Читать книгу No Man’s Land - Simon Tolkien - Страница 17

Early one Saturday morning Adam was shaken awake by Ernest, who was standing fully dressed by the side of the bed.

‘Can you keep a secret?’ he asked.

‘What are you talking about? What kind of secret?’ asked Adam. He was still bleary-eyed from sleep and he wondered if he was still dreaming. It was dark outside the window and the guttering candle in Ernest’s hand was throwing weird shadows on the walls.

‘No, that’s not the way it works,’ said Ernest. ‘You’ve got to tell me you’ll keep it first. You’ve got to promise.’

‘All right,’ said Adam doubtfully. ‘I promise. So what’s the secret?’

‘I’ll tell you when we get there,’ said Ernest, laughing. ‘Now get dressed. We’re supposed to be there in ten minutes.’

Everyone in the house was still asleep and they crept down the stairs quietly and closed the door softly behind them. The sun was just beginning to rise in a pink mist over the far hills, dimly illuminating the silvery crystals of the hoar frost hanging on the trees and hedges, and their breath hung white between them in the cold air as they got on their bicycles and went freewheeling down the hill past the station, where they could see the silhouettes of the coal trucks that had been lined up empty and idle on the sidings since the strike began.

The mist was thicker, grey and fog-like in the valley bottom, and they could hardly see a yard in front of them when they dismounted, leaning their bicycles up against the side of the deputies’ office.

Ernest whistled twice and waited a few seconds before whistling again and then after a minute the same signal was echoed back to them.

‘Who is it?’ Adam asked.

‘Luke,’ said a familiar voice, close by but invisible. ‘An’ ’Arry and Davy MacKenzie, an’ I hope you can keep a secret, Adam Raine?’

‘He will,’ said Ernest, answering for Adam. ‘I got him to promise before we left.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Luke, coming forward out of the mist and clapping Adam on the shoulder. He and the two boys with him were smoking cigarettes and the burning ends illuminated their faces. Adam knew them all from playing football.

‘What’s the secret?’ he demanded. He’d been amused and irritated in equal measure by Ernest’s refusal to tell him what was going on, but his frustration was getting the better of him now that he seemed to be the only one of the five of them who didn’t know why they were there.

‘Come on,’ said Luke. ‘You’ll see.’

The boys followed Luke as he led them over to the big shed-like building that housed the stores for the mine and produced two keys from his pocket.

‘Where did you get them?’ asked Adam, starting to feel worried.

‘One of the deputies left ’em lying around an’ Davy ’ere was sharp enough to nab ’em without anyone noticin’, said Luke, pointing to his friend, a boy of his age but of much smaller stature with curly sandy hair and a round cherub-like face that reminded Adam of the carvings in the church in Islington that he used to go to with his mother. Davy was constantly getting into trouble, letting off fireworks or pilfering from the village store, and relied on his false air of innocence to escape punishment. His twin brother, Harry, looked nothing like him. He was tall, dark-skinned and serious, and had a precocious talent for playing the violin that he had never been able to properly develop as he had been required, like his brother, to join their father and uncle down the mine on the day following their fourteenth birthday. The strike had given the boys their longest holiday since then even if it had also made them cold and hungry.

Luke fitted one of the keys into the lock on the door of the stores and they went inside, leaving Harry outside to stand lookout.

Luke and Davy lit candles and began to pick their way up and down the narrow lanes between the tall stacks of equipment piled up on all sides – ropes and rails and wheels and steel and timber roof props – before Luke gave a triumphant whistle as he halted in front of a tall cupboard at the far end of the shed which had the word ‘DANGER’ painted in big red letters on the door under an image of a skull and crossbones.

The second key opened the padlock and the door swung open to reveal shelves of the various explosives used for shot firing in the mine. Luke carefully selected two sticks of dynamite.

‘One should be enough; t’other one’s just in case,’ he said as he relocked the door.

‘What the hell are they for?’ asked Adam, now feeling seriously alarmed. He was angry too. ‘You should have damned well told me, Ernest, that you were planning to blow up the mine before you hauled me out here,’ he told his friend, taking hold of his arm. ‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come.’

But Ernest shook him off and laughed. ‘Who said anything about blowing up the mine?’ he said. ‘We’re going fishing. That’s what we’re doing.’

The roads were still deserted as they rode their bicycles out of the town, heading past the football pitch into the open countryside. Away from the valley bottom the early spring sunshine was burning off the mist and the clean cold air filling Adam’s lungs gave him a sudden feeling of exhilaration as the boys increased their speed, weaving in and out of each other’s paths but somehow never colliding. They halted at a crossroads a few miles from Scarsdale, arguing about which direction to take.

‘It’s up there,’ said Davy, pointing to the left where the road narrowed as it climbed up into a beech wood and disappeared. ‘I know cos this ’ere is the cross lanes where they ’ad the iron gibbet back in the olden days. They used to ’ang the ’ighwaymen up ’ere in chains after their executions as a warnin’. Pitch on their faces; tar on their bones. Imagine the wind blowing through the bars of the cage rattlin’ their skeletons; imagine the sound o’ it in the moonlight,’ he said, dropping his voice to an enthusiastic whisper.

‘You’re makin’ it up,’ said Luke, pushing Davy playfully back with his hand. ‘I think you’re maybe right about the lake, but the rest is nonsense, ain’t it, ’Arry?’

‘Nay, it’s true,’ said Davy’s brother. ‘Our granddad told us about the gibbet the year afore ’e died; ’e said ’e’d seen it ’ere when ’e was a kid.’

‘An’ I s’pose you’re sayin’ that’s what’s we’ve got comin’ to us for stealin’ the dynamite?’ said Luke, grinning.

‘Nay, ’angin’s too good for the likes o’ us,’ said Davy, shaking his head in mock despair.

Laughing, they got back on their bicycles and pedalled hard to put the cross lanes behind them and reach their destination.

They slowed down once they reached the wood. They had to as the road quickly became no more than a dirt track and they bounced along in single file over the exposed tree roots until they reached a rise and stopped, looking out in wonder at the still waters of a semi-circular lake ringed by weeping willow trees whose leafy branches were trailing down into the water.

The boys waited while Luke lit the fuse on the first stick of dynamite and threw it into the lake. Almost immediately a column of foaming water exploded upwards from the surface and with it came scores of fat fish glinting silver in the sunlight. They flew up through the air before cascading back to float stunned or dead on the surface, ready and waiting for the boys who were already wading out into the water with the nets that they had brought from home extended in front of them.

They sorted through their catch on the shore, looking for the green-scaled perch with black stripes down their flanks and a spiked dorsal fin on their backs. The rest they threw back. Adam was told off to gather twigs and branches for the fire while the other boys descaled and filleted the fish ready for cooking.

‘Perch are the best to eat. And this lake’s known for them. The carp taste of mud and the chub are full of forked bones and taste of mud too,’ said Ernest, grinning happily as he took the wood from Adam and built the fire.

Adam watched the quick way the boys worked together preparing the meal with a twinge of envy mixed with regret: there had been no opportunity for him to learn how to live outdoors back in London. Over the course of the last year he had come to love the countryside around Scarsdale, gazing out at it with pleasure every day from the window of the bus, but he still felt like an outsider looking in, utterly ignorant of how nature or agriculture actually worked.

But Adam’s despondency was fleeting, chased away like a stray cloud by the delicious scent of the cooking mixed with the smell of smoke from the fire. Ernest had come equipped, producing a frying pan and flour and a bag of lemons from his knapsack, and the breakfast was the best and most satisfying meal Adam had eaten in as long as he could remember. The food prepared by Ernest’s mother had always been bland, and quantity as well as quality had sharply deteriorated since the privations inflicted by the strike had begun to bite into the family’s income.

Afterwards Adam lay back on the mossy bank with his eyes closed, using his rolled-up jacket as a makeshift pillow, and let the sunlight warm his face as it dappled down through the branches of the willow trees. He idly listened to the laughing voices of his friends, not taking in the words but letting them intermingle with the sound of birdsong and the tap-tap-tapping of a woodpecker further back inside the wood. The mine and the strike and the unresolved issues in his life seemed faraway and inconsequential, subsumed for now in a deep contentment. And later, in the midst of war and misfortune, he thought back on that moment lying beside the lake as the one where he had been most completely happy, wanting for nothing, at peace and in perfect harmony with the world around him.

In April the union voted to return to work. An Act rushed through Parliament by the Liberal government had appeared to answer the miners’ demands. But it soon became apparent that they had achieved far less than they had hoped. The new law set up district boards made up of employers and employees to agree a minimum wage in each district, and when the Scarsdale Board failed to reach agreement, the Chairman, Sir John Scarsdale, used his power under the Act to set a five-shilling minimum.

At demonstrations all over the north the miners had chanted their slogan: ‘Eight hours’ work, eight hours’ play, eight hours’ sleep and eight bob a day,’ and now they felt betrayed. The sacrifices they had made during the strike had been for nothing and they wanted someone to blame. Daniel Raine provided the obvious scapegoat.

Edgar had long ago come to regret bringing in his cousin to run the local branch of the union. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that the cousin who had stepped off the train from London was not the same man as the firebrand strike leader that he had read about in the newspaper, and only a personal dislike of Whalen Dawes and a stubborn unwillingness to acknowledge his own mistake had kept him from switching his allegiance before now. Where Edgar led, the rest of the miners followed and in quick order at the next union meeting Daniel was removed as secretary and replaced by Whalen, who also took over as checkweighman. Not one miner spoke out in Daniel’s support.

Returning to the house at the end of Station Street, Daniel told Adam to pack his bags as they were leaving the next morning. He’d seen what was coming and, knowing that they couldn’t continue to live at Edgar’s, he’d found them temporary lodgings in a widow’s house close to the pithead. He’d also been to see Hardcastle, the pit manager, and got a job working as a tub-filler underground. Once he’d learnt the trade he could become a collier but until then money was going to be tight.

They left at sunrise, hoping to avoid awkward goodbyes, but Edgar was already downstairs, eating his breakfast at the table.

He got up and helped the carrier load their meagre belongings into the pony cart that Daniel had hired for the move, and then shook Daniel’s hand.

‘I wish thee the best o’ luck,’ he said. ‘I know we ’aven’t seen eye to eye recently, but that doesna mean we aren’t still o’ the same blood, an’ if there’s anythin’ you need …’

‘Thank you, Edgar,’ said Daniel. ‘You’ve been very good to us but it’s time we stopped being a burden; we should have found our own place months ago but there was always something else to think of. You know how it is.’

‘Aye, I do,’ said Edgar warmly. ‘I do indeed. An’ I wish thee luck too, young man,’ he said, turning to Adam and putting out his hand.

‘Thank you,’ said Adam. But he wouldn’t take Edgar’s hand, acting as though he hadn’t seen it as he climbed up beside the carrier. He was angry, and shaking hands would have meant condoning Edgar’s treatment of his father. If Edgar was feeling guilty about what he’d done, then he would have to live with it; it wasn’t Adam’s responsibility to salve his conscience.

And Adam was frightened too: frightened for his father going down into the pit to work; frightened of what would become of them. If they couldn’t live, they would have to go to the workhouse and Adam thought he would rather die than go back there. He sat tense and unhappy as the pony trotted down the empty road in the grey early-morning light past the sleeping terraced houses, its hooves ringing out on the hard tarmac.

He looked over at his father, leaning forward on the box with his brow furrowed and his unseeing eyes focused on some inner struggle, and felt a sudden wave of protective love flood through him. They had drifted apart in the year since they had come north. It had not been Daniel’s intention to allow his preoccupation with his work to create a gulf between him and his son, Adam realized that, but nevertheless that was what had happened. And as Daniel had withdrawn from his son’s life, Adam had filled the space with new friends and interests which he did not share with his father. He felt guilty when he realized that he had begun to see the parson as a new father figure in his life. The comfort and softness of the Parsonage and the conversations about history and politics were experiences that Daniel could not provide. Adam had grown up and grown away and it was hard now for him to reach out across the emotional barrier, but he forced himself to try, laying his hand on top of his father’s, causing Daniel to look up, called back for a moment from his own inner turmoil.

‘It’s not your fault, Dad,’ said Adam. ‘It was in London but not this time. You worked night and day for the men and they’re plain ungrateful to throw it back in your face like they have. And Edgar’s the worst of them,’ he went on, raising his voice as his anger got the better of him. ‘He’s got a lot of nerve, pretending like everything’s all right after what he’s done.’

‘No, you shouldn’t blame him,’ said Daniel quietly. ‘He thought that he was getting a class warrior when he brought me up here and he deserves credit for putting up with me for as long as he has once he realized I’d changed my spots. I’ve got a lot of sympathy for him, in fact. He wants the best for his people and God knows they’re not getting the best now: they work in terrible conditions for far too little money. But the trouble is Sir John hasn’t got enough to give them what they want. The mine’s old and the coal’s not good enough to fetch good prices and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Facts are facts. Of course Sir John should have offered the men more when they went back, but it was never going to be as much as they wanted. I’m glad I’m out of it, to be honest with you. Let someone else try their hand at making one and one add up to three.’

They relapsed into an uneasy silence. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the past, it didn’t change the fact that they would have far less money now. Adam didn’t know if his father had any savings but they couldn’t amount to much.

‘I wish there was something I could do to help,’ he said. ‘Maybe if I got a job on the screens with Ernest? Then at least we’d have a bit more to go around.’

‘No,’ said Daniel, practically shouting the word. ‘The only thing that keeps me going is that you’re doing so well at school and knowing that you’re going to make a better life for yourself than I’ve had. Don’t worry, Adam – we’ll be all right. I’ll make sure we are.’

Adam saw no reason to believe his father, but he knew there was no point in arguing. The pony had halted in front of their new home, a small squat house in a dismal narrow street close to the mine. Its peeling paint was blackened with soot and the grimy windows looked as though they had never been washed. Adam shivered as his father opened the door and they went inside.

The house belonged to a miner’s widow whose husband had died from tuberculosis several years before. She still wore her widow’s weeds and moved about the dimly lit rooms in a state of permanent misery, living as far as Adam could tell on an unchanging diet of cold tea and porridge. A sampler invoking the Lord to ‘Bless This House’ gathered dust over the mantelpiece in the parlour above a faded photograph of the widow and her late husband on their wedding day. Even the aspidistra in the corner, the hardiest of indoor plants, wilted miserably, waiting to die.

Daniel and Adam had the upstairs rooms and shared use of the kitchen. There was a permanent smell of mouldy dampness in the air that fires could never quite chase away, but Daniel did his best to brighten the place up, pinning coloured pictures from penny magazines over the mildew stains on the walls and bringing home two matching armchairs to stand on either side of the fireplace – bargains bought from a family that was moving away and had no further use for them.

He never complained, although Adam guessed from the stiff way his father walked that he wasn’t finding it easy to adapt to the hard manual labour and the cramped conditions inside the mine. And it was strange for Adam too seeing his father come back from work all black and dirty from the coal. He winced when he washed his father’s back, seeing the cuts and abrasions – the physical toll exacted daily by the pit.

It was strange: adversity seemed to soften rather than harden Daniel, and in the evenings, father and son were often happy, sitting side by side in front of the fire, toasting bacon on a fork and catching the fat on their slices of bread. They played chess on a handmade board and Daniel listened while Adam told him about the heroes and villains of long ago, just as Adam had listened to his mother reading him the same stories when he was a boy, so that sometimes the dead world of the ancients seemed more real to them than the mining town lying quiet outside the window.

And when Adam had finished his storytelling, they talked about issues such as whether the senators had been right to assassinate Caesar – Daniel thought they were but Adam was less sure; and whether the Roman Empire had been doomed from the beginning. They argued sometimes until the candles had almost burnt away, and Adam smiled, thinking how unlikely such conversations were to be taking place in these shabby rooms in this shabby little house in the middle of nowhere, while the widow snored down below.

But later, lying in bed, Adam would see the lights sprawling over the dark ceiling from the lamps swinging in the hands of the late-shift miners as they came tramping down the road outside on the way to work, their voices rising and receding as they passed the house. And he would feel fearful of he knew not what, like a weight was pressing down on his abdomen, a sense of foreboding that would keep him awake late into the night.