Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

“There, there, my boy,” he said soothingly. “Don’t magnify the situation. I know you are naturally impetuous. You’ll get over it. We shall have a full meeting of the Association in a week’s time. You’ll be all right by then. You’ll stand in with the rest of us. There’s no other course open to you.”

Arthur stared at Probert with a strained look in his eyes. A nerve in his cheek began to twitch. No other course open to him! It was true, absolutely true; he was tied to the Association in a hundred different ways, bound hand and foot, He groaned.

“This is going to come hard on me.”

Probert patted him a little more tenderly.

“The men must be taught their place, Arthur,” he murmured. “Have you had breakfast? Let me ring for some coffee?”

“No thanks,” Arthur muttered with his head down. “I’ve got to get back.”

“How is your dear father?” Probert inquired sweetly. “You must miss him sadly at the Neptune, aha, yes, indeed. Yet I hear he is making marvellous headway. He is my oldest colleague on the Association. I hope we shall see him there soon, the dear man. You’ll give him my warmest regards!”

“Yes.” Arthur nodded jerkily, making for the door.

“You’re sure you won’t have some coffee?”

“No.”

Arthur had the stinging conviction that the old hypocrite was laughing at him. He got out of Probert’s house somehow and tumbled into his car. He drove very slowly to the Neptune, then he entered his office and sat down at his desk. With his head buried in his hands he thought out the situation fully. He had a going pit wonderfully equipped and working full time on a reasonable contract. He was willing and ready to pay his men an adequate wage. Probert’s wage offer was derisory. With a choking heart Arthur picked up a pencil and worked it out. Yes. Balanced against the cost of living, the real value of Probert’s offer was a pre-war wage of under £1 a week; for the pump-men alone it came to pre-war equivalent of sixteen shillings and ninepence per five-shift week. Sixteen shillings and ninepence — rent, clothes, food for a family out of that! Oh, it was insanity to expect the men to accept it; it was no offer, merely a gage thrown out to promote the struggle. And he was bound to the Association; it was financial suicide even to think of breaking away. He would have to shut down his pit, throw his men out of work, sacrifice his contract. The grim irony of it all made him want to laugh.

At that moment Armstrong came into the office. Arthur looked up with nervous intensity.

“I want you to start overtime immediately on that coking coal, Armstrong. Take as much out as you can and stack it on the bank. Do you understand? — as much as you can manage. Make every effort, use every man.”

“Why, yes, Mr. Barras,” Armstrong answered in a startled voice.

Arthur had not the heart to enlighten Armstrong then. He made a few more calculations on his pad, threw down the pencil and stared away in front of him. The date was the 16th of February.

On the following day the Association met. As a result a secret circular was dispatched to all district mine owners discreetly indicating the approaching lock-out and urging that reserves of coal should be built up. When Arthur received this confidential document he smiled bitterly. How could he build up four months’ output in a bare six weeks!

On March 24th the Coal Decontrol Act became law. Arthur served notices upon his men to terminate the contracts. And on March 31st, with half his contract obligation unfulfilled, the stoppage began.

It was a wet, sad day. In the afternoon, as Arthur stood in his office staring gloomily at the last tubs coming outbye in the pouring rain, the door opened and, quite unannounced, Tom Heddon walked in. There was something almost sinister in Heddon’s silent entry. He stood, grim and formidable, with his back to the shut door, facing Arthur, his compact figure slightly bent as if already burdened with the load of the approaching lock-out. He said:

“I want a word with you.” He paused. “You’ve served notices on every man in this pit.”

“What about it?” Arthur said heavily. “I’m no different from the rest.”

Heddon gave a short, bitterly sarcastic laugh.

“You’re this different. You’re the wettest pit in the district and you’ve served notices on your safety men and pumpers.”

Striving to keep control of himself, Arthur replied:

“I feel too badly about this to quarrel with you, Heddon. You know my obligations compel me to serve notices on all grades.”

“Are you looking for another flooding?” Heddon asked, with a curious inflection in his voice.

Arthur was very near the end of his resistance; he was not to blame; he would stand no bullying from Heddon. A wave of nervous indignation broke over him. He said:

“The safety men will carry on.”

“Oh, will they?” Heddon sneered. He paused, then rasped with bitter emphasis, “I want you to understand that the safety men are carryin’ on simply because I tell them to. If it wasn’t for me and the men behind me your bloddy pit would be flooded in twenty-four hours. D’you savvy that — flooded and finished! The miners you’re tryin’ to starve into the muck heap are goin’ on pumpin’ to keep you fat and cushy in your bloddy parlour. Just bite on that, will you, for the love of Christ, and see how it tastes.”

With a sudden wild gesture as though he could trust himself no longer Heddon swung round and banged his way out. Arthur sat down by the desk. He sat there a long time until darkness came stealing into the office and all but the safety men had left the pit. Then he rose and silently walked home.

The lock-out began. And through the long dreary weeks it drearily dragged on. With the safety of the mines assured there remained only to stand aside and contemplate the struggle between the men and the spectre of want. Day in, day out, with a heavy heart Arthur saw the limits to which this unequal conflict could be pushed — the gaunt cheeks of the men, the women, yes, even the children, the darkness that lay on every face, the streets without laughter, without play. His heart turned within him in a cold pain. Could man inflict this cruelty upon man? The war to end war, to bring great and lasting peace, a new and glorious era in our civilisation. And now this! Take your pittance, slaves, and toil in the underworld in sweat and dirt and danger, yes, take it or starve. A woman died in childbirth in Inkerman Terrace — Dr. Scott, when pressed by the coroner, used a word, tempered officially to malnutrition. Margarine and bread; bread and margarine; sometimes not that. To raise a sturdy son to sing the song of Empire.

Thoughts like these burned incoherently in Arthur’s mind. He could not, would not stand it. At the end of the first month he started soup-kitchens in the town, organised a private relief scheme for the utter destitution in the Terraces. His efforts were met, not with gratitude, but with hatred. He did not blame the men. He understood their bitterness. With a quick pang he felt his inability to turn the tide of sentiment towards himself; he had no gift for spectacular publicity, no winning personality to utilise. Right from the start the men had distrusted him at the Neptune and now outside his soup-kitchen the words were scrawled: To Hell with the Conchy . Rubbed off, the phrase, or one more obnoxious, was rechalked at night ready to meet his eye on the following morning. A body of the younger men were most hostile to him; headed by Jack Reedy and Cha Leeming, they comprised many who had lost brothers or fathers in the Neptune disaster. Now, for no reason he could imagine, their hatred expended itself on him.

On and on went the ghastly farce. With a strange disgust Arthur read of the formation of the Defence Force, a fully armed and uniformed body of 80,000 men. The Defence Force — in defence of what? In May trouble began round the Amalgamated Collieries and troops were drafted to the district. There were a great many Royal Proclamations and Mr. Probert took himself and his family for a well-earned and most enjoyable holiday at Bournemouth.