The Most Precious Thing (36 page)
It will end, it will end. He kept repeating the words over and over in his mind through the whirling panic that at any moment the roof would come crashing down on their heads and they would be buried beneath millions of tons of slate, rock and coal. It will end, it will end . . .
He wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone how they got back to the main roadway and then the cage, but eventually he was going upwards and he was so thankful he had to fight back tears. There had been lots of banter between Walter and the miners who had been working, some of it spoken in such broad pitmatic by the oldtimers, it might as well have been a foreign language. This was another world. A world that had nothing remotely familiar about it and was typified by what Walter casually referred to as blacklocks. These bore no resemblance to the black beetles above ground; they looked like monster cockroaches and were as big as mice. Walter told him they were too big and nasty to ever come up out of the ground and that’s why people didn’t know about them. But he knew about them now, and this secret, terrifying, subterranean hell was where he would be every day in a couple of weeks’ time.
What was he going to do?
What was he going to do?
‘So, there you are, lad.’ Walter could see how pale his nephew’s face was, even covered in coal dust, and there was something about the stiff way he was standing that prompted a softer tone than he had ever used to him before. ‘It won’t seem so bad second time round. You get yourself home and have a good wash afore your mam gets home, and then you’ll have something to tell them both the night, eh? And your pals an’ all. Stole a march on them, haven’t you?’
The jerk of Matthew’s head passed as a nod, and Walter stood and watched him walk away and out of the colliery gates. Well, he’d bet his last farthing Matthew wouldn’t belittle his da’s courage again; he’d been brought down a peg or two today and no mistake. Strangely, the thought brought no relief to the guilt Walter was feeling. Aw, to hell with it, he thought irritably. The boy had to see for himself and that’s an end to it. Then he stomped off to the lamp house and Larry to while away the half an hour or so before his shift began.
Matthew found he had to concentrate very hard to keep the numbness that had enveloped him in place all the way home. He dared not think, not until he was safe in his bedroom with the door locked, where no one could see him if he let go of the flood of feeling that had built up throughout the endless time down the pit.
When he reached home he stood in the scullery for some minutes, his legs shaking, just gazing into space, before forcing himself to move into the kitchen. Again he stood for a while, holding on to one of the hardbacked chairs grouped round the table. He had thought he would cry once he was home, like he’d wanted to do in the cage, but curiously he found he was dry-eyed, the fear in him burning up the relief of tears.
After a moment or two he walked across to the range and lifted the big black kettle he’d filled with water before he’d left to meet his uncle this morning. He pushed it hard into the red glow. He would have a washdown in the bath and then see to his clothes, he told himself dully. His mam wouldn’t be back from the shop for some time, it being a Tuesday, the day she saw individual clients by appointment.
When there was six inches or so of warm water in the bottom of the tin bath Matthew bolted the front and back doors and stripped off completely. It was only then that he saw his knees were skinned raw from the number of times he’d stumbled and fallen. The palms of his hands were in no better shape, and when he lathered up the bar of carbolic soap and washed his hair, the top of his head felt as if a cheese grater had been applied to it.
He sat in the water until it was stone cold, and when he rose to his feet he was stiff and every muscle ached. He walked naked to his bedroom where he pulled on a pair of trousers and a shirt. Then he returned to the kitchen and washed his clothes as best he could in the cold bath water. This did not even begin to lift the grime out of them, so he boiled some more water on the hob and rubbed and scrubbed until the black coal dust was gone, his sore hands smarting so much he had to hold his breath at times. But still he couldn’t cry.
He hung his clothes on the line in the backyard, climbed the narrow stairs to his bedroom, shut the door after him and flung himself on the quilted bedspread that covered his narrow iron bed. His mam had made the bedspread and matching curtains and they were bonny. All his friends said he was lucky to have a room of his own, a room that had a square of carpet on the floor and a wardrobe and bookcase and shelving for all his toys and things. They all loved to come round to his house because his mam wasn’t stingy with drinks and cakes, not like some. But then all his pals had brothers and sisters and, depending on the number, that meant they were hard-pressed. He was glad he hadn’t got any brothers or sisters; he wouldn’t have wanted to share this room with anyone or have little ones messing about with his things. His eyes alighted on the magnificent model of Sir Francis Drake’s ship, the
Golden Hind
, which his Uncle Alec had bought him for his thirteenth birthday. It was perfect down to every small detail, and the present had been the envy of all his friends.
Golden Hind
, which his Uncle Alec had bought him for his thirteenth birthday. It was perfect down to every small detail, and the present had been the envy of all his friends.
‘Uncle Alec.’ It was a whisper, a cry from the heart. ‘Oh, Uncle Alec, please come back.’
But still he couldn’t cry.
Chapter Sixteen
‘What do you reckon then? Right pair of cards, these two, ain’t they?’
Alec turned his head slightly in acknowledgement of the man who had spoken but he did not look at him, keeping his gaze fixed on the two red-faced and perspiring individuals on the makeshift stage. ‘Aye, they’re not bad.’
In truth, the duo was getting on his nerves. For the last half an hour they had been singing such songs as ‘Hang Out Your Washing on the Siegfried Line’, ‘A Nice Cup of Tea’, and other sing-alongs, cavorting about like a pair of loonies in their endeavour to get everyone to join in. In the absence of official entertainment, most of those present seemed happy to oblige, but Alec was not.
He shut his eyes for a moment, sighing deeply. Whenever he had imagined seeing a bit of the world - and he had dreamed of it more and more the last few years since Margaret had become so impossible - it had never been in the company of hundreds of his own sex. Most of them seemed to fill their time cursing and belching and passing wind of such intense toxicity that he felt certain the whole company would go up in flames one day. But he could take the smells, the exhaustion, the swill that passed as food and the lack of privacy better than some of the sights he’d seen. They went round and round in his head every time he tried to sleep, like that little Arab child this afternoon who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had got blasted to smithereens.
He opened his eyes and stared blindly ahead. Their commanding officer had congratulated them today on inflicting heavy losses on the Italian troops advancing across the Libyan border into Egypt, but Alec knew he wasn’t the only one who couldn’t get the picture of that young mother cradling the mangled remains of what had once been her son out of his mind.
The world had gone mad. He stretched his neck, flexing tired muscles. Stark staring mad. Every country he could think of seemed intent on killing, maiming or burning the occupants of another one, and all because one deranged rabble-rousing little corporal was intent on world domination.
The wind that seemed more prevalent in the evening lifted the warm dust at his feet into his eyes, and he swore softly.
The man at his side spoke again. ‘You want to be thankful you’re not neck high in mud. I went through the first war and nothing could be worse than Passchendaele. Me and my best mate joined up together and we’d covered each other’s backs all through, then one night he went to relieve himself and never came back. We found him the next morning by his hand stretching out of the mud. He’d fallen off the boards, you see, and it had sucked him down. Lethal, that mud was. They say hell is hot and blazing, but I tell you, I’ve seen hell. It’s thick and black and stinking and once it’s got you, it don’t let go. That’s hell in my book.’
Alec couldn’t take any more of this. ‘I’m turning in.’ He rose to his feet. ‘See you.’
‘No doubt about that.’ The old veteran grinned up at him, his blackened teeth mere stubs. ‘We’re going to be slugging it out here for some time, you mark my words, but like I say, a few flies and heat and dust is nothing to that mud.’
A few flies? Alec just nodded before walking away. A few flies he could take, but the swarms that covered everything twenty-four hours a day were something else. They were the real enemy. You breathed them in, ate them, drank them . . .
He didn’t go straight to his kit; instead he continued to walk into the shadows as though he intended to relieve himself. When he was some distance from where most of the men had congregated he stopped, put his head back and looked up into the dark sky in which a myriad stars were twinkling.
He was going to die out here. Die on foreign soil, probably with his guts spilled out in the sand and flies laying their maggots in him before he was even cold. Back home life continued as before. People were eating and drinking and loving as though nothing had changed. There were times lately when he wondered if he’d meet his end like Ted Stafford had. He’d suddenly gone berserk a few weeks ago and bolted out of cover like a rabbit with a fox on its tail, running blindly until he was shot by the enemy. There’d been nothing any of them could do but watch. And him with a young wife and a babby.
The thought of Ted’s wife and child brought Carrie and Matthew into his mind before he could stop them intruding. He had found very early on in the mayhem that it didn’t do to think of Carrie. It was weakening, draining; it brought too many things he’d left unsaid to the surface and tied his stomach into knots. She hated him. Funny, but it had only been since he’d been out here that he could accept that. That was the thing about staring death in the face: it stripped away any pretence or wishful thinking.
He screwed up his eyes tightly then opened them very wide and continued to stare into the velvet sky.
Matthew was his. His by the act that had alienated Carrie for ever, and his by Matthew’s will too. His hand moved to the letter in the breast pocket of his uniform jacket. The boy had chosen to love him in spite of all his mother had done to keep them apart. And she’d tried, by, she had.
His face hardened and his gaze dropped from the sky to the scene about him. Whatever he’d done that night - and he wasn’t proud of it, of course he wasn’t, but she had been there with him at least part of the way - it wasn’t right to try and keep him from his own flesh and blood. Not in times like these. And now Matthew was down the pit and terrified out of his wits, if his letter was anything to go by. He’d never have stood for it if he had been back home, whatever might have resulted from his interfering. Matthew was no miner, you only had to look at him to see that.
Alec swore, loud and long, but it didn’t relieve the ache in his heart which had come into being when he had read Matthew’s desperate outpouring.
‘Hey, you.’ An officer was standing some yards away, peering at him in the blackness. ‘If you’ve finished, get back to the others. This isn’t a Sunday school picnic, you know. There’s a damn good reason why you’re told to stay together.’
‘Sorry, sir. I just needed a minute or two alone.’
The man moved nearer and Alec saw it was Lieutenant Strong. He liked Strong, all the men did, and they respected him. He might talk in a lah-de-dah fashion but that was the way he’d been brought up, no doubt, public school and the rest. But he cared about the men under his command and furthermore he was as brave as a bull when the chips were down, unlike some who were dab hands at sending their soldiers where they were chary of going themselves.
‘Bad news from home?’ the lieutenant asked.
‘Aye, sir.’ Well, it was in a way.
‘Damn Jerries.’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘We
will
beat them, you know. Mussolini too.’
will
beat them, you know. Mussolini too.’
‘Will we, sir?’ Every man jack knew that with France finished they were facing two huge Italian armies, each with about two hundred and fifty thousand men, one here on the Libyan-Egyptian border and the other in Ethiopia.
‘Definitely.’
‘How . . . how can you be sure, sir?’
Lieutenant Strong paused for a moment, and then he said, ‘I have a wife and two children. Do you have family?’
‘Aye, sir. A wife and son.’ He didn’t hesitate.
‘Well, every time the slightest doubt comes into my mind as to the outcome of this damn war, I think of Cynthia and my boys. I think of them under German occupation, of my boys being forced to wear the uniform of Hitler Youth and being indoctrinated by the Nazi machine. Then I know we will win. Anything less is not an option.’
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