Is (19 page)

‘How’d I ever get back?’

‘I think Captain Podmore would take you.’

‘But his ship was wrecked.’

‘He has already been appointed to another. He is a very fine skipper. You could always send him a message by your aunt.’

‘
If
I find what I’m looking for,’ sighed Is. ‘It’s like looking for a pin in Piccadilly.’

He clapped her on the shoulder. ‘But you’ve got the grit for it, dearie! I’ll lay odds you do find it! And I’m sad to lose your help. But you’ll be better in the south.’

‘Doc – why does
anybody
stay in this hateful place?’

‘Most can’t get away, dearie,’ he said soberly. ‘And a few – like your aunt – stay because in some way, however small, they can help the others.’

‘But why don’t nobody
do
nothing?’

‘What’s needed,’ he said, ‘is a leader. And one hasn’t turned up as yet. Now – good luck, dearie! I’ll keep in touch – ’ as the old mare reached the docks, and Is jumped down to run off towards the smoke and gusts of flame coming from the blast furnaces.

8

Procuring work at the foundries presented no problem. The manager was, indeed, so amazed that somebody should actually volunteer instead of being dragged, confused and protesting, off a wagon, that he offered Is a fairly safe job shovelling coke, but she said she’d rather work on the bellows that blew the blast furnaces to maximum heat.

‘Why?’

‘I’ve a mate there.’

‘No talk or fooling, mind! That’s the rule. If you talk, you get the strap. See this?’ He held up a thick leather strap, heavy as a horse-whip.

‘Yus,’ said Is.

‘Right. Remember that. You get five minutes for your dinner and five for your supper. Got your grub with you?’

‘No,’ said Is.

‘Go without, then. You’ll know to bring it tomorrow. Jem! Take this one to the bellows team on Number Two furnace.’

It would be no use, Is could see, asking to go to Number Four furnace; she must simply watch for her chance and take one, if it offered, to change over or to talk to the Number Four team.

The bellows were kept in action by a team of seven or eight pulling on a rope. The work went on continuously, all around the clock; when one team took over from another, each member in turn passed his or her section of the rope (half of them were girls) to somebody who stood waiting at their shoulder, ready to jump in and grab. The work was hard, but not intolerable. The smell of sulphur was very bad until you got used to it; so was the boredom. The worst times were when you wanted to scratch an itch, or to relieve yourself. (There was an unspoken working agreement, in the latter event, that one member of the team at a time could run off to a dark corner while the others pulled harder – but not, of course, if the overseer was anywhere in view.)

For the first two days, Is did not try to ask any questions. It took her that time to get used to the noise. There was a terrific continuous blasting roar from the furnace itself, besides the shriek of the bellows and the grating rattle of the hoist that fed coke into the top of the furnace, a hundred feet above. It might have been thought impossible for people to talk and hear each other in such conditions. But Is observed that the other members of the gang were able to talk and understand one another with as much ease as if they had been in a peaceful meadow. Also they had a system of talking without moving their faces, to avoid being spotted by the overseer.

At noon a whistle blew. The bellows had to go on working, so each member of the team had a few minutes off in turn to bolt down whatever food they had brought.

On the first day Is, having none, shook her head when it came to her turn.

‘You got no crib?’ shouted the boy behind her in the line. ‘Here – ’ and he offered her half of a cold potato. But she shook her head again.

‘Thanks, cully. You keep it. I ain’t that hungry.’

He didn’t wait for her to change her mind but bolted it down in one gulp. He was as thin as a rasher of wind, Is noticed; she wondered if that was all the food he had to eat in the twenty-four hours.

After a twelve-hour shift they were relieved by the next team. The other members of the gang did not stop to chat – they raced off as if the militia were after them.

‘Where d’you live?’ panted Is, running beside the boy who had offered her the potato.

‘Ma Cobb’s lodging. Most o’ the gang lives there. It’s by the Infirmary – reckon she’d take you too – ’ He nodded at a dingy building that looked like a storehouse.

Is decided that she would go in there and ask some questions, but not tonight. She was very tired – her arms and back felt as if she had been pulled in half. And she still had to arrange about her own accommodation.

But when she reached Corso Mill she found herself expected. Aunt Ishie had called there during the day, and the two sisters gave her a kind welcome. As soon as she had bolted down a big bowl of fish and carrot soup, Miss Sibley rubbed her aching back with poppyheads.

‘A fair exchange for all the rubbing you have given my sister.’

While being massaged, Is heard again the howling of the cat-boy.

‘Perhaps he will consent to come in this time,’ said Mrs Crockett, hobbling hopefully to the door with a plate of fish. But she came back shaking her head.

‘Still too shy. But he is sure to grow accustomed in time to Is, now she is living here. Indeed we are delighted to have some young company, my dear!’

Is found that she had been provided with a comfortable bed made from a pile of old sacks on the upper floor, in what had been the grain store of the mill. ‘But no need to worry about rats,’ said Miss Sibley cheerfully, ‘as they have all departed to the new town, where there are choicer pickings. And you will have no trouble in waking for your shift, my dear, since you may easily hear the factory hooter from here.’

This was so; at four-thirty a fearsome yelling whistle sounded on the dock, a quarter of a mile away, to rouse the workers who began their duties at five a.m. Is scrambled into such of her clothes as she had taken off, and ran down the ladder.

To her dismay, both sisters were up and had a breakfast of porridge and a roast turnip waiting for her.

‘You shouldn’t, ma’am – you shouldn’t, missus. It ain’t fair you should havta get up early for me – ’

‘Nonsense, child. In any case, my sister is very strongly affected by changes in the weather, and just lately she has been having some terrible twinges, which wake her very early – there must be a shocking climatic disturbance over the Atlantic moving this way. Run along now, dear child, and here is a noonpiece for you. Make haste . . .’

Is gulped her thanks and was off down the hill.

Running past the gate guard she caught up with the potato boy.

‘What’s your name?’ she panted.

‘Col. Got some grub today?’

She nodded. There was no chance to say more, as they took their places on the bellows rope with the overseer watching. But later in the day Is seized a moment to ask the girl ahead of her, as she returned from bolting down her noonpiece:

‘You ever come across a boy called David Stuart?’

‘Ah, I done! He were a real decent feller!’

The overseer, stepping close, caught each of them a stinging slash with his strap, putting all the weight of his arm behind the blow. ‘No talking!’ he growled.

At the end of the day Is followed this girl and asked her name.

‘Fanny. What’s yours?’

‘Is. What happened to David Stuart?’

‘He switched to Number Four. Then I didn’t see him no more. Ted, over yonder, might tell you more.’

Ted, hurrying home to supper at Mrs Cobb’s lodging, was a surly-looking, tow-headed boy who might have been about fifteen.

‘Whadya want to know for?’

‘A pal of his was asking for him.’

‘Promise me your tomorrow’s noonpiece and I’ll tell.’

‘No!’ said Fanny. ‘Don’t promise him that. You
tell
her, jist,’ she said to Ted, ‘and don’t be so pin-mannerly. That Davie was a real sweet chap. Ted were there when it happened,’ she explained to Is.

‘When what happened?’ Is felt her heart sink horribly, though it was not hard to guess.

‘Dave were working on the runner of Number Four, see?’ Ted said, apparently deciding to co-operate. ‘And a feller, Danny Rowe, he were going over the gangway, and he slipped, and he were hanging on the rail, screaming for help.’

Is knew by now that the
runner
referred to was a wide deep trough of white-hot metal, and the gangway over it no more than a single plank.

‘What happened?’ she asked with a dry mouth.

‘Dave turned to the chap next him – Bob, his name were – and give him a luck-piece what he used to carry – kind of a button, like – said, “See my dad gets this, wiltha, Sam Driver knows where ’e is –” and then he went to help t’other chap, but they both slipped and fell in, an’ that were the end of ’em.’

‘What about the button? And Sam Driver?’ Is felt for her own button, safely stitched inside her hem.

‘Why – what Davie didn’t know was that Sam his own self had been done for by a blow-out o’ gas that same week. So no one knew what to do wi’ the button.’

‘What
did
they do with it?’

Fanny broke in.

‘
Everybody
liked Davie – someway he were a cut above most o’ the rest, but no swagger or brass about him, not a bit – and he used to say that all this, the way we gotta work, was wrong, and one day it’d be stopped, when his dad got to hear about it. We used to pull his leg a bit, ask who was his dad, did he mean God-a-mercy up above, but he says No.’

‘He were a right mystery-ous cove, Dave were, he useda say as he could hear voices,’ Ted ruminated, taking up the story, growing more involved as he remembered.

‘Voices?’ Is felt a queer leap of excitement.

‘Yus. He come from Scotland, Dave did, his dad were a Scotty, he said. Up in those parts they have what he called Sight, they can hear things and see things what other folks can’t. So Dave used to hear those voices, times. An’ they told him – he said – that things wouldn’t allus be like this here. Kids wouldn’t allus be made to work without pay fourteen hours a stretch. Wouldn’t allus be douls. He said – he said – ’

‘He said someone
else
’d come!’ Fanny interrupted.

‘Someone else?’

‘Ah! And this other cove ’ud have another button, just like his’n. And when this other cove come – with the button – that’d be the start of things getting better.’

‘Where – what did they do with the button
he
had?’

‘It still gets passed round, like. Just to have it and handle it for a day or two puts more gumption into folk. And they figure, sooner or later, someone’ll find a way to get it to Davie’s da.’

‘A girl called Tilda had it, I heard,’ Is said.

‘Tilda Thatcher? She ain’t got it now. I bleeve she passed it to Hattie Smith.’

‘Where’d I find Hattie?’

‘She’s a puddler. Dunno what shift, though – come and ask at Ma Cobb’s if you’ve a mind.’

It took Is two weeks in the foundries – asking, probing and persuading – before she caught up with the button. Tilda had passed it to Hattie, who had passed it to Annis, who had passed it to Len, who had passed it to Jack . . .

Nobody seemed to feel the need to keep it for more than a day or two, but they all said it put new heart into them. One odd thing Is found out was that, with each person who had contact with the button, the story, the legend of Davie Stuart was enlarged and extended. He were a right decent chap, clever too, with it, but no side or pride about him, not a bit, though his da was some big weight down Lunnon way; he had saved several people from accident or trouble before the unfortunate Danny, had done no end of kind deeds and good turns, he was a real nob, a nonesuch, a nonpareil. And was he really truly dead? asked Is over and over again. Could her informants be certain of that? Yes: Ted and another boy called Rodge had seen both him and Danny fall into the runner. And
nobody
could survive that. In fact there was nothing left of them, not so much as a buckle nor a bootlace.

With a heavy heart, when the token finally came into her possession – from a girl named Dorcas – Is took it back to Corso Mill, borrowed pen and paper from the sisters, who, as ex-teachers, still had a stock of such things, and wrote a note to Wally.

DERE WAL HERES TARBLE SAD NEWS. YOULL HAFTA TELL HIS NIBS THAT YOUNG DAVE AINT NEVER COMIN BAK NO MORE. HES DED, DYED TRIN TO SAVE ANUTHA FELLA. ALL THE FOLKS HERE SAY HE WERE A REEL GOOD COVE AN ALLUS TOLD EM BETTER TIMES WUZ CUMN. NO USE TRYIN TO KEEP THE NEWZ FROM HIS DAD HED HAFTA NO SUM TIME. THINGS UP HERE IZ RITE BAD THAT GOLD KINGY IS A DEVIL ON TOAST. TELL MY SIS PEN IM WELL AN SEND LUV. IM STILL LOKKN FER ARN TWITE. KIND REGARDS TO YOU AN YORE DA. IS
.