There was silence.

  “Ah,” said Blight, “as I thought. If—”

  “I’m the agent,” said someone behind him. He turned and stared at a small, roughly dressed man in the corner by the window. He had blue-gray eyes, freckles across the bridge of a large, intelligent nose, a humorous mouth and chin. He wore his own hair, which was reddish-gone-gray and cut short after the fashion of a working man.

  Blight looked him up and down. He saw that he had to deal with a person in an inferior class.

  “What is your name, my man?”

  “Martin.”

  “And your business here?”

  “Agent for the Carnmore Copper Company.”

  “I have never heard of it.”

  “Well, that’s a surprise to me. Chairman up there’s been talking of nothing else since one o’clock.”

  One of the copper agents beside Tonkin rose.

  “What is your purpose, sir, in bidding for this great quantity of copper?”

  “Same as yours, sir,” said Zacky respectfully. “To smelt it and sell it in the open market.”

  “I take it you are the agent for a—a newly formed company.”

  “That’s so.”

  “Who are your employers? Who finances you?”

  “The Carnmore Copper Company.”

  “Yes, but that’s a name,” said Blight. “Who are the men who make up and control this company? Then we shall know where we stand.”

  Zacky Martin fingered his cap. “I think ’tis for they to choose whether to give out their names or no. I’m but their agent—same as you—making bids on their behalf—same as you—buying copper for ’em to smelt—same as you.”

  Harry Blewett could sit by no longer. “Do we yet know the names of the shareholders of the South Wales Smelting Company, Blight?”

  Blight blinked at him a moment. “Are you behind this scheme, Blewett?”

  “No, answer your own question first!” shouted another manager.

  Blight turned on him. “You know well that we came in fully vouched for by friends. ’Tisn’t our reputation that’s in question, and—”

  “Nor neither is it theirs! Let ’em default, and then you can talk!”

  Tonkin rapped on the table. “Gentlemen, gentlemen. This is no way to behave…”

 
Blight said, “When was the samples taken, Tonkin? Not when all the other agents went around. There must be collusion in this. There was no stranger among us when any of the sampling was done.”

  “I mistook the day,” Zacky said. “I come around the day after and was kindly allowed the opportunity to sample them by myself. ’Twas no benefit to the mines.”

  “That’s not fair doing, Mr. Tonkin. There’s some sort of collusion in this—”

  “Fair enough,” said Aukett, squinting horribly in his excitement. “What’s there amiss in it? No collusion such as might be set at the door of certain interests I could mention—”

  “Who are you—”

  “Now, look ’ee here,” said Zacky Martin, in a quiet voice that gradually made itself heard because everyone wanted to listen. “Look ’ee here, Mister Blight. And you other gentlemen too that seem a shade set about by me and my doings. I’ve no mind to be awkward or to put a stave in anyone’s wheel, see? I want everything amiable and aboveground. Me and my friends is thinkin’ of starting a little smelting works of our own, see, and we did think to buy up some o’ the copper today just to lay in a little store handy-like.”

  “Smelting works? Where?”

  “But we didn’t think to set the other companies by the ears—far from it. That’s not our way. And if so be as we’ve bought more’n our share today—well, I reckon I’ll take it on myself to sell back a parcel or two to any of you other companies that are disposed to buy it. In a friendly fashion as the saying goes; no bones broke or harm meant. At the price I give today. No profit wanted. I’ll be at the next ticketing and buy more then.”

  Ross saw Blight’s expression change. One of the other brokers began to speak, but Blight interrupted him.

  “So that’s the game, eh? More than ever this stinks of arrangement. A pretty scheme, eh, to hoist the prices and put the legitimate dealers in a false box. No, my man, you and your friends—and I doubt not there’s some here today—will have to think of another contrivance to catch us old hands. Keep your ore and take it to your new smelting works and pay for it at the end of the month, else, you’ll have all the mine managers whining to you before ten o’clock of the following day!”