Simon Tolkien - No Man’s Land

Shouldering their bags, Daniel and Adam walked out through an empty waiting room lined with posters advertising seaside holidays in Blackpool, Scarborough, Whitley Bay and other places Adam had never heard of. The world of brightly coloured deckchairs and bathing machines, pleasure boats and parasols under a hot sun, seemed a long way removed from this bleak mining town which was to be their new home.

Outside the station they had to pause for a minute as a column of cloth-capped miners came up the street from the direction of the mine, returning home from the night shift. Their faces were smeared black with coal dust and their iron-heeled clogs clattered on the roadway as they approached, setting off sparks on the cobbles. Some of them were singing. The tune reminded Adam of a hymn that the congregation used to sing at the church in Islington when he went there with his mother but he could not recognize any of the words. They seemed to be in another language.

The last of the group had almost gone past when a tall man stopped in mid-stride and rushed over to them. He had an open tool bag in his hand, which he dropped on the ground as he put his arms around Daniel, pulling him close in a bear hug. Something tin-like inside it clanged as it hit the pavement and Adam instinctively bent down and picked it up, holding it out to the stranger.

‘So, this is thy boy, eh, Daniel?’ said the stranger, releasing Daniel and looking Adam up and down with a broad smile. ‘’E’s the livin’ image of thee, ain’t ’e? An’ good-mannered too, which I s’pose ’e gets from thee,’ he added, taking the bag. ‘Not like us miners. I’d shake thy hand, lad, but it needs washing first.’

‘Adam, this is your cousin, Edgar Tillett,’ said Daniel. ‘We’re going to be staying with him and his family until we find our feet.’

‘Find thy feet,’ repeated Edgar with a laugh. ‘Thy feet’re at the end of thy legs last time I looked so thou shouldna’ be wastin’ thy time tryin’ to find ’em. An’ you can stay wi’ us as long as you need. You know that. Blood’s thicker than water as they say, an’ they say right.’ He clapped Daniel on the shoulder and Adam sensed his father’s awkwardness in the face of his cousin’s largesse as he smiled uncertainly in response.

The other miners had gone on ahead and now they began to follow them up the hill, walking towards the rising sun. Edgar walked in the centre with Daniel and Adam on either side.

‘How was work?’ asked Daniel.

‘Tight,’ said the miner with a smile, pronouncing the word with relish as if pleased with the selection he’d made from a choice of other possible epithets. ‘That’s the word for it, I’d say. We’re workin’ a plough seam jus’ at present – that’s a narrow ’un, no more’n two feet high – and so we ’ave to be on our ’ands an’ knees most o’ the time. Hurts the back and it hurts the ’ead too if thou doesna watch thyself,’ he said with a grin, stretching his arms out wide as if to release the tension. Adam could see that he was a powerfully built man, lean and strong with muscle.

‘An’ it hurts our pockets too when the owner won’t pay us enough for all our hard work. Which is where you comes in,’ he said with a sideways look at Daniel. ‘You’ve come at the right time, Cousin, I can tell you that. I’m looking for’ards to seein’ thee gangin’ toe to toe with ol’ Sir John and the managers,’ he added with a smile.

‘Who’s Sir John?’ asked Adam, who’d been listening avidly to the conversation. The foreignness of everything in this new world had begun to excite him: the landscape, the way Edgar talked, the things he said. They made Adam want to understand, not to be left behind.

‘Sir John? Why, ’e’s the owner – o’ the mine, an’ o’ nigh ivrything ’ereabouts,’ said Edgar with an expansive sweeping gesture of his hand that seemed to encompass everything in sight. ‘’Cept me ’ouse o’ course. I owns that, lock, stock an’ barrel. I’m one of the few that do, so ’e canna evict me even if the notion takes ’im, which is nice to know.’

They had followed the road up from the station without turning right or left and now came to a halt in front of the last house in the street. Beyond, a yellow cornfield ran up the rest of the hillside to a thick-limbed oak tree standing alone like a sentinel on the sharply etched skyline. The house was the same height as its neighbours but it had been extended out at least fifteen feet to the side where a vegetable and flower garden had been planted out in tidy rows behind a picket fence.

‘Well, ’ere we are,’ said Edgar, pushing open the door and beckoning them to follow him inside. ‘Not exactly a stately ’ome but it’ll do. Thomas, Ernest, say ’ow d’yer do to your cousins.’ This last was addressed to two young men sitting at a deal table on the other side of the large low room into which the entrance opened directly. There was no front parlour as Adam had been used to in London or, if there had been, the partition wall had been knocked down to increase the main living space, which was centred on a big fireplace with a bread oven set in its side. The fire was banked high with red coal and Adam could feel the thick heat radiating off it from the moment he came in.

Ernest, the younger of Edgar’s two sons, came forward and shook Adam’s hand. He was a few months older than Adam and seemed open and friendly like his father. His brother Thomas stood back. He appeared reserved, nodding his head rather than shaking hands. And behind him Adam could see a woman in a white apron and cap, evidently their mother, come bustling out from another room at the back of the house.

She didn’t wait to be introduced but came straight over to Adam and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I’m Annie, Edgar’s wife,’ she said. ‘And I’m glad you’re here. Now, take your coat off and Ernest will show you your room. Edgar, you need to go in the back and wash yourself. You’re black from the pit and you’re not eating breakfast with the likes of us looking like that.’

‘Why do your parents talk different?’ Adam asked as he followed Ernest up the stairs, and then immediately regretted the question. It was rude to ask about the way people spoke. His mother had told him that.

But Ernest didn’t take offence. ‘She’s had more schooling than our dad – he went down the pit when he was nine or ten. One of the two – sometimes he says eight but that’s when he’s had a few too many to drink on a Saturday night and he’s trying to lay it on thick and make you feel sorry for him,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Schooling takes the Yorkshire out of thee, or at least that’s what they say round here. And yes, I suppose it’s done it to me too. That and my mother who’ll clip me round the ear if I talk silly, as she calls it. But I don’t know if it’ll last: I’m working at the pithead now, on the screens, and it’s hard not to talk like everyone else. We all end up down the pit sooner or later, you’ll see. And now here’s my room. And yours too – we’ll be sharing if that’s all right …’

Ernest threw open a door with a theatrical gesture and Adam found himself in a long thin room with two beds, each made up with a spotlessly white counterpane. A table with an oil lamp stood between them, facing a wide but low rectangular window with leaded panes from which he could see across to the oak tree at the top of the hill. They were clearly on the top floor of the side extension that he’d noticed earlier.

‘Better than looking out the front,’ said Ernest, following Adam’s gaze. ‘The houses here are all the same – it’s easy enough to go in the wrong one if you aren’t careful, coming home in the dark. It happens all the time. And you could end up in the wrong bed too, next to the wrong wife if you aren’t careful. And I don’t know what would happen then!’