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Despair overtook them when the passage opened out again and they emerged into the same pillared hall that they had passed through hours before. Rawdon sank to the ground, leaning his back against one of the black columns and closed his eyes.
‘I’m done,’ he said. ‘You carry on if you want to. I knew this mine’d be the death of me the first day I went down it. I’d ’ave been better off if I’d cashed in me chips when that friggin’ pony kicked me. It’d ’ave saved me a lot o’ grief.
Adam tried to find some words of comfort or encouragement but he could think of nothing. All that was keeping him standing was the stubborn animal refusal to be beaten that had enabled him to endure so much misfortune already in his life. It was an undying spark somewhere deep inside him that stopped him giving in even when his brain told him there was no point in continuing, and now it forced him to bend down and pick up the lamp and go on.
‘I’ll be back,’ he said, looking at Rawdon for a moment before he left him in the darkness. But there was no reply: Rawdon had slumped over on to his side and seemed to be asleep.
Once again, passing between the pillars of coal, Adam thought of the beautiful silver-white temples of Greece and Sicily, bathed in sunlight, that he now would never see. The outer columns collectively called the peristasis which surrounded the pronaos, the four-sided porch that led in turn through a beautifully carved set of double doors to the cella, the holy of holies at the centre of the building that housed the exquisite statue of the god which only his priests were ever allowed to see.
Except of course that there was no God or gods – of that Adam was by now quite certain. His mother and Parson Vale and the ancient Greeks were fools – poor credulous fools; at the centre of everything was nothing, just a vast emptiness in which your voice echoed back off the walls. Echoes of echoes: that was all.
At the end of the hall, Adam reached the crossgate where he had stood with Rawdon hours before. He was almost certain they had gone to the right, although the more he thought about it, the less sure he was. The darkness unsettled his memory and he hesitated, turning the lamp from side to side in a vain attempt to find something he recognized before he followed his first instinct and went left.
Almost immediately the path sloped uphill and the quality of the air seemed to improve. A few turnings later and he stumbled out into a wide open space and looked up to where the downcast shaft rose up half a mile to the surface. At the top the underside of the suspended cage blocked most of Adam’s view of the sky and the dim light which did get through gave him no clue as to the time of day. He shouted for help until he was hoarse but there was no response except the mocking echo of his voice bouncing back to him off the red bricks lining the sides of the shaft. Rawdon had been right – there was nobody looking for them.
But there was still hope: from just above Adam’s head an iron ladder cemented into the brickwork ran straight as a die up the side of the shaft towards the surface. In the lamplight Adam could see its rusty brown side rails and narrow treads ascending into the gloom.
Rawdon was asleep on the floor when Adam got back to him, and he had to shake him awake.
‘Maybe we can wait,’ said Rawdon as he limped after Adam. ‘The miners’ll be back down ’ere soon. When no one’s working, the owner’s losin’ money and that matters to ’im a sight more’n respect for the dead, you mark my words.’
‘You’re worried about the ladder?’ asked Adam when they got back to the shaft.
‘Of course I bloody am. It’s been there forever an’ no one ever uses it or keeps it repaired. We’ll get ’alfway up an’ then we’ll come fallin’ back down again an’ drown in that sump down there,’ he said, pointing to the evil-smelling black pond at the bottom of the shaft.
Adam examined the bottom rungs of the ladder with the lamp and found it hard to disagree with Rawdon’s verdict. The brick lining the shaft was damp and mouldy and the brackets holding the side rails in place gave way alarmingly when he pulled on the two that were within reach. There had to be over a thousand treads between them and the surface and what were the chances that they would all hold?
He hesitated, uncertain of what to do. His instinct was to climb but common sense told him to wait. And perhaps he would have stayed below if the changing light of the lamp hadn’t taken the decision out of their hands. The flame had seemed to expand when they came out on to the landing by the shaft and now there was no mistaking its signal. There was firedamp in the air, probably spreading back from the fire, blown down the tunnels by the mine’s ventilation system. They couldn’t sit and wait for it to explode.
‘You go first,’ said Rawdon. ‘I’ll follow.’
‘Why?’ Adam asked, surprised.
‘It doesn’t matter. Just do it,’ Rawdon said irritably.
Something in Adam always rebelled against being told what to do when he wasn’t given a reason for doing it, and he was about to argue the point further – but then stopped, biting back his words, as he suddenly grasped where Rawdon was coming from. With his damaged leg Rawdon was clearly the one most likely to fall and logically that meant he should climb behind. If he went first he would bring Adam down when he fell; going second, he would fall to his death alone.
‘I’ll not go too fast,’ he said, looking Rawdon in the eye as if making a promise.
Rawdon nodded brusquely and then turned away, picking up the lamp. ‘Here, you’re going to need this – fasten it on to your belt,’ he said, showing Adam how the attachment worked.
‘Thanks,’ said Adam. He breathed deeply, wiped the sweat from off his hands, and began to climb.
To begin with, he made the mistake of looking up above his head, trying to measure the distance to the top. It quickly made him giddy and he had to hold still, waiting for the nausea to pass. And looking down was worse: below Rawdon the black water at the bottom of the shaft seemed to rise up to meet him. Slowly he trained himself to keep his eyes fixed straight ahead on the damp bricks passing slowly by as he climbed higher and higher up the rungs of the ladder.
But even if Adam wasn’t looking down at Rawdon, he could still hear him, and it was obvious from his laboured breathing and half-stifled cries of pain that the climb was taxing him to the limit of his endurance. Again and again Adam had to force himself to wait so that Rawdon wouldn’t get left behind in the darkness.
It quickly got colder as they neared the top so that the rusty red side rails felt icy in their sore hands, and as they gripped them harder, the iron brackets cemented into the damp wall seemed to give. Only one needs to come away, Adam thought, only one, and it will all be over. And part of him welcomed the thought – an end to the pain and the struggle and the terrible fatigue as they fell down, down, down into nothingness.
But it wasn’t Adam who fell; it was Rawdon. And it wasn’t a loose bracket or a broken tread that made him lose his footing; it was a rat. They’d heard them scuttling away into niches in the sides of the shaft as they climbed but this one was different. Perhaps it was sick and that was why it stayed lying on the tread as Adam went past it without noticing, but it was alive enough to react fiercely when Rawdon’s hand, following behind and reaching for the rung, came down on its back. The rat’s head shot round and it bit down hard on his wrist. Rawdon screamed – a terrible gut-wrenching scream that reverberated up and down the shaft – and pulled away, throwing the rat off so that it flew back against the opposite wall and then fell, turning over and over, bouncing off the masonry until it landed with a splash in the sump at the bottom that the boys would have heard if they had been listening.
But they weren’t. As the rat let go of Rawdon’s wrist, Rawdon let go of the ladder. Falling back, he instinctively grabbed hold of one of the steel guides that the cage used for its descents, and after a moment he was able to loop his feet around it too. But that was the limit of his good fortune. The guide was just too far away from the ladder for him to be able to reach it with his hand. He realized immediately that there was nothing he could do to save himself and he clung to the guide with his last remaining strength only in order to prepare himself to fall.
Adam had climbed back down opposite Rawdon and now turned half to face him, keeping one hand behind him on the ladder as he tried to measure the distance between them. The light was poor and he couldn’t risk trying to unfasten the lamp from his belt but he guessed that Rawdon was about five or six feet away.
‘There’s a chance,’ he said.
‘No, there isn’t,’ said Rawdon. ‘I’m fuckin’ done for and I’m not takin’ you with me if that’s what you’ve got in mind.’ It cost him an effort to speak and his words came in gasps. Adam wondered how much longer he could hold on.
‘Listen, I think I can get hold of your hand if you reach it out as far as you can. And if I can do that, I can swing you round on to the ladder.’
‘No, you can’t. You’re not strong enough.’
‘Try me,’ said Adam, forcing a smile. And without waiting for a response, he reached out towards Rawdon with his hand, pushing away from the ladder so that his other hand was stretched out behind him, hanging on to the rung.
He was looking straight at Rawdon, willing him to try. He could see the cold sweat on Rawdon’s forehead and the tears that were forming in his eyes. ‘Do it,’ he said, making it sound like an order. And Rawdon closed his eyes and let go, reaching out across the abyss.
Adam felt Rawdon’s hand close on his own in a death grip and the next moment he felt a pull on his arm and shoulder the like of which he had never known before, but somehow they didn’t rupture; somehow he managed to keep hold of the ladder at his back as he swung Rawdon in and felt him stick firm as he caught hold of a rung one or two below where he was standing.
Afterwards they shook, each trembling uncontrollably one above the other as they gripped tight on to the ladder, waiting for their strength to return. And then slowly, very slowly, they climbed the remaining rungs, edging past the empty cage hanging on its steel rope, until they got to the surface and emerged out into the twilight of a day that had come so close to being their last.
‘You saved my life,’ said Rawdon simply as they stood together at the mouth of the shaft, looking back down into the darkness. His voice was quiet and he sounded bemused, as if he was examining a strange artefact he’d just found, uncertain what to make of it.
‘You’d have done the same,’ said Adam lightly.
‘Would I?’ said Rawdon, as if it was a question to which he did not have the answer.
He shook his head and turned away; and stumbled down the stairs to the standpipe at the bottom where he drank greedily before he sank to the ground, dully watching Adam as he did the same. A moment later his eyes closed and he was asleep where he sat, overcome with exhaustion.
Chapter Ten (#ulink_d7da9089-be02-53c9-a00e-969d79942d91)
Adam could see no sign of anyone at the pithead, but there was a light coming from the stores building. Leaving Rawdon where he was, he pushed the door open: it wasn’t locked – not like the last time Adam had been inside when he’d helped to steal the dynamite for the fishing expedition. That carefree day seemed light years away now, as if it belonged to a different world.
Inside, an area had been cleared in the centre of the floor with the mine equipment pushed back against the walls, blocking the windows, and in the open space eight trestle tables had been set up in two lines facing the door. On each one a man was lying, covered up to his neck by a white sheet that smelt strongly of carbolic acid. Adam stopped in his tracks, unable for a moment to go forward as he wondered if his father was among the dead.
What light there was in this makeshift morgue came from a few oil lamps and guttering candles set up here and there, and the darkening shadows creeping in on the areas of isolated light around the bodies reminded Adam of the Rembrandt paintings of anatomical lessons in seventeenth-century Amsterdam that he had once seen in a book at school. But there was no sign of any doctor here; only Parson Vale, who was trying to console several women who were sitting on folding chairs beside the bodies of their dead husbands or sons. Some were clearly beyond the reach of comfort, crying out their pain as they rocked backwards and forwards, unable to cope with their grief, while at the opposite extreme another woman sitting closer to the door was still as a statue, making no sound at all. Taking a few steps forward, Adam recognized her with a jolt as Annie, and the body beside her on the table was Edgar’s.
It was hard at first for Adam to believe he was dead. He could see that Edgar hadn’t been burnt by the fire; it must have passed him by as it roared down the tunnel after the explosion, not needing to seek him out in his stall because he would have already been gone, overpowered in a moment by the firedamp gas that had suddenly swamped the seam.
Adam felt cold and nauseous. He had never seen a dead man that he knew before and he had to fight for a moment to stay upright before he forced himself to inspect the other tables. As far as he could tell, none of the other corpses was his father’s, but it was hard to be sure as many of the faces were badly burnt and disfigured.
He looked up and saw that the parson was watching him from the other side of the room.
He clearly knew what was going through Adam’s mind.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Your father’s all right. Wait for me a minute. I want to talk to you.’
Adam nodded. Relief flooded through him, making him weak at the knees. But he felt guilty when he looked back at Edgar who hadn’t survived but had instead been cut down in the prime of his life. Adam looked at the thick muscles in Edgar’s neck and the broad set of his shoulders. He doubted he had ever seen a stronger man. And yet now this powerful body was no more than a hollow shell, a husk emptied of meaning. Soon it would fall apart and rot, food for worms in the damp ground.
Adam closed his eyes and remembered Edgar’s ebullience: the way he seemed to fill a room, coming out of the scullery in his soapsuds in the evening and squatting before the hot fire to get dry; or singing snatches of old songs in a pitch-perfect baritone as he mended his boots – his voice vying for ascendancy with the hammer.
I’d shake thy hand, lad, but it needs washing first. Edgar’s first words to him came floating into Adam’s mind as he recalled that first morning when he and his father got off the train from London and met the miners coming home from the night shift. And then a year later he had refused to shake Edgar’s hand when they left the house in Station Street. It seemed a petty gesture now.
He glanced over at Annie. She hadn’t moved since he had come into the shed and she seemed completely unconscious of his presence. She was dry-eyed, staring unseeing into the middle distance behind his shoulder. Only her hands were active, pulling repetitively at the stitching of her husband’s cloth cap, which she was holding in her hands. She was wearing her best black dress and a hat decked out with black imitation fruit. He wondered if she’d already known or suspected that Edgar was among the dead when she’d gone to the pit after the alarm was sounded and had dressed up for the occasion. He realized that it was a question to which he would never know the answer.
‘She’s in shock,’ said the parson, coming up to Adam and drawing him aside. ‘Grief can take people this way as well – they just shut down because the loss is more than their minds can accept, at least to begin with. She’ll be better later, I hope.’
‘What about her son, Thomas?’ Adam asked, lowering his voice. ‘He was working with his father last time I was here.’
‘Yes, he was, but he got lucky – I think he’d gone back to fetch something when it happened. So he’ll be able to support his mother. Others haven’t been so fortunate. She’s lost both her sons,’ he said, pointing over at the woman who was crying the loudest, shaking uncontrollably as the sobs were torn from her throat.
‘Where is everyone?’ asked Adam, looking away. ‘There’s no one outside.’
‘They’ve gone to the Hall with Whalen Dawes. Surely you know that?’
‘No, I was in the mine with Rawdon. We were lost and we just got out.’
‘I didn’t know he was a friend of yours,’ said the parson, raising his eyebrows.
‘He’s not. Or he wasn’t,’ said Adam, stumbling over his words. ‘Has my father gone too – to the Hall?’
‘Yes. And I fear the worst, to be honest with you. Whalen’s worked the men up to a fever pitch, saying that the accident’s the owner’s fault; that he doesn’t care; that he thinks the miners are like the third-class passengers on the Titanic – not worth saving …’
‘Well, that may be true, but that doesn’t make it Sir John’s fault. What’s Whalen’s basis for saying that?’
‘He says that if they’d had reverse ventilation then they could have taken the air away from the fire, starved it of oxygen. There was a law passed last year requiring mine owners to install it but it’s expensive and so they were given two years’ grace, so I suppose you can argue it either way. What matters is that Whalen’s been waiting for something like this to happen ever since he took over from your father – he wants to start the revolution here in Scarsdale and he thinks this is his opportunity.’
‘What about my father? What did he do?’
‘He tried to talk the men out of going and I did too, but they wouldn’t listen. They’re angry and they’ve taken Edgar’s death very hard. He was their real leader, but I expect you know that.’
‘How long ago did they set off?’ Adam asked.
‘Fifteen minutes; maybe more. I got Mr Hardcastle to call the police in Gratton so I hope they’ll get there in time. And he called Sir John as well to warn him. I don’t know what more we can do.’
‘Well, I’m going after them. Have you got your bicycle here, Mr Vale?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘I’d really like to borrow it. I’ll look after it, I promise,’ said Adam, putting his hand on the parson’s arm to underline the urgency of his request.
‘But I don’t think you should go,’ said the parson anxiously. ‘As I said, I fear the worst.’
‘Please, Mr Vale. I have to. Where is it?’ asked Adam, refusing to be put off.
‘Outside, around the back,’ said the parson, bowing his head. And, reaching in his pocket, he handed Adam the key to the padlock.
‘Thank you,’ said Adam, turning to go. But at the door he came back. ‘I don’t like to ask but can you make sure Rawdon’s all right before you go? We had a bad time in the mine and his leg is hurting him. We almost didn’t make it.’
‘Where is he?’ asked the parson.
‘He’s asleep over by the pithead steps.’
‘You can rely on me. And I wish you luck. I think you’re going to need it,’ said the parson, putting out his hand.
‘I think I will too,’ said Adam with a faint smile. He shook the parson’s hand and was gone.
The hours of anxious wandering, breathing in the fetid, stale air of the mine, followed by the frightening climb up the ladder had left Adam exhausted, and he cast an envious look back at Rawdon before he pushed off, pedalling hard as he began the steep climb up the road to the station with the bicycle’s oil lamp flickering in its case above the back wheel. The town was quiet with a sense of foreboding in the air, and he jumped, almost losing his balance, when a stray dog ran out of a side street barking viciously at him as he rode past.
Out in front the moon hung pale and full over the eastern horizon, illuminating the church tower at the top of the hill, but down below the trees and the houses were fast disappearing into the evening shadows. Flocks of birds wheeled overhead and flew away, screeching and crying. And Adam shivered, gripping the handlebars as his mind raced, wondering what was happening up ahead.
On his left he passed Edgar’s house. There were no lights on inside and he wondered where Ernest was and whether he yet knew about his father. He remembered the torment he’d suffered when his mother died and it hurt him to think that his friend would now have to undergo the same searing experience. There was no escaping the open wound of grief; only time healed or at least dulled the pain of loss.
At the top of the hill he had to stop to catch his breath, resting the bicycle against the wall of the graveyard. The moon had temporarily disappeared behind a bank of clouds, but the light on the parson’s bicycle enabled him to make out the dim outline of the pitched tile roof covering the lychgate, and he remembered with a sudden intensity how he had stopped dead in his tracks when he came out of the church on that first Sunday in Scarsdale, arrested by the sight of Miriam in her simple black dress standing there beside her father. The organ had been playing in the church behind his back: a rousing fugue filling the morning with a crescendo of sound – not faint like the music he thought he could hear now, little more than a breath on the breeze, coming up soft and muffled out of the valley below.
He wiped the cold sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his jacket and rode on, accelerating as the road ran downhill into the open countryside beyond old Scarsdale village. And now he knew he was not mistaken: he could hear the music up ahead – the rich, mellow horns and cornets of the colliery’s brass band playing ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’, and rising up over the sound of the instruments a great swelling of men’s voices singing out in unison:
‘I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.’
Adam rounded a corner in the road and stopped, momentarily confused. The miners were close by. He could hear their marching feet, pounding the ground to the rhythm of the song’s chorus:
‘Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Our God is marching on.’
And yet the road ahead was empty. He could see no lights in the darkness.
He rode on a little way and then braked hard as the brick wall on his left ended in a pair of high columns surmounted by stone lions with thick silver-coloured manes, staring fiercely out into the night. The wrought-iron gates between them were half pushed back, giving Adam the sense that they had been forced open, and he felt an upsurge of anxiety as he turned the handlebars and headed down a wide tarmac avenue lined on both sides with ancient elm trees.
Now there were burning lights up ahead, and as he got closer he was able to see that they were flaming torches being carried high above their shoulders by the men. They weren’t singing any more and the brass band had fallen silent too, except for a single drummer beating out a monotonous tattoo. Adam slowed down, staying back just behind the marchers, not wishing to draw attention to himself until he had found out what they were going to do.
They went on at an even pace and then abruptly stopped as the line of trees came to an end and Adam caught sight of the façade of Scarsdale Hall up ahead, looming high above the miners’ heads. The house looked very different now to how Adam remembered it on that summer afternoon with Ernest when it had seemed to glitter invitingly in the warm sunshine. Now, illuminated by the pale moonlight, it had a sinister appearance. Perhaps that was why the miners had come to a halt. Adam sensed their uncertainty and he could hear Whalen’s voice up ahead, trying to encourage them to go on. At first it was hard for Adam to make out what he was saying, but as Whalen’s voice rose and the drumbeat ceased, Adam realized that he was talking about the house and what it meant:
‘Beautiful, ain’t it?’ Whalen’s voice was thick with angry sarcasm. ‘But you know who paid for it?’ He paused for effect before answering his own question. ‘You did. That’s who. Ev’ry last fuckin’ penny of it, with back-breakin’ toil an’ with yer blood.’ Again he stopped before going on in a louder voice so that he was almost shouting: ‘Yes, an’ with our comrades’ burnt black bodies lying under cold white sheets in the tool ’ouse back yonder. An’ now Sir John, ’e must account to us for ’em; an’ if ’e won’t, why, we mus’ make ’im. ’E canna ’ide from us, not this time.’
Adam shivered, feeling the raw power of Whalen’s words, and they certainly seemed to have the desired effect on his listeners, who roared their approval and resumed their march at a faster pace than before.
Soon the drive swung away to the right, curving round the side of the ornamental lake which reflected the red and yellow lights of the miners’ flaring torches on the still surface of its black waters. Adam was frightened: pushing forward, he could feel the miners’ rising anger and determination. Whalen had talked of blood and he sensed that there would be more spilt before the day was done. He needed to find his father, extricate him from what was coming before it was too late. But it was too dark to see people’s faces and nobody seemed to hear him when he asked about Daniel. Adam was sure his father was there somewhere but it was as if he was invisible in their midst.
A little further and they reached a fork in the drive at the front of the east wing. The parson’s bicycle was an encumbrance now and Adam abandoned it in a recess, taking care to padlock the front wheel before following the marchers into the stone quadrangle facing the house. Behind them the manicured lawn ran back down from below an ornamental terrace to the shore of the lake; while in front and on both sides the house was dark, although here and there faint gleams of light were visible behind tightly drawn curtains. Mixing with the moonlight, the flickering flames of the miners’ torches played up and down the pale stucco walls and across the silent windows.
The miners had fanned out, filling the quadrangle in disparate groups, all with their eyes fixed on Whalen as he strode unhesitating up the curved flight of steps leading to the entrance portico and banged the golden lion’s head knocker against the ebony-black front door. Once, twice, three times but each time there was no response.
