Ann Granger (11 page)

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Authors: The Companion

BOOK: Ann Granger
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‘What the devil?’
The rug was yanked away and I was revealed. We were still travelling at a fast clip along the rough road and the trap swayed and bounced. My father didn’t draw rein but just snapped, ‘What are you doing there, Lizzie?’
‘I wanted to come with you,’ I said.
‘Pah!’ I sensed that he wanted to use some of the language I’d heard earlier in the yard but he was repressing it. ‘Well, you will have to stay there now,’ he ordered. ‘I can’t turn back.’
‘I’m cold,’ I said unwisely.
‘Then you will have to stay cold, won’t you? Wrap yourself in the rug and do your best.’
I knew he was very angry. I wasn’t so much frightened as sorry and said so.
‘Sorry?’ he said. ‘What has sorry to do with it?’
I couldn’t answer his question. But it worried me to think I might have done something so bad that I couldn’t atone for it with an apology. Were there sins so bad you could never be forgiven, no matter how remorseful you were and tried to make it up?
Now I could wrap myself properly in the rug things weren’t so bad. The wind ruffled my hair and made the tips of my ears sting, but otherwise I wasn’t quite as cold as I had been. I was getting used to it.
We were already out of the town and heading along a country road. This was strange territory. In the distance were odd hills shaped like pyramids. I rubbed the tip of my nose with the back of my hand to restore some feeling to it, and saw, when I took my hand away, that it was smeared black. This could only come from something in the air. I wanted to ask some questions of my own: where exactly we were headed, what had happened to necessitate our journey and if someone was dead, who it was and how had he died?
But I decided discretion was the better part of valour and anyway, when we arrived I’d find all these things out for myself.
 
We drew up eventually outside a large stone building surrounded by wooden sheds. Beyond it towered a brick chimney. I gazed about me eagerly. I had never seen anything like it. It was a much bigger area than I’d imagined it would be; almost a town in itself: busy, untidy with a jumble of buildings of weird design and mysterious usage and everywhere blackened by coal dust. Behind them rose another of those pyramids, a huge man-made hill of slag. There were women and children climbing over it like so many ants, painstakingly seeking out small pieces of coal to add to the collection in buckets and bags they carried. People came and went in bewildering confusion, some hurrying, and some walking slowly and wearily. There were carts drawn by scrawny grubby ponies which were never groomed and, nearby, a group of men stood talking quietly together. Their faces were blackened with coal dust, their clothing equally soiled. I knew they were upset about something and angry too, but despite that, there was an air of helplessness about them. Whatever it was, they could do nothing about it.
My father jumped down from the trap with a curt, ‘Wait there, Lizzie! Don’t move, do you hear me?’
I hadn’t time to promise him I would stay where I was before he had disappeared into the stone building.
I realised now that I was myself the object of some scrutiny. I looked round and saw a thin, wiry boy in tattered clothing standing nearby. He was holding the pony’s bridle, a job I suppose my father had given him. He was a little older than me, as far as I could judge, and he was studying me carefully. He was taking his time about it, seeming unbothered by the fact that I could see him doing it. He had a shock of dark – or perhaps only grimy – hair but his face was reasonably clean. His eyes were also dark. There was something gipsy-like about him. If he had simply been staring at me, ‘gawping’ as Mary Newling would have called it, I could have borne that with equanimity. But this slow assessment was unsettling.
Perhaps I showed it because now he asked casually, ‘Who are you, then?’
The casual phrasing of the question annoyed me further. I knew I must present an odd sight, sitting in the trap with the rug round me and my hair unbrushed. But I drew myself up and announced loftily, ‘I am Miss Martin. Dr Martin is my papa.’
‘Oh, aye,’ said my interlocutor in that same easy drawl. ‘And what would Miss Martin be doing here along with her papa?’
‘It’s none of your business!’ I snapped. ‘You are a very impertinent boy. Go away!’
At that he grinned outright. He had a wide smile, ear to ear, and his teeth were very white and even. This was in itself unusual. The only boys of his type I had seen before, street urchins, had generally lost a tooth or two in brawls. He made no move to leave. I decided to use his presence to acquire some knowledge. Besides, I wished to assert my authority.
‘What is that building?’ I asked, pointing at the large stone block into which my father had gone.
The boy looked surprised at my ignorance. ‘Why, the offices.’
‘Who works there?’ If he thought me ignorant, so be it. I was ignorant of how things were done in this place.
‘Fellows with nice clean hands,’ said the boy drily. ‘As never goes down a pit but knows all about sending others down there.’
He seemed to make a sudden decision, foraged in his pocket and withdrew a small dull grey object which he handed to me. ‘Here, you can have this, if you want it. It might bring you luck.’
‘It’s a piece of shale,’ I began, anxious to show him I did know something, but then I saw it was more than that. There, pressed into its surface, was the image of a small fern, so distinct and so minutely perfect in every tiny detail that I gave an impetuous exclamation of delight, causing the boy to give his grin again.
‘It’s not shale, then?’ I asked wonderingly and a little embarrassed because I had been so pleased at identifying it.
He shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘It’s shale. You find lots of bits like that around here. You split ’em open and if you’re lucky, there’s something like that inside.’
Just then, my father came out of the stone building, accompanied by a stocky man who seemed almost as broad as he was tall. The stranger wore a creased frock coat and, possibly to give the impression of increased height, a very tall silk hat which looked singularly out of place. He also had a clay pipe stuck in his mouth but it didn’t seem to be lit. He chewed on it as if that was its purpose, which added an extra grimness to his pugnacious features. I didn’t know who this man was, but I did think I didn’t much like the look of him. However, I realised he was clearly a force to be reckoned with. The coal-grimed colliers, who had been talking together, stopped whispering to stare at him and then they moved slowly and silently away, their backs turned to the scene.
‘I’m off!’ said my companion and promptly disappeared, too, abandoning the pony and me.
I hoped Inspector Ross would prove more tenacious now in his task of tracking down the murderer of Madeleine Hexham and not scuttle for cover as that coal-grimed urchin had done then!
They are all afraid of that man, I thought to myself at the time. He must be very important. And also, I realised, very powerful. Somehow this made me like him even less.
My father, I noted with pride, was not afraid of the man in the tall hat. He walked briskly beside him and both went into a shed. After a while, they came out. Now I could see that it was my father who was angry.
His voice rose clearly on the early-morning air. ‘That child is nowhere near ten years of age. You know as well as I do that it’s been unlawful for almost two years to employ a boy under the age of ten to work underground.’
There was so much rage in my father’s voice that I thought it would affect Tall Hat but he just stared insolently at my father and shrugged his broad shoulders. When he took the pipe from his mouth to reply, his voice was aggressive.
‘The boy’s parents told me he was ten years old, but small for his age. I believed them. You know what runts these collier brats are.’
I was surprised at his tone because my father was normally treated by everyone with great respect. How dare he? I thought crossly. How dare he speak to my papa like that?
I waited confidently for my father to put the fellow in his place. But although I could see how angry he was, when he spoke his voice was very steady and cold. Somehow it was more terrifying than if he had shouted.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know that these children are born to malnourished mothers, that they are themselves ill fed and are accustomed to do heavy, unsuitable work from the earliest age. Little wonder that they suffer from rickets and other damage and their frames are stunted. But there is no way that child back there -’ here my father gestured towards the shed behind them –
‘there is no way that child could be taken for anything more than six or seven.’
Before Tall Hat could answer, there was a disturbance and two men backed out of the shed door, carrying a stretcher between them. On it lay a small heap covered with a blanket. As one of the men stumbled on the uneven ground, the stretcher tilted and the blanket moved. A hand slipped out from beneath it and dangled over the edge, a tiny hand.
My father removed his hat but Tall Hat only snorted and kept his ridiculous headgear firmly in place.
A cart had been brought up to the door and the men began to load the stretcher on to it. Suddenly a hideous scream split the air. I had never heard anything like it and I started up in fear. The pony was alarmed, too, and started forward without the boy to hold her head and steady her. The trap lurched and I had a vision of being bolted away with. I grasped the reins and hauled on them with all my strength and to my great relief the pony stopped.
A woman had appeared running towards my father, Tall Hat, and the cart with the stretcher on it. She waved her arms as she ran and shouted incoherently like a madwoman, her mouth working and forming gargoyle-like shapes. The shawl she wore as working women did, over her head and pinned beneath her chin, became loose, slipped and fell down into the dirt. But she was heedless of her loss although her clothing was poor and scanty. Her face was lined like an old woman’s but from the way she ran she had to be quite young. Reaching the cart, she scrambled into it and threw herself over the small body on the stretcher, wailing and clawing at the blanket to pull it away from the face of the corpse. I realised this was the little boy’s mother and watched in horror.
‘Davy, Davy!’ she was crying. ‘It’s Mam! Do wake up and speak to me!’
Tall Hat turned aside with an expression of disgust. The men who had carried the stretcher stepped back and looked
discomfited and awkward. My father went forward and tried to speak to her soothingly but she only screeched the more. At last three other shawled women who resembled the child’s mother appeared, and managed to drag her from the cart. The men now picked up the shafts of the cart and began to manhandle it away and the group of women followed it, the bereaved mother supported between them.
When they were out of sight, but not out of earshot, my father replaced his hat on his head and turned to Tall Hat.
‘There will be an inquest,’ he said curtly. ‘You have my word on it. I’ll see to it. There will be no covering this up.’
Tall Hat still seemed unimpressed by my father’s words or manner. ‘Do as you please,’ he said. ‘The boy’s own mother, that one who was wailing and carrying on there, she herself told me the boy was ten years of age. I believed her. There’s no coroner can prove I didn’t.’
With that, he turned and walked back into the mine offices. My father came towards the trap. He climbed up into it, took up the reins and whistled to the pony. I knew he was still angry but I also knew his anger was not directed against me for my naughtiness in hiding in the trap. It was directed elsewhere to bigger and more serious targets. I sensed he was probably unaware of me sitting on the wooden seat beside him. I fancied, as we passed through the gates, that I glimpsed the boy who had given me the good luck token, but I was not sure, though I twisted on my perch to look back. If he’d been there, he’d already vanished.
We were halfway home before I ventured to speak. ‘It was a little boy who died,’ I said. ‘A very little boy, wasn’t it, Papa?’
My father glanced down at me and I think he only then remembered I was there. ‘Why, Lizzie …’ he said. Then, giving his head a shake, ‘Yes, indeed, a very little child. I think hardly as old as you are.’
‘What was he doing in the mine?’ I asked. ‘He wasn’t big enough to dig coal, surely?’
My father pulled on the reins and we came to a halt. The sun was up now and shone with gentle welcome warmth on my shoulders. We had left the area of the mine behind us and not yet reached the outskirts of the town. We found ourselves in a pleasantly green rolling landscape, the slag pyramids just small shapes on the horizon. It looked so clean and peaceful; the filth of the place we had just left and the awful scene I had just witnessed there hardly seemed real now, as if it had all been a bad dream.
‘He worked as a trapper,’ my father said. ‘Do you know what that is, Lizzie?’
I shook my head.
‘Well, now,’ said my father. ‘How shall I explain it to you? Let’s see. The air underground is very foul. Fresh air must be brought into the workings. So they dig two big ventilation shafts.’ My father gestured with his hands to indicate two long narrow tubes. ‘The fresh air is drawn in through the one, and along the mine tunnels, and the bad air is drawn out through the other. To control all this there exists a system of wooden trapdoors. They are operated by children, little boys, who sit there all day for that purpose.’

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