James sat amidst the rubble and devastation in the suffocatingly thick air and his mind travelled on from his son’s last words. Aye, Rosie was a canny lass, and she was one of them folk who’d been born with an old head on their shoulders. She’d take care of her mam and the other two all right. He shut his eyes tight for a moment before they sprang open as a shrill scream sounded from somewhere down the tunnel, the sound of which was echoed in the groans and laboured breathing all around him.
Those that could still walk were kneeling over injured friends or in some cases sons or brothers or fathers, and James noticed a heavily bloodstained Sid begin to drag an equally bloodsoaked miner back down the passage whence they had come. He couldn’t see who the man was from the angle at which he was sitting, and when Sid paused at the side of him and said, ‘He’s bad, eh?’ with a nod of his head at Sam, James merely answered, ‘Aye, he’s bad, Sid.’
‘You need to get to the next air-door, man. You’ll choke in here an’ this might not be the end of it.’
‘Aye, Aa know. In a while.’
Sid coughed and gasped before he drew more of the swirling grit and dust into his lungs as he said, ‘You might not have a while.’
‘Leave it, man.’ James glanced down at the face of his son who appeared to be sleeping. ‘Aa’ll come when Aa’m ready.’
‘It’s no good goin’ yonder.’ Sid inclined his head in the direction of the cage for a moment. ‘The roof’s down.’ They were both aware he was pronouncing a death sentence on Philip and the others who had been in front, but again James’s voice was flat when he said, ‘Whey aye, I know, Sid. You go, man, an’ get outa this styfe. Aa’ll be all right.’
It would take the rescue party all their time to break through the first fall before the remaining air went, James thought as he watched Sid depart through the gloom. If there was more to come they were as good as dead anyway, air-doors or no air-doors.
At what point his son’s heart stopped beating James didn’t know, but by the time the second explosion hit - with the force and thunder of an earthquake as it brought tons of rock, coal and slate crashing down into the maze of tunnels - he had been holding Sam’s lifeless body close to his heart for some time, simply because he couldn’t bear to let him go.
Part One
Changes
Chapter One
‘Mam, I know it’s hard, I do, but we’ve got to talk about what we’re going to do. It . . . it’s been three weeks now, and Mr Kilbride said he wants the house for another family at the end of the month.’
There was no answer or reaction whatsoever from the plump middle-aged woman sitting slumped at the scrubbed kitchen table, and when a full minute had passed with just the occasional spit and hiss from the banked-up fire in the blackleaded grate to alleviate the heavy silence, Rosie’s voice was sharper when it said, ‘Mam, do you hear me?’
‘Mr Kilbride won’t put us out on the streets, not that man. He’s always bin good to us.’
‘He was good to us because Da never missed a day’s work in his life and always kept his mouth shut if there were any disputes and such like, and he’d brought Sam and Phil up to do the same.’
‘Your da was no boss’s man, Rosie Ferry.’ There was a touch of animation in Jessie’s dull voice for the first time that day and she raised her head, staring at her daughter out of swollen, pink-rimmed eyes.
Rosie stared back at her, exasperation vying with deep, gut-wrenching pity as she surveyed her mother, who had seemed to age twenty years in the last three weeks since Mrs Robson had first come banging at the door with the news that the whistle was sounding at the pit. The continuous whistle meant a disaster of some kind, and as they had thrown their shawls about their shoulders, scooping up Molly and Hannah as they went, neither of them had said a word, but they had run through the labyrinth of alleys and streets in Monkwearmouth towards Southwick Road without stopping.
The January afternoon was raw, the odd flake of snow swirling haphazardly in the biting wind, but as the four of them joined the crowd that was gathering at the pit gates Rosie and Jessie didn’t heed the cold. It was noticeable that the majority of the company was silent, the women’s faces white and pinched and the men’s expressing strained control, but Jessie spoke directly to one of the two deputies manning the gate as soon as they were near enough.
‘What news, Stan? Is it bad?’
‘We don’t rightly know as yet, Jessie.’ Stanley Fowler had been a lifelong friend of James and his voice was tight as he said, ‘There’s bin a fall but most of the fore shift was up.’
‘A fall?’ Jessie’s voice was shaking.
‘Fire-damp.’
The dreaded words were enough to bleach the women’s lips and cause the men’s faces to tighten further.
‘Who’s down?’
It was a man at the back of them who asked, Jessie had turned to stone as she clung on to Rosie’s arm.
‘They’re doin’ a check but it takes time, man, you know that.’ The deputy’s voice was soft and low; he knew the man who had spoken and he had two brothers on the morning shift.
‘Damn owners an’ viewers.’ Another man’s voice sounded, strident this time. ‘Three-quarters of a million killed in the war an’ they’re aimin’ at the same underground if you ask me. All them giant maroons fired, an’ church bells ringin’, an’ fireworks an’ dancin’ an’ the like, an’ where are we now, not fourteen months later? Beggin’ for every penny we get. It’s all well an’ good the King givin’ old Lloyd George the Order of Merit for his services in wartime, but what about us? We kept the country goin’ with our blood, sweat an’ tears bringin’ their black diamonds up.’
‘All right, man, all right. Not now.’
But the old wizened miner was in full flow. ‘Order of Merit! An’ that’s the man who called the rail strike an anarchist conspiracy an’ then turned down nationalization of the mines. Too many pals of his have too much to lose, that’s the thing. There’s barely bin a month without a strike, an’ why? There’s nothin’ else we can do, that’s why. They pay nowt but lip service to safety--’
‘
Jimmy.
’
Silence reigned again, an uneasy, tense silence broken now and again by a whispered word or two, or children crying in the cold northern afternoon as the bitter chill seeped into their bones.
It was quite dark when the first rescue party came up and the next one went down, and by then Rosie was a block of ice, every part of her frozen, and she knew she would never feel warm again. Sam and her da were down there, maybe Davey too, and it was more than she could bear. And Phil, he was just fifteen.
Fifteen
. And the pit might have taken them all. But they couldn’t be dead - it was inconceivable that she wouldn’t see them again, they
had
to be all right. And her mam, her poor mam. What would her mam do . . . ?
One of their neighbours had taken Hannah and Molly when it had begun to get dark, and now, as she stood cradling her mother in her arms, Rosie saw Davey Connor and her heart leapt. Davey was on the rescue party, he was
safe
. But Sam, and her da and Phil . . . ?
‘You’ve been down?’ she asked weakly, but she had seen it in his eyes, that look of desperate pity and compassion, and she knew that, whatever he might say, there was little hope for the others.
‘Aye.’ He cleared his throat, his young face under its mantle of black dust working slightly. ‘Aye, I’ve bin down, an’ it’s goin’ to be a long job, lass. Best take your mam home, eh?’
‘I’m not goin’ nowhere.’ Jessie spoke for the first time in hours.
‘Mrs Ferry, it’ll be a long job, there’s a good stretch of the roof down,’ the young man said softly, ‘an’ it’s no use you waitin’ an’ gettin’ chilled to the bone, is it? Your man wouldn’t want that. They might well be at the back of the fall, there’s still hope, but it’ll take time to reach them. Go home, the bairns need you.’
‘Bairns?’ Jessie looked up at him, her brow wrinkling, before it cleared and she said, ‘I’m stayin’ put, lad.’
‘No, you’re not, Mam. You heard what Davey said, they’ll not have any news for hours yet and we can be back at first light. You’re coming home and having something hot and getting a few hours’ sleep. You’ll be no good to Da and the lads in the infirmary with pneumonia, now then.’
Rosie didn’t expect her mother to take any notice of her - Jessie was well known for her stubbornness within the family - so it was with some surprise that she glanced up at Davey again as her mother turned obediently in the direction of home and said, ‘All right, lass, whatever you think best,’ without any more argument.
‘Davey?’ Rosie caught hold of Jessie’s arm as she spoke - the older woman was already walking docilely away - and said hastily, ‘How many? How many are down?’
‘Your da’s section an’ some of the lads from five, the rest were up when it happened.’ Rosie knew Davey Connor to be a fine, fresh-faced, good-looking lad, but at that moment he looked like all the miners did when they came up from the bowels of the earth - a barely recognizable creature from a different planet. ‘Rosie, it could be forty-eight hours if not longer, you’d better prepare her.’ He nodded quietly at Jessie’s back. ‘They’re talkin’ about establishin’ a fresh-air base an’ comin’ in from a different angle an’ that takes time.’
Rosie nodded, her breath a white cloud in the bitterly cold, frosty night as she said, ‘Aye, I’ll do that, Davey, and . . . thanks.’
‘Oh, lass, lass.’ He didn’t say any more but he didn’t have to. There are some heart cries that are too deep to express.
It was seventy-eight hours later before the first body was brought up, and a full week before they reached the last man. The rescue teams had worked frantically, long after any hope of finding anyone alive had gone, each man aware that the training he had gone through over and over again was now being used in a disaster the like of which he had never imagined.
It had snowed heavily on the day of the funeral and the whole town had lined the route to show their respect. Even Fawcett Street, with its wide road paved with wooden blocks and magnificent town hall, was subdued and strangely still. But to the families concerned, many of which had lost their main breadwinner, there was only the long black line of horsedriven hearses, and the seemingly endless service when coffin after coffin was lowered into the hard, unforgiving northern earth.
But in a strange sort of way she had almost welcomed the funeral, Rosie thought now, sinking down into a straightbacked chair at her mother’s side, and taking Jessie’s limp hands in her own as she began to chafe them gently. During the terrible wait for news, and then the agony of each body being brought up from the black cavernous depths that had consumed it, she had really feared her mother was losing her mind.
Jessie’s grief had been overwhelming. There had been times when the older woman had sat for hours without speaking, her hands picking at the fringe of her shawl and her eyes staring sightlessly ahead, and then others when she had ranted and raved like a madwoman and Rosie had had to physically restrain her. At her worst she had lashed out at little Hannah when the six-year-old had tried to clamber on her knee, knocking the child against the hard wood saddle where only the plump, flock-stuffed cushions had saved the little girl from serious injury. Even Molly, the undisputed favourite, had failed to make any impression on Jessie’s deranged mind, and her two sisters had clung to Rosie increasingly.
But although the frightening mood swings had passed along with the funeral, the woman who had returned home with Rosie from the cemetery was not her mother. The big, buxom, rosy-faced Jessie had died in the mine along with her husband and her sons, and what remained was a silent, bitter shell.
‘Mam, me da was a fine man, I know that,’ Rosie said now, her voice soft. ‘I’m just saying that Mr Kilbride knew which side his bread was buttered, that’s all. And now Da - now things have changed, he won’t put himself out for us beyond what he’s already done. You have to see that, Mam.’
‘Aye, perhaps you’re right, lass.’
It had become Jessie’s stock answer to anything that was put to her, and always spoken in the same dull, uninterested tone.
‘Mam . . .’ Rosie bit hard on her lip, shutting her eyes for an infinitesimal moment. ‘Mam, you do see we’ve got to find somewhere to live? And Davey, he said that the hot potato man - you know, Mr Nebb who’s the verger at Holy Trinity - well, he told Davey on the quiet that he knows of two lasses who are going to leave Bradman’s jam factory in Hendon Street in the next week. They’re going up Newcastle way, the family’s moving there because their da’s found work through his brother, but they’re not telling the foreman before time in case he gets rid of them early.’
‘So?’ Jessie turned to look at her pretty, dark-eyed daughter, but Rosie had the feeling her mother wasn’t really seeing her.
‘So we could get in on the ground. I’m fourteen next week and Bradman’s pays more than most. If we could get set on--’