The Black Mountains (2 page)

Determinedly she set her gaze on the break in the houses that would mean the end of her climb, and at last she reached it, a narrow track branching away from the hill and following the curve of the valley bowl.

From here it was plain that the town had been built around the railway lines that would carry the coal out of the valley. They ran arrow-straight through the untidy jumble of dust-blackened buildings. The strong sunlight had made a silver ribbon of the river, and pointed up the tower of the church, away beyond the shops, and chapels, while on the opposite hillside, the terraced houses, with their strips of garden, looked cool and shady by comparison.

Into the track Charlotte turned. It was rough underfoot at first. Then, as it passed the allotments and reached the houses on the one side and the blocks of privies, wash-houses and bake-ovens on the other, the road was better made. To the rest of Hillsbridge it was known as Greenslade Terrace, one of the rows of cottages built across the hillside to accommodate the miners and their families. But to the inhabitants of its twenty houses, it was simply ‘the rank'.

The door of number eleven, like most of the others, stood ajar. Charlotte pushed it open and walked through the small scullery to the kitchen.

Even at this time of year a fire had to be kept burning under the hob for cooking and boiling a kettle, and its heat, reaching out to meet the warmth of the summer afternoon, made the room oppressive.

She put her bag down against the settle and crossed to the door in the far corner of the kitchen. Behind it, the stairs rose, steep, scrubbed wood.

“Jack!” she called. “Are you up there?”

He came down the stairs and into the kitchen, a slightly-built boy with fair hair that grew thick and springy away from his forehead, and eyes as blue as Charlotte's own.

“I didn't expect you home yet, Mam,” he said. “I was reading.”

She nodded abruptly. Jack did far too much reading for his own good. Far better if he'd only get out in the fresh air more often. But she'd had it over with him a good many times, and he never took any notice of her.

“Jack, about this job of yours,” she began shortly. “I want to talk to you.”

He turned away, crossing to the window and looking out across the yard.

“What's there to talk about? I'm going to start at South Hill Pit now my chicken pox is cleared up.”

“No, Jack.” She followed him. “I don't want you going down that pit.”

The boy pushed his hands into his pockets, still staring out unseeingly at the blank wash-house wall on the other side of the path.

“What else is there for me to do?” he asked flatly.

“There's a job going at the chemist's,” she told him. “Peggy Yelling saw the card in the window. Now if you went down straight away, you might get it.”

He half-turned, frowning and biting his lip, and she caught at his arm.

“Jack, you don't
want
to work in that filthy hole, do you?”

He shook his head “ No, but …”

“But what?”

“I don't want to work in a chemist's shop, either.”

Her expression softened.

“You mean there's something else you'd like to do that you've been keeping quiet about?” she asked.

He hesitated, his face brightening momentarily. Then he turned away.

“It wouldn't do any good if I told you. If you live in Hillsbridge, there are two jobs you can do. You can go down the pit, or you can work on the land. A farm labourer earns even less than a miner, and at least a miner gets Sundays off.”

The bitterness in his voice surprised her.

“But you'd get time off in the chemist's shop, Jack,” she said. “It would be a nice, clean job.”

“I don't want to work in a shop,” he said mulishly. “ I might as well be on the screens. And there's no money for what I want to do, so it's pointless going on about it.”

“Well, what is it you want?” she asked in exasperation.

For a moment the silence hung between them, as hot and heavy as the afternoon air. Then he raised his eyes to meet hers squarely.

“I should like to be a teacher. Mr Davies wanted me to sit a scholarship, but I knew we couldn't afford it. There'd be books to pay for, and all the travelling, even if I got a free place. Mr Davies was going to come and see you and Dad, and I had to stop him. So I took the labour exam instead, and got the job at South Hill Pit.”

“Why ever didn't you say?” she asked.

“I didn't want to worry you,” he said simply.

She pulled a chair from beneath the red chenille folds of the table cover and sat down, easing her shoulders out of her coat. Her mind was flitting back across the years to a half-forgotten love, and a young man with gentle hands and a white body that was not blue-veined like a miner's. He had been secretive, too, and sensitive, and clever …

“Chemist shop, screens, I should have known none of them were for you, Jack,” she said softly.

For a moment they were silent. Then the mantel clock chimed the hour and she came out of her reverie abruptly. “ Jack, I wish you'd go up the hill and meet Amy for me. We'll talk about this again.”

He paused in the doorway. “Are you going to tell Dad?”

“I'll have to tell him, won't I? You've taken me aback a bit, though, and I want to think about it first.” She smiled briefly and encouragingly. Then, when he made no move, she went towards him, giving him a little push. “ Don't look so worried. We'll sort something out. Now off you go and meet Amy for me, there's a good lad. It'll be all right, you'll see.”

But as the door closed after him, she wished she could feel as confident as she had sounded.

BENEATH the black mountains, the town of Hillsbridge was sleeping.

The last customers had rolled unwillingly from the bars of the George Hotel and the Miners Arms, already dreading the hooters that would shatter their peace before dawn had broken. The tenors, baritones and basses of the male voice choir had whistled snatches of ‘Song of the North Men' and ‘ The Teddy-bears' Picnic' as they climbed one of the inevitable hills home and fallen into bed to dream of the reception they would get next week at their annual concert.

In one or two houses, lamps burned late as men discussed ways of raising money to help the Whitehaven disaster fund, set up to help the dependants of those who had recently died in a pit explosion in far-off Cumberland.

But to Charlotte Hall, sitting beneath the stars on the doorstep of her house in Greenslade Terrace, it seemed as if she might be the only person in the world still awake.

The pits would be resting now. The great wheels that raised and lowered the cages would be still, and no steam would be belching from the chimney above the winding house. Maybe the odd maintenance man would still be at work, but by now the shot-firers who worked the backshifts would have finished blasting, and the yards that were alive throughout the daylight hours with busy men calling to one another, with hauliers' horses and carts queuing at the screens for their loads of coal and tubs shunting on the sidings, would be silent and ghost like in the white light of the moon.

This, she recalled, was almost exactly the way she remembered first seeing Hillsbridge, and to her had seemed to be endowed with a special kind of romance.

She had been seventeen years old, and too much in love to feel outrage at the cancerous black growth on the green Somerset countryside. Twenty-five pits, the coal veins had thrown up, and around them had grown the mining villages, clusters of small, grimy houses obtruding into rich, undulating farmland and overlooked by those mountainous mounds of coal waste, the batches.

Hillsbridge was the largest of these villages, centre of the coal field and even dirtier than the rest. But to her it had been a magic place.

The batches had looked like black mountains, girdled with fir trees on their lower slopes and rising round and sombre or long and ridge-like against the violet sky. They were, she had thought, like guardian hills of an enchanted valley, and a trickle of warm excitement had made her tighten her grip on the arm of the young man beside her.

“Oh, James,” she said. “ I think it's wonderful!”

Charlotte Morris was the daughter of a regular soldier, but Hillsbridge was quite unlike any other place she had know. Since her mother had died, three years earlier, she had lived with an elderly aunt in Bath. But nine miles of open countryside separated the city from Hillsbridge, which had a bad name with the people of Bath. The miners, they reckoned, were a ‘rough lot'. And they kept as far away from them as possible.

One night in the autumn of 1891, Charlotte had to stay later than usual at the draper's shop where she worked. They had been stock-taking, and it was past nine when she finally escaped, tired and footsore. But her relief was short-lived. As the door closed after her, she saw a gang of youths coming up the street towards her, and from the way they were dressed and their rowdy milling about she recognized them instantly as Hillsbridge miners.

Alarmed, she drew back into the shop doorway, but it had been locked behind her, and offered no escape.

The gang of youths was getting closer, shouting and singing ribald songs. A nauseous knot of panic formed in her throat, but she knew that to show fear was the worst thing she could do and she made herself leave the trap of the doorway and walk firmly towards them.

The first group parted to let her through, and, heart thumping, she passed them. But the following group fanned out across the pavement, blocking her way, and as she moved to one side they moved too, cheering and jeering.

“Hey-ey! Look what we've got here, lads!”

“Not bad, eh?”

“Don't be in such a hurry, sweetheart!”

Charlotte drew herself up tight. Fear was making her tremble, but the last thing she wanted was for them to see it.

“Let me pass!” she said.

But they only laughed, closing in around her. Even the first group had come back now to join in the fun.

“I like your hair, sweetheart. That's all right, that is!” The tallest of the lads made a grab for one of her combs, and before she could stop them, thick honey-coloured curls had tumbled down one side of her heads.

“How dare you!” she cried, angry now as well as frightened. “ If you don't leave me alone, I'll call a policeman!”

The lads laughed in delight.

“That won't do you much good. They're all in a fight down by the railway station,” one told her, and the tall lad who had pulled out her comb reached down to tweak at her skirt.

“Got pretty ankles, too, have you?” he leered.

Tears of panic pricked at Charlotte's eyes.

“Stop it!” she cried, her control gone. “Leave me alone, d'you hear?”

“Yes. Leave her alone!” A young man elbowed his way to the front of the group. “Can't you see she's a decent girl?”

“Oh, sod off, Hall,” the tall lad told him. “ I like a bit of class myself.”

But the other raised his fist threateningly.

“Leave her. I'm warning you!”

For a moment they squared up, surely and determined, and Charlotte held her breath. Then the taller lad relaxed, sticking his hands into his pockets and laughing.

“All right, Hall you can have her. Come on, lads, let's see what else we can find.”

Laughing and calling, they rolled off down the street, and when they had gone Charlotte turned to look at the young man who had rescued her. He was no taller than she, wiry, with hair that looked fair in the light of the gas lamp, but he was older than she had first thought—twenty-four, maybe, or twenty-five.

“Thank-you, I'm all right now,” she said, but her voice was still uneven.

He stood looking at her, summing her up.

“I'll see you home,” he said after a moment “You shouldn't be out on your own at this time of night.”

“I've been at work,” she protested. “We're not allowed to close the doors while there's a customer anywhere to be seen, and tonight we had stock-taking as well.”

“Then your father ought to come and meet you,” he told her.

“My father's a soldier. He doesn't live with us,” she replied abruptly. She was still upset by her encounter with the youths, and there was something disconcerting in the way this young man was looking at her. “I'll be all right. You need not trouble yourself any more.”

She turned and began to walk, but he fell into step beside her.

“You might meet more trouble yet. There's been a rumpus at the pit today, and a lot of lads have come in on the train looking for mischief. They don't mean any harm, but when they've had a drink, well, they get stupid.”

She cast a sidelong look at him.

“Are you a miner, too?”

He laughed. “Course, I am. Why?”

She bit her lip, embarrassed. “ You don't seem like the others. I've heard terrible stories about miners, how they're always fighting and that. Don't you know about the notices they put up in Bath when they're advertising for servants? “ Hillsbridge girls need not apply.” That's because they're supposed to be so rough.”

He laughed again. “They're no different to you. Except…” He paused, eyeing her appreciatively. “ I haven't seen any as pretty.”

“Oh!” she said, pleased.

She'd never considered herself pretty. Her mouth was, she thought, too wide, dominating her small, straight nose, and although her eyes were a good, clear blue, the lashes around them were stubby and too light in colour. She'd tried to darken them once with the black-lead her aunt used on the grate but a fine mess she'd made, for it had been days before she'd been able to wash away the last traces of the dark smudges under her eyes.

“I'd like to see you again,” he said.

Beneath her tight-laced stays her heart began to beat very fast, and she began to feel a little sick again.