The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,24
hoping to see her now, though it would be only briefly, before he went down; she started work at the same time he did, sorting out the waste from the coal at the head of the shaft.
There was enough money, they could hold their heads up, they need be beholden to no one. There was even enough for him, with his father’s permission, to take three hours a week in addition to Sunday, to practice at handball. He was recognized as having a talent for the game, and would be the Thorpe champion in the annual match with the nearby colliery village of Northfield, due to take place fairly soon now.
One of the men in the group ahead of him was Daniel Walker, who he intended to have a word with as soon as he saw a chance of getting him alone. He thought again of his brother’s hangdog look the previous evening when his bruises were revealed. He had been ashamed … David was walking beside him now, silent, still not fully awake. He might have hastened his steps so as to come up with Walker, and perhaps find an occasion as they walked side by side. But he did not want to be among the first to go down; in the few minutes of waiting for the rope he could look at Elsie; he looked for her every morning and she looked for him.
He could hear the sounds of the workings as they drew near the pithead, the grinding of the cogs on the drum, the jingling of the horses’ harness as they plodded round, the creaking of the stern pole fixed to the axle of the drum. The first men were going down already. There was a fire burning in the iron basket suspended over the shaft, and by its light he saw Elsie with the other women, crouching over the heaped coal. As he waited, with seven or eight others, for his turn to be lowered down the shaft, she looked up and saw him watching and smiled. The banksman shouted up from below that the shaft was clear, and the men prepared to descend.
There was no platform, only the winding rope that dangled before them. They bound themselves into the rope, each man making a loop and thrusting one leg into it, each using one hand to grip the rope above him, each keeping the other free to guard himself against being dashed against the sides of the shaft in the descent—collisions that had sometimes maimed men in the past. The younger boys sat astride the knees of the men; the older ones clung with their hands to the rope and twined their legs about it. Clustered thus, colliers and boys riding down on a single rope, it was as if they had been spliced together and hung on a string by some giant hand.
The fire bucket was kept burning above them, suspended over the mouth of the shaft, placed there to move currents of air through the mine workings and disperse accumulations of marsh gas. By its light, as they descended, they could see for a while the vitreous glints in the walls of the shaft. These were lost as they went deeper, and for a while they were in a darkness almost total, with only the candlelight far below them on the shaft floor and no sound but that of the rope uncoiling on the drum.
Michael found the occasion he was looking for soon after touching down at the shaft bottom. David had stopped at the entrance to the main gallery, to load empty corves onto a sledge. At a point where the gallery divided into two narrower ways toward the coal face, he came up with Walker and spoke a greeting to him. Walker turned quickly, as if startled. The light of the candle he was holding lit up the lower part of his face, glinted on the fair stubble around the heavy jaw. “What does tha want?” he said.
Neither of them could stand upright here, the ceiling was too low. Crouching forward, with heads lowered, they faced each other. There had never been much love lost between the two families; small disagreements had been magnified over time, as happens in close-knit communities.
“Tha’s been bearin’ too heavy on our David,” Michael said. “Tha’s been too free with yor fists.” He saw Walker’s mouth loosen with a sneer. “A’m tellin’ you to lay off it,” he said. “The lad’s only twelve.”