Читать книгу No Man’s Land - Simon Tolkien - Страница 14

At first Adam was alone as he walked down the street from Edgar’s house, but by the time he reached the station he had become part of a crowd of miners all heading the same way towards the valley bottom with their snap tins and drinking flasks dangling from their hands. The rising sun was shining on their backs and they seemed happy and carefree: laughing, smoking, jostling each other – a sea of cloth caps moving towards the headstocks whose wheels were running fast now, hauling the cages up and down the shafts. The men’s mood increased Adam’s sense of isolation – none of them could imagine the dread he was feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had to force himself to go on, placing one foot in front of the other.

Further down the road, they started to meet miners coming the other way, returning home from the night shift. They were black with coal, blinking bleary eyes in the sunlight as they shuffled wearily along. And now the road became a path, winding its way through a grey barren waste ground littered with the detritus of the mine – discarded feed sacks for the ponies, broken coal tubs and timber props, pieces of rusting machinery whose purpose Adam couldn’t determine. Railway lines snaked here and there with the main line running on towards the screens area where Ernest worked.

Adam could see him with a group of other boys and men, standing on either side of a wide belt of moving coal, their hands in a constant flurry of motion as they pulled out stones and rubbish and threw them aside, although not fast enough to satisfy a corpulent red-faced man in a low round-crowned black hat who was standing on a gantry above the screens, shouting at the workers below, berating them for being too slow or too careless with a stream of profanity that never seemed to end.

It looked like terrible work, Adam thought. As fast as they worked, the coal kept on coming, tipped down a series of chutes on to the sorting belts by tippler machines. On and on, hour after hour, 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 didn’t know,’ said Adam pensively.

‘Know what?’

‘About the sun and the wind and the rain. Then they wouldn’t miss them.’

‘O’ course they don’t miss ’em. They’re ponies, for Chrissake,’ said the ostler, sounding irritated. ‘He’s a contrary lad, thy boy, ain’t ’e?’ he added, turning to Daniel.

‘That he is, Joe. That he is,’ said Daniel, affecting a false jocularity that jarred on Adam. ‘But he doesn’t mean any harm, do you, Adam?’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Adam uneasily. He was sorry that he’d got on the wrong side of the ostler, who seemed a good man, genuinely concerned for the welfare of the animals in his care. It wasn’t the first time since he’d come to Scarsdale, Adam realized, that he’d put people’s backs up just by being himself. His different voice, his book learning as they called it, made people suspicious of him or even dislike him – like Rawdon, who’d wasted no time becoming his sworn enemy for no reason at all except the spurious one that their fathers had been rivals for the same job. Adam wondered where Rawdon was now – he’d be working somewhere in the mine and Adam hoped that their paths wouldn’t cross. He didn’t want Rawdon to see him when he felt at such a disadvantage.

‘Where’s Edgar working?’ Daniel asked the ostler, changing the subject.

‘In Oakwell,’ said the ostler. ‘Same as before. ’E doesna stop carpin’ about it, but ’e’s earnin’ good money. There’s good coal in there still even if you has to work hard to get it out.’

‘All right, Oakwell it is,’ said Daniel. ‘Thanks for showing my boy around, Joe.’

The ostler nodded, but without looking at Adam. He was clearly still disgruntled by Adam’s contrariness, but there was no time for Adam to attempt any further apology as Daniel had already set off along one of the wide tunnels that led down into the mine.

‘What’s Oakwell?’ Adam asked, catching him up.

‘One of the districts.’

‘Districts?’

‘Yes; they’re the different seams in the mine. There are three active ones in the Scarsdale pit as well as several more that have been exhausted, and they call them after football grounds. Oakwell’s where Barnsley play. I’m surprised you haven’t found that out yet. People round here are mad about football.’

‘I know, Dad. I’ve been playing it, remember?’

‘Yes, I do and I’m pleased you are,’ said Daniel warmly. ‘It’ll help you make friends, get accepted. I know it’s not easy—’ He broke off, but Adam knew what his father had been going to say and he was right – it wasn’t easy living in Scarsdale and not being a miner.

It was much darker now than it had been back in the whitewashed stables: pitch-black outside the pools of light cast by their lamps. But the tunnel was still far less daunting than Adam had anticipated. A succession of curving steel supports holding up the roof gave him a sense of security and the generous height and width of the roadway were enough to keep his claustrophobia at bay. But it was still a ghostly place – water dripped continuously from a pipe running along the crown of the roof down into puddles on the ground in which Adam caught faint reflections of himself and his father in the lamplight.

The tunnel was empty except for two roadmen hard at work repairing the narrow railway that ran down the centre, constructed on top of wooden sleepers bolted together with fishplates. The noise of their claw hammers echoed off the walls – a clanging percussion that broke off suddenly when they got up and moved quickly to the sides of the roadway. Adam and Daniel followed suit, ducking into one of the manhole niches that were built at regular intervals along the sides of the tunnel. A pony was coming up the slope hauling a line of coal tubs each full to the brim and marked with the iron motty tags that Daniel had told his son about earlier. As it came abreast of where they were standing, Adam saw that the pony had a rider. Rawdon was lying flat on the animal’s back, his hands on its black ears, his head turned sideways in their direction. He caught Adam’s eye as he passed and smiled – a cold contemptuous smile that made Adam feel that Rawdon had seen right through him and felt the toxic fear that he was working so hard to keep under control.

‘The boy’s an idiot – that’s how he hurt himself before,’ said Daniel, looking back at the train of tubs as it rounded a corner in the tunnel, its wheels rattling on the rails. ‘His father would be furious if he knew.’

‘Will you tell him?’ asked Adam.

‘No, Whalen wouldn’t want to hear it from me,’ said Daniel, shaking his head. ‘And anyway today’s about you, not Rawdon Dawes. We don’t need to get distracted.’

‘About you’ – once again Adam wondered why his father had been so quick to grant his request to see the mine. What was it he was hoping to achieve?

He wanted to follow his father’s advice and put Rawdon’s sudden apparition out of his mind, but it was hard – the encounter seemed like an ill omen, coming so soon on the heels of his wish that their paths shouldn’t cross.

And it didn’t help his peace of mind that the ceiling was getting lower now as they went further down into the mine so that they had begun to have to bend their necks forward as they walked to avoid hitting their heads on the overhead struts. Adam wasn’t used to walking in a crouch and his back started to ache, but still his father pressed on.

And it was getting hotter too, so hot that Adam took off his shirt to better feel the soft breeze that the mine’s ventilation system was blowing down the tunnel behind them. But even with the ventilation, he was starting to find it harder to breathe – the air was thick with dust and the stale sulphurous smell of the black powder used to blast the coal from the seam. Low stalls led off passages from the main tunnel in which Adam caught glimpses of miners working. They were down on their knees, stripped to the waist like him, and their torsos, black with coal dust and sweat, gleamed in the light from their lamps. On all sides there was a constant noise of hammering and hewing and breaking.

Adam felt his senses being overwhelmed as if by a raging tide. He wanted to scream out loud, but he doubted his father would have heard as he had hurried on ahead, looking for Edgar. All the time the tunnel was narrowing and the roof was getting lower. It was supported on timber props now, which left it sagging in places.

And then, just as Adam felt he had come to the limits of his endurance, just as he had decided to tell his father that he could go no further, Daniel stopped, standing at the entrance to a stall from which Adam could hear familiar voices coming.

Looking over his father’s shoulder, Adam could see Edgar and his older son, Thomas, lying on their sides working at the face. Edgar was using a mandrel, a straight-bladed pick, to hack the coal from the seam and Thomas was shovelling it back into a waiting tub. Their lamps and most of their clothes were hanging from nails hammered into the wall and they both were naked apart from their underwear, boots and padded caps. Adam felt embarrassed, out of place. He wished he hadn’t come and hung back behind his father, hoping that Edgar would not see him, which at first he didn’t.

‘Welcome, cousin, to my ’umble abode,’ said Edgar, doffing his cap and laughing at his affectation of a city voice. ‘What brings thee down ’ere out o’ the sunshine?’

‘To show his white-fingered son ’ow the other ’alf lives,’ said a caustic voice behind Adam, who turned round and came face to face with a thick-set, bald-headed man about his own height. He seemed to be about the same age as Edgar and like him was stripped to his underwear with his face and skin blackened with coal, but his outlandish appearance clearly had no effect on his confidence. The dirt was a badge of honour, an outward manifestation of his class credentials.

Because Whalen Dawes was a fanatic. Adam could tell that straightaway; it was clear to see in the hard chiselled set of his chin and in his unforgiving flinty grey eyes – different coloured eyes from his son, who was standing behind his father, watching with that same look of dry amusement that Adam had seen on his face before. After he had delivered the coal tubs, he must have ridden the pony straight back from the maingate to wherever his father worked in time to tell him about the visitors and give him the opportunity to intercept them.

Now Adam truly regretted asking his father to show him the mine. He’d hoped that the experience would bring him closer to the miners, help him to understand them better, but instead it was just going to make them see him as even more of an uppity outsider.

‘Is this true, Daniel? Is that why you’re here?’ asked Edgar, who had now come forward and caught sight of Adam.

‘No, of course it isn’t,’ said Daniel. ‘Adam wanted to know what the mine was like, which is natural – he lives here after all, and so I agreed to show him.’

‘Agreed to show ’im cos you want to scare ’im, make sure ’e don’t end up down ’ere, cos you thinks ’e’s too good for the likes of us,’ said Whalen, pressing his advantage.

‘No, that’s not true,’ said Daniel angrily. But Adam knew that Rawdon’s father was right – his father had been trying to scare him. He’d asked the ostler where Edgar worked but he hadn’t needed to because he already knew. And he’d taken him to the Oakwell seam because it was the narrowest, lowest part of the mine, the place most likely to trigger his claustrophobia.

It made Adam angry to have been manipulated, and angry too that he had allowed it to happen. But there was nothing he could do. His father’s plan had fully succeeded: panic was welling up inside him like a flooded dam about to burst its banks.

For a moment everyone was silent. It was as if they were all waiting on Edgar as he opened up his flask and took a long slow drink of the sweet milky tea that all the miners took with them into the pit.

‘I don’t know,’ said Edgar pensively. ‘Whalen likes nowt more’n to make trouble, I knows that …’

‘I tells the truth,’ said Whalen vehemently. ‘If that makes trouble, then I makes no apology for it.’

But Edgar held up his hand, insisting on finishing his thought. ‘As I says, I knows that. But that don’t mean what ’e says ain’t true, and I have to say, Daniel, that I doubt thee sometimes. I wish I didn’t but I do.’

There was an uneasy silence, broken when a pair of rats scurried across the floor of the tunnel, causing Adam to jump instinctively out of the way. Rawdon laughed. ‘You’ll ’ave to get used to them if you’re goin’ to be makin’ a habit of comin’ down ’ere,’ he said. ‘We likes the rats, don’t we, Dad – when they scurry about it gives us fair warnin’ that the roof might be about to cave.’

Whalen looked at his son and then over at Adam, seeing how he was swaying on his feet. Just a little push would send him over.

‘You’re right, Rawdon,’ he said. ‘Same as the timber props – we prefers ’em to the steel ones cos you can hear ’em creak and whine afore they go.’

Adam didn’t know if he could hear creaking or whining. But he could feel the millions of tons of earth and rock over his head bearing down on him, ready to bury him alive. It was intolerable, insupportable, more than he could stand. The tidal wave of his panic burst out, swamping his consciousness, and he fell to the ground in a dead faint.