Ken Follett - A Place Called Freedom (1995)

She tried to ignore her discomfort. On either side candlelight flickered in the gaps between broad columns, and she was reminded of a midnight service in a great cathedral. Jay said: “Each miner works a twelve-foot section of the coal face, called a ‘room.’ Between one room and another they leave a pillar of coal, sixteen feet square, to support the roof.”

Lizzie suddenly realized that above her head there was two hundred and ten feet of earth and rock that could collapse on her if the miners had not done their work carefully; and she had to fight to suppress a feeling of panic. Involuntarily she gave Jay’s hand a squeeze, and he squeezed back. From then on she was very conscious that they were holding hands. She found that she liked it.

The first rooms they passed were empty, presumably worked out, but after a while Jay stopped beside a room where a man was digging. To Lizzie’s surprise the miner was not standing up: he lay on his side, attacking the coal face at floor level. A candle in a wooden holder near his head threw its inconstant light on his work. Despite his awkward position he swung his pick powerfully. With each swing he dug the point into the coal and prized out lumps. He was making an indentation two or three feet deep across the width of his room. Lizzie was shocked to realize that he was lying in running water, which seeped out of the coal face, flowed across the floor of his room, and drained into the ditch that ran along the tunnel. Lizzie dipped her fingers into the ditch. The water was freezing cold. She shivered. Yet the miner had taken off his coat and shirt and was working in his breeches and bare feet; and she could see the gleam of perspiration on his blackened shoulders.

The tunnel was not level, but rose and fell—with the seam of coal, Lizzie presumed. Now it began to go up more steeply. Jay stopped and pointed ahead to where a miner was doing something with a candle. “He’s testing for firedamp,” Jay said.

Lizzie let go of his hand and sat on a rock, to relieve her back from stooping.

“Are you all right?” Jay said.

“Fine. What’s firedamp?”

“An inflammable gas.”

“Inflammable?”

“Yes—it’s what causes most explosions in coal mines.”

This sounded mad. “If it’s explosive, why is he using that candle?”

“It’s the only way to detect the gas—you can’t see it or smell it.”

The miner was raising the candle slowly toward the roof, and seemed to be staring hard at the flame.

“The gas is lighter than air, so it concentrates at roof level,” Jay went on. “A small amount will give a blue tinge to the candle flame.”

“And what will a large amount do?”

“Blow us all to kingdom come.”

Lizzie felt this was the last straw. She was filthy and exhausted and her mouth was full of coal dust, and now she was in danger of being blown up. She told herself to keep very calm. She had known, before she came here, that coal mining was a dangerous business, and she must just steel her nerve. Miners went underground every night: surely she had the courage to come here one time?

It would, however, be the last time: of that she had no doubt at all.

They watched the man for a few moments. He moved up the tunnel a few paces at a time, repeating his test. Lizzie was determined not to show her fear. Making her voice sound normal, she said: “And if he finds firedamp—what then? How do you get rid of it?”

“Set fire to it.”

Lizzie swallowed. This was getting worse.

“One of the miners is designated fireman,” Jay went on. “In this pit I believe it’s McAsh, the young troublemaker. The job is generally handed down from father to son. The fireman is the pit’s expert on gas. He knows what to do.”

Lizzie wanted to run back down the tunnel to the shaft and all the way up the ladder to the outside world. She would have done so but for the humiliation of having Jay see her panic. In order to get away from this insanely dangerous test, she pointed to a side tunnel and said: “What’s down there?”

Jay took her hand again. “Let’s go and see.”

There was a strange hush throughout the mine, Lizzie thought as they walked along. Nobody spoke much: a few of the men had boys helping them but most worked alone, and the bearers had not yet arrived. The clang of picks hitting the face and the rumble as the coal broke up were muffled by the walls and the thick dust underfoot. Every so often they passed through a door that was closed behind them by a small boy: the doors controlled the circulation of air in the tunnels, Jay explained.

They found themselves in a deserted section. Jay stopped. “This part seems to be worked out,” he said, swinging his lantern in an arc. The feeble light was reflected in the tiny eyes of rats at the limit of the circle. No doubt they lived on leavings from the miners’ dinner pails.

Lizzie noticed that Jay’s face was smeared black, like the miners’: the coal dust got everywhere. He looked funny, and she smiled.

“What is it?” he said.

“Your face is black!”

He grinned and touched her cheek with a fingertip. “And what do you think yours is like?”

She realized that she must look exactly the same. “Oh, no!” she said with a laugh.

“You’re still beautiful, though,” he said, and he kissed her.

She was surprised, but she did not flinch: she liked it. His lips were firm and dry, and she felt the slight roughness over his upper lip where he shaved. When he drew back she said the first thing that came into her head: “is that what you brought me down here for?”

“Are you offended?”

It was certainly against the rules of polite society for a young gentleman to kiss a lady not his fiancée. She ought to be offended, she knew; but she had enjoyed it. She began to feel embarrassed. “Perhaps we should retrace our steps.”

“May I keep holding your hand?”

“Yes.”

He seemed satisfied with that, and he led her back. After a while she saw the rock she had sat on earlier. They stopped to watch a miner work. Lizzie thought about the kiss and felt a little shiver of excitement in her loins.

The miner had undercut the coal across the width of the room and was hammering wedges into the face higher up. Like most of them he was half naked, and the massive muscles of his back bunched and rolled as he swung his hammer. The coal, having nothing below to support it, eventually crumbled under its own weight and crashed to the floor in lumps. The miner stepped back quickly as the freshly exposed coal face creaked and shifted, spitting tiny fragments as it adjusted to the altered stresses.

At this point the bearers began to arrive, carrying their candles and wooden shovels, and Lizzie suffered her most horrifying shock yet.

They were nearly all women and girls.

She had never asked what miners ‘ wives and daughters did with their time. It had not occurred to her that they spent their days, and half their nights, working underground.

The tunnels became noisy with their clatter, and the air rapidly warmed up, causing Lizzie to unfasten her coat. Because of the dark, most of the women did not notice the visitors, and their talk was uninhibited. Right in front of them an older man bumped into a woman who looked pregnant. “Out of the damn way, Sal,” he said roughly.

“Out of the damn way yourself, you blind pizzle,” she retorted.

Another woman said: “A pizzle’s not blind, it’s got one eye!” They all laughed coarsely.

Lizzie was startled. In her world women never said “damn,” and as for “pizzle,” she could only guess what it meant. She was also astonished that the women could laugh at anything at all, having got out of bed at two o’clock in the morning to work for fifteen hours underground.