Netherwood (8 page)

‘Don’t go back without me,’ she said to Solomon as she clambered out of the cart. ‘I’m walkin’ in from ’ere.’

‘Please thissen,’ said Solomon. He watched Eve as she set off, as determined and formidable as any of the men she was following, then he clicked at Bessie and joined the unlikely procession down the hill.

B
arrington Short was a prosperous Midlands businessman with an impressive portfolio of interests, most of which were connected in one way or another with stoking the fire in the belly of the Empire. From his large, comfortable office in a tree-lined avenue of a Birmingham suburb, he had invested not inconsiderable sums in a number of railway companies, a steelworks in Sheffield and the Gas Light and Coke Company in London, all of which were producing satisfying returns for his trouble. Grangely Main Colliery, on the other hand, of which he was principal shareholder, was turning out to be a veritable poisoned chalice. It had seemed, on paper, such a golden opportunity; one of the most productive pits in the Yorkshire coalfields, producing three-quarters of a million tons of good, saleable coal every year. A man with his insight and ambition had to be in coal, and Mr Short had seized the opportunity when it had been offered ten years ago.

He had never actually visited the pit; he didn’t need to, since there were a number of reliable managers in place there, appointed by the board. He understood that the miners were decently housed in convenient dwellings close to the pit, and that the Grangely Main Colliery Company, in the interests of
the community, had built two public houses for the inhabitants – a clever stroke, since any money the miners spent on ale went straight back into the company coffers. Everyone was happy. Or at least they should have been.

But it now appeared there was ruinous sedition at the heart of the colliery. What the company – and he himself, if he were entirely honest – had foolishly taken for sporadic, ill-organised and easily quashed grumblings had turned out to be something much bigger and far more costly. Six months ago, when the Grangely colliers had downed tools over withdrawal of payments for bag muck, the board of directors – Barrington Short among them – had held a brief meeting at which the consensus had been that the whole ridiculous business would be over before the end of the week. They had laughed – laughed! – at the audacity of the union men who were demanding to be paid for the hours they worked, not for the coal they produced. Damnable cheek! What profit-making concern would pay good wages for the removal of muck that couldn’t be sold? The geology of the mine meant a thick seam of useless dirt had to be shifted before the coal could be got at, and as far as Mr Short could see this could only be accomplished by the miners. It was their bad luck, not his, that they worked in a mine where clearing the worthless muck took a couple of hours each shift. He had no doubt, no doubt at all, that if the company paid them for the removal of bag muck, it would suddenly take twice as long. No. Capitulation on this matter would be an open invitation to idleness and time wasting.

Barrington Short had said as much this morning in a telegram to Bill Bramley, manager at Grangely Main and the company’s man on the spot, as it were. His reply had been infuriating: ‘Much outrage at evictions stop … Inform soonest if board reconsiders stop’

Reconsider indeed! Mr Short would see the whole colliery swallowed back up into the earth and covered over for ever
before he would let the miners win. So he sat at his mahogany desk in his thickly carpeted, oak-panelled Edgbaston office and waited for the welcome news that those workers who had chosen to withdraw their labour were now homeless. The sooner those houses could be filled with new men with a proper work ethic, the better.

The silence of the crowds on the streets of Grangely held for longer than the policemen found comfortable. The rasp of their boots on the road rang out like artillery shots as they marched as a body into the row of houses farthest from the colliery, closest to the outskirts of the town. The mounted police now hung back; their instructions were to advance only in the event of the mob growing nasty.

Eve had been absorbed by the mass of humanity. She stood near the front of the crowd and looked about her. There wasn’t a single soul she recognised here. Grangely had always been populated by incomers, who left as soon as they were able to for work in other, happier collieries. Most people didn’t stay here long enough to put down roots, and those that did remained only out of poverty or inertia. No one understood better than Eve the desperation to flee Grangely; in many ways it was the undoing of the place. Without the succour and support of generations, a soul was too easily cut adrift. Eve looked at the children around her and pitied them with all her heart for the awful stigma of their birthplace. Their little faces appalled her: white with cold and fear, and filthy. Their clothes hung in rags about them and they rustled when they moved, hampered by the sheets of newspaper layered under their garments to help keep them warm. The men and women, too, were gaunt and hollow-eyed with hunger. The strike had lasted nearly twenty-eight weeks; desperation lined their skin and
gave young men and women the appearance of great age. For months now they had had no coal for their fires and scant food for their bellies. There seemed no likelihood of a fight today, thought Eve; these people were already defeated.

By now the police had taken up their positions, two of them in front of each house. There were a few seconds of uncertainty as the policemen, self-conscious, waited for orders, then a shout went out from behind – perhaps from one of the mounted police, no one could be sure.

‘Get a bloody move on!’

It was as if an electric current passed through the uniformed men; as one, they started forwards and into the homes, and still the assembled crowd stood motionless, their watchful silence a more powerful reproach than any words. But as the muddy road in front of the houses began to fill up with the trappings of domestic poverty, a hubbub began, low at first but rising, though not of complaint so much as resignation. It was remarkable how swiftly the work was being done. Until this point the miners and their wives had not been certain that the evictions would really take place, so the sight of their threadbare rugs, thin, stained mattresses, tin baths, tables and chairs, all stacked in careless heaps or upended in the dirt, was shocking to them. The police, in their haste and embarrassment, were dragging large pieces of furniture out of the houses and flinging smaller items out of opened windows, heedless of where they landed. From where she stood she saw a small box of children’s playthings fly from an upstairs window and spill its contents on the ground: a ball, a shabby dolly, a spinning top. It was an outrage and an insult, thought Eve. She imagined her own possessions being handled in such a way, and bridled at the thought. She wanted someone to scream at the policemen, demand that they stop their callous work, but remarkably there seemed to be no anger brewing in the crowd around her.

‘Why don’t you rail against them?’ she said, voicing her thoughts but addressing no one in particular.

‘Nay, lass, it’s not t’bobbies fault,’ said an old man. His eyes were rheumy and red-rimmed with cold and Eve felt a powerful longing to feed him with hot soup. ‘It’s them bastards want stringin’ up,’ he said, tossing his head contemptuously in the direction of the pit offices, which were unoccupied today. ‘An’ there’s not one of ’em man enough to face t’music.’

‘Oi!’ a woman on the other side of Eve shouted, as a well-trodden rag rug sailed from her bedroom window. ‘Watch what you’re doin’ with that carpet – it’s priceless!’

She cackled at her own black humour and there was a smattering of laughter from the crowd. Someone else had struck up an accordion, adding a bleakly festive air to the grim proceedings. Another man, standing on a footstool and ringing a small, brass handbell, began an ironic auction of his own belongings, as if his furniture was piled around him by choice, not force.

People were moving quickly now, galvanised into action, hauling the contents of their houses on to waiting drays. Only the very old and the very young hung back, out of the way, watching the show with bewildered eyes. Eve took one end of a chest of drawers and its owner, a young woman with a sweet, sad face, accepted the help wordlessly. Together they lugged the piece of furniture to a small cart and heaved it into position. Back and forth they went until all the pitiful pieces of a domestic life were out of the dirt and on the cart. Eve moved on, to see how else she could help. Ahead, on a low wall, a man was standing berating God, the police force and the colliery owners in a stream of colourful invective. But he was drunk and no one paid him much attention except for a small group of children who had gathered round him and were listening, solemnly. A light rain, insubstantial but insidious, began to fall.

‘Marvellous. Now we can all be wet as well as cold and miserable,’ said a familiar voice. Eve turned towards it and smiled.

‘Reverend Farrimond,’ she said. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes.’

‘As are you, dear, as are you.’ Samuel Farrimond, Grangely’s Methodist minister, beamed at her and clasped her cold hands briefly in his own. He was a handsome man in his late fifties, urbane, well-read, mildly eccentric and entirely incongruous in the largely illiterate community in which he lived. But he’d come to Grangely twenty-five years ago and saw there a project so worthy of his energy and so needful of his Christian commitment that he had never been able to leave. Eve, whom he had known for almost all of her life, regarded him as the saving grace of her childhood, a font of kindness and integrity in a cruel and uncertain world. For his part, Reverend Farrimond saw in Eve the living embodiment of what made his task here worthwhile. She stood before him, beautiful as she ever was, eyes lit with indignation and her skin glowing from the exertions of the brisk march down the hill into town. She looked unlikely here: well-nourished, properly wrapped against the cold, unburdened by defeat. Seeing her now reminded him how very much he missed her in his congregation. It was six years, at least, since he’d seen her.

‘Excellent young woman, to come here today,’ he said.

‘’ow are you bearin’ up?’ said Eve. Unused to compliments, she was not adept at receiving one and usually chose, as she did now, to ignore it.

‘These are trying times,’ he said. ‘Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.’

Eve smiled. Reverend Farrimond had literary leanings and a rather theatrical delivery which sometimes gave the impression of ostentation, but Eve knew there wasn’t a kinder heart in the county. He was a very dear man, she thought.

‘Where will they all go?’ she said, coming back to the point.

‘Ah, Eve, pertinent and practical, as ever,’ he said. ‘Some of them have family elsewhere and therefore places to go, albeit temporary. Many, however, have nowhere to turn.’

‘But they do ’ave you,’ said Eve.

‘Indeed they do,’ he said. ‘Indeed they do. As many as we can manage will be housed in the chapel and my own home, be it ever so humble. Also, as I speak, a canvas village is being erected for the rest.’ He waved an arm in a vague southerly direction, indicating the fields beyond the town.

‘Tents?’ said Eve, incredulous.

‘Army bell tents, fifteen of them, each one large enough for thirty people, perhaps more in extremis. A padre friend of mine took pity on our plight. Not a permanent solution, but, for now, nothing short of a godsend and what we lack in comfort we shall make up for in compassion. Spare blankets and hot food gratefully received. Do spread the word. Now, my dear, I must take my leave. Much to be done, much to be done. Bless you for coming.’

Reverend Farrimond swept off. He had spoken lightly to Eve, but she knew he would be feeling the burden of every sorrow, fear and pang of hunger suffered by his flock. Their cares were his own.

‘Reverend Farrimond!’ she called out on an impulse, but he had been swallowed up by the crowd. She stood for a moment lost in thought, then, aware that the rain was making the task in hand more urgent, she threw herself back into the common effort.