The Black Mountains Read online

  This, she recalled, was almost exactly the way she remembered first seeing Hillsbridge, and to her had seemed to be endowed with a special kind of romance.

  She had been seventeen years old, and too much in love to feel outrage at the cancerous black growth on the green Somerset countryside. Twenty-five pits, the coal veins had thrown up, and around them had grown the mining villages, clusters of small, grimy houses obtruding into rich, undulating farmland and overlooked by those mountainous mounds of coal waste, the batches.

  Hillsbridge was the largest of these villages, centre of the coal field and even dirtier than the rest. But to her it had been a magic place.

  The batches had looked like black mountains, girdled with fir trees on their lower slopes and rising round and sombre or long and ridge-like against the violet sky. They were, she had thought, like guardian hills of an enchanted valley, and a trickle of warm excitement had made her tighten her grip on the arm of the young man beside her.

  “Oh, James,” she said. “ I think it’s wonderful!”

  Charlotte Morris was the daughter of a regular soldier, but Hillsbridge was quite unlike any other place she had know. Since her mother had died, three years earlier, she had lived with an elderly aunt in Bath. But nine miles of open countryside separated the city from Hillsbridge, which had a bad name with the people of Bath. The miners, they reckoned, were a ‘rough lot’. And they kept as far away from them as possible.

  One night in the autumn of 1891, Charlotte had to stay later than usual at the draper’s shop where she worked. They had been stock-taking, and it was past nine when she finally escaped, tired and footsore. But her relief was short-lived. As the door closed after her, she saw a gang of youths coming up the street towards her, and from the way they were dressed and their rowdy milling about she recognized them instantly as Hillsbridge miners.

  Alarmed, she drew back into the shop doorway, but it had been locked behind her, and offered no escape.

  The gang of youths was getting closer, shouting and singing ribald songs. A nauseous knot of panic formed in her throat, but she knew that to show fear was the worst thing she could do and she made herself leave the trap of the doorway and walk firmly towards them.

  The first group parted to let her through, and, heart thumping, she passed them. But the following group fanned out across the pavement, blocking her way, and as she moved to one side they moved too, cheering and jeering.

  “Hey-ey! Look what we’ve got here, lads!”

  “Not bad, eh?”

  “Don’t be in such a hurry, sweetheart!”

  Charlotte drew herself up tight. Fear was making her tremble, but the last thing she wanted was for them to see it.

  “Let me pass!” she said.

  But they only laughed, closing in around her. Even the first group had come back now to join in the fun.

  “I like your hair, sweetheart. That’s all right, that is!” The tallest of the lads made a grab for one of her combs, and before she could stop them, thick honey-coloured curls had tumbled down one side of her heads.

  “How dare you!” she cried, angry now as well as frightened. “ If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll call a policeman!”

  The lads laughed in delight.

  “That won’t do you much good. They’re all in a fight down by the railway station,” one told her, and the tall lad who had pulled out her comb reached down to tweak at her skirt.

  “Got pretty ankles, too, have you?” he leered.

  Tears of panic pricked at Charlotte’s eyes.

  “Stop it!” she cried, her control gone. “Leave me alone, d’you hear?”

  “Yes. Leave her alone!” A young man elbowed his way to the front of the group. “Can’t you see she’s a decent girl?”

  “Oh, sod off, Hall,” the tall lad told him. “ I like a bit of class myself.”

  But the other raised his fist threateningly.

  “Leave her. I’m warning you!”

  For a moment they squared up, surely and determined, and Charlotte held her breath. Then the taller lad relaxed, sticking his hands into his pockets and laughing.

  “All right, Hall you can have her. Come on, lads, let’s see what else we can find.”

  Laughing and calling, they rolled off down the street, and when they had gone Charlotte turned to look at the young man who had rescued her. He was no taller than she, wiry, with hair that looked fair in the light of the gas lamp, but he was older than she had first thought—twenty-four, maybe, or twenty-five.

  “Thank-you, I’m all right now,” she said, but her voice was still uneven.

  He stood looking at her, summing her up.

  “I’ll see you home,” he said after a moment “You shouldn’t be out on your own at this time of night.”

  “I’ve been at work,” she protested. “We’re not allowed to close the doors while there’s a customer anywhere to be seen, and tonight we had stock-taking as well.”

  “Then your father ought to come and meet you,” he told her.

  “My father’s a soldier. He doesn’t live with us,” she replied abruptly. She was still upset by her encounter with the youths, and there was something disconcerting in the way this young man was looking at her. “I’ll be all right. You need not trouble yourself any more.”

  She turned and began to walk, but he fell into step beside her.

  “You might meet more trouble yet. There’s been a rumpus at the pit today, and a lot of lads have come in on the train looking for mischief. They don’t mean any harm, but when they’ve had a drink, well, they get stupid.”

  She cast a sidelong look at him.

  “Are you a miner, too?”

  He laughed. “Course, I am. Why?”

  She bit her lip, embarrassed. “ You don’t seem like the others. I’ve heard terrible stories about miners, how they’re always fighting and that. Don’t you know about the notices they put up in Bath when they’re advertising for servants? “ Hillsbridge girls need not apply.” That’s because they’re supposed to be so rough.”

  He laughed again. “They’re no different to you. Except…” He paused, eyeing her appreciatively. “ I haven’t seen any as pretty.”

  “Oh!” she said, pleased.

  She’d never considered herself pretty. Her mouth was, she thought, too wide, dominating her small, straight nose, and although her eyes were a good, clear blue, the lashes around them were stubby and too light in colour. She’d tried to darken them once with the black-lead her aunt used on the grate but a fine mess she’d made, for it had been days before she’d been able to wash away the last traces of the dark smudges under her eyes.

  “I’d like to see you again,” he said.

  Beneath her tight-laced stays her heart began to beat very fast, and she began to feel a little sick again.

  “I don’t know your name,” she said.

  “I don’t know yours either,” he teased. Then, taking pity on her, he added, “I’m James Hall. Does that make it all right?”

  “I don’t know,” she confessed. “And I’m not sure I should tell you my name. You might be up to something.”

  “I am. I want to make sure I can find you again,” he told her honestly.

  They turned a corner and came upon a row of small houses whose doors opened directly on to the steep street.

  “This is it,” she said, excitement making her bold. “ This is where you can find me.”

  “Then I can see you again?”

  “If my aunt allows it. But I expect I can get round her,” she added.

  “I should do something about this if I were you.” He pointed to the hair she had quite forgotten to re-pin. “I don’t want to get the blame for something that isn’t my fault. And no more wandering about the streets on your own, do you hear? From now on, I’ll take care of you, all right?”

  He had been as good as his word. He had courted her with a gentleness that had surprised her, and when he proposed marriage, her father had reluctantly agreed. He ha
dn’t much cared for the idea of his only daughter becoming the wife of a miner, but for all that; he liked the quiet pitman well enough.

  So Charlotte and James were married, and she moved into a world that seemed to have a romance of its own. She was fascinated by the dark and dusty workings that were reached by means of leafy lanes, and the black batches rising out of the green fields had, she thought, a regal dignity. As for the men who worked in the unknown places beneath the earth, they were her heroes, and when she watched them walk in twos and threes across the colliery yard, sinews hard and taut beneath their working shirts and rushyduck trousers, she was proud to be the wife of one of them.

  She had closed her eyes to the bent shoulders and stooping posture of the older men, ignored their phlegmy coughs and turned her head as they spat into the gutter. To her, the lung disease meant nothing. Even the pit accidents she heard about seemed more romantic than tragic, on a par with soldiers’ lives lost in battle.

  When she first began to learn of the indignities a miner could suffer, she had refused to believe. She had actually laughed when James told her about the duties of a carting boy, for it was beyond her comprehension that anyone could expect a lad to pull a sleigh fill of coal by means of a circle of tarred rope around his waist, while crawling on his hands and knees along the narrow and sometimes steep seams.

  “Just because I don’t know anything about it, you think you can make a fool of me,” she had said, and to convince her, James had called in a young lad from further down the rank who had called in young lad from further down the rank who had recently started work as a carting boy.

  She had stared in horror when he had pulled up his shirt to reveal a raw and bleeding band of flesh around his waist where the rope had cut into it.

  “That’s terrible” she cried, outraged. “They shouldn’t allow it! If the roadways aren’t big enough for tubs then they should make them big enough!”

  But to her surprise, James had merely shrugged.

  “If they spent too much money, the pit wouldn’t pay, and we’d all be out of a job,” he told her calmly. “Besides, the lads soon get used to it.”

  “I don’t believe it!” she said harshly sickened, yet unable to tear her eyes away from the red raw flesh. “Look at his poor back! You can’t tell me he’ll ever get used to that!”

  “It’ll harden. We’ve all been through it.” James turned to the lad, pulling his shirt across the sore. “Bathing it with urine, are you, son? That’s the best way. But I expect your father has already told you that.”

  Charlotte had been as shocked by James’ easy acceptance as she had been by the boy’s raw back, and that night as they prepared for bed in the small room above the parlour, she found herself looking closely at James’ waist. To her surprise, she saw that there was no circular scar. But for the first time she took notice of the blue veinings that stood out places, one short, thick and ridged along side his left shoulder blade, one longer and shaped like a curled rope just above his buttock, and instead of the usual fierce pride, she felt the beginnings of anger and disgust.

  During the busy years that followed, however, she had no time to think about the pits and what they did to the men who worked in them.

  The children came, one after the other, first Jim, then Dolly, her older daughter, Fred, Ted, Jack and Amy. And between them, the two children who had not survived, but were still as real to her as those who had lived: Wilfred, whose sickly little body gave up its unequal struggle after only a few days, and Florrie, fifteen months old, and beginning to talk and take a tottering step or two when whooping cough claimed her. When they died, a little of herself died with them, but there was precious little time for grief. The endless round of washing, scrubbing and baking saw to that.

  When the time came for Jim, her eldest, to leave school, however, and James took him proudly down the hill for his first day under ground, all her anger came flooding back. That night she had looked at his bloodied back and relived the horror she had felt so many years before, only multiplied a hundred fold for it was her own son’s body that had been used in this brutal way, a body on which she had lavished tenderness and care.

  She had wanted to cry, but she was beyond tears, and to relieve her feelings she had taken down every pair of curtains in the house and washed them, working until almost midnight, while the children, half-afraid, peeped at her from behind the wash-house door. When she’d finished, she was exhausted, her eyes great dark pools, her hair hanging damply from its pins, but she felt herself washed as clean as the curtains, and as thoroughly wrung out.

  “What the devil are you doing?” James had asked, crossing the yard. “ Leave it and come to bed, do, or you’ll kill yourself.”

  She laughed, and her tired, singing ears recognized the note of determination and piercing despair.

  “Don’t worry, James, I’m not going to die yet,” she told him. “I’m going to makes sure I live to see at least one of my sons in a decent job where people respect him—and his body. I’ll see that, if its the last thing I do!”

  He had put his arm around her then, wondering what had happened to the naïve girl he had brought to Hillsbridge as his wife. Life hadn’t been easy for her. But for all that, she was still the handsomest woman in the rank. Her neck had not turned scrawny, and her body was still straight and supple, though thickened at the waist from repeated childbearing. As for her hair, most of the curl had gone when Jack was born, and she had almost lost her life, but thirteen years had done nothing to dim its rich honeyed colour.

  He moved his hand to her head, pulling it against his in a rare gesture of affection.

  “Better times are on the way,” he told her. “Amy is three now. In no time at all, she’ll be off you hands. And with the boys earning, there’ll be a bit extra money about, and with any luck we’ll fix Dolly up in service where she can live-in. It’ll be all right sweetheart, you’ll see.”

  She did not answer, for she knew that she could never make him understand, and she let him take her back across the yard to the scullery door. There, for just a moment she paused, looking towards the batches: black mounds on the skyline, trapping them all.

  Now, five years later, Charlotte sat in the doorway, remembering that other night. Since then, she had seen two more sons go down the hill to the pit, and each loss had only strengthened her resolve. The coal masters would not have Jack; and they would not have her unborn child either if she could help it.

  All evening, as she sat sewing moleskin patches on the threadbare knees of three pairs of pit trousers, she had been busy formulating her plans. Her hands and face had been black with the dust that spewed out from the cloth in clouds as she sewed, but she hardly noticed. Finally, when she put away her needle, she knew that in spite of being tired, she was far too excited to sleep. So she had taken her chair to the doorway where the heat that still sang in the air was less oppressive, and sat for a while turning over her memories and her plans.

  A small breeze stirred the hem of her skirt, and she smiled gently to herself. Tomorrow, perhaps, it would be cooler. She hoped so, for tomorrow she had a great deal to do.

  THE NEXT DAY, she went to see William Davies, the school-master at the board school where Jack had gone since he was three years old.

  There was no time for making appointments, so at the end of the day she stood at the school gates, waiting for Jack and Amy, turning over in her mind what she would say.

  She would have liked to be able to talk it over with Dolly, she thought. Since Dolly had grown up, Charlotte had found she could discuss things with her more as a friend than a daughter. But Dolly was in service with Captain Fish in the big house at the top of the hill, living in, and would not be home until her day off, the day after tomorrow.

  The bell rang to signal the end of school, and as the children began pouring out, Charlotte watched them closely. Amy was among the first. She came skipping across the yard, a small, round figure in pinafore and petticoats, with honey-coloured hair as br
ight as Charlotte’s once had been.

  “Mam! Mammy! Why are you here? I was coming home with Jack!”

  Jack had returned to school that day for the first time since his bout of chicken pox.

  “I’ve come to have a word with Mr Davies,” Charlotte told her, bending to retie a hair ribbon that had been pulled into a tight, crumpled knot “ You go home with Jack like you always do.”

  Amy looked up at her, round-eyed.

  “What do you want to see Mr Davies for, Mammy? Is it about me?”

  Charlotte smiled. It was just like Amy to assume she must be the central character in any drama. It came from being the youngest child of the family for so long, she supposed, loved and fussed over by older brothers and sister. When the new baby arrived, Amy was going to have some adjusting to do.

  “No, Amy, it’s nothing to do with you,” she told her. “ Look, here’s your brother coming now. He’ll see to you. And if you’re good, he’ll take you to get an ounce of mint shrimps, won’t you, Jack?”

  “If you like …” Jack’s eyes were on her best coat, and she knew he’d guessed the reason she was here. His face was pale—from spending too much time indoors, she told herself—but she knew it was not only that. “ Mam, couldn’t I come with you?” he said hesitantly. “I’d like to hear what he has to say.”

  But Charlotte shook her head decisively.

  “No. It’s better if you’re not there. He can be frank with me then, without hurting your feelings—or making you conceited, if that’s the way it goes. You take Amy home, and you’ll hear soon enough what Mr Davies has to say.”