Reginald Hill - Under World

‘Eh? What’s up?’ demanded Farr.

‘You were right. They don’t pay me anything like enough to oblige me to put up with drunken jokers,’ said Ellie. ‘So out.’

He didn’t move. Then he said in a low voice, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know how to talk to you … no, that’s daft … it sounds like I’m a peasant and you’re a princess and that’s not what I mean! It’s just that I feel I’ve got to meet you head on somehow, like it were a kind of challenge … I mean, like when I rang up, I expected you’d just tell me to sod off. It were like riding along with my eyes closed. You know what’s going to happen so when it does, it just sort of confirms things, means you were right to expect the worst. But you said you’d come, right off, no fuss, so I don’t know what to expect, and I’m a bit pissed and my head hurts and I’ve got to fight back else you might have an advantage … Listen, why’d you come?’

‘Not to put you down, that’s for sure,’ said Ellie. ‘Why’d you ring me? Are you in some sort of trouble?’

‘Trouble?’ he said in such a low voice she could hardly hear him. ‘Am I in trouble or is he in trouble … or out of trouble … like Dad … a way out of trouble … to take … to give …’

‘Colin,’ she said urgently, ‘has something happened? At home? At the pit?’

He slumped back and closed his eyes. Ellie for a heartstopping moment thought he’d slipped into unconsciousness, or worse. Then his lips started to move again. She put her ear so close she was almost touching and she could feel his breath light as a summer breeze that hardly stirs the grass.

‘… blood on your coal … they say … blood and flesh and bones and brains … dark place for a dark deed … man can’t toil all his life in darkness without drinking some of it in … not possible! Not possible!’

His voice suddenly rose to a scream and she jerked her head back. His eyes were open again and watching her.

She said, ‘Colin, what are you talking about?’

He frowned in concentration, then pulled the bottle from inside his leather jerkin and took a long draught. Ellie said, ‘Oh Colin, must you?’

He seemed to consider the question seriously then replied. ‘Yes, I must.’

But he replaced the bottle in his jerkin.

He said, ‘You know what Mam said when Dad had his accident? She said, “At least it means he’ll end up dying in God’s good air and not down that stinking hole.” She’s always been a one for finding good in bad, my mam. She told me she felt glad when I went to sea. She cried because I were going but she felt glad too. She thought it meant that I’d be like Dad, able to die in God’s good air, or at least God’s good water, eh?’

He laughed. It sounded contrived.

He went on, ‘I got to thinking of it today. I shouldn’t have gone on shift. Last night I thought I’d never go underground again, but after what Mam told me … well, I had to think, and dark seemed right place to think … he killed himself though, stands to reason, mebbe not because … I don’t know … but he had left her, hadn’t he? He’d have loved a little lass of his own … after me Mam couldn’t … that’s why he were so fond of … bloody Satterthwaite! that bastard deserves everything … but I shouldn’t have … it was so black down there, I had to get out, I had to get out, I told Jim I were sick … all the way along the return I could feel the dark flooding after me like water, and all the way up in the Cage. Seeing that sky again … oh God!’

He stopped, leaned his head back and took in a deep breath as though reliving the experience. Ellie found she’d put her hand over his and he turned his over to grasp hers loosely. It felt easy, companionable, safe.

She said, ‘You still haven’t told me what you’re doing out here.’

‘I didn’t want to go home and worry Mam, so I got on me bike and went for a ride. And I stopped for a drink. And it seemed a good idea. So I stopped for some more. And when I got properly bevvied up, I crashed the bike, came staggering on here and rang you. All right?’

His voice was loud and harsh.

Ellie said, ‘Why me? Why not a garage? Or a taxi? Or a friend?’

‘I thought I did,’ he said. ‘Ring a friend.’

‘Crap,’ said Ellie firmly.

‘You mean you’re not my friend?’

‘I mean I’m not the kind of friend you ring up when you’ve crashed your bike!’

‘Now that’s a real middle-class luxury,’ he mocked, suddenly wholly himself again. ‘Having categories of friendship.’

‘I like it when you give yourself away,’ said Ellie calmly. ‘You’ve got to be really clever to play dumb all the time.’

‘And mebbe you’ve got to be a bit thick not to know when it’s best to play dumb,’ he retorted. ‘All right, here it is. After I’d been drinking a bit I got to thinking I’d really like to sit down and talk things over with someone, not with one of my mates or anyone who had owt to do with Burrthorpe, but someone who’d mebbe see things a bit clearer from the outside. You were the only one I could think of.’

‘Thanks,’ said Ellie.

Farr laughed. ‘Truth were your idea,’ he said. ‘Any road, I don’t know if I’d have done owt about it, but when I came off the bike and got to this box, I meant to ring a garage, like you said. But then I thought: Why not her? See what she says, what she does. There, that’s how it was. Satisfied now? Or shall I lie back here while you ask a few more questions?’

‘Colin, I’m not a psychologist,’ said Ellie carefully. ‘Nor am I a schoolteacher. Either we talk on level terms or we don’t talk at all.’

‘Level terms?’ he sneered. ‘What do you know about anything? How could you understand owt? Middle-class cow!’

She was beginning to feel uneasy at these swings of mood. Was it the drink that caused them? Or his head wound? Or something deeper, darker?

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I can’t understand for a start why you’ve stayed on at the pit as long as you have if you hate it so much.’

‘How the hell should I know?’ he demanded. ‘Look, I went back after Dad died, like I said. That were to show ’em, to shut ’em up. Then the Strike started. You remember the Strike? Or did you mebbe not notice in the academic world? It lasted a year, just on. It was pointless leaving then. It would have looked as if I were giving in, letting my mates down. Besides, at least you didn’t have to go down that bloody hole. There were some good times. It brought us all together. Sometimes I’d think I must be mad, freezing on a picket or having my arse kicked by a bloody police horse, all to save a place and a job I hated! Then I’d go down the Welfare, see how everyone was pooling their resources and pulling together, and I’d start to feel that mebbe there was something here worth all the shit, that mebbe it had taken the Strike to awaken it and it’d not go back to sleep in a hurry even when the Strike were over.’

‘And were you right? Have things changed permanently?’

‘For some people, mebbe. Some of the women say so. Good luck to ’em if they can keep it up.’

‘But for you …?’

He shook his head, winced, shook it again as if defying the pain.

‘So, if things didn’t change for you,’ said Ellie, ‘why are you still there?’

‘Just because it went back to what it was before!’ he exclaimed angrily. ‘Because people were still saying things, because … oh, a hundred becauses, not one of ’em you’re like to understand … then there was that bloody copper writing in the paper. That’s the last straw, I reckon. Since I saw that and realized it was all going to be raked over again, I’ve been going around, I don’t know, looking for someone to kill, it feels like, even if it’s only myself!’