Black Diamonds (3 page)

 

DANIEL

Dad's always that careful, I can't help ragging him for it, but I don't this morning. Too busy yawning. I watch the way he smells the air as we come back round after firing, then he listens as he's tapping everywhere above the fall with his pick, like he's talking to God, as if, before laying in. There is a point to it here, though, round this blind pinch in section three; we've cavilled that for this quarter and the place is full of bumps and low-roofed with cranky shit shale — I've got a ridge of scrapes down my back to prove it. I'm way too big for this sort of thing, they should make it Taff-only work; I didn't mean that. The rock above us groans softly, and we wait a little longer: tap, tap, tap. It settles and Dad says: ‘Yep.'

I'm fighting my pick before I lift it, and already thinking about crib break, already blinking. Next time I have trouble sleeping I will hit myself over the head. The light's streaking in my eyes like there's water running down the face, and I'm boiling after five minutes. It's always hot of course, but it's too hot too quickly. It feels like there's a fire above us, gusting down. I take off my shirt, but it doesn't make any difference.

I'm turning around to look at the brattice cloth, back towards the fan shaft, to see if the ventilation's right or if we are on fire, when it bumps again, very loud this time, with an unscheduled spill of rock somewhere, and we stop. Even the rats stop. There's dead silence; we've all heard it. And we all wait.

I hear Robby Cullen say, ‘Jesus Christ' and hoick from the next stall up. This section is so slow in parts he hasn't met his present darg of two ton a day for a few weeks, and it doesn't help that it takes the ponies ten years to get down here to collect. His wife is having her second one already and he's feeling the pressure. Stupid bugger, shouldn't have got married so young. He's only a year older than me.

Then it comes again, and somehow I know this time it's going to come down in a big way. I see myself at pit top, going in. And everything speeds up, I'm flying down the drift to the face. Here I am. And now I'm not. I've dropped the pick and I'm running back. Not panicking. Just running, as if I can outrun whatever the roof has in mind.

‘Move!' That's Dad, behind me, with a shove: ‘
Achtung!
Don't worry, I'm fucking moving.

It keeps coming and the sound is everywhere. I look over my shoulder and it's just black, and dust flying towards me like a fist. I keep running, and even as I'm running I'm thinking this is no good, I can hardly see a thing, but I keep going. Then something catches me on the back of my leg and I'm flat out, winded, and I definitely can't see a thing. And I reckon it's all over. I'm waiting for the rest to hit me.

I lie with my face on the floor and I think I can't breathe for a second but I am breathing and I must have moved because I feel the roughness against the side of my face. And it's warm. Just warm. I hear the trapper above, it's Billy, with his high voice, calling down something, and then it's all quiet again.

I wait.

A light swings through the dust way ahead with footsteps. ‘Jesus fucking Christ!' That's Robby, loud and to my right; I can hear him frigging around for his lamp, and I try to get up now, but I can't. When I try to push up against the floor, pain rips through me like you wouldn't believe. I must have made that plain because Robby says: ‘Hang on, mate.' I can't see him but he's right near me now. I'm staring up at the light ahead and the footsteps coming closer and I'm wanting it to be Dad but I know it's not. He's behind me, where's it's come down. I close my eyes, I can hear the others now, I don't want to know.

There's a hand on my shoulder and it's Evan, Evan Lewis saying, quiet and steady: ‘Who's here, then?' And Robby says: ‘Just us so far, this way.'

I can't say anything. The weight is lifted off the back of my leg and it wasn't much after all, only a prop; probably one I laid up: I hear it thud next to me. The four whistles blow for evacuation; says it all.

Hands slide under me, one two three, and I bite down against it this time as they lift me onto the stretcher that stinks of iodine; it's so old it's a wonder it holds the weight of me. I keep my eyes closed, I don't want to know. I wonder if Mim's had the baby yet. I panic for a minute thinking Mum's not at home, and then I'm thankful she's not. Evan says, ‘Easy!' and I'm out to it then. Won't be riding my bike home today.

I'm in and out, not thinking, but every step they take up that drift is branded into me. It takes ages and it doesn't take long enough and on reflex I open my eyes when we come out and they put me on the ground, but I can't see anything through the brightness anyway.

Evan's saying something next to me, but I don't catch it; everyone's out and milling around, wondering what's going on, wondering in the back of their minds whether they'll get back in today, though no one would ever say that. When I focus there's a man looking at me I think I've seen once or twice before, and he pats me on the chest. Who the fuck is he?

Evan says across me: ‘Well, that's very good of you. All right, then. ‘And then he says to me: ‘Well, up with you then, boyo.' I'd rather stay here, thank you.

My head's spinning right off as they get me up and onto the back seat of this new beaut motor car. Light blue panels, black leather: very flash; in any other circumstances I might be impressed by the service. I know every pothole in the road up to the hospital too by the time we get there.

Must have known I was coming because there's Mrs Moran shoving a brandy at me. I push it away — can't stand the taste let alone the smell of grog — and she says to me: ‘Drink it, Danny. Be a good lad, and I'll knock you out in a minute. The brandy won't kill you but what's coming might.' I drink it, and she strips me and washes me down. It hurts to buggery but somewhere I'm grateful to feel in my skin again. Till Nichols, the doctor, gets started prodding; he says it's not too bad by the looks of it, though, not too much bleeding inside. ‘X-ray will confirm it.' X-ray does, apparently, and in any other circumstances I might be impressed by that machine too.

‘Hold on, Danny,' Nichols says as he goes round to my feet. I look down at my left leg, doesn't look like there's anything wrong with it to me, but I start feeling it worse before he has a proper go at it, and I can say that the brandy does not help.

Now Mrs Moran knocks me out. Thank Christ. When I come back round and it's all over I don't argue about more brandy. A lot more. There are tears in my eyes now, and they are not all for me. There's someone yelling over the other side of the room; I can't see him and hope it might be Dad. Know it's not. Dad wouldn't carry on like that.

 

FRANCINE

So, I've tried to sketch a kookaburra from memory today — it looks like a duck — and I've paced around the garden imagining it till it bored me witless. At least I've calmed down now. Halfway home this morning, my heart still battering like a bird hitting a window, one of those work whistles started blowing shrill above the incessant crunch-crash din of the place and I just about jumped out of my skin. As if it were demanding,
What
are
you doing, Miss Connolly!
before setting off a chorus of every like whistle across the entire valley. This place is conspiring against me.

Good God, I even contemplated looking for my old needlework, which I haven't touched for at least a year — a twee thing of violets and lobelia I had planned to place under glass on my dressing table before the tedium set in: didn't get halfway round the border. It's here somewhere, in one of the packing cases in the spare room. Leave it there. I had a long, hot, drowsy bath instead. I suppose I could have done a little more unpacking to wile away some time, but I can't face it. Really. I'm turning into one of those girls I've always despised; next I'll be peering into the mirror worrying about the fashion of my hairstyle and reading cheap romances to assuage the meaninglessness of my existence.

That's it, I'm going out. I'm not the best at landscapes, but I'll go and have a shot at the hillsides out of town, wait for the sun to come around. I gather up my sketchbook and pencil box and I'm heading for the stairs when I hear the Austin pull up. Father's home, from whatever he's fortunate enough to have been doing out there all day.

‘Francy!' he's calling as his head appears around the front door, waving at me to come down, before disappearing outside again. He's in a terrible excitement.

‘What's happened?' I say, following him out, and I can smell the whisky lingering around the doorway. Oh dear.

Oh dear indeed. There's an unconscious man in the back of the vehicle; he's covered in a blanket and there's a graze on his cheek, and I think the worst. Father's run someone down. Well.

‘I'll explain in a minute. Stay here while I get McNally to help me,' he says, already striding down the side of the house. Help you do what?

I step closer to the Austin and look at the fellow. His head is lying back on the folded canopy and he's frowning; he winces, then sighs. He's wearing pyjamas and there's a cast on one of his legs sticking out from under the blanket and shoved up diagonally against the front seat. He looks extremely uncomfortable, and quite young too. This is not quite real. I'm still holding my book and pencil box and have a strange compulsion to sketch him.

‘Go up and turn down the bed in the spare room, will you, Francy?' Father says behind me, McNally lumping crankily along with him.

‘Shouldn't he be in a hospital?' I say; he surely shouldn't be here, should he?

‘No,' says Father, quite sharply, and that jolts.

So I go back inside the house and Polly meets me in the hall saying: ‘What's all this fuss?'

I shrug, casually, and say as I walk past her: ‘We have a visitor, apparently.' My grasping for a small moment of condescension overriding my sense: I should have told her to go upstairs and turn down the bed. No, I should have asked her to help me. I am a first-class fool: there is no bed to turn down. Well, the bed is there but it's not made up. I have never moved so fast in my life. It's a sloppy job, in accordance with my inexperience and haste, but I don't imagine our guest will care. I can hear them awkward and heaving on the stairs. I push the higgledy-piggledy cases into some order against the wall and feel like saluting. Five minutes ago I was wondering what to do. Asketh and the Lord shall provide.

Father looks as if his face is about to explode as he and McNally come in. Our visitor dwarfs his bearers ridiculously; I can't believe they made it up the stairs. Father looks at me urgently and I take the poor man's feet, trying to be gentle against the weight, and help heft him onto the bed. The man lets out a pitiful groan but he doesn't rouse. I look at my father, my eyebrows fairly off my face. He cocks his head; he'll speak to me outside. I look back at the man as I turn to leave and realise we've just left him sprawled there, with his feet off the end of the bed. Nothing I can do about the length of the bed, but I pull the covers up over him, and follow Father out of the room.

What?
my eyes are saying to him; he's still catching his breath.

Then he runs a hand through what's left of his hair and he says: ‘Oh, Francy.'

My eyes are still asking but I'm waiting for him to tell me that he ran the man over.

Instead he says: ‘There was a terrible accident at the Wattle today, a cave-in. Three men killed. One of them this lad's father.'

That is unspeakably awful, but I still don't understand what he's doing here in our house. He's a
miner.

‘And his mother's out of town,' Father adds, shaking his head, but that's not an answer.

‘Shouldn't he be in hospital?' I repeat, with some proper compassion this time.

‘No. There's a man they've got in there with gallstones, moaning to wake the devil. And that Doctor Nichols said the lad'll be all right; just groggy from too much brandy — he passed out on the way here. Needs a comfortable bed, that's all. When I realised he had no one at home, I said we'd take him, till his mother comes — just overnight possibly. It seemed the very least …' He grabs at the top of the balustrade as if off balance.

‘Are
you
all right?' I ask. He looks ill himself, face pale now, and tired.

‘Yes,' he bellows, summoning a grin at my concern and heading down the stairs with the spring back in his step. ‘Nothing a malt won't fix.'

I follow him down, wondering why it is he feels so personally responsible. I'm sure Father doesn't know a jot about this mine of his, and a sense of responsibility is not generally known to be a high point in his repertoire.

But I don't get a chance to ask any more questions before Mr Drummond clumps through the open front door.

‘Francine,' he says, taking off his hat as he sees me at the bottom of the stairs.

‘I'm so sorry to hear about the accident,' I say to him above my own confusion.

He nods very gravely in my direction but he's looking at Father. ‘I need to have a word, Frank,' he says and, although Mr Drummond has never displayed too much good humour at the best of times, he appears positively grim now.

Father nods in return and they head without further word for the parlour. The door closes with a soft click behind them. I have never eavesdropped in my life — I'm confident that the majority of closed-door conversations between Father and his associates would not be worth the bother — but, naturally, I can't help myself now. I slip over to the parlour door and press my ear to the wood.

I don't hear anything at first since Polly heaves down the hall behind me and shuts the front door with a forcible sigh. She stops as she turns back, and stares at me, but I have no shame; I wave her away with a scowl.

The first thing I do hear is Mr Drummond saying: ‘You've no business taking this sort of thing into your own hands. You're a bloody liability!' I couldn't fail to hear it, since he's not making much effort to keep his voice down or hold off the expletives.

I can't make out what Father says in reply but there's a dismissive quality to it, followed by the stopper plipping out of the decanter, then Mr Drummond says: ‘What message does that send the men, you strolling in here and promising Lewis such terms? Every bloody industrialist in this country would think you a fool — a dangerous one. You've got no bloody idea!'

‘What difference will it make to the company ledger?' Father says and I can hear a scoff in his tone. ‘They are my profits too — I can do what I like with my bit.'

‘The difference is that it won't stop at compensation, Frank. Give them an inch on this issue and we'll never hear the end of it. The union could well use this as a precedent and run with it.'

‘And they'll hit a brick wall, won't they, in you and every bloody industrialist in the country. But three men died today, in
our
mine, that's all that concerns me. And their three widows. The piddling payout from their own fund won't amount to enough for those families to live on beyond a few months. The lad upstairs will be off for weeks — is it his fault he won't be able to work?'

‘It's not ours either. This was an accident, pure and simple — as the enquiry will show. We're not culpable for something so completely unpreventable. As
that lad's
father would have known: he was one of our most valuable workers; where's our compensation for losing him? This is not a charity. You can't act on your emotions here.'

‘I've never acted any other way, John,' Father laughs, then cuts it off. ‘I'm going to make them a reasonable offer and be done with it.'

‘Why?' There's genuine bewilderment from Mr Drummond now. ‘This is madness. You've never shown the slightest interest in ten years and now …?'

‘And now I am. Look, John …' and it goes to mumbles now. Mr Drummond says, ‘Oh,' a soft blow. Father laughs again, more mumbles. Mr Drummond says: ‘All right, but make certain it's unofficial — just between you and them, and don't involve Lewis. Keep the union out of it. I still think you're mad, though.' He no longer sounds angry, just resigned.

‘Done,' Father says cheerfully. ‘And I'm going to build a lavatory as well, if it's the last thing I do!'

‘They won't thank you for it,' Mr Drummond adds, ‘if that's why you're doing it. Believe me.'

‘Oh no, it's far more indulgent than that.' Father's moving towards the door. ‘Stay for dinner?'

I scurry to the stairs and bound nearly to the top before they come out.

‘I think I've had enough excitement for today,' Mr Drummond says; he's so terribly dour; Catholic like us, but from Yorkshire. He adds: ‘And so have you. I'll see you tomorrow.' And he's gone.

Well. That all says a lot and a little. Father's had some kind of epiphany by the sounds of it and appointed himself philanthropist, which is at once as baffling as it seems fabulously noble, but that soft ‘Oh' echoes. I shall make a big deal of his kindness at dinner tonight, since it is evidently so important to him, whatever the reason. I frown; can't put two and two together with this lot.

I look across the landing into the open doorway of the spare room and another whisper slips through me. I can see through to the window, and see myself sitting on a rock futilely trying to capture the sun on the hills with a piece of charcoal. That's where I'd be right now. While this man in the bed … I can't begin to think. I don't even know his name.