Prince Edward, The

The Prince Edward

D James Brown
david.brown@iname.com
Words: 6,470

The morning was a cold one. Half of the sky had been clear
since midnight, blue since dawn, but the other half was still
black. I opened one eye when I heard my name called to wake
me, and I had risen inside a minute. I pulled my shirt on - it
was damp - and took my bread out with me between my teeth.
As the door closed behind me I bent down to tie my laces.
This morning a bid was being held at Captain Hutchins'
House. This was the routine whenever a fresh seam of tin was
discovered and its purpose was to contract miners to work on
the face for as little of Hutchins' money as he could get away
with. This morning I felt a little lucky, but still a little
nervous.
I didn't like auctions.
The sun hadn't risen yet. The clouds hadn't formed. The
day was in a state of preparation, ready to be seen when the
sun chimed. This was how the day looked before it showed
itself to the world, and to peek at it in this state of attire was
to
see into its private life.
I knew what to expect at Hutchins'. There would be a
hustling of miners, the finery of Hutchins' garden. The captain
himself would suck on his filthy pipe. He would announce the
location of a new seam of tin - this morning it was expected to
be the Emery Face - and declare the highest price he would
pay a miner to work it. The miners would successively
undercut each other, calling out the wages they would work
for, until there remained the number of miners Hutchins
needed for the work.
Henry and I arrived early and were stood beneath an
ornamental alabaster balcony on which Captain Hutchins
would soon stand to conduct the affair. I had never seen inside
the captain's house - I expect no miner ever had, but from the
outside it was clear that Captain Hutchins lived without
hardship.
To gather under the balcony, the miners had to enter the
gardens through sculptured gateposts, one of a lion seated and
one of a lion rearing, and from them could be seen the entire
western aspect of the house. Perhaps none of us were able to
fully appreciate the architect's skill, but the house was
attractive not only to the educated. Even we labourers admired
the artistry, even in the greyness of the early morning. The
windows were all framed by pristine white sills and the
decorative brickwork must have made the mason as proud to
have crafted it as Hutchins was to own it.
The gardens had an ambient beauty, a strict and deliberate
arrangement. The very sound of the gravel under the miners'
hobnails was smart. But these auctions were strange times
when all the contrasting elements of the mine's business were
seen together. Dirty miners were seen trampling between fine
topiary. Colleagues unexpectedly earned your mistrust as they
peered at your between the leaping hands of the first bid.
It was here that I came to appreciate how poor the men's
families really were, how the miners of Cornwall could be
helped if their Captains were less habitual in their pursuit of
grandeur. But I also discovered why captains like Hutchins
could feel no compassion for us. Having been nursed from
childhood in the arms of luxury and having heard his father's
rote, "The miners don't understand money like we do. They're
not accustomed to it", he was simply not capable of imagining
himself in our position. It would be unfair to expect it of him.
He knew only the hereditary caste which granted his ignorance
and which prevented him from being able to expose fear or
humour or ire to those beneath him.
On this morning, and it was still not long after dawn for
we did not want to whittle down the working day, Hutchins
appeared on the balcony before the last of the miners had
joined the group of fifty. As they approached he fingered a log
book, unbending a dog-ear from the corner of one page and
forming another a few pages farther on. The sun had begun to
watch from a distance. On the side of the captain's face was a
strip of grey and a strip of peach.
"The Emery Face!" He announced suddenly. "Do you all
know where it is? For the Emery face I will pay a maximum of
six pence for the pound." The arms shot up and the shouting
began.
_

Lostwithiel is a mining town on the South Coast of
Cornwall, near the River Fowey. To its west the ground is
thick with granite, but the Prince Edward tin mine at
Lostwithiel was one of many throughout Cornwall which were
responsible for over half of the entire world's tin production
not long before the turn of the century, when I was a tinner at
Lostwithiel.
I was young then, just approaching twenty, and still lived
at home with my parents. My older brothers had married and
moved away. We lived in Raleigh Road, in a house with a
large garden in which my father grew vegetables. The Prince
Edward was thirty minutes walk towards the sea, and
Lostwithiel's centre a good hour's walk in the other direction.
Nearby, in Jacob Street, lived Henry and his wife Irene,
with their only daughter Ruth. It had been some years before
Ruth had been born and about six years since. Ruth had
suffered from mild scarlet fever in her early years and Henry
had spent a lot of money on medicines and doctors' bills, so
perhaps it had been fortunate that he'd not had more children
to support.
Henry had once lived as my next-door-neighbour in
Raleigh Road until he had married and left home. We had
spent our youths running after footballs up and down the road,
and even after his marriage we'd occasionally knock one about
with some old childhood friends.
Henry was a big man of thirty-odd years, with a handsome
stature. I was tall, but I came only up to his boulder-like
shoulders when I walked beside him. Poverty had made him
an admirably hard worker and when he went home at night
after mining since early morning, his black hair scruffy and his
face shining with either perspiration or rain, Irene would sit
with him by the fire while he ate a hot supper, then squeeze
into his chair beside him and tell him how she and Ruth loved
him.
Henry and I had been two of nine men who started work
on the Emery Face after the bid at Captain Hutchins'. We had
been on a wage of four shillings for the pound (meaning that
we were paid four shillings for every pound that the tin
realised). From this the miners had to deduct debts for
candles, explosives and fuses, oil, rope, clay and other
paraphernalia, paid to the mine who supplied such things. Of
course Captain Hutchins, the bounder of our mine, ensured a
slight profit on his part by buying in bulk from suppliers in
Lostwithiel.
Captain Hutchins was a smallish man, and was an unusual
mine-owner in that he had never been a tinner himself. He had
a small lump of a beer belly and chewed on a dirty clay pipe,
his smoky breath quite suiting his ugly temperament.
Henry liked to keep Hutchins apart from his family. In
fact Henry tried to separate every aspect of his working life
from his home life. There was no reason why his wife and
daughter should ever have to see the inside of a mine; there
was no more reason why they should have to feel his bruises
or sit shivering in icy trickles. Why should they have to suffer
his injuries? So long as he kept earning money and always
came home safely at night then he could shield them from all
the unpleasantness of his work.
However, he sometimes made mistakes. The worry over
threadbare clothes and stale bread dinners sometimes
distracted his attention when he put Ruth to bed each night,
and the exclusion of his work from his home would falter. A
grimace would betray him as he knocked a bruise against the
door-frame, or he would forget to hide his act of leaving
crumbs on his chair so that Irene thought that he had eaten,
when in fact he had spared his food for Ruth.
He had considered changing his job, so had I in fact, but
we were unqualified and inexperienced in everything save
mining. What was even less bearable was that being illiterate
and living in a closed community, we had no knowledge of
what other lifestyles existed. Perhaps different people in
different lands lived quite differently, perhaps idyllically, but
we knew nothing of it. Not only could we not change our lives
but we were deprived even of ambitions.
Had Henry been able to picture his life as a painter, he
would have seen the grey of the mine-shaft leak out into the
blue of the sky behind his house, darkening as it spread on
paper too wet to keep the forms' definitions. The light would
fade. Perhaps as an actor he could have kept his fears from his
family more easily. Working away the daylight hours, it was
only in his dreams that his way was lit. Whichever role he
found himself in when he fell asleep in the small hours there
was always light - the light of colour, lime-light, always light.
He told me that Irene had noticed a change in his attitude.
He came home later and wearier than he used to. At home he
began to talk about the problems of coal-mining, whereas
previously he had kept them secured in his tool-bag. More
seriously, he let thoughts of Ruth follow him down the mine-
shaft, often to overcome him as he sat for a half-hour in
mesmeric worry amongst the labouring miners and booming
coal-wagons. After planting a candle in a mound of clay he
sometimes stared into it for a while as if he saw in its radiance
the face of his wife or daughter, or sometimes as if he were
waiting for news of the world above to appear in that spectral
spore of sky-light.
When he left the mine each night Henry had to duck under
the dirty weeds that fringed the mine-shaft entrance. We
walked together over the gravel to the smelting house where
we took our clothes off to dry them. After trudging his long
trek home, Henry's first sight of his house would be a night-lit
black obelisk with the same candle-light straining from the
windows as he was used to seeking underground. At home he
found Irene and Ruth clinging to the beacon in their night-
world as Henry did habitually in his. It grieved him that they
should have a hardship so reminiscent of one of his own.
_

To save on expenses, Henry and I didn't buy our
equipment from Captain Hutchins, we bought from
Lostwithiel like he did. Although we couldn't afford to buy in
large quantities we still worked it out to be cheaper than
buying through Hutchins. We would walk into Lostwithiel
once every fortnight and would buy as much as we could carry
or as much as we could afford, whichever was the smaller. In
Winter these treks were wearisome, but as the Spring awoke
each year they became respites from all the seasonless
tribulations of the mine.
On the first day of May, I spent the early morning
gathering bracken from the woodland near the mine, which we
sometimes used to take down with us to sleep on when the
urgency of the work kept us down the mine overnight. Henry
and I had been running short of a few items and I had arranged
to meet him in Lostwithiel so that we could stock up and
return together. Once the bracken had been bundled and
stacked in one of the smelting huts to dry out, I began my
walk into the town.
The walk into Lostwithiel was refreshing. There were not
many aspects of my job which were common to other jobs.
Nobody who wasn't a miner had to work underground.
Nobody who wasn't a miner had to change their clothes in
smelting huts. But when you are walking along a road you
could have any profession you fancied; doctors have to walk
to visit their patients; acrobats walk to practice sessions;
coopers and farriers have to walk to towns for supplies. Henry
and I were always looking for time to pretend we weren't
miners.
On the road to Lostwithiel, meandering through
woodland, I passed only a few walkers. I knew the faces of
two of them but I said nothing more than a greeting to each. I
walked sometimes through the shadow of the cedars,
sometimes through the shadows of spruce, but when the path
was sunny oh! it was alive with light. So refreshing it was to
see more than a yard in front, to breathe woodland fragrances.
My senses stretched as if I had come out of hibernation for the
first time.
The slow change of scenery made the walk all the more
pleasant. With my eyes rummaging over dells and hillocks, I
spotted new sights which had not existed seconds before.
But it was with a sick shock that on rounding a corner of
the road my eyes found Henry, his eyes closed, lying propped
against the wooden wreckage of a cart. Next to him was
another man. His eyes were also closed, but not from
weariness like Henry's because as I approached and crouched
beside him I realised his breathing had stopped. A little way
further along the road, two horses grazed while their broken
harnesses dragged along behind them.
Henry opened his eyes as I placed my ear to the driver's
mouth. Henry said softly, "I've done everything. You'd better
leave him." I stood up again. The driver's face was grazed and
dirty down one side.
Henry said, "Do you know who that is?" I said that I did
not.
"That's Captain Dauncey. He owns the mine at Truro. He's
a friend of Captain Hutchins, what's more."
I sat down beside Henry and asked what had happened.
"I'm not sure. It looks like he must have crashed," he
replied helplessly. "He hit the rocks at the roadside."
"How? Did he hit a pothole? Did you see it happen?"
"I can't remember. It was so sudden," he said coyly, with
his head rolling on his chest. At length I stood him up and
looked him up and down.
"You're alright?" He didn't answer but I could see no
damage. His head was turning from the wreckage of the cart to
the body of Captain Dauncey. His hands were gesticulating.
He might have been explaining the accident but no words
came from him.
"Look Henry," I said. "You stay here while I go into
Lostwithiel. I'll send back some help, okay?"
Henry didn't answer, except in that he slumped down
again beside the cart and sat with his eyes closed and his
forearms resting on his knees.
It was midday when I returned with Doctor Price and Mr
Mitchell, the store-owner. He had brought us on his own cart
when he had heard that Captain Dauncey had been killed.
There was little conversation on the journey. What there
was came abruptly.
"Should I have left Henry? He might have concussion,
don't you think, Doctor?"
"We'll see when we get there. How much farther?"
"I don't know. We must be nearly there."
The words were predictable. Our minds were on other
matters and our speech had to be trivial. My own thoughts
were for Henry. However blameless he might have been, he
had been involved somehow in the death of the bounder
Captain Dauncey. For some time Henry's health had been in
jeopardy from his relentless anxiety over poverty and work.
This accident could not have happened to a less fortunate
man.
When the overturned cart came into view around a corner
it was once again a shock to see it. The body of Captain
Dauncey was laid upon it with Henry's shirt over the face. The
two horses were tied to a wheel which rolled spoke by spoke
at their whims.
"Good Lord!" exclaimed Mr Mitchell. "The cart came
right off the bloody road!" He reined in his horses and the cart
stopped. I jumped off it ahead of the others.
Mr Mitchell called to Henry. "Did anyone turn up to help
you move the body? The hounds, why didn't they stay with
you?" Henry shook his head dolefully.
Doctor Price was already peering under the shirt at
Captain Dauncey. He replaced the shirt. Looking around
himself he tutted and perched his fists on his hips. "The horses
must have swerved a hell of a long way to bring the cart right
off the road. Henry must have been walking in the middle of
the road. The bloody idiot. You bloody idiot, Henry!"
"They'd have just run over him!" I shouted. "You can't
possibly blame Henry!"
Once again Henry slumped down against the cart, this
time out of sight. It was hard to believe that he could have
moved the body on his own - Dauncey was not a slight man -
but knowing Henry's strength I didn't think it was beyond him.
Mr Mitchel and I had to help Doctor Price to move the body
over to Mr Mitchel's cart. We laid the body in the back and I
walked over to Henry.
"Are you coming? We can sort everything out at
Lostwithiel. Come on, Henry." Hesitantly he followed me. He
kept his gaze at the ground and didn't answer any of the
doctor's questions as Mr Mitchel drove us back to the town.
The black pines bowed as we passed.
Henry was not able to explain what had happened. I am
sure it was not through want of trying, but he never seemed
able to piece together his fragmented account of the accident.
His only direct reference to it came once when he was standing
at the side of Gunnel's Recess while a wagon was trolleyed
through. I remember dust falling onto his head like a curse
onto a beggar.
He looked up, blinking the dust from his eyes, and said
"Dauncey."
"What do you remember?" I said.
"The cart..." He spoke very slowly, as though even the
words were forgotten. "It was coming towards me, right at the
edge of the road. Very fast, very, very fast. Poor Captain
Dauncey could never have helped it."
He could recall nothing after that. His work and hence his
wages suffered from his worry over the incident. Nothing
more was said after the initial simmering of gossip had cooled,
save for on one occasion when he crossed Captain Hutchins
on the dressing floor.
"Henry!" Captain Hutchins called.
"Yes, Captain?"
"A word, if you will. Mrs Dauncey is finding it difficult to
cope after the departing of her husband, and I feel obliged to
help her out." He paused to suck his pipe. Henry clasped his
hands and shifted uncomfortably. "Which means I'll be less
able to supervise your work. Now, I expect you to pull out of
this slump you've been in since the accident you caused, and
I'll be watching the books to see what you're producing."
Finishing with a glare he turned to go, but Henry called
him. "Captain Hutchins?" I knew what he was going to ask
and I made as little noise as I could so that I could overhear
them.
"Yes?"
Henry paused before he began. "Captain Hutchins, things
are tight at home. The money doesn't go a long way." Captain
Hutchins arched a glowering eyebrow.
Sternly, and without waiting for Henry to finish, he said
"The tin-plating factories we supply to are hard pushed these
days to compete with the Americans and it's causing all flaccid
accounts to be scrutinised. What are you paid currently?"
"Four shillings."
"Well, you're lucky to get that. Where are you tinning?"
"Emery Face."
"Then you're very lucky. It's wages such as yours that will
be considered with an eye to reduction."
"Yes, Captain."
Captain Hutchins left Henry rubbing his chin sadly for a
few moments before returning to his work.
_

A year later Henry and I were working on the Palmerstone
Lode, four hundred feet below the Emery Face. As you entered
it through a narrow crevice leading from Gunnel's Recess you
would be facing a sloping wall that widened as you climbed
up it. The ceiling was always a yard above your head wherever
you were on the slope. When we first began work on this seam
we had hoped to fashion a path of footholds up the centre of
the wall so that we could walk up it to any height and build
our way sidelong to the left or right, but time pressed us into
blasting almost immediately.
We made several trips through the mine, bringing down
crampons, planks, candles and gelatine. Henry knocked in a
ladder of pins into the wall and mounted a plank across two of
them about eight feet up. I began work on the right hand side,
slightly lower.
We worked the lode for three or four weeks. Henry
worked so hard that he'd often fall asleep with the mallet in his
hand. He was trying to make all the money he could and, as he
would say, if that impressed Captain Hutchins then all the
better. I spent a great deal of time with him, not only for my
wages but to help him earn his.
Thirty or forty feet above us, at the top of the wall, was a
crevice leading down to us from a natural gallery above. It had
been boarded over with timbers for the workers above to run a
wagon-rail along. As we worked, we would occasionally hear
a wagon thunder across the wooden platform above us.
Sometimes, worrying threads of dust would spray down from
the timbers.
Mining had always been an unpleasant job. Seeing Henry
in his filthy canvas clothes, squatting uncomfortably on a
creaking plank high in the darkness, far underground, my
thoughts would turn again and again to what other lives could
possible exist for us. The only respites came when we took
cover in Gunnel's Recess while we blasted a section of the
Lode. We could not easily remove ourselves more than a few
hundred feet from the blasts, so we would shelter in an
upturned wagon in the tunnel. We would count the explosions
until all of the charges had blown. Sound travels faster
through rock than air, so we would feel the "knock" through
the stone beneath us before the "boom" of the wind rushing
over the wagon. Even after waiting for most of the dust to
settle before taking up our chisels and planks and climbing
back up the crampons, we would cough ferociously for a half-
hour while the air was still smoky. The dread of phthisis was a
sobering thought for any miner.
It was frightening work, too. When Nathan and Daniel in
the gallery above used explosives to shatter a slab of stone
from one of the faces on that level, we would press ourselves
flat against the wall until the rumblings crept away.
After a time, Henry was working high up the wall. I was
off to the far right. Nathan and Daniel in the gallery above us
had been sand-blasting heavily for a day or more and much of
the ore had been taken away in wagons grumbling along the
groaning timbers out of sight in the darkness above us.
Strange bonds form between men who work in such
conditions for so long. Henry and I were the only two miners
who came to the Palmerstone Lode, its not being very big, and
we could not help but feel united as we worked. We ran out of
conversation easily, but neither of us minded. In my head I
still talked to him.
There were certain unspoken gestures made between me
and Henry. If he had been hurt I would have stopped work to
help him, naturally, but if one of us had had a disagreement
with Captain Hutchins it was understood that the other would
not take sides so that at least one of us could continue to earn
a wage. If one of us had to stay down the mine overnight then
so would the other.
"Henry?"
"What's up?"
"What would you like to happen to the girls if you died?"
"Don't know. Hutchins wouldn't offer any compensation,
that's for sure."
"He did to Dauncey's wife."
"Bounders' families are different. He wouldn't give my
Irene anything." That was true.
"So what about Ruth?"
"I suppose I'd like you to see to things."
"Right. I thought so."
Simple. We understood each other perfectly.
"You'd call in on my folks if they lost me?"
"Of course."
We knew each other very well, Henry and I.
Suddenly the weight of a wagon above us broke through
the timber platform and came hurtling down the wall's face.
As we heard it tear through the darkness we hugged the wall
for protection, but the wagon clipped one of the crampons
supporting Henry's plank and he was sent skidding down after
it into the gloom. Mercifully, perhaps, our candles were
knocked out. I didn't see Henry land on the rock below but I
heard it. Lumps of ore fell from the gallery above and chased
down the slope. I heard a grunt as they battered down onto
Henry.
When the fall had ceased and all that sounded were the
rustle of stones and the shouts of miners above me, I peered
down from my plank into the claustrophobic night. I could see
nothing. I was helpless without light. I needed light down in
the mine.
"Light!" I dammed the panic. When I called again my
voice was still shaking but the initial edge of madness had
gone.
"Nathan!" I called upwards to where three candle-lit faces
were staring down into the crevice. "Bring candles! One of
you fetch Hutchins!"
There was a scuffle of activity and a long minute's
anguished wait before Nathan lowered himself awkwardly
down on a rope. He scrambled down to me and while he
teetered on a crampon I took the matches from him and lit a
candle, from which we lit two more that he had brought.
Looking downwards, all we could see was the topmost
layer of rubble. The entrance to the face had been completely
blocked and the rocks had piled up at least six or seven feet.
"Henry!" Nathan hollered, but no answer came save for a
faint, fast echo. Daniel peered down from the remaining
section of platform, saying that Captain Hutchins had been
sent for.
Nathan and I hurriedly set the candles into clay mounds on
the wall's ridges and climbed down the existing crampons
until we were just above the rock pile. We could see no sign of
Henry and he still didn't answer our frantic shouts. Nathan put
one foot out to stand on the rocks.
"No! Don't add any more weight!" The waving of my hand
urged him back onto the crampons. I reached down and
touched a rock with my fingertips. It felt so very heavy.
"Use this!" called Daniel from above. He tossed an empty
sack down to us. "There's nowhere for you to move the stones
to down there. Fill the sack and I'll haul them out." For some
time Nathan and I didn't move. We had heard Daniel but we
couldn't move.
"Don't waste time!" called Daniel, prompting us into
action.
Nathan and I struggled to lift the topmost stones without
putting weight onto the rocks. When the sack held as many
stones as it could without tearing I called up to Daniel who
organised three or four men to lift it up into the gallery.
Captain Hutchins didn't arrive for what must have been an
hour or more. During that time, we tried to clear the rocks
from above where we guessed Henry to have been lying.
We made very slow progress and each time Daniel raised
the sack to empty it, I found it increasingly difficult to
convince myself that Henry could have survived. But we
persevered nonetheless. Nothing was said. There was no
speculation or opinion expressed. At one point, a wooden slat
fell onto us from the collapsed platform, hitting me on the leg
as it landed, but I hardly felt it. We knew that if Henry still
lived then no effort should be spared. If not, then it did not
matter to me what danger I put myself in.
Beneath the rubble Henry was in total darkness, but
behind his eyelids he saw a red mist. His dazed mind swam
back across the months of poverty, back to the day of Captain
Dauncey's death. Vivid memories awoke in the dusty
blackness as he relived the crash as if seen from the eyes of a
bystander. A miner walking on a curve of a difficult road - a
horse-drawn cart careering towards him, out of control, the
horses wild and furious. The man looks up, eyes and mouth
shrieking, and the cart dives towards him. The driver's face
panics from under a woollen cowl. The man on foot suddenly
spreads his legs in a wide stance, digs his chin into his chest
and draws in his arms.
The cart topples and rams into him, its chassis crunching
and buckling against him. The driver is dashed against
wayside rocks, while the miner merely totters and plants a
hand down onto the wreckage to steady himself. As his head
bows, rough breaths clogging his throat, he hears the last, soft
words of the driver, now lying bleeding only yards away.
"Why weren't you crushed? I'm so sorry."
_

After a length of time, Captain Hutchins' growl was heard
rumbling through the mine. We soon saw him lean over the
crevice. He squinted down at Daniel and me. He was handed a
lantern by someone which he held out above the splintered
remains of the wooden wagon platform. It sent an ugly yellow
light sliding down the rock face, picking out the rocks below.
Nothing could be seen of Henry.
"He's under the rubble, Captain!" called Nathan up to him.
"We've shifted some already!"
Somewhere near Palmerstone Lode a droplet of water was
ticking onto stone.
Captain Hutchins stood up straight. "Get those two up and
knock out the rest of this timber." I wrung my hands. Only just
loud enough to hear, Daniel said, "You think he's dead then,
Captain?"
"He's dead, yes, and this is unsafe." He nodded at the
ruined platform. "I don't want any more accidents, so I want it
out. I want all of you out. Two minutes, boys." He turned to
clamber back to the mine's central shaft. A blackness was
draped over the place as his lantern swung away into a
tunnel's bend.
In Captain Hutchins' absence there was nothing for us to
say. Glances were shuffled around the rock pile, some up at
the broken timbers, until Nathan called up to Daniel "Is the
rope secure?"
"Yes", came the answer weeping down to us like the
trickles of dust had done earlier. Nathan took a last, apologetic
look at me still gazing at the pile of rocks, then he took the
rope and climbed up it until he stood alongside Daniel.
Looking down at me they knew without asking that I wouldn't
want to follow.
"You'll have to come up now," they both said.
"What about Henry?" I asked. "He should be coming up,
you know."
"Henry's not with us anymore. Come out, come on."
In a few moments I filed through several directions of
action. I could leave Henry behind. I could stay down with him
for a while, leave him later, but that wouldn't please Captain
Hutchins. Most of all I wanted to dig through the rocks, throw
them aside until I saw Henry again. This, I knew, would be
hopeless. Perched on a crampon with my cheek resting against
the wet stone wall, I allowed myself a few moments to gather
my courage before I would take the rope hanging beside me
and leave the lode.
A noise stopped my thoughts. A moan! Nathan couldn't
have heard it for he said, "The platform needs knocking down.
We don't want you hurt as well."
"Quiet! Silence!" I shouted up at him. "Listen!"
There was nothing. I waited. Still there was nothing, but I
knew what I had heard.
"There was a sound! A groan of pain! Listen!" Again there
was nothing.
Nathan said again, "Captain Hutchins wants us to leave,
and rightly so. You might want to annoy him but I don't. I
want to leave and I want you to leave with us. You'll have to
come up."
Desperately I strained to listen one more time. I heard the
scrape of a miner's boot, the shuffle of someone slapping dust
off their clothes, even the distant cough of gelatine. Nothing
more. I had no hope left.
I grasped the rope and, without looking down, climbed up
to the gallery. The group of us made our way back to the
central shaft and climbed the long, heavy climb back up to the
dusk-light. Captain Hutchins met us there and instructed us to
go to our homes - we would help him compile a report in the
morning. He would talk to Henry's wife that night.
Darkness crawled out of the sea onto Cornwall and lay
over the mine-works of Lostwithiel. Beneath the blotchy
clouds, dew hung like tears ready to fall. Irene and her
daughter, Ruth, half slept with their arms around each other
and their eyes wet and swollen. Ruth's face was half-buried in
her mother's chest. Her mother lay with her head propped up
on pillows. Candle-light shone in the salty paths left on her
cheeks.
Occasionally a sigh or sob would disturb the air.
Occasionally the candle, with wet trails on its sides, faltered
or
sniffed. Outside the shield of yellow light lay darkness, as
dark as ever it was underground. Within the light, objects
seemed closer to the point of claustrophobia. The ceiling of
the bedroom seemed too low, and everywhere that it was not
perfectly even, the light cast elongated shadows to accentuate
the bumps.
Why had it happened to Henry? Why Henry? Why Henry?
What would Irene do with Ruth? How could they possibly
have had Henry taken from them? There were no reasons.
There was no more reason why they should have to feel such
grief, or sit shivering in icy angst. Why should they have to
suffer from Henry's injuries?
Suddenly the weight of guilt broke through Irene and came
hurtling through her mind. As she felt it tear through the
darkness she hugged Ruth for protection, but the guilt ripped
at her composure and she was sent reeling after it into the
gloom.
Mercifully, perhaps, she fainted. In her sleep she didn't see
Henry fall from his creaking plank high in the darkness, far
underground, but she felt every rock which chased down the
slope and battered down onto him.
Captain Hutchins huddled under his blankets, biting his
lips and sighing. His thoughts were empty. No explanations
came to him of why the accident had happened to Henry; why
it had been Henry; what Irene and Ruth could possibly do
from now on.
The mine seemed abandoned, work having stopped since
the news of the accident had spread. Freezing night rain
spattered over dressing sheds and stannary houses and gurgled
in rivulets alongside the long hillside flues that ran down into
the valley.
The black-green weeds above the mine entrance blew in
the wind and the muddy gravel below it shone frostily. Then,
it crunched as the worn boots of a miner limped across them.
He supported himself for a while with an elbow propped
against the stone wall. With his torn shirt he mopped his damp
head, on which sweat was glistening on clotted blood, and he
waited until his breath returned before slowly traipsing around
the smelting huts and towards his home.
_

The first I knew of Henry's escape was when Ruth came
stamping into my kitchen, pulling at me to listen to her. I ran
clumsily through my Father's cabbages, shouting over his
complaints, "Henry's at home! He's there now!" My Mother
had dropped her apron of clothes pegs whilst to her anguish
her whites whipped off the clothes-line onto muddy rockeries,
and in a moment of almost comic indecision, she clasped her
hands to her cheeks and came dashing out of the garden after
me.
Long before I had reached Henry's house I was calling out
his name and then I saw him hurry over his doorstep to greet
me. A minute later my parents came gasping into the front
garden to see my friend Henry and me still vigorously shaking
hands and slapping each other's shoulder.
Henry spent much of the day in bed on Irene's insistence
while she sat and cried over him. However, he was back on his
shift after a few days. A new platform had been built to
replace the broken one and the rocks had been cleared from
the bottom of the Palmerstone Lode face. The miners gave
Henry a hearty welcome back and even Captain Hutchins let
us both see his smile while we dried our clothes in the
smelting house at the end of the shift.
"Hello there. How are you, Henry? Recovering?" he
enquired.
"Yes, thank you very much, good as new, Captain
Hutchins," replied Henry.
Captain Hutchins said, "Incidentally, you'll be aware of
the uncovering of a new face of the main lode - the Lucknow
Face, it's been called. I've had it inspected and it seems worth
putting some effort into. I'd like you two to take half a dozen
men to it and start in a week or so. You'll be paid six shillings
for the pound, both of you. We'll talk some more when the
time comes."
We were astonished, both of us. We thanked Captain
Hutchins and wished him good evening as he left us. We were
delighted with the good news, and with that happiness came
financial relief for Henry. Once we'd pulled on our canvasses,
his contentment showed in the way he swung his tools over his
shoulder as we left to go back home.