Netherwood (48 page)

T
he winding accident was no reason to halt production at New Mill, and Amos and the rest of the afternoon shift were redirected to a wide, single-tiered cage in a ground-level shaft usually used for coal tubs and ponies. Amos had got hold of a list of names of the deceased, and he made sure as many people as possible knew the facts. Lew Sylvester was on it and old Alf Shipley, who had only been down there for a couple of hours to look at a damaged section of the roadway. There were six others. Jed Goddard and his two lads, Henry Schofield, Billy Goldthorpe and young Abe Utley, an apprentice who had only left the screens two weeks previously. The word was that the remains were horrific, the men having been crushed when the force of the fall caused a concertina effect on the cage, collapsing it in on itself as it hit the sump at the bottom of the shaft at a speed of two hundred miles an hour.

It was a black day, and there wasn’t much said among the men down the pit as they went about their work. Up on the surface, the bereaved were being plied with sweet tea, though the earl wasn’t attending to them in their grief, being away with his family at his London home.

‘I reckon nowt of ’im, living the ’igh life while men die in ’is service,’ said Sam Bamford.

Amos shrugged. ‘Makes no difference who comes, does it? They’re dead now. I expect ’e’ll be told, anyroad. Telegram or summat.’

In Lord Hoyland’s absence Jem Arkwright had come across from Netherwood Hall, representing the estate, and he was holed up now in a pit office with Don Manvers, putting a story together before the inspector of mines arrived. There’d be an inquest sharpish, thought Amos, and doubtless a great deal of energy would be expended proving the accident hadn’t happened through neglected repairs to shoddy equipment. God forbid that the earl’s reputation as the great benefactor should be tarnished. Privately, he wondered if this latest tragedy might not galvanise a few more men into joining the union. Death benefits to widows and security for families of the deceased were on the agenda of the YMA. Amos wondered, as he worked, how he might raise the issue without appearing to profit from the disaster.

When he got home that night Anna was waiting, standing like a sentry by his back door in Brook Lane. This was not a usual occurrence. He was almost upon her by the time he noticed her and he stopped in his tracks, astounded. His relationship with Anna had always been friendly, but she had never paid him a visit at home.

‘What’s up?’ he said at once. ‘is it Seth? ’as something ’appened to t’lad?’

‘No. Well, yes,’ she said. ‘In a way.’

He looked at her, mystified and not reassured.

‘What I mean,’ she said, ‘is Seth is safe, but not happy. Can you come see him, talk to him?’

‘Now? In all my pit muck?’ said Amos. ‘What is it that can’t wait till morning?’ It wouldn’t be beyond the boy to need an urgent conversation about melon varieties. There wasn’t much Amos wouldn’t do for Seth, but right now he needed a wash and a hot meal.

‘Please,’ said Anna. ‘He heard there was accident. He will not believe you are alive.’

The penny dropped. Amos turned at once and began to run down the street towards Beaumont Lane.

‘He’s not at home,’ Anna called after him. He stopped and turned to her.

‘He’s at allotment,’ she said, and shook her head to show that she knew this was madness, but there it was.

Amos set off again, changing his course. Anna followed in less of a hurry. She had had a terrible time with Seth today; frankly, she was happy to hand the problem over to Amos. She was sick of the boy’s baleful gaze, which he turned on her so often that she saw it even when she closed her eyes.

Amos, meanwhile, cursed himself as he ran. Among all the thoughts he’d had since the accident, the lad hadn’t been among them. It hadn’t even crossed his mind that Seth might believe him to be among the dead. He jogged along the quiet streets and out of the town along the Sheffield Road, then swung right on to the lane which led to the plots. By the time he flung open the gate on to his allotment, he could barely breathe, let alone speak. The boy was a sorry sight; he lay face down in the dirt by the potato rows.

‘Seth, lad,’ Amos said, alarmed, appalled, embarrassed for the boy. ‘Frame thissen.’

Seth twisted and sat up, as if he’d been poked with a cattle prod, then he jumped to his feet and hurtled into Amos. He was trying to speak, but couldn’t get anything out beyond an incoherent stammer. For a long while they just stood there, Seth’s filthy face pressed against Amos’s filthy shirt.

‘You could’ve come to t’pit,’ Amos said, finally. ‘They would’ve told you there that I weren’t among ’em.’

‘We did.’

This was Anna, who had just pushed open the wooden gate and arrived by their side. ‘Didn’t we, Seth? We went to pit, and we spoke to men who told us, no, Amos Sykes was not in cage.’

Amos held Seth out at arm’s length, studying his face which had been disfigured by his afternoon of imagined horror.

‘Nah then, lad, is that right?’

Seth nodded. Now that Amos was here, in the flesh, he felt weak and stupid for thinking him dead when everyone told him otherwise. He shuddered involuntarily and gave a great, tragic sniff. He simply didn’t have the words to express the blind panic that had seized him when he heard the pokers rattling on the fire backs and saw women leaving their homes and their chores to be at New Mill if the worst news came. He had been on his way back to school after eating the bread and cheese that Anna had left for him and Eliza on the kitchen table. Eliza had skipped on ahead and was already in the school yard, but Seth was dawdling along, wishing he could spend the afternoon in the sunshine getting the canes up for the runner beans. Then the clanging had started, passing from one house to the next like jungle drums, and women had emerged into the street, pulling shawls around their shoulders as they half-ran, half-walked towards the colliery. Seth had begun to run himself, all the way to Mitchell’s Mill where he knew Anna would be working. She had a fleeting moment of surprised satisfaction that he’d come to her in a crisis, but it hardly lasted a second because he threw himself on her in a fury, pummelling her with his hard little boy’s fists, and apparently blaming her, in a barely coherent stream of words, for his father’s death and now Amos’s.

Ginger had come to Anna’s aid, pulling Seth off her and giving him a resounding slap across the face.

‘Now pack it in, Seth Williams,’ she had said. ‘Your mother would be ashamed of t’way you’re carryin’ on.’

There were customers in the shop, all of them gawping at the scene unfolding before them. Anna and Ginger exchanged a look.

‘I take him to New Mill,’ Anna had said. She was shaking from the shock of Seth’s accusations and the uncertainty of Amos’s fate.

‘Aye, well,’ Ginger said. She turned to Seth. ‘You behave yersen. And wipe that snotty face.’

She had her own opinion about Eve’s lad, and it wasn’t favourable. She’d seen the way he was with Anna, and had frequently thought that if he was hers he’d be made to account for his behaviour or suffer the consequences. For Anna, though, a puzzle had been solved this afternoon. She waited until Seth had cleaned his face with the cloth Ginger thrust at him, then she set off with him to the pit, walking in silence. At New Mill three different men told him Amos was safe, but Seth had wanted to see him and this, apparently, wasn’t possible. Then he had run away. She had let him be for a few hours – there was so much to do every day that searching for a hysterical, recalcitrant boy had to wait – then, with Eliza at home looking after Ellen and Maya, she walked to the allotment, where she found him. And there he’d stayed, despite all her entreaties to come home, eat, sleep. He hated her, he said, and nothing would ever be right while she was in his home. So finally she had shrugged and left him, and waited for Amos to come home from work and mend it.

They sat together for a long time after Seth had gone to bed. Anna had made a batch of pig parcels for the mill, and she warmed some through for Amos, who’d never imagined you
could do anything with a savoy other than chop it small and boil it. They talked about Seth. Anna said she pitied him; all these months he’d carried an irrational grudge, blaming her for being alive when his father was dead. Amos said it was all straightened out now, he was sure of it. He had told the boy, upstairs, that Anna was a good woman and a very dear friend to his mother, and that he, Amos, respected and liked her. It was beyond foolish, he said, to punish her for Arthur’s death.

‘Your father showed Anna a great kindness before ’e died. He knew what was right, and he would expect t’same o’ you. You mun grow up, little man. Stop actin’ like a bairn.’

Seth, ashamed, contrite, had listened solemnly then dropped into an exhausted sleep.

‘It’ll be better now,’ Amos said to Anna as they talked about the boy. ‘Y’know, easier between t’two of you.’

Anna smiled and shrugged – she could live without Seth’s approval – and poured more tea from the big brown pot. They talked a little about the accident and about Lew, who Anna knew vaguely as a customer at the shop. There’d be funerals, probably sooner than later.

‘Do you think Eve will come?’ Anna said.

‘Doubt it. ’Ow would she get ’ere in time? They might not even tell ’er it’s ’appened.’

Anna heard the hardness in his voice. ‘Are you angry at Eve?’ she said.

‘No,’ Amos said. ‘I’m angry with plenty o’ folk, but not wi’ Eve.’

‘Good,’ Anna said. She sighed. ‘I miss her.’

‘Aye,’ Amos said. He stared into his cup and swilled the tea around. ‘Me an’ all.’

Could a
soirée
be too triumphantly successful? The countess believed so. The Duchess of Abberley, enchanted with all she’d eaten that evening, had put her in an extremely awkward position.

‘We’d love to borrow your clever cook for a little
chez nous
at Grosvenor Crescent,’ she’d said. ‘A week Saturday?’

The countess, entirely caught out, smiled thinly. Eve was her own discovery. She had no wish to share her. Yet, could one decline a request from a duchess?

‘The king will be there, we just heard from the palace. All very hasty, as these things are. You’ll come, of course?’