The Miner’s Girl (2 page)

‘Howay now, Bonny, nearly finished,' he said trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. Ponies knew when they were winning. Bonnie was a small Shetland pony with intelligent eyes and he had been sluggish all through the shift. Now he wedged himself at an awkward bend in the tunnel and stood, four-square. Lance knew that the pony knew he couldn't get at him there, force him to move on. The ponies soon find out these places, he thought savagely.

‘By, I could have done with old Peter,' said Lance to himself. Peter was his usual pony but he had had a stone fall on his shoulder, cutting it, so he was away recuperating. Bonny had a reputation among the miners; he was too clever by half.

‘Go on, lad,' Lance said again. ‘I need the money, man.' He was forcing himself to keep his voice low, reassuring. ‘Nearly home now.'

The buzzer sounded and suddenly Lance erupted with rage. He had not made enough money this fortnight to keep himself and Vera, let alone pay for the lying-in woman. What was more, the rest of the men on his cavil blamed him for not managing the pony better. Suddenly his frustration got the better of him and he kicked out
at the only bit of pony he could reach – his steel toecap connected with a hock and the skin broke.

Bonny squealed and jumped causing the coal tub to overturn and hit a pit prop, one that should have been replaced days earlier but the gaffer had said the maintenance could be done at the weekend. The pit prop bent and broke, and then the next one to it and the one after that. Lance, crouching against the fallen tub heard a great rumbling and began to cough as coal and stone dust started to fall.

Bonny's bucking was ever wilder, his eyes rolling in terror, but Lance couldn't get to him even if he'd wanted to. He wouldn't have been able to calm him anyway so he tried to move backwards between the tramlines but the roof started to fall as more props broke. It was close to the junction with the main way and pit props were going down like ninepins. Bonny's screaming stopped abruptly as man and pony went down, both hit by great chunks of stone.

At the top of the shaft the engine house that worked the winding wheel bringing up the cage for both men and coal shuddered and strained, then the engine stopped altogether as below ground there was a great explosion. Coal dust had been disturbed, the air was thick with it and lurking firedamp – methane – had been ignited by a falling miner's lamp. Fire raged.

‘Oh God, oh God,' whispered Tommy Trent, ‘it couldn't be worse. Our poor Lance.'

‘Do you think me dad is dead, Grandda?' asked Johnny. The group of miners clustered together. Johnny had just joined the men working the cavil, the part of the coal seam allocated to the group of marras. He had been looking forward to the pie his mother had promised she would bake.

When the noises came even Johnny knew exactly what they meant, as the roof caved in, cutting them off from the way out. They crouched together, heads down as stone dust swirled in the air, choking them.

‘Grandda!' he croaked and Tommy managed to reach him and put an arm around him.

‘They'll get us out, lad,' said Tommy, for Johnny was only just coming up twelve. But Tommy knew there was next to no hope. Behind them the roadway had been cut off, so they couldn't even try for the old shaft. And already the air they were breathing was becoming foul.

‘Howay, lass, see if you can push,' said Peggy Trent, though Vera's eyes were closed and her face blue white. Vera gave no sign of hearing. Indeed, May thought, she looked as though it was already too late for her. But the baby's head was crowned – it would surely come. Almost imperceptibly the girl lying on the clippie mat let out a tiny breath.

‘If we could just get her up on the settee,' said May.

‘Well, we cannot move her,' Peggy answered. ‘Not 'til the bairn comes.' She slid her hand over Vera's belly, found the right place and kneaded. Vera moved slightly and the baby's head came out, the little face red and screwed up with effort. After that it was only minutes before Peggy had her out.

‘It's a bit lass,' said May. ‘By, she's a fighter an' all.' For the baby's fist waved in the air and from her open mouth came a loud wail of rage.

‘Tak' her,' said Peggy, and May pulled a piece of worn blanket from the line over the fireplace and wrapped the child in it. Peggy was bending over Vera, looking in dismay as blood gushed suddenly and then stopped.

‘I'll give you a hand getting her up,' said May as she laid the baby in the bottom drawer from the press, in lieu of a cradle.

‘There's no hurry now,' said Peggy sadly. ‘She's gone. Will you get a blanket to cover her, May? And can you stay for a bit? I have to go up to the pit yard to find out what's happening.'

‘Eeh!' May looked stricken, for in the urgencies of the last half-hour the fact that something had happened at the pit had slipped her mind. How could that have happened? Just because her own Albert was safely off shift. ‘You go on, Peggy, I'll attend to things,' she said. All of Peggy's menfolk were on shift. In spite of herself
May couldn't help a profound though guilty thankfulness that it wasn't her own.

Peggy picked up her shawl from the back of the chair where she had dropped it when she came in and wrapped it round her thin shoulders. She could do nothing for Vera now. All her instincts were drawing her to the pithead.

Albert came in just after Peggy left, dressed in his pit clothes, his leather and tin hat on his head, his knee protectors strapped on.

‘I didn't like to come in before,' he said. ‘Oh no, the lass isn't dead, is she?'

‘Aye, she is,' May replied. ‘You can lift her onto the settee for me if you like.'

Albert picked up Vera, still with the blanket covering her and laid her as carefully as he could on the horsehair settee. Then he turned back to his wife.

‘I have to go, lass,' he said. ‘I might be needed at the pit.'

‘Aye,' said May. ‘Hadaway, lad, I know. Mind, be careful.'

‘I will.'

After he'd gone, May filled an enamel bowl with the water left in the kettle, and some cold from the bucket in the pantry. Then she laid the baby on her knee and washed her. Peggy had tied off the cord with cotton thread, which May inspected and it seemed all right. She dressed the baby in one of the flannelette nightgowns she
had found in the drawer and tied a rag on for a nappy. The baby didn't cry, just made sucking motions with her mouth. May mixed up a little sugar and water and tried to feed her but the baby would have nothing of it. In the end she carried her up the street to the yard of a woman who had birthed a baby only a few days before, Eliza Wearmouth. She didn't go in, for it would bring bad luck on the house to take a baby inside before it had been christened. Eliza's man was one of Albert's marras so he must have escaped the explosion too, which meant that Eliza would not be among the women waiting at the pithead.

By this time, the baby was screaming and Eliza came straight out. Thank God, thought May, she had been right.

‘It's Vera's babby,' she said and told Eliza what had happened.

‘Eeh, poor bairn,' said Eliza, and thought for a minute. ‘I tell you what, you go back and I'll come, give her a bit tittie.' She banked the fire and wrapped her own sleeping infant, John Henry, in the corner of her shawl, then followed May down the street to the end house.

‘Eeh, man!' she said when she saw Vera's body lying on the settee covered in a thin, old sheet. ‘They've got their troubles in this house the day, haven't they?'

‘They have that,' May agreed. ‘Peggy's away up to the pit yard now, waiting to see what's happened. Aye,
but I doubt it was a bad accident. My Albert's up there an' all. With the rescue workers I should think.'

‘Aye, Big John an' all,' said Eliza. She bent over the press drawer and clucked in sympathy at the baby who was sniffling quietly by now. Eliza laid her own John Henry at the other end of the drawer and picked the new baby up. The baby nuzzled at her bare arm, making sucking noises. Eliza opened her blouse and offered her the breast and the baby clung to it. ‘She seems strong enough, any road,' Eliza commented as she settled herself in the rocking chair by the fire. ‘It's a good job I have plenty of milk for the both of them.'

‘Aye. The first bit of luck in this house the day.'

May glanced over at the settee. ‘I don't know whether to wash the lass or wait for the doctor. The authorities get funny these days, you know, if you do anything without a death certificate.'

‘Daft, I call it,' said Eliza. ‘Doctor Brown will have enough on his hands up at the pit. And it doesn't take a doctor to tell that one's gone, poor soul.' She lifted the baby and changed her to the other breast. ‘I tell you what though, you'd best let the fire die down. An' pull the settee as far away from the range as it'll go. It might be the night before he gets here.' She looked down at the baby in her arms. Sated now, she had let go of the nipple and was dropping off to sleep. Her little fists were
bunched up tight as a prize fighter's and there was a furrow between her brows.

May came over and looked down at her, wiped a bubble of milk from the corner of her mouth. ‘Mind,' she said softly, ‘she looks like a fighter, an' she'll need to be an' all, poor motherless bairn. I reckon she'll have a hard row to hoe, this one.'

She took the baby from Eliza and laid her back in the makeshift cradle. Then she sat down in the chair opposite her friend. ‘We'll have two minutes while we can,' she said. ‘By, they're a long time at the pit. I doubt, I doubt.' What she doubted she didn't say.

Both women gazed into the dying fire as the burnt-out crust of it collapsed in a shower of ash, the red coals dying to grey.

‘Will you stand up for the babby at chapel?' asked Peggy. ‘I'm going to call her Miranda after me own mother. Merry for short.'

‘I'd love to be godmother,' replied Eliza. ‘But what about May?'

‘Aye well,' said Peggy, ‘May and Albert are away at the weekend. He's got work at Thornley, over past Durham. I'm away to see the minister now.'

She wrapped Merry in the end of her shawl and held her close for the wind was biting as it was channelled down the row. Peggy had lost weight since the disaster, she just couldn't eat any road, she told May when she tried to persuade her to.

Eliza watched as Peggy went out of the door and took the black path along the line. There was no chapel at Jane Pit, as the colliery was too small for that, so Peggy had to go up through the fields and along the path to the
road and down to Winton Colliery, a distance of two miles.

‘Peggy looks blooming awful,' Eliza told Big John when she went round to see to his tea. ‘She's that thin.'

‘Well, what do you expect, woman?' asked John. ‘She lost her man, her son and her grandson in the explosion, didn't she? And then to lose the bairn's mam an' all . . .'

‘Aye, I know, John,' Eliza replied. ‘That babby's all she's got in the world. But if she doesn't look after herself Merry'll have no one. Then it'll be the workhouse for the poor mite, won't it?'

‘Merry? Is that what she's calling it? Bloody fancy names at a time like this an' all.'

‘It's after her own mother,' said Eliza. ‘I like it. Any road, I'm going to stand up for her. Sunday likely.'

‘I expect so. If I get this job at East Howle we'll be leaving. They reckon there's some fine two-bedroomed houses an' all, with a proper staircase.'

Eliza stared out of the window at the house opposite. It was empty now for already the people were beginning to go looking for work elsewhere. Some of them had only stayed for the funeral service that had taken place the week before. Oh God, she thought, I hope the young lads didn't suffer. The men an' all, of course. There was no way of telling for they were entombed in the pit. The gaffer had explained there was no way they
could be reached, what with the shaft being blocked off at the bottom and water seeping through. So the pit was abandoned, the shaft capped with a wooden cover nailed over it. The whole of the village, those who were left, that is, had watched as it was done.

Eliza turned round and faced Big John. ‘I'm staying a few weeks more,' she said. ‘I have to give that bairn a chance and it's too early for her to have to suck pap.'

‘Eliza pet, your heart's too big for your own good,' said John. ‘What do you think we're going to live on if we stay here? You have your own bairns to think about.' He didn't sound angry, just weary.

The whole community was weary and bitter. The company had just left them here. The gaffer didn't even care if they stayed in the houses or not. They were no good to him now, houses or men. There had been no compensation for the widows and orphans, no extra for the men left when the pit closed down. Though the union were fighting for that now it was too late for the folk of Jane Pit. Aye well, thought Big John, bitterness got a man nowhere.

‘Just another week then?' asked Eliza. She had picked up her own baby and now she began to change the clout on his bottom. She knew it was hopeless, they had to look after their own. And if she starved, her milk would go any road.

‘We're moving in the morn,' she said to Peggy a couple of days later as she held little Merry to the breast. ‘I'm that sorry, Peggy. How will you manage?'

‘The Lord only knows,' said Peggy. She sat down heavily on the cracket that had belonged to Merry's father. Lance had been so proud of the stool he had made when he first started at the pit. But she couldn't think about Lance now, not now. She had the living to think of.

‘Eeh, Peggy, I don't know what to say,' said Eliza. ‘I've got fond of the little lass an' all.'

‘You have to think of your own,' said Peggy. She roused herself, forced herself to be pleasant. ‘There's one thing for sure, we're not going to the workhouse, not while I have breath in my body. I'll find work, never you think I won't. And at least we have a roof over our heads, me and the babby. I was just thinking, any road – I could take in washing couldn't I? With all the empty houses there's plenty of space to dry it here. No, no, I reckon I'll go round the houses, see what I can pick up.'