The Nipper, page 6
But three hours later at eight o’clock there was only one thought in his mind which was that he would die if this went on any longer. Every bone in his body was aching, and his eyes were smarting unbearably with a mixture of coal dust and salt sweat, and he knew his mother, and even Big Mullen, had been right: life in the fields was child’s play to this. The man to whom he had taken a liking now appeared ruthless and untiring, for his arms were like a machine, lifting the pick, banging it into the coalface, pressing down, pulling, lifting again, on and on ceaselessly.
‘There, that’ll do for a start. Now for a snap…Feeling it, lad?’
Sandy wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand, blinked painfully and muttered, ‘I’m new to it, it’ll come.’
‘Aye, it’ll come. This day week an’ you’ll be in your stride. You got any bait?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, go along out and eat it.’
In the roadway the men were sitting together on their hunkers munching and talking. Sandy sat by himself waiting for Stan, but he had almost finished his bread and dripping before Stan put in an appearance. He came out of the black shadows and looked about him, and seeing Sandy, he was making his way towards him when Tom Fitzsimmon’s voice came at him, saying, ‘Lost your way?’
‘No.’ Stan’s voice was quiet, tentative, ‘Just wanted a word with Sandy, pal of mine.’
Tom Fitzsimmons looked at him hard before turning his gaze away; and Stan, sitting down beside Sandy, bowed his head and muttered under his breath, ‘He’s no truck with us.’
‘Why?’ asked Sandy in a whisper.
‘Aw, you know.’ Stan shrugged his shoulder. ‘Me da. An’ me da’s for a strike, always is, but Tom Fitzsimmons has other ideas. He just wants to talk; thinks you can get things done that way.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Stan.’
‘Aye?’
‘Are the ponies out yet?’
‘Ponies?’ Stan’s face crinkled. ‘Why are you always on about ponies?’
‘Aw.’ Sandy shook his head. ‘I was used to them on the farm. I like ponies, I just thought I’d like to have a look at them.’
‘Well, you won’t see them down this road ever. The level’s too low; the bairns push the bogies up to the drift, then they hook the ponies on for the long pull. They still need the bairns behind them though, for those bogies carry some.’
‘Could I see them there, at—at the drift?’
‘Aye, you could. Come along at middle snap, you get half an hour then. They get their bait an’ all around that time.’
‘Ta, I will.’
‘How…how you gettin’ on?’
‘Oh.’ Sandy let out a long breath. ‘I’ll get used to it I suppose. Bit tirin’.’
‘You’re lucky.’
‘What do you mean, lucky?’
‘To start along o’ Tom Fitzsimmons. He goes easy on you, the young ’uns.’
Easy! If the last three hours had been easy, he wouldn’t want to be with anyone who worked him hard.
‘I wish I was in your shoes.’
As Sandy was staring at his new, solemn-faced, enigmatic friend, Tom Fitzsimmons cried, ‘Well, get off your velvet couches, lads, and let’s take a gentle stroll inbye.’
‘Ta-ra,’ said Stan, hastily, at this, and Sandy answered, ‘Ta-ra,’ and in a few minutes he was back on the face, forcing his body to go through the same motions over and over; bend, lift, thrust; bend, lift, thrust. Sometimes the rhythm would go smoothly until he would slip onto the knife-edged fragments under his feet and fall awkwardly under the weight of the coal.
By twelve o’clock he was bleeding in several places and he was thinking for the hundredth time, I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it, when Tom Fitzsimmons said, ‘Well, lads, enough’s enough,’ and they were crawling through the low aperture again and into the road.
He had difficulty in asking a first request of Tom Fitzsimmons, for his throat was clogged with dust and his body was weakened with work and sweat. ‘Can…can I,’ he began, ‘can I go along to the drift, to see…to see Stan?’
Tom Fitzsimmons was gazing down at him intently now, his eyes looking white in his dead black face, and he said, ‘Aye, lad. The next thirty minutes you can do as you like. But do you mind if I give you a word of warnin’?’
Sandy waited.
‘The Mullens will do you no good.’
‘I know that. But Stan, he’s…he’s different, he doesn’t hold with his da. I’m sure of that.’
‘You think not?’ It was a question to which no answer seemed necessary, for Tom Fitzsimmon’s tone conveyed that he thought that if Stan was Big Mullen’s son then he was tarred with the same brush.
‘I think he’s all right.’
‘Well, every man to his own opinion. I just thought I’d give you a word.’
‘Thanks, an’ I’ll remember.’
‘Do that, lad. And remember another thing.’ He checked Sandy as he was turning away. ‘If you’re five minutes late, I’ll skin your hide.’ The threat was issued with a smile, and Sandy managed to smile back before he turned and staggered up the roadway to the drift, with Tom’s voice coming after him, saying lightly, ‘An’ don’t keep rubbin’ the bloody patches, you’re only rubbing the muck in. Let them bleed, they’ll clean themselves.’
There was a new boy sitting in the darkness at the air gate. In the light of the lantern he looked all eyes and mouth. He never spoke as he pulled on the rope, and as Sandy went through the door he half turned and looked at him again and the feeling that came into his chest disturbed him. He didn’t put the name compassion to it, he only knew that the little fellow sitting there made him feel even more sad than had the first one he had seen.
At the drift top which was the junction of a number of roads, Sandy saw Stan sitting alongside three boys. There were another five men sitting on their hunkers with their backs against the opposite wall, and standing, one facing up the main road and one facing down, were two Galloways, both harnessed to bogies, and Sandy felt his heart leap as if it was going to burst through his ribcage when he recognised that the one facing uphill was The Nipper.
‘How’s it going?’ Stan’s voice drew his eyes away from the hanging, dejected head and, walking slowly towards him but not looking at him, he answered, ‘Not too bad.’
As Stan said, ‘These are me mates, Fred, Dixie and Paul,’ Sandy turned away without acknowledging the boys and began walking towards the small horse.
‘Keep away from him.’ The voice came from one of the men, and Sandy stopped and looked towards him and the man said, ‘He’ll kick you in the teeth as soon as look at you, he’s fresh.’
‘He won’t kick me.’ He was sorry as soon as he uttered the words, for the man pulled himself to his feet and said slowly, ‘He won’t kick you, huh! Who do you think you are, God Almighty? Look.’ He pointed. ‘He’s got his head up, an’ when he’s got his head up he means business.’
And The Nipper had his head up, for he had recognised the voice, the voice of his friend.
The group of men and boys were all now startled by a loud prolonged neigh.
‘See what I mean?’ said the miner, turning to Big Mullen, and Big Mullen, coming and standing beside him, said, ‘Aye, John. Aye, I hear he’s a bad ’un.’
Sandy looked at Big Mullen, then at the man called John and the other two men who had joined them, then his eyes swung to the boys who were now coming from their corner. He knew he’d have to speak to The Nipper, make himself known to him, but he’d have to give some sort of explanation to this crowd afore he could do it, so he said, ‘I’ve…I’ve got a way with animals.’
There was a derisive laugh now from an ugly, stumpy looking man, who turned to Big Mullen and said, ‘This youngster you brought in, he’s got a way with animals, Mac?’ and Big Mullen laughed and said, ‘Aye. Well, he’d better show us then, Peter, hadn’t he?’ And the man replied, ‘Aye, he’d better.’ Then he said to Sandy, ‘Go on, show us the way you’ve got with animals, lad. I’ll bet you…’ He looked round for something to bet on. ‘I’ll bet you me bait.’ He pointed to a wooden box. ‘There’s bacon in there, an’ legs of rabbit. Go on, if he doesn’t kick you in the teeth that bait’s yours.’
Sandy waited a moment, pretending to hesitate. He looked around at the faces. They were all grinning, all except Stan’s, and Stan made an almost imperceptible movement with his head, telling him not to try it, because The Nipper was now tossing his mane and trying to free himself from where his reins were attached to a post.
Slowly Sandy moved forward and, stopping within a foot of the horse, said softly, ‘Hello there, lad,’ and his hand went out and stroked the sweaty muzzle. Then he moved another step and drew his hand down the animal’s neck, and felt the quivering of its whole body going through his own. Then he slid his arm right round its neck, talking all the time. ‘There now. There now. You’re goin’ to be all right. Just stay put, stay quiet.’ When at last he moved away from the horse it was quiet, and so were the spectators.
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ It was a thin man speaking now. He was noticeable for his big head and long arms, and something else, his Irish voice, and he looked around the men and said, ‘That boy’s got a charm on him, that’s what he has, a charm on him. He could never have done it else. He’s got a charm on him. What you carryin’?’ he now asked Sandy. And Sandy said, ‘Carrying? What do you mean?’
‘Have you a relic on you, the fingernail of a saint or somethin’ like?’
‘No.’ Sandy’s nose wrinkled. ‘Why would I want that?’
‘Just ’cos you did a miracle with that animal there, and you could never do it off your own bat, I’ll swear on it, because I’ve seen him not an hour gone tryin’ to kick the daylights out of Nick Stock, an’ what Nick Stock doesn’t know about horses isn’t worth learnin’, for it’s his work. If it had been me he had went for I’d have had his innards out with me pick, I would that.’
Peter Armstrong was holding out his bait box to Sandy now, and Sandy, pushing it away, said, ‘No, I don’t want that.’
‘Go on, you won it fair.’
Again the box was thrust under his nose, and he looked down on slices of bread, a thick dollop of bacon and two rabbit’s legs and his mouth watered; but again he pushed it away from him, saying, ‘I’ve me own bait, thanks.’
‘Aw well.’ The man seemed relieved. ‘I tried to pay me bet, you can’t say I didn’t.’
‘That’s right,’ said Sandy, and he was turning with the other boys to go to the corner and sit down when The Nipper again neighed and Stan said, ‘It was as if he knew you, as if he was talking to you.’
‘Aye,’ said Sandy, ‘it was, wasn’t it?’ and the thought came to him that he could confide in Stan and he would do, but later on.
Having sat down and started on his bait, he asked casually, ‘Who’s in charge of that one?’ He nodded towards The Nipper.
‘Paul here,’ said Stan. ‘Paul Bowmer.’
Sandy looked at Paul. He was a boy of eleven or twelve. He had a dull face, but he didn’t look vicious. Paul said, ‘I’ve had a devil of a job with him this last week; I’ve tried everythin’.’ He leant forward and whispered, ‘How d’you do it?’
Sandy looked back into the small round eyes and said slowly, ‘Kindness. Think kindly towards them and they pick it up, you know, sort of sense it.’
‘No kiddin’?’
‘No kiddin’.’
‘I’ve just got to think about bein’ kind to him and he’ll act for me like he did you?’
Sandy paused, looked about him, then let his eyes rest on The Nipper, and he said, ‘Well, it’ll take a little time, but he’ll get used to you. ‘I’ll’—he laughed now as if he was making a joke—‘I’ll have a word with him afore you start.’
‘Ta.’ The boy took him quite seriously and again said, ‘Ta.’ Then he added, ‘Did you see wor Teddy inbye, on the door?’
‘You mean in there?’ Sandy pointed, and Paul nodded. ‘Yes, I saw him.’
Paul now edged himself towards him. ‘Will you, when you’re passin’, stop and have a word with him, I mean stay a second or so if you can? You see he’s new to it and scared an’ they don’t like me goin’ near him, stops them bein’ broken in they say; but it gets lonely sittin’ by yersel’, and he’s too young to start puttin’ yet, so if you’ll give him a word?’
‘Aye, I will.’
The boy, Paul, nodded and sat back and started tearing at a piece of dark-looking bread. And now he said, as if to himself and not by way of explanation, ‘He was just apprenticed last week.’
Apprenticed. That meant he was from the workhouse. The pain in Sandy’s chest deepened and it came to him that he had entered a new world, a new phase of his life.
Chapter Six
During his first week down the mine Sandy learned a number of things. First, that labour was comparative. The backaching weariness that was engendered by working in the fields was not to be compared with the body-racking pain and the feeling of utter exhaustion left by twelve hours down the mine.
The first night when he had come up above ground he had staggered about like a drunken man; it was as if the air had intoxicated him, and the Mullens had laughed their heads off, even Stan had been amused, and when he reached home he had thrown himself down on the floor covered from head to foot with coal dust and dried blood as he was, and gone fast asleep. And there his mother had found him when she came in from the fields an hour later, and he had woken to her whimpering, ‘Oh my God, boy, look! Look at the sight of you, blood and muck.’ He was too exhausted to push at her hands as she washed him down.
The second thing he learned was that men fought differently down the mine. He had witnessed two fights, one between boys and one between men. When the boys fought Big Mullen and his pals formed a ring round them and egged them on, and they fought with feet and teeth and hands like claws, seeming bent on tearing each other’s eyes out.
The men fought with their bare fists, and with their knees they struck out at all the lower parts of the body. It was after witnessing a fight that he learned there were two warring factions down the mine, one headed by Big Mullen, the other by Tom Fitzsimmons. He also learned that there was a strike imminent.
He had sat and listened to Tom Fitzsimmons, Jimmy Tyler, Chris Suggett and Fred Jamieson as they talked openly about their grievances, the main grievance being that the corves of coal they sent from the face were too often short weighed by the keeker—this was the name given to the check weighman who, if he found a little slate of stone amongst the coal in the seven and a half hundredweight basket, would discard the whole corve, so giving free coal to the owners and a bonus to himself. Added to this, men working on bank—above ground—wanted a standard wage of three ha’pence an hour. There was also a crying need for better safety conditions underground, and every man wanted the wording of the bond altered, the bond that tied a man to the mine for a year and assured him of work at a promised rate, but at the same time had loopholes which allowed the owners to cut wages when they deemed it necessary, which often happened when another pit closed and its miners were looking for work.
They wanted the pernicious rule—that a man could be fined or even jailed for staying off work—done away with: it was little use a man saying he was sick, he had to prove it, and how could he do that when he hadn’t the money to send for a doctor, and there was only his word for it? They wanted the maximum time a child should work down the mine to be twelve hours, no overtime until he was fourteen.
All this talk seemed reasonable to Sandy’s ears, but when he went to the middle drift and strained to hear Big Mullen, Felton, Armstrong and Casey talking he knew, without being able to distinguish all they said, that whatever they were planning wasn’t reasonable and could only lead to trouble, for repeatedly he would hear phrases like, ‘Talkin’s no good. The time for talkin’s past, it’s action we want, action.’ Then one day another word was added to the word action…the word was, loud. ‘Loud action,’ they said, and following this there was a silence, and then a series of mutterings of ‘Aye. Aye, that would do it.’ Loud action. Sandy could make no sense of this.
The next thing he learned was that some horses took to working down the mine, or became resigned to it, while others never did. One was Paddy The Kick. He was smaller than The Nipper, and full of fight, although he was eight years old. They said his back legs had broken more shins than falls of stone. Big Mullen had egged Sandy on to test his powers on Paddy The Kick, but Sandy had demurred, saying, ‘One at a time; I’ll take one at a time.’
Then there was Sniffy, a bony, body-scarred horse, that sniffed loudly up its nostrils before kicking out with its hooves. Cock-Eye was an old horse, blind in one eye; Sandy couldn’t bear to ask how this had come about. Cock-Eye was docile, as was Mary Ann, but Bella was spirited and didn’t like being handled by anybody except Fred Beecham, and he, in his way, was kind to her.
One thing that pained Sandy was the fact that all these five horses had been down in the dark for years, never glimpsing the sky or munching a bit of green grass, though he had to admit that their feed wasn’t bad.
He had inveigled himself into the good books of Nick Stock who had heard about his handling of The Nipper. Nick Stock was a dour man, a Scot from across the Border; he had chest trouble, the result of years spent on the coalface, and had now the comparatively light job of horse-keeper.
On Sandy’s first visit to the stables—this was after he had finished his shift at the end of his fourth day—Nick Stock had seemed slightly resentful of his power over The Nipper, but Sandy had been sensible enough to praise the horseboxes and the fact that there was dry straw in them.
On this first Saturday morning he asked his mother for threepence. Without question she gave it to him, and that night, at the end of the shift, when all the men were scrambling upwards to receive their pay, he went to the stables and there, handing tuppence to Nick Stock said, ‘Get yourself a mug of beer.’ Then proffering a further penny he added, ‘And could I have a penn’orth of carrots from your land?’
