No Man’s Land. Simon Tolkien

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       Chapter Nine

      The day began much like any other. Daniel was working the early shift and the house was cold and silent as Adam got dressed and gathered his books for school. He had an exam to take and he was nervous, hoping he would do well. Outside, the women in their workaday aprons were gathered on their front doorsteps gossiping. They stopped talking as he went past, looking after him as he went up the road. They weren’t hostile but they weren’t friendly either. Adam had lived in Scarsdale long enough to no longer be upset by their response. He wasn’t one of their own and he never would be – he spoke differently to them and he didn’t work in the mine. But nevertheless, the old sense of not belonging added to the free-floating anxiety that he hadn’t been able to shake off since he woke up. He felt burdened by an invisible weight, the same feeling he had sometimes when a sixth sense told him it was going to rain but the heavy clouds stayed hanging overhead, refusing to open. Not that that was the case today – it was a bright June morning and he increased his pace, breathing the fresh air deep into his lungs in a largely unsuccessful attempt to lift his spirits.

      The siren sounded just as he reached the corner. The mournful inhuman cry, the signal for disaster, broke out from the pithead and reverberated through the town. Adam was shocked by the noise and yet it also felt like something he had been expecting ever since the day his father left the safety of the checkweighman’s office, forced to try to earn his living underground.

      All around doors were opening and people were spilling out into the street, pulling on their coats as they headed down the hill towards the mine. Everyone was talking – asking questions and getting no answers and passing out of hearing as Adam stood, rooted to the spot, looking back at the headstocks. They seemed like huge alien shapes lit up by the morning sun, hostile visitors from some other planet.

      Voices rose and fell as rumours flowed up and down the hill, until suddenly Adam heard a name he recognized – Oakwell: the district where Edgar worked and now his father too; the district where he’d disgraced himself, fainting in front of Rawdon Dawes and his vile father. Just the other day Daniel had told Adam that he’d been sent there. He’d seemed pleased, stupidly pleased, happy that he would be working where the coal was more plentiful so that there would be more money in his pay packet come Friday evening, but what he didn’t say and Adam knew from Ernest was that the Oakwell seam was deeper and narrower and less safe than the old ones – it was where the two miners had died in the winter.

      Adam began to walk towards the mine, carried forward ever more quickly by the press of the crowd that was surging tide-like down the hill. At the pithead there was chaos, although the cage appeared to be operating normally and there was no smoke billowing out from the opening or other outward sign of the trouble down below. Atkins and a group of deputies were making ineffectual attempts to keep an open corridor for rescuers to get to and from the shaft, and a man with a camera was getting in everyone’s way taking pictures. Some of the women were crying, desperate for news, but no one seemed to have any definite information about what had happened or who was dead or trapped.

      Adam didn’t hesitate. He bore no resemblance to the sweating, shaking version of himself that had climbed the pithead stairs on his last visit, feeling as though they were the steps up to the gallows. Now he waited until the cage was almost full and then rushed forward, joining the throng of rescuers inside. The banksman was too distracted by the growing hysteria of the crowd to notice the late arrival and slammed the gate shut with a clang. Forty-five seconds later Adam was released out into the mine.

      As soon as the cage lifted back up, the men at the bottom went back to filling coal tubs with water from the sump at the bottom of the shaft. The full tubs were then wheeled to the stables where they were coupled up in lines to the limbers of the pit ponies whose boy drivers drove them away into the mine, passing other ponies that were coming back up the tunnels the other way pulling trains of empty tubs ready for refilling.

      All around, the lights of the miners’ lamps were dancing in the blackness like white dots as the men moved to and fro, but, unlike up above, their hectic activity seemed cohesive and organized as they battled against a common enemy: invisible, inaudible, but utterly real away down the black tunnels beyond the stables. And the enemy was winning – or at least that was the impression that Adam was getting from listening to the snatches of passing conversation that he was able to pick up from the out-of-the-way corner into which he had retreated while he worked out his next move.

      ‘Fire’s like a bloody dragon; it’s got a thirst that canna be quenched.’ ‘Like lookin’ in the mouth o’ hell, it is.’ ‘I pity the poor bastards that got caught …’

      It made Adam sick to his stomach to hear what the men were saying. He felt sure that his father was one of the poor bastards they were talking about, and he knew he had to try to reach him, even if there was nothing he could do to help when he got there; even if it was already too late. He felt no fear, just desperation because he realized that he had no chance of finding his way to the Oakwell district unaided: he’d be lucky to get round the first corner before he was trampled by one of the pit ponies. His only hope lay in hitching a ride on one of the water trains that they were pulling. But no driver would take him willingly – he had no right even to be in the mine. If he revealed himself he would be thrown back in the cage and sent back up to the surface in a second. His only chance was to stow away in one of the tubs.

      His mind made up, he left his bag of books on the floor and began to edge his way carefully along the wall. Without a lamp of his own he was invisible in the darkness. Up ahead he could hear familiar voices: it was Joe the ostler talking to Rawdon Dawes. They were at the door of the stables, their faces lit up garishly by their lamps, standing next to a pony that seemed larger than the others and angrier too. It was neighing and stamping its feet, shaking its leather harness so that the shafts connecting it to the water tubs behind were creaking and clanking.

      ‘Don’t ride ’im, Rawdon, you ’ear me? I’ve told thee before – ’e’s a wild one; ’e’s not like t’others,’ said the ostler. There was a desperate urgency in his voice, mixed with what sounded like frustration, and he was gripping Rawdon’s shoulder as if to reinforce his words. But Rawdon was pulling away, anxious to be gone. The ostler was a small man, almost a foot shorter than Rawdon although three times his age, and there was something comical about the two of them, pulling each other backwards and forwards as they argued.

      ‘I wish you didna ’ave to take ’im but t’others are all out,’ the ostler continued mournfully.

      ‘I know,’ said Rawdon impatiently, getting on to the bumper of the first tub and taking hold of the limber chains connecting it to the pony. ‘You’ve already told me that, Joe, remember.’

      The ostler was about to respond but Rawdon reached forward with a stick he was carrying in his hand and tapped the pony’s hindquarters. Immediately the animal leapt forward, pulling the train of water tubs behind him. And at the last moment Adam ran out and vaulted over the side of the last tub; he landed in the water inside, which splashed over the side, soaking the astonished ostler. He shouted out but Rawdon was concentrating on trying to control the pony as it charged away down the tunnel and didn’t turn round.

      Adam was shoulder-deep in water, soaked to the skin. It had been cold at the maingate but now it felt as if he was being burnt in ice. And the water was foul too, drawn from the stagnant sump at the bottom of the shaft. He hadn’t been able to avoid taking a mouthful as he jumped into the tub and he was still retching it up as he struggled to come to terms with the pitch-blackness all around. The tub’s wheels screeched over the rails and up ahead the pony’s hooves pounded through the coal dust that swirled in the air, making it hard to breathe.