A Time for Courage (38 page)

In the two years following the ridge ride Harry had eased himself into more underground inspection since it was the atmosphere that he enjoyed the most. He felt less on edge, less exposed. And then two months ago he and Baralong had been together in the propped seams of the mine, the dust stinging their eyes from the drills and the picks, and the noise had blasted into their bodies as usual. The men had not heard them or seen them, working as they were in the light from the candles, ignoring the sweat which streamed off their faces on to the ground.

Baralong had been at his side pointing up the stopes leading off the main shaft. These are the ones we want, Boss, Baralong had said, for he called him Boss when others might hear, and they might hear if the drilling paused. Harry had been about to nod but had tensed instead as they bent down to pass beneath an overhang chiselled with lines from picks and drills, straightening when they reached the other side. Baralong had turned and looked, his face questioning beneath the candlelight, but Harry had said nothing, just stood quite still as he sensed the earth rebel, feeling that same feeling that Penhallon had brought him before the ceiling plunged down so long ago.

Harry had known it was about to happen again; it was in the air. His nerves had felt it somehow and he looked at Baralong and it was Sam he saw and he did not know whether to go back or forward. This time he could not tell. Why the hell couldn’t he tell? And he knew it was because it was not his earth.

He was a stranger here and he knew it now. Baralong, he had whispered, I do not know. This time I don’t know which way to go, and he had gripped the black man’s arm and fear had filled the air between them, and this time it was his friend who had stood with his head to one side, his eyes looking but not seeing, his ears listening, his very being waiting, guessing, and still the men worked on around them and Harry knew it would happen but not where so he could not shout an order to leave. He could not until he knew which way they should go. Oh God, which way? And then he felt Baralong’s arm around him, throwing him back, pushing him, dragging him, shouting orders which Harry could not give, and he knew that Baralong had guessed because this was his land. Then the noise came and the wind and the screams and the weight. But there had not been much weight on his legs nor on Baralong’s. The weight was on the men who had been drilling further forward and had not heard the order.

As the dust cleared and the pain receded Harry had pushed the ore from his body, hating for the first time its rough edges, its size, its smell, then crawled across to Baralong and moved the splintered pit prop from his legs, coughing and choking.

They had heard the men who had been using the drills, behind the wall of rock and beneath it. It was dark though, so bloody dark, because the rush of wind had blown the candles out and filled the air with dust. After Harry had ripped his jacket and bound the cut in his right leg that would not stop bleeding he had found his matches and almost struck one, but remembered the danger of fire. Go back for help, he had instructed Baralong, scrabbling carefully to his knees, not wanting to cause sparks, and then on to his feet. And for God’s sake, hurry.

Baralong had said, what of fire? His hand had gripped his sleeve and as he rode on this dark evening Harry could still feel the pressure; still feel the fear because he knew that there could indeed be fire.

Get along, Baralong. Just get along now. I’ll begin. It had been an order but one that he had to give and Baralong had looked at him and though he had not spoken there was comfort in the hand that gripped his shoulder.

In the dark Harry had torn at the rocks, ripping his skin, his nails, and talking all the time. It’s all right, boys, he had said again and again, we’re coming, we’re coming. And still he made no sparks but choked and coughed, and soon men who had been knocked off their feet by the rushing wind came to join him and Baralong brought more help, fresh miners, and Harry ordered that every man was to be brought out, dead or alive. No one was to be left in that stinking hole and they were to work quickly but carefully; oh so carefully.

Baralong took him to the surface and the light blinded him as it had at Penhallon but this time there was no Hannah to take his hand and kiss it, though there was the black arm of his friend to steady him and support his weight, his familiar voice urging him onwards. Frank had been waiting at the top and he had brushed Baralong aside and taken Harry’s weight himself.

Get along, he had said to Baralong. Back to the barracks. But Harry had called to his friend, You saved my life, and Baralong had turned. I do nothing, Boss, and there was a warning in his look and Harry nodded. His leg hurt now and his hands were throbbing and blood dripped from them on to the parched ground. Blood was on Baralong’s torn jacket too. Harry had just nodded to his mate. He would not show that he cared, for he knew that Baralong was right to fear the rules which governed this small world of theirs.

Frank had taken him back to the office. There was no need for all that fuss, you know, he had said. So a few boys die? There are plenty more. We’ve lost time, a lot of time, Harry. I’ve sent down an order that the bodies are to be left beneath the rock. They are just to clear enough of the fall to be able to carry on working up the stopes.

Harry remembered the anger which had pushed back his tiredness and the feel of the wood beneath his shaking hands as he had pushed himself up from the old corner chair where Frank had placed him. Without a word he had pushed past Frank and out of that dark airless office, straight back to the head of the shaft though the pain had shot through his leg and blood flooded the torn jacket which was his bandage. He had told the white overseer that all the fallen ore was to be moved so that the equipment could be brought out, and while they were doing that they might as well bring out the bodies, they’d stink if they were left. He had raised his voice and said that if necessary he would stay here until they were finished. His voice had been strong and he had not coughed or choked but stared at the man until he sent a runner with the message, looking first over Harry’s shoulder to Frank who had followed.

Frank’s face had been hard but he had not rescinded Harry’s instructions. Harry had gambled on that, knowing that Frank would not want it to be seen that managers were quarrelling.

Harry had smiled. Makes sense, old man, he had said. There’s good equipment down there, it would be a shame to waste it. We’ve lost time, let’s not lose the drills.

Had Frank seen through him? Harry had not known then, and did not know now, but had watched as the man he lived and drank with turned and walked away, and Harry had wanted to shout after him that the drills were nothing but the men were different, and yes, they were men, who even when dead deserved some dignity. They were not beasts.

But he could not for what would this do to his mate whom he somehow hoped to drag out of this mess? So instead he said the words to himself and to Hannah whose hand he could feel kissing his own, holding it to her mouth and the wind of the moor was cool for one moment on his face.

And so he lifted his head and told her how Baralong was not a beast but a man whose forebears had lived in stone buildings as good as the one in which he and Frank lived. How he was a Sotho from the interior whose tribe had worked copper into fine wire, had smelted iron, had mined and worked gold. He told how Baralong was a man, not an animal, and how this man was his friend, and he shut his eyes to the mine and to Frank and to the injustices which comprised this world in which he lived. By now the beating heat of the sun had chased the moor and the wind away and the pain behind his eyes and in his leg surged as he turned back to the head of the shaft. He would wait until they all came out.

The house was in sight now and this evening was the last time he would approach from these God-forsaken mines. The sounds of the compound could no longer be heard. Harry’s leg was still stiff but the cut had healed well. Frank had not spoken to him directly but Harry had received praise from their superiors for saving so much equipment. Harry was also informed that H. Watson Esq. was to be transferred to Kimberley and the diamond mines; to get rid of him, Harry suspected and was glad, but he had insisted that his mate went too, giving as his reason that he did not want the tedium of breaking in another kaffir.

He hoped that Kimberley would be better for them both, though he feared it would not, but it was a means to an end for during the long nights he had realised that somehow Baralong must go where there would be some peace, some dignity, but was that possible in South Africa? He doubted it and so Baralong must have money, a great deal of money to leave the country, and it was only in the region of the diamond pipes that this could happen. They had to build up enough money for a stake and then find their own diamonds as some others had recently done. It was imperative for Baralong’s sake, for Esther’s and for his own.

Months ago the Conciliation Bill dealing with female franchise reform had passed the second reading with a large majority and Hannah and Frances had cooked special cakes for Sunday morning, but now, in 1911, before it could reach the committee stage, there was talk of the Government introducing an alternative Franchise Bill which was to deal with universal male suffrage and perhaps a limited amendment concerning women, but in no way would the Government consider equal rights. All female suffrage societies were incensed. Hannah’s suffragette leader assigned to her the task of reminding the politician who was to speak in her area that week that suffragettes would not be diverted from their task.

Hannah was waiting for the moment when the Cabinet Minister paused in his speech and drank from the glass which stood on the table before him. It was a good point at which to interrupt the speech, the leader of her group of suffragettes had told her.

She had not done this before, though she had marched and protested once the Pensions Act came into force in 1908, three years ago, and votes had not then been forthcoming. She had attended meetings where live rats were thrown through windows by furious men and had felt their quick lithe bodies clawing up her skirt but had not screamed and neither had the other women. She had been jeered and beaten often as she left meetings with other suffragettes; chased down alley-ways by men with sticks; stoned as they spoke on street corners.

She had earned the Holloway badge and been imprisoned for obstruction as she stood with others blocking the Ministers’ cars but had only been sentenced to the first division so far. It was a holiday in comparison with the third, she had been told, for she wore her own clothes, bought her own food, read her own books and slept in good sheets, but she had hated the confinement, hated high-walled cells and the way that she could scarcely breathe when the door closed behind her; she felt suffocated as though it was her father’s darkness that surrounded her, his power.

She hated the way she always felt tired now; a tiredness which Frances said was born of stress and fear but which Hannah would not discuss, would not think of, because if she did, she might not go on and too many years of waiting had preceded the work she was now doing. The fear she lived with must go on being conquered.

She looked around her, at the large man sitting next to her; at the slimmer younger man in a smart suit and waistcoat on her right; at all the men and a few women who sat listening in this high-domed hall. It had not been easy to obtain tickets for tonight since the speakers were careful now and closed their meetings to the general public to avoid just the sort of action she was about to take, but somehow her leader had managed it. And she must go on doing so if their voices were to be heard questioning the Government’s representatives about their attitudes to female suffrage. What would the large man do when she stood up? But no, she must not think of him pulling her down, of his hands clasped across her mouth.

She still could not see Esther who was to take up the heckling when Hannah was removed by the stewards as would inevitably happen. She should be in the middle of a row nearer the front. It had to be the middle, she had told her cousin, so that it takes longer for them to eject you. Remember that now – do not speak until I am taken. She had wanted Esther to obey her because it was the first speaker who received the harsher treatment as a rule and there was Harry to think of.

Hannah had not wanted her cousin as the second voice at all, since she must be kept safe for Harry, but Esther wanted one of the badges that suffragette prisoners were awarded by the movement, she had explained to Hannah, who sighed. Esther could see no further than the badge, of course, but perhaps just once would do her no harm. Uncle Thomas would make quite sure she received only the first division; after all Esther would be a first offender. She would not think of her own sentence.

She looked back at the stage which was hung with Liberal slogans. The Minister was still talking about the eight Dreadnoughts they were building to combat the menace of the rising German sea power, and Hannah tried to listen to his words, hoping that it would quell the fear which she was worried would weaken her voice. It was easier to be bold when friends stood with you; she was not sure if she could do this. She wanted to leave, to rise quietly and slip past the people sitting in her row and walk out of the exit and home to Frances, to cocoa and her homework-marking, her St John’s teaching. She wanted to walk into the sitting-room and say, I’m back, and see the worry drop from the older woman’s eyes, feel the fear ebb from her own body, for she knew that she would be hurt, that the sentence this time would be severe.

She wanted to say to Frances, don’t worry, we need not arrange for another teacher to take my pay, do my job, work with you on Sundays, arrange holidays for the families at Penbrin where she had not yet visited for there had been no time. She looked back up to the stage. Still the man was on his feet, speaking, gesticulating; the audience laughed at an aside and a ripple of applause ran round the Free Trade Hall. Surely he would drink now? But he did not.