No Man’s Land. Simon Tolkien
until it was time to go home and catch a few hours’ sleep before beginning again. Adam wondered at his friend’s patience and good humour. If he were in Ernest’s shoes he thought he’d go mad within a week or at least throw a lump of coal at the slave-driving tyrant up above; anything to make him shut up if only for a moment.
‘Not easy, is it?’ said Daniel, who had been looking out for his son and now came up to him, observing the appalled look on his face. ‘But at least the screens are above ground – I suppose there’s that much to be said for them.’
‘Why does he have to shout like that?’ asked Adam, pointing up at the fat man, who was now threatening to dock the screen workers’ wages if they got up to any more of their ‘damned dilly-dallying, playin’ the fool on his lordship’s time’.
‘Because that’s the way he is,’ said Daniel with a smile. ‘Atkins’s bark’s worse than his bite but you’re right – no one likes him much. Except the manager maybe – the cleaner the coal the more money it gets. And make no mistake – money’s what this is all about. Sell the coal to the highest bidder and pay as little as you can to get it out of the ground, which is where I come in, of course – trying to make sure that the men get what they deserve, which isn’t easy when you’re dealing with people who worship profit margins like it’s their religion. Come on. I’ll show you where I work.’
The weighing office was one of a group of mismatched buildings standing at different angles to each other around the base of the headstocks. Through an open door Adam glimpsed the blazing red fire of a blacksmith’s forge and the acrid coal smoke mixed in his nostrils with the tarry, oily smell of the huge steam engine that was powering the headstock pulleys. Close up, the clank of the pistons, the hiss of expelled steam and the general roar of the machine made it hard for Adam to hear what his father was saying, and Daniel had to shout to make himself understood as he described how the tubs of coal came up out of the cage with the collier’s motty tags attached, ready to be weighed.
‘The owner’s man weighs them and then I do the same so the colliers can be sure they’re getting paid properly for the coal they’ve mined,’ said Daniel. ‘It’s a big responsibility but I like that they trust me.’ The pride in his father’s voice gave Adam pleasure. He had refused to buckle in the face of a terrible adversity and now here was his reward. But Adam sensed a new humility in his father too – it was as if suffering had added a new dimension to his personality, taught him that life was precarious and had to be treated carefully.
‘So, are you ready?’ asked Daniel, handing his son a lamp. Adam nodded, swallowing. He was sweating and his hands were shaking so he found it hard to attach the lamp to his belt as his father was doing.
‘You don’t have to do this, you know,’ said Daniel, looking hard at his son.
‘Yes, I do,’ said Adam. He’d used up almost all his stock of bloody-minded determination to get this far and he didn’t think he’d be able to try again if he turned back now. And he needed to be able to look at himself in the mirror without having to turn away – he couldn’t bear to be less than he hoped he was. It was a virtue and a fault that he would carry with him all his life.
‘Where do we light it?’ he asked, pointing at his lamp.
‘We don’t – the overman does that down below. And if it goes out then we have to walk back to the lighting station to get it relit. You can’t have any fire inside the mine – it’s far too dangerous.’
‘Because of the gas?’ Adam asked, shuddering as he remembered Edgar’s account of the two boys trapped by fallen rock after an explosion.
‘Yes. You can’t smell it and you can’t see it, but it’ll explode if it gets near a flame. More miners have lost their lives from gas explosions than roof falls so we have to be careful all the time. Back when I was young miners used to take canaries down – once they stopped singing you knew it was time to go. But now they make the lamps so the light expands when there’s gas about. They’re ingenious these inventors – that’s something I’d like to have been if I’d had the brains,’ Daniel said wistfully.
Adam was grateful to his father for his flow of chatter. Daniel wasn’t talkative by nature and Adam knew that he was trying to keep him distracted from the ordeal ahead. But now there was no escaping it. Wreathed in jets of steam, they had joined a group of miners climbing up the wooden stairs leading to the cage platform; for Adam they were just like the steps going up to a monstrous gallows. He looked up as if expecting to find the noose, but instead saw the spokes of the great wheel flickering in the sunlight as it pulled the cage up to the top of the shaft.
The men inside walked out and the banksman beckoned them inside. Adam hesitated, looking wildly around. Away down below he could see bottles of tea left to warm beside the steam engine that was driving the mechanical screens. At that moment his life felt just as insignificant. He wanted to run back down the steps and up the hill away from the mine, putting it behind him forever, but he couldn’t. He’d come too far to turn back. With a last despairing glance back at the sunlight, he took a deep breath and followed his father inside the cage and closed his eyes.
All around him the men were talking, without a care in the world. He could hear an electric bell ringing somewhere down below and one nearby answering it and then the clang of the gate as it slammed shut, and they were falling, slowly at first and then faster, faster than he would have thought possible. He was going to die – he was sure of it. He felt his stomach lifting up into his mouth and his feet coming up off the floor and someone – it had to be his father – holding him by the back of his collar, and then the brake kicked in and they were down below.
Adam opened his eyes. There was a little light coming down the shaft and he could dimly see the faces of the miners queuing up at the lighting station. He was relieved to see that they paid him no attention – clearly no one except his father had noticed his distress in the cage on the way down. With their lamps lit, the miners walked away down one of the three sloping tunnels that radiated off the maingate, as the central area around the cage was called. Almost immediately they became no more than tiny points of light in the inky blackness before disappearing from view.
It was cold and Adam shivered, unprepared for the sudden change in temperature. The anxious sweat was now freezing on his skin. But he felt better – he’d overcome his fear, proved to himself that he was no coward. His overactive imagination had been the real enemy, he realized: the mine was never going to be as terrible as he’d built it up to be in his mind’s eye.
They went first to the stables, which were still in the main landing area, not far from the cage. Daniel had made friends with the ostler and he took them from stall to stall, describing the merits and demerits of each pony. Some were hard workers; some liked to go on strike, refusing to move if you harnessed them up to too many tubs. And some could give you trouble, britching and kicking if you didn’t get in there first and show them who was boss.
‘Like the one that hurt Rawdon?’ asked Adam.
‘Whalen’s boy? ’Twas ’is fault what ’appened to ’im,’ said the ostler, his face darkening. ‘Ridin’ on the back o’ the pony when ’e shouldna done. That’s how accidents ’appen. An’ then the pony ’ad to be put down when ’e didna need to be. Whalen made sure o’ that, damn him.’
The stables were clean and well kept and the ponies were clearly well looked after, but Adam still felt sorry for them, living their lives in the God-forsaken darkness, hauling coal up and down through the dusty black tunnels until their strength gave out and they were put to merciful sleep. It seemed wrong, not what they had been born for, but that was true of the miners too, although at least they got to leave the pit at the end of the day when their work was done.
‘Do they ever get out, have time up above?’ Adam asked.
‘Aye, they goes up once a year for respite. They ’ave races and the men bet on ’em. They’re good days, they are. But it’s hard to get ’em back down afterward. Needs all thy strength to push ’em into their boxes.’
‘Perhaps it would be better if they