Under World. Reginald Hill

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СКАЧАТЬ run after a married woman? What a thing to say about your own son!’ he mocked. ‘All I meant was, you’re the best, Mam, and they don’t make ’em like you any more.’

      She sat down and regarded him seriously, refusing to respond to his sentimentality.

      ‘What does keep you here then, Col, if you’ve no plans for settling? I know you hate it, always did. And don’t say it’s for my sake. I’m all right now. I’ve got friends, real friends …’

      ‘You mean Red Wendy and her mates in the Women’s Support Group?’ he laughed. ‘With friends like yon, you need a man around the place to keep an eye on you.’

      ‘You see, there you go again, Col, trying to put it down to me. Don’t do that. Don’t keep things hid deep inside you like he did. Yes, Wendy and the others are my friends. It may have ruined the Union, but there’s me and a lot like me who can say thank God for the Strike. It showed me a road I’d not have found on my own. And you, Col; I thought when you started getting involved that mebbe you’d found a road too …’

      ‘Me? Oh, I liked the action and the fighting well enough, but the only road I hope to find in Burrthorpe is the road out of it.’

      ‘Then why don’t you go?’ she asked passionately. ‘And don’t pretend to be hurt, I know all your little acts, remember? You know what I’m saying. I wept the first time you went, after your dad hurt his leg. And I’ll weep if you go again. But I were glad then too, glad that now neither of my men was going to be killed down that hole … Well, I were wrong about one of them, though God knows how …’

      ‘There’s more than God knows,’ interrupted her son fiercely.

      ‘Is that it, Col? Listen, son, he’s dead, he’s gone, does it matter how or why? There’s nothing any of us can do will bring him back, so why waste your life boozing and fighting and causing trouble in the Club, and wandering round them old workings looking for God knows what …’

      ‘Who’s been gabbing? That old woman Downey, is it?’ Farr interrupted once more. ‘Jesus Christ, it’s like living in a fish tank, this place! What do you have to do to get a bit of privacy?’

      ‘Try living quiet, not raising hell wherever you go,’ suggested his mother.

      Colin Farr pushed his plate away and stood up.

      ‘No one ever lived quieter than my dad and they didn’t let him alone, did they?’

      ‘Col, don’t talk like that. What do you mean? What are you trying to do? Col, please, you’ve no idea how it upsets me to see you this way.’

      There were tears on her cheeks. He put his arms round her shoulders and kissed them away. It was a gesture neither awkward nor theatrical. He had a natural grace in his movements which had made him stand out even as a child. He drew back and smiled at her, the smile which had so often won forgiveness instead of punishment, and complicity instead of accusation. Billy had sometimes said she was spoiling him but she knew how deep her husband’s love went too.

      ‘I’ll go soon, Mam,’ he promised. ‘Once I’m sure you’re OK and … once I’m sure. Now I’d best be off to work.’

      She watched him walk away down Clay Street, marvelling as always that from Billy Farr’s seed and her womb a creature of such grace and beauty could have sprung. At the corner he turned and smiled and waved his snap tin. She waved back, then went inside and began to clear the dishes.

      Colin Farr walked on, no longer smiling. The long brick terraces opening directly on to the pavement frowned back at him. They had been built a hundred years ago when Burrthorpe had suffered its first expansion from rustic hamlet to mining village. Perhaps they had looked more cheerful then. He doubted it. There had been other expansions since, most affluently in the late ’sixties and early ’seventies. The low hills to the east, the end furthest from the pit, were chequered with owner-occupied boxes. There were modern shops in the High Street (one with a new plate-glass window) plus a bank and two building societies. The Strike had hit hard, but the natives of Burrthorpe were used to taking and giving hard blows, and they would bring the good days back, if the pit survived.

      Here was the irony which Farr felt every day of his life. It was like being fed by a tyrant you hated, yet if you slew him, you would starve.

      He was in the High Street now, heading west towards the Welfare. The village was built in a blank valley running east to west. It was along the densely wooded southern ridge that the sweet infection of coal had first been detected. Here due to some geological fault the veins were broken and often near the surface, and possibly the uprooting of some ancient tree in a storm revealed the symptoms. There were records at the end of the eighteenth century of frequent disputes between the Burr estate which owned most of the land hereabouts and the locals who, delighted at having such a ready supply of fuel on their doorstep, ran drifts into the scrubby common land which abutted Lord Burr’s woods, and didn’t much care if they trespassed underground. At first His Lordship’s care was all for his trees, the game they harboured and the income they promised. But a new lord, the first one born in the nineteenth century, caught on that industrial progress simply meant a new system of serfdom to replace the old which had run its course. He initiated a series of fairly haphazard explorations of the south ridge, ravaging much fine woodland principally on the village side, out of sight of his country house. At last an engineer was employed who knew what he was doing. He looked at the mish-mash of workings on the south ridge, shuddered, turned to the north and after several months of exploration recommended that here was where the next generation of Burrs would earn the necessities of life such as London Seasons, Grand Tours, four shirts a day, and the most up-to-date treatment of their social diseases.

      He proved right. Deep beneath the northern ridge rich new seams were found, running north and west. The pitheads which rose here were completely invisible from His Lordship’s house, and the remnants of Gratterley Wood still crowned the southern ridge to provide a nice bit of rough shooting for a couple of chaps on a morning stroll.

      But that was long ago, aye, ages long ago, thought Colin Farr as he approached the Welfare Club. The mine belonged to the people now, the Burr estates had contracted, and you could walk freely through Gratterley Wood with more risk of having your head blown off by some poaching miner than an angry gamekeeper. Even the Burr mansion had declined to the clubhouse of the Burr golf club (miners welcome to join the Artisan Section), and all was well with the world.

      Except that he was still walking up the long hill to clock on for his shift.

      He needed a drink. He glanced at his watch. There was plenty of time for a leisurely pint in the Club, but he wished now that he’d come on his bike instead of walking so that he would have had the option of going to a pub outside the village.

      Then, annoyed with himself for his weakness, he turned up the steps of the Welfare.

      Pedro Pedley watched him enter the bar with a studiously neutral expression. Farr smiled with all his charm and said, ‘Pedro, I’m sorry if I were a bit obstreperous last night.’

      Before the steward could reply, another voice said, ‘You’re not obstreperous, Farr. You’re just not fit to be around decent people. Peter, I thought this trouble-maker were banned.’

      It was Harold Satterthwaite who spoke. He was sitting close to the bar in company with a dark-suited, red-faced man, with a ragged moustache and an alderman’s belly. Farr turned to face them as Pedley said, ‘I decide who’s banned in this bar, Harold. What is it, Col? A pint?’

      ‘In СКАЧАТЬ