No Man’s Land. Simon Tolkien

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СКАЧАТЬ Daniel told Adam to pack his bags as they were leaving the next morning. He’d seen what was coming and, knowing that they couldn’t continue to live at Edgar’s, he’d found them temporary lodgings in a widow’s house close to the pithead. He’d also been to see Hardcastle, the pit manager, and got a job working as a tub-filler underground. Once he’d learnt the trade he could become a collier but until then money was going to be tight.

      They left at sunrise, hoping to avoid awkward goodbyes, but Edgar was already downstairs, eating his breakfast at the table.

      He got up and helped the carrier load their meagre belongings into the pony cart that Daniel had hired for the move, and then shook Daniel’s hand.

      ‘I wish thee the best o’ luck,’ he said. ‘I know we ’aven’t seen eye to eye recently, but that doesna mean we aren’t still o’ the same blood, an’ if there’s anythin’ you need …’

      ‘Thank you, Edgar,’ said Daniel. ‘You’ve been very good to us but it’s time we stopped being a burden; we should have found our own place months ago but there was always something else to think of. You know how it is.’

      ‘Aye, I do,’ said Edgar warmly. ‘I do indeed. An’ I wish thee luck too, young man,’ he said, turning to Adam and putting out his hand.

      ‘Thank you,’ said Adam. But he wouldn’t take Edgar’s hand, acting as though he hadn’t seen it as he climbed up beside the carrier. He was angry, and shaking hands would have meant condoning Edgar’s treatment of his father. If Edgar was feeling guilty about what he’d done, then he would have to live with it; it wasn’t Adam’s responsibility to salve his conscience.

      And Adam was frightened too: frightened for his father going down into the pit to work; frightened of what would become of them. If they couldn’t live, they would have to go to the workhouse and Adam thought he would rather die than go back there. He sat tense and unhappy as the pony trotted down the empty road in the grey early-morning light past the sleeping terraced houses, its hooves ringing out on the hard tarmac.

      He looked over at his father, leaning forward on the box with his brow furrowed and his unseeing eyes focused on some inner struggle, and felt a sudden wave of protective love flood through him. They had drifted apart in the year since they had come north. It had not been Daniel’s intention to allow his preoccupation with his work to create a gulf between him and his son, Adam realized that, but nevertheless that was what had happened. And as Daniel had withdrawn from his son’s life, Adam had filled the space with new friends and interests which he did not share with his father. He felt guilty when he realized that he had begun to see the parson as a new father figure in his life. The comfort and softness of the Parsonage and the conversations about history and politics were experiences that Daniel could not provide. Adam had grown up and grown away and it was hard now for him to reach out across the emotional barrier, but he forced himself to try, laying his hand on top of his father’s, causing Daniel to look up, called back for a moment from his own inner turmoil.

      ‘It’s not your fault, Dad,’ said Adam. ‘It was in London but not this time. You worked night and day for the men and they’re plain ungrateful to throw it back in your face like they have. And Edgar’s the worst of them,’ he went on, raising his voice as his anger got the better of him. ‘He’s got a lot of nerve, pretending like everything’s all right after what he’s done.’

      ‘No, you shouldn’t blame him,’ said Daniel quietly. ‘He thought that he was getting a class warrior when he brought me up here and he deserves credit for putting up with me for as long as he has once he realized I’d changed my spots. I’ve got a lot of sympathy for him, in fact. He wants the best for his people and God knows they’re not getting the best now: they work in terrible conditions for far too little money. But the trouble is Sir John hasn’t got enough to give them what they want. The mine’s old and the coal’s not good enough to fetch good prices and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Facts are facts. Of course Sir John should have offered the men more when they went back, but it was never going to be as much as they wanted. I’m glad I’m out of it, to be honest with you. Let someone else try their hand at making one and one add up to three.’

      They relapsed into an uneasy silence. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the past, it didn’t change the fact that they would have far less money now. Adam didn’t know if his father had any savings but they couldn’t amount to much.

      ‘I wish there was something I could do to help,’ he said. ‘Maybe if I got a job on the screens with Ernest? Then at least we’d have a bit more to go around.’

      ‘No,’ said Daniel, practically shouting the word. ‘The only thing that keeps me going is that you’re doing so well at school and knowing that you’re going to make a better life for yourself than I’ve had. Don’t worry, Adam – we’ll be all right. I’ll make sure we are.’

      Adam saw no reason to believe his father, but he knew there was no point in arguing. The pony had halted in front of their new home, a small squat house in a dismal narrow street close to the mine. Its peeling paint was blackened with soot and the grimy windows looked as though they had never been washed. Adam shivered as his father opened the door and they went inside.

      The house belonged to a miner’s widow whose husband had died from tuberculosis several years before. She still wore her widow’s weeds and moved about the dimly lit rooms in a state of permanent misery, living as far as Adam could tell on an unchanging diet of cold tea and porridge. A sampler invoking the Lord to ‘Bless This House’ gathered dust over the mantelpiece in the parlour above a faded photograph of the widow and her late husband on their wedding day. Even the aspidistra in the corner, the hardiest of indoor plants, wilted miserably, waiting to die.

      Daniel and Adam had the upstairs rooms and shared use of the kitchen. There was a permanent smell of mouldy dampness in the air that fires could never quite chase away, but Daniel did his best to brighten the place up, pinning coloured pictures from penny magazines over the mildew stains on the walls and bringing home two matching armchairs to stand on either side of the fireplace – bargains bought from a family that was moving away and had no further use for them.

      He never complained, although Adam guessed from the stiff way his father walked that he wasn’t finding it easy to adapt to the hard manual labour and the cramped conditions inside the mine. And it was strange for Adam too seeing his father come back from work all black and dirty from the coal. He winced when he washed his father’s back, seeing the cuts and abrasions – the physical toll exacted daily by the pit.

      It was strange: adversity seemed to soften rather than harden Daniel, and in the evenings, father and son were often happy, sitting side by side in front of the fire, toasting bacon on a fork and catching the fat on their slices of bread. They played chess on a handmade board and Daniel listened while Adam told him about the heroes and villains of long ago, just as Adam had listened to his mother reading him the same stories when he was a boy, so that sometimes the dead world of the ancients seemed more real to them than the mining town lying quiet outside the window.

      And when Adam had finished his storytelling, they talked about issues such as whether the senators had been right to assassinate Caesar – Daniel thought they were but Adam was less sure; and whether the Roman Empire had been doomed from the beginning. They argued sometimes until the candles had almost burnt away, and Adam smiled, thinking how unlikely such conversations were to be taking place in these shabby rooms in this shabby little house in the middle of nowhere, while the widow snored down below.

      But later, lying in bed, Adam would see the lights sprawling over the dark ceiling from the lamps swinging in the hands of the late-shift miners as they came tramping down the road outside on the way to work, their voices rising and receding as they passed the house. СКАЧАТЬ