Heart of Coal (12 page)

‘What things he has seen!’ whispers Will. ‘One day I’ll feckin’ travel the world, see if I don’t.’

Bella looks at him sharply. ‘There is more to life than drifting around gawping at exotic savages, Willie Winkie. I have seen a few sights, but none is as fine as a good home with family and friends close by.’

Will is still hypnotised by the tiny scenes. ‘Well, I will have to judge for myself because I have seen no sights further than Westport. And who could make a nice piece of artistry out of that town? Oh, Mrs C, look at that! Is it fruit or flower? And see — an inscription!’

Carved so small that only a magnifying glass can pick it out are the words
To Rose of Tralee, my daughter. Behold the wide world of
your father, Conrad V
. Bella groans as Will reads the message. ‘Ah, Con!’ she cries. ‘You would tempt her away too? That is …’

Her voice trails away as they both hear Rose’s light step on the porch. Bella quickly bundles the tooth and its wrapping under balls of wool in her knitting basket. Her eyes are fierce as she turns back to Will.

‘This is not the time to show Rose. Who knows what harm it might bring? We will keep this a secret for the time being. Willie, you must promise?’

Will nods, but already his mind is on his confrontation with Rose.

15 MARCH 1903

EFFIE SCOTT CAME to school with her leg in a worse state than yesterday. The sores are infected and are spreading, not only up her own leg but to others in the class, I’m sure of it. In the lunch hour I bound the horrid things up and piggy-backed her home. Poor Mrs Scott, thin as a rake and streaming with a nose-cold, said she was grateful for my care but burst into sobs when I insisted Effie must go down to the hospital for treatment.

‘Look inside and see for yourself,’ she cried. ‘My Billy is coughing his lungs out and Joan not much better. The baby is the only well person in the family. Mr Scott has been home a week with the bronchitis, and only today back in the mine. How am I going to take a trip down to Westport? I might as well fly to the moon.’

Well, I could see why she sent Effie to school! Back the two of
us went and I let the stoic little girl lie in the little teachers’ room with her leg up and a hot poultice to draw the pus.

It won’t do, though. We need our own hospital and the way the fundraising is going we won’t have one until the next century. Tonight I went to the Hospital Committee meeting and made a speech! (I have not been invited to join — Henry represents the school, but he is not well these days and often sends me whether they like it or not.)

I told them about Effie and the Scotts. ‘Cake stalls and penny raffles are all very well,’ I said, fiery as a unionist, ‘but we will never raise the amount unless the Company dobs in. Let us challenge them to match every pound we raise. Or better, two to our one. It is in their interests too. There will be fewer days lost if men are treated on the Hill.’

I know I make them uncomfortable, but they were behind me on this, which was a welcome change. Quite a few of the men clapped. (Not Tom Hanratty, who is chairman, but Flynn O’Dowd and Tom Cudby senior were behind me. Also Miss Jessop, which was a surprise.) I wanted to lead a delegation but they weren’t having that! But at least I got them moving. Mr Hanratty has lost all his drive these days. He should make way for someone with more energy.

I will see that hospital built!

29 MARCH 1903

Yesterday I visited the mine where Brennan nearly died. They have closed the entrance with old iron and put up a notice, but it is easy to slip past. I was afraid to light a candle because of the gas but found my way to the hollowed space in the wall. Such utter dark! I lay in that warm black place for perhaps an hour — not long enough to be dangerous — and came out again with a light head, no more than that.

It
is
dangerous though, in a different way. The peace and the warmth is seductive. I wanted to stay.

4 APRIL 1903

I think about Willie Winkie too much. He slinks around inside my head like a rat (Willie the Rat, the Jockey Club calls him — very apt), nosing his way into my thoughts when I am interested in something quite other. Bella wants to know why I dislike him. It’s true — he’s as irritating as grit between your toes. For one thing he is so sure of himself. He was born up here and thinks he knows everything — who is courting whom; which shopkeeper has the cheapest flour; which miner made the best tally; what entertainment is on its way. Why doesn’t he gallop off down below and leave us in peace? He spends half his time in Westport anyway.

For another thing, he is in our house too much: under our feet like a grinning goblin. Bella wags her finger at me and says I am jealous. Am I jealous? Jealous of what? No, it is the way he plays up to Bella. She doesn’t see he is playing her like a fish. What does he want from her, the nosy little weasel? He sits by her bed, cackling and gossiping like an old woman. First it was the odd visit; now he comes down most days in his dinner-break, and eats our food rather than Hanrattys’. What does Bella see in him? She makes a fuss as if he were her child, getting up from her bed to make him soup or a cheese dish. If I come home in the middle of the day she will not bother, but lets me cut my own slice of bread.

Well, he deserved to lose his money. Hadn’t he been dining for a month at our expense? At any rate it was only for gambling. There he was, in his shirtsleeves if you please, by the settee, holding Bella’s hand, extolling some horse that would be a good bet and how he would put a bob or two on for Bella if she wanted. Bella’s face all rosy with the excitement of it. His coat was flung in a heap over a
chair, with the pocket gaping. It was the easiest thing in the world to lift out a handful of coin. If I hadn’t been so angry with him, I suppose I might have taken less. I thought at the time that the cocky monkey must have won at the horses because there was a good sum in that pocket — several guineas and half-guineas as well as the silver. I had thought to lift a few shillings to teach him a lesson, but came out with gold coin. Well, all the better, I thought. Let him sweat a bit.

Oh, the hue and cry that followed! I had to laugh. It turned out his pocket of coin was not his at all, but belonged to several of the lads who trusted Willie Winkie to place bets for them. Back he comes up the Hill, sitting high on Black Knight (which by rights should be mine) but well down in the dumps. They say there was a right old set-to up at Hanrattys’ with the little monkey accused of all sorts, and he insisting someone had picked his pocket.

Later, there he is again at the log house, with a face as long as pulled toffee. He remembers leaving his coat on our chair, he says, and could he search in case the coins had rolled out. Which he did, while Bella and I watched. At last the boy faced up to me, which was brave, I suppose, and asked the question he’d been thinking of all along.

‘Miss — Mrs — I don’t suppose …’

I waited.

‘I don’t suppose you may have …’

Then Bella, my own Mama, helped him out.

‘He’s wondering, my sweetheart, if you might have borrowed a coin or two?’

She said it in her neutral, flat voice that I have always hated to hear. Usually there is every colour in the sound of her voice — it is one of the things that sets my Bella above the general run of women up here. But her flat voice is cold as winter; it dismembers me. If she
had left it to Willie Winkie to ask the question, things might have been different.

Everyone knows the game I play. If someone misses money and suspects me (and this is by no means every time, be assured — it is surprising how often people blame their own absent-mindedness for small losses), and if that person has the courage to stand up and ask me, then I return the coin or the piece, whatever it is. I will make a little act of it, find it with a cry of surprise, or produce it like magic from behind a person’s ear, or suggest we toss for it: something to make light of the matter. Some will smile and thank me; others stalk off with a frown. A stupid game, I suppose, and I hate playing it, but I can’t manage any other way. If some don’t like it, well, there’s nothing can be done.

But on this occasion Bella’s intervention spoiled the game. How could I return the money when Bella had asked the question? ‘No,’ said I, looking Willie Winkie dead in the eye, ‘I have not seen your money, Willie Winkie. If you had it loose in that pocket, perhaps it flew out as you rode down the Track.’

The little fellow seemed about to say something, push the matter further, but then he shrugged his scrawny shoulders and let it be.

‘Oy then, I am in feckin’ trouble,’ said he. ‘It will take three weeks’ wages to pay back the lads.’ And off he droops, not his usual perky self at all.

Well, this was difficult. I like to play by my rules. Perhaps I would have ‘found’ the money a day or two later and returned it. I think I would have done that. Only Bella would not leave it alone. On and on in her flat, hard voice — am I sure?; it would be best to admit it; there is no shame if the money is returned quickly; and so on until I am quite dragged down too, and want to scream at her for her stony expression.

‘Mama,’ I said finally, ‘don’t you trust me at all? I did not take his wretched guineas. That is an end to it.’ It made me angrier than ever to be forced this way. I do not like lying to Bella, as she very well knows.

Well, she left it, or so I thought, and though dinner that night was a quiet affair, at least I was able to bring a smile to her face with stories of the children at school and the antics of the other teachers. It is an uphill climb, sometimes, to find an entertaining tale, and often I have to invent a story to amuse Bella. I am not well-loved in the town these days. Is it that a widow is always treated this way? Or that there is still some blame flung, like a dark shawl, over my shoulders? The worst is Henry Stringer, who will not come to our home to discuss matters any more; will not rage against his latest political foe while we eat our meal at school. He paces the playground, pipe sending up regular smoke signals, but any other kind of communication has withered away. Oh, I miss that more than anything.

‘Are you ill, Henry?’ I say. ‘Where have all your ideas and theories flown away to?’ Or I will taunt him with an outrageously conservative view — suggest that the Miners’ Union is corrupt or the new Arbitration Court toothless. Not a flicker. His eyes slide past to focus on some distant thing. ‘You may well be right,’ he mutters, and continues to walk away, puff puff, like a tiny steam engine. It is maddening. My world is full of unsolvable mysteries, it seems.

Well, the missing guineas. Could anyone credit this? Bella, my own mother, somehow found my hiding place. There is a place where I keep my treasure, before I can do something more secure and profitable with it. Did Bella always know, or did she search high and low? Or did she — I cannot bear the thought — secretly spy on me? When I discovered she had found the guineas and returned them to Willie Winkie, saying they had turned up after all, rolled
under a basket — when I learned all this, not from Bella, but from Weasel Willie himself, face all wrinkled with smiles and rusty little voice creaking with thanks (but his eyes said he knew the truth of it), all breath left my body for a moment. How could Bella do such a thing? Never, never
ever
has she crossed me in public before. For a moment, standing there in the road, watching Willie prance off, I believed that even Bella had stopped loving me.

This is true: I could scarcely walk the few yards home; could not stop tears running down for anyone in the world to see. Inside the house Bella was waiting. At first I could say nothing, my throat jammed tight with the shock of such betrayal. Bella’s face was sad and grey. She stood there in front of the fire, leaning on her stick.

‘My sweetheart,’ she began, but my voice found itself at that very word. How could I be her sweetheart if she would damage me so in public? I raged, she raged, it was a blessed release, to be perfectly honest. On it went for a good half-hour — traitor, liar, unnatural, thief, betrayer — we flung accusations back and forth, shouting and crying, and at last fell into each other’s arms and decided a glass of sherry was needed. A good end to a sorry business.

But I will be liked even less in the town now, and that is a serious matter, the fixing of which will take some serious thought.

Wee Willie says Brennan is coming back. Wouldn’t you know I’d hear it from the Rat?

NO ONE EVER thought much of Nelson Hanratty, the quiet beanpole brother of the much more noticeable Michael. Nolly was seen as a general dogsbody who would often as not get instructions wrong, or even if he understood them would manage to create a disaster out of a simple task. After his brother’s death, though, Nelson was promoted, of necessity, to Michael’s end of the business and, overnight it seemed, became a dependable right-hand-man to his father. In the first weeks after Michael’s death it was Nelson who saw that supplies were ordered, and customers served, while his parents grieved in their room at the back of the house, and his sister Liza wandered the plateau painting sad watercolours. It was Nelson who finally faced up to his father — the same who had treated him more as servant than son — to say it was time to come out and face the world again; that the community attached no blame to the
parents; and that the business might collapse and customers drink their pints elsewhere if the saloon was not more cheerful and welcoming.

‘I’ve smiled all I can, Father,’ said the boy, ‘but it’s not my nature and it is yours. You are needed in the front room.’

Totty, listening to these plain words, took heart and breath, as mothers do, and went back to the kitchen. Over time she could laugh and sing again, and chat with her neighbours, but the fright of seeing Michael hanging purple-tongued in the stable, the loss of her golden first-born, the grinding agony of knowing no cause, laid a shadow across the path of every small task, every day for the rest of her life. From that day, the day the Boer War was won, the Hanrattys were lost to Denniston. It would be three more years before they left, but leave they surely would, selling one guest house, dismantling the other to transport it down the Incline to re-erect it away from the shadow of that unfathomable death. Many others would follow, in later years, but the Hanrattys, who were considered the cornerstone of Denniston, the dynasty built into the bedrock, lost their connection to that plateau as the rope was cut and the dead boy lowered into the straw.

A tangible result of that dreadful day was the rift between Totty and the Rasmussens — both Bella and Rose. It rankled that Rose had not seemed devastated by the loss. She continued to teach. She volunteered to join the planning committee for the new hospital. Rose played piano at school concerts and took the children on picnics as if she were no widow of a shameful suicide. Neither Totty nor Tom could bear to see her bright and smiling about the town. Liza would cross the road rather than face her. It made an awkward chasm in the community, as if a large pot-hole had grown in the middle of Dickson Street, which no one quite knew how to fill. Bella, largely bedridden, posed no great problem, although in better
times Totty would have visited and brought a dish of stew or a cake along with the town gossip. Now she stayed away.

Nelson Hanratty did not share his parents’ attitudes. Nor did he denounce them. He went about his business, even-handed and level-headed. If he laid blame for his brother’s death at any door, he never showed it.

On this grey and blustery July day of 1903 he is plodding up over the plateau with a cartful of hay and oats for the mine horses. Just as well he’s covered the load with a tarp because here comes the hail, slicing almost horizontal and cutting his cheeks, no matter how high he pulls up his collar or jams down his cap. At the high point of the terrain, where the wind bites hardest, a single house, newly built, stands against the storm. Nolly can hear the hail pinging off the unpainted iron roof. He dismounts and leads old Diablo around to the lee side of the house. He has a parcel of books to deliver. His instructions are to leave it in the biscuit tin on the porch. Meantime horse and boy will shelter, hoping the worst will pass quickly over.

Nolly stamps his feet on the porch to keep the circulation going. Mr Stringer has certainly chosen a wild spot to build a house. When the new infant teacher arrived two months ago, with a wife and family, Henry Stringer willingly gave them the school-house and built himself a tiny two-room cottage halfway between Denniston and Burnett’s Face, no other dwelling for a mile either way, and host to every direction of weather. Nolly has been away from school two years; he never was bright like his brother and sister, but steady enough to earn the position of school captain in his last year. He thinks he was chosen because he stood head and shoulders above the others, so was a good rallying point at school sports and picnics.

As he bends to examine the workmanship of the new front door
it swings open and there is Mr Stringer, unshaven and in his dressing-gown, pipe clamped between his teeth.

‘Come in, come in quickly,’ he cries, ‘before the whole raging storm comes with you!’

In the hallway Henry Stringer sees who he has brought in. For a moment he closes his eyes and Nolly fears he might faint, but as he moves forward to help, Henry recovers, steps away into the kitchen. The boy follows. The room is warm, very warm, and full of steam. Down the clouded window pane black trails of condensation mirror the white tracks of the hail outside. The roar of the fire in the chimney can be heard above the storm’s rattle, and a kettle on the coal range puffs out clouds.

‘Nelson, my boy, you shouldn’t be out in this,’ croaks Henry Stringer. He clears papers off a chair and seats the lad. ‘What are your parents thinking of?’

‘The fodder is needed, Mr Stringer. I thought I’d be into the valley before it struck.’

Henry looks at him in silence. Nolly smiles back, but a little uncertainly. Is Mr Stringer down with fever? He seems strange. At last Henry sighs and comes back to his normal self.

‘Well, Nelson, you see the headmaster is laid low with a bad chest, and is trying to steam the pestilence out of himself. Can you bear the tropical heat?’

‘It’s very pleasant, sir.’

‘And you are a very pleasant liar.’ Henry looks vaguely around the tiny room — the piles of books and papers, the unwashed dishes. He coughs. ‘Please forgive the mess. I have been ill.’

‘Sorry, sir.’

Henry smiles painfully. He realises that if Nelson looked even slightly like his brother, Henry would simply not be able to manage a word. I must get over this, he thinks. I am becoming ridiculous.
He offers Nelson a mug of hot tea and asks for any news in the town.

Nolly Hanratty looks out at the flying hail, which is softening now to snow. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘things are the same, more or less.’ They both know what the less is. ‘There is a new rope-road to be built,’ says Nolly, trying to find something that will interest his former teacher, ‘which they say will double production.’

‘That is not news, Nelson. I have been advocating that move for months.’

‘And Brennan is returning to survey it.’

Henry coughs again and turns toward the fire to spit. ‘Brennan Scobie?’

‘True. My parents are not that pleased.’

Nor I, thinks Henry. Nor I. But holds his peace.

After the boy has gone, clop-clopping through the whirling snow over the plateau, Henry, coughing, stooping like an old man, begins to tidy up. When the dishes are washed and the papers sorted or burnt, he straightens up, looks around at his little home. He takes the pipe out of his mouth and delivers a speech to the window and the storm outside.

‘Well, I am born to be a loner, so it seems, but I am still a headmaster and teacher, am I not? And a member of the human race. I still maintain an interest in books, and in the great or small matters of the world outside, even if I no longer argue them at Hanrattys’ saloon. Also,’ — here he points his pipe stem severely at his reflection in the window — ‘also, you will clear your mind, Henry Stringer, of anger or recrimination. Brennan may have been the cause — yes, yes he may — but he is certainly not responsible. No, no, he is not!’ Henry begins to pace, trips over a chair. ‘God dammit to hell!’ he roars, rubbing his shin. ‘Is the pain inside not enough? Could I have saved him? Possibly, but I doubt it. Could Rose? Same
answer. Michael was the one who took his own life. Ohh!’ He slumps onto the straight-backed wooden chair beside the coal range, coughing and groaning, only to jump up again, to beat the sides of his dressing-gown like some scarecrow flagellant. ‘And another thing!’ he shouts at the whirling storm outside. ‘Something must be done about Rose — and you, Henry Stringer, must not shrink from your duty in that direction! Tomorrow!’ He adds more water to the steaming kettle, then stands in the middle of the room as if he has forgotten what he is about to do. ‘Or at least by week’s end,’ he mutters.

But before long he is sitting slumped again, dull-eyed in the steamy room.

Meanwhile young Nolly Hanratty has eased Diablo and his full cart down the steep track and into the more sheltered valley of Burnett’s Face. He looks down at this grimy little miners’ town without much love. He is a Denniston man. The snow still swirls but here at least there is shelter from the worst of the wind. The houses of Burnett’s Face, every chimney pluming, huddle together as if for warmth. They are built higgledy-piggledy, no discernible plan or pattern, on either side of the rope-road — a double railtrack that marches down the valley floor, carrying full boxes of coal from the mines, through the old Banbury mine and out the other side, on to the Bins at the top of the Incline. Back come the empties, pulled by the same endless rope, a steady procession, day and night, full boxes one way, empties the other; life-blood of Burnett’s Face and Denniston both.

Nolly draws up at the railway yard where lines snake in all directions. He waves to Ned Farmer and Johnny Mitchell, who were at school last year, and now, at fourteen years old, are clippies, out in all weather, blowing on their fingers and stamping their feet, waiting for the next box to come down the rope-road. Ned unhooks
a full box and shifts it deftly onto a new set of rails. Johnny clips it onto another moving rope, which will take the box through Banbury mine and away to be tallied, sorted and tipped into the great Bins at Denniston, ready for the trip down the Incline. From left and right the boxes come, from Ironbridge mine and Muncies, from Coalbrookdale and East Cascade and Big Pillar. Mine entrances are a short walk from homes, burrowing into the sides of this little valley. No need for miners to travel deep down into the bowels of the earth here — the great slabs of coal seams lie close to the surface and in this valley they outcrop conveniently, so the miners can burrow in horizontally, often extracting coal from the very first shot fired.

Nolly lets Diablo pick his way carefully over rails and chains to the shed where he will unload. There are no sides to this shed, only a great iron roof, but even that shelter is welcome. Diablo whinnies and shakes his black mane, sending a cloud of snow into the cold air. The dark-coated man who turns at the sound is Brennan Scobie. He comes to hold the horse as Nolly, stiff with cold, climbs down.

Nolly remembers the Brennan of a year ago as a young fellow, not much older than himself, but this Brennan is a solid man with straight black brows and a shock of black hair. There is a heaviness about him. Nolly stands there waiting for recognition. It comes in a slow, hesitant smile.

‘It’s Nolly, is it?’

‘It is, Brennan.’

‘By God, you’ve grown a good six inches, and turned into a man!’

‘I had to, didn’t I?’

Brennan nods and looks down at his boots. The rattle of boxes travelling past on the rope covers their silence. Then Brennan moves to help untie the tarpaulin and unload bales and sacks.

‘Do they blame me for what happened?’ he says as he catches a sack of oats, lays it on a pallet, where it will be loaded into empties and railed into the worked-out mine sections where the horses are stabled.

‘My parents need someone to blame. They blame Rose more.’

‘What about you?’

‘Blame is a waste of time, I reckon.’

Brennan smiles, catches another sack. ‘You’ve changed, Nolly.’

‘For the good, I hope?’

‘For the good. Are you interested in a job as surveyor’s mate by any chance?’

‘No. I am needed at home.’

Brennan straightens and looks up at the boy. ‘Nolly,’ he says, ‘that was entirely stupid of me. Of course you are needed.’ After a while he adds, ‘Will I be welcome in Denniston?’

‘By most, yes, I reckon.’ He grins. ‘Especially my sister, maybe. She moons for you like a lost duck.’

Brennan laughs. ‘Oh dear.’ Then asks, serious now, ‘Will Rose and her mother welcome me?’

Nolly shrugs. ‘Who knows with either of them? They’re both mad in my book. And Rose is in trouble again. Same thing. The band will welcome you, at any rate.’

Brennan grins, and suddenly he is a young man again. ‘Oh yes, I am well aware of that. I tell you what, though — Henry Stringer, has he left the Hill? There seems to be a new family in the schoolhouse.’

‘Mr Stringer is still headmaster but he’s gone a bit strange. Or stranger than he was. I’ve seen him just now, coughing away, all alone in his new house. You can’t miss it. On the open plateau, like a single pimple on an unshaved chin.’

Brennan laughs out loud, and solemn Nolly grins, pleased to have his joke appreciated.

Diablo stamps the ground, one two. An iron plate beneath his hooves rings out. ‘All right,’ says Nolly, ‘I get the message. Time to move.’ He shakes Brennan’s hand, grave-faced, and swings up onto the cart. Brennan runs after the boy, holding on to the tray as he shouts up, ‘Are you going back past Stringer?’

‘How else?’

‘Would you drop me off there?’

‘I would. Hop aboard.’

Brennan jumps up to sit beside Nolly. The cart rumbles out into the snow where the track beside the rope-road is a mess of mud and slush. Each box of coal, travelling sedately under the wire rope, wears its own lumpy white blanket of snow. The jumble of iron and wood around the junction yards is disappearing and softening. The wind has dropped. Ramshackle Burnett’s Face could almost be called pretty as the snow falls in slow gobs. On Diablo’s broad back each fat flake slides away, melting as it goes, but the two on the cart are soon coated. Brennan sticks out his tongue to catch the snow. Rose is in trouble, Henry gone strange, the Hanrattys won’t welcome him, but Brennan feels a lightness working in him. A high sweet snatch of a tune comes into his head and he hums it aloud.