Ken Follett - A Place Called Freedom (1995)

She felt strange. Everything here was physical and sensory: the darkness, holding Jay’s hand, the half-naked miners hewing coal, Jay’s kiss, and the vulgar hilarity of the women—it was unnerving but at the same time stimulating. Her pulse beat faster, her skin was flushed and her heart was racing.

The chatter died down as the bearers got to work shoveling the coal into big baskets. “Why do women do this?” Lizzie asked Jay incredulously.

“A miner is paid by the weight of coal he delivers to the pithead,” he replied. “If he has to pay a bearer, the money goes out of the family. So he gets his wife and children to do it, and that way they keep it all.”

The big baskets were quickly filled. Lizzie watched as two women picked one up between them and heaved it onto the bent back of a third. She grunted as she took the weight. The basket was secured by a strap around her forehead, then she headed slowly down the tunnel, bent double. Lizzie wondered how she could possibly carry it up two hundred feet of steps. “Is the basket as heavy as it looks?” she said.

One of the miners overheard her. “We call it a corf,” he said to her. “It holds a hundred and fifty pounds of coal. Would you like to feel the weight, young sir?”

Jay answered before Lizzie could speak. “Certainly not,” he said protectively.

The man persisted. “Or perhaps a half-corf, such as this wee one is carrying.”

Approaching them was a girl of ten or eleven, wearing a shapeless wool dress and a head scarf. She was barefoot and carried on her back a corf half full of coal.

Lizzie saw Jay open his mouth to refuse, but she forestalled him. “Yes,” she said. “Let me feel the weight.”

The miner stopped the girl and one of his women lifted the corf. The child said nothing but seemed content to rest, breathing hard.

“Bend your back, master,” the miner said. Lizzie obeyed. The woman swung the corf onto Lizzie’s back.

Although she was braced for it, the weight was much more than she had anticipated, and she could not support it even for a second. Her legs buckled under her and she collapsed. The miner, seemingly expecting this, caught her, and she felt the weight lifted from her back as the woman removed the corf. They had known what would happen, Lizzie realized as she collapsed into the miner’s arms.

The watching women all shrieked with laughter at the discomfiture of what they thought was a young gentleman. The miner caught Lizzie falling forward and easily supported her on his strong forearm. A callused hand as hard as a horse’s hoof squashed her breast through the linen shirt. She heard the man grunt with surprise. The hand squeezed, as if double-checking; but her breasts were large—embarrassingly large, she often felt—and an instant later the hand slid away. The man lifted her upright. He held her by her shoulders, and astonished eyes stared at her out of his coal-blackened face.

“Miss Hallim!” he whispered.

She realized the miner was Malachi McAsh.

They looked at one another for a spellbound moment, while the women’s laughter filled their ears. Lizzie found the sudden intimacy deeply arousing, after all that had gone before, and she could tell he felt it too. For a second she was closer to him than to Jay, even though Jay had kissed her and held her hand. Then another voice pierced the noise, and a woman said: “Mack—look at this!”

A black-faced woman was holding a candle up to the roof. McAsh looked at her, looked back at Lizzie, and then, seeming to resent leaving something unfinished, he released his hold on Lizzie and went over to the other woman.

He looked at the candle flame and said: “You’re right, Esther.” He turned back and addressed the others, ignoring Lizzie and Jay. “There’s a little firedamp.” Lizzie wanted to turn and run, but McAsh seemed calm. “It’s not enough to sound the alarm—not yet, anyway. We’ll check in different places and see how far it extends.”

Lizzie found his equanimity incredible. What kind of people were these miners? Though their lives were brutally hard their spirits seemed unquenchable. By comparison her own life seemed pampered and purposeless.

Jay took Lizzie’s arm. “I think we’ve seen enough, don’t you?” he murmured.

Lizzie did not argue. Her curiosity had been satisfied long ago. Her back ached from bending constantly. She was tired and dirty and scared and she wanted to get out on the surface and feel the wind on her face.

They hurried along the tunnel toward the shaft. The mine was busy now and there were bearers in front of them and behind. The women hitched their skirts above their knees, for freedom of movement, and carried their candles in their teeth. They moved slowly under their enormous burdens. Lizzie saw a man relieving himself into the drainage ditch in full view of the women and girls. Can’t he find somewhere private to do that? she thought, then she realized that down here there was nowhere private.

They reached the shaft and started up the stairs. The bearers went up on all fours, like small children: it suited their bent posture. They climbed at a steady pace. There was no chattering and joking now: the women and girls panted and groaned beneath the tremendous weights they were carrying. After a while Lizzie had to rest, but the bearers never stopped, and she felt humiliated and sick with guilt as she watched little girls pass her with their loads, some of them crying from pain and exhaustion. Now and again a child would slow down or stop for a moment, only to be hurried along by a curse or a brutal blow from its mother. Lizzie wanted to comfort them. All the emotions of the night came together and turned into anger. “I swear,” she said vehemently, “I’ll never allow coal to be mined on my land, as long as I live.”

Before Jay could make any reply, a bell began to ring.

“The alarm,” Jay said. “They must have found more firedamp.”

Lizzie groaned and got to her feet. Her calves felt as if someone had stuck knives in them. Never again, she thought.

“I’ll carry you,” Jay said, and without more ado he slung her over his shoulder and began to climb the stairs.

8

THE FIREDAMP SPREAD WITH TERRIFYING SPEED.

At first the blue tinge had been visible only when the candle was at roof level, but a few minutes later it appeared a foot below the roof, and Mack had to stop testing for fear of setting fire to it before the pit was evacuated.

He was breathing in short, panicky gasps. He tried to be calm and think clearly.

Normally the gas seeped out gradually, but this was different. Something unusual must have happened. Most likely, firedamp had accumulated in a sealed-off area of exhausted workings, then an old wall had cracked and was rapidly leaking the dreaded gas into the occupied tunnels.

And every man, woman and child here carried a lighted candle.

A small trace would burn safely; a moderate amount would flash, scorching anyone in the vicinity; and a large quantity would explode, killing everyone and destroying the tunnels.

He took a deep breath. His first priority was to get everyone out of the pit as fast as possible. He rang the handbell vigorously while he counted to twelve. By the time he stopped, miners and bearers were hurrying along the tunnel toward the shaft, mothers urging their children to go faster.

While everyone else fled the pit, his two bearers stayed—his sister, Esther, calm and efficient, and his cousin Annie, who was strong and quick but also impulsive and clumsy. Using their coal shovels the two women began frantically to dig a shallow trench, the length and breadth of Mack, in the floor of the tunnel. Meanwhile Mack snatched an oilcloth bundle hanging from the roof of his room and ran for the mouth of the tunnel.