Netherwood (47 page)

‘Aye, well,’ said Amos, keeping his head down.

‘That spring cabbage looks grand,’ said Percy.

‘Aye,’ said Amos.

‘Them carrots want thinnin’ aht.’

Amos said nothing. He didn’t mind Percy in general, but on occasion found him as irritating as a persistent horsefly.

‘Tha’ll be on afternoons, then?’ Percy said.

‘Aye,’ said Amos. ‘Well spotted.’ He really couldn’t be doing with this pointless to-ing and fro-ing like a pair of old women on their back doorsteps. He rammed his hoe into the ground, and turned to collect his cap and jacket. Might as well be off. He passed through the gate, forcing Percy into reverse.

‘Your weeds are shootin’ up while you stand ’ere chewin’ t’fat,’ Amos said.

He walked off, thinking how much he valued young Seth’s silent companionship in the allotment. Now there was a lad who understood how to garden. They could work side by side for two or three hours, without more than a couple of words being exchanged. Then on the walk home, the boy would talk for England about what they’d done, should be doing or shouldn’t consider. He was still after planting a melon bed – Seth had fancy ideas – and wouldn’t be dissuaded by Amos’s argument that without a glasshouse they had no chance of thriving. And he’d got hold of the top of a pineapple from a kitchen lad down at the hall, having read in his gardening books that they weren’t hard to grow. He was bringing the top on at home until it sprung roots, then his heart was set on planting it on a hot bed. He was pestering Amos to fetch
some stable dung from the pit ponies’ living quarters at New Mill, and Amos – really more of a parsnip man than a pineapple one – found himself catching the boy’s enthusiasm and thinking it was worth a crack at it. If he could find time to build a cold frame, they could sit his pineapple top on a hot bed and see what happened. It might take years to fruit, Amos had told Seth. Well, we can wait, he’d said, and Amos had thought – not for the first time – what a fine boy Arthur’s son was. Not many young ’uns would have the patience to watch a pineapple grow in Yorkshire.

He was early for his shift at the colliery, so he collected his lamp and his two brass checks and went to sit by Sam Bamford, who had found a sun trap at the back of the stores and was basking in it like a cat.

‘Stockin’ up on sunlight?’ Amos said. ‘Grand idea. There’s none where we’re off to.’ He lowered himself to the ground.

Sam kept his eyes closed and his head tilted, but he knew it was Amos.

‘Good turn out last neet,’ said Sam. ‘Now you’ve got t’ball rollin’, we’ll be carryin’ a union flag through Barnsley before we know it.’

‘Aye,’ said Amos. ‘Fifty-four names. I need more than that to give Lord ’oyland an ’eadache, but it were a grand start.’

‘What’s thi next step then?’

‘A bit more gentle encouragement, a couple more meetin’s, a proper agenda o’ fair demands. Then we can present t’management wi’ a formal letter askin’ ’em to acknowledge t’New Mill branch of t’YMA.’

Sam opened his eyes now and looked at his friend. ‘Then they’ll go runnin’ down to Netherwood ’all, and Lord ’oyland’ll do ’is nut.’

‘Aye, more than likely. And we stand firm.’ He grinned at Sam, and adopted Reverend Oxspring’s sermonising voice. ‘Stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong.
Corinthians, Sam, lad. We could sew that on our flag. You any good wi’ a needle?’

Sam laughed, then he cocked his head in the direction of the winding gear where the wheels had begun to turn, bringing the day-shift miners up in the cage from the pit bottom. There would be more than one draw, so they sat on a while in the day’s warmth, crossing the yard towards the pit bank only when they knew that most of the last shift were up. At the bottom of the steps they joined a small band of colleagues and waited, standing back to let muck-blackened miners pass in the other direction. To a man, they envied them their homeward journey. It’d be eight hours before they were treading the same path.

As the empty cage went down for the last few men, Amos and Sam walked up the steps. Stan Clough, duty banksman, greeted them.

‘Nah then,’ he said, nodding. But the wheels were moving again, the cables taut as they took the strain for the upward journey, and there was no conversation among the waiting miners. Silence often fell over them before they descended the mine, as if a few minutes’ reflection were needed to prepare for the job ahead. Amos leaned on an empty tub, listening to the music of the mechanism, for want of anything more interesting to do. It was as familiar to him as the sound of his own footsteps, this metallic slip and grind of the headstock. And because he knew it so well, he also knew the very second that it altered its tune; Stan Clough and Sam heard it too. There was a discordant squeal of metal on metal, and a quickening of the usual rush and rattle of the chains. Then the cage emerged from the shaft, but not slowly as was usual, preparing to stop at the surface. Instead it moved without intention of stopping, continuing its upward path at great speed and smashing with all its mighty weight into the headgear. The massive steel rope, too thick for a man to enclose in his fist
and secured to the cage by a great iron cappel, broke like a strand of cotton on impact with the workings and the two-tier cage and its cargo plunged back into the earth, free-falling for six hundred yards to the unyielding sump at the pit bottom.

All of this took only seconds. Stan said, ‘Over-wound. Engine winder must’ve slipped up. Else workings were faulty and we never realised.’

His face was white with shock, but he spoke placidly as if he was commenting on a bad hand in a game of whist. Which, in a way, he was. You get the cards you’re dealt, and you prosper or suffer accordingly. Amos turned and ran down the steps from the pit bank to fetch the manager, pushing past the crush of men who were pressing forwards to find out more. But Don Manvers was already striding towards him across the yard, alerted to the disaster by the ungodly racket he’d heard in his office when the cage slammed into the winding gear.

‘How many?’ he said to Amos.

‘Last draw of t’day shift. Eight, nine.’

‘Ah, right. Could be worse.’

‘Not for them,’ said Amos. ‘They’ll all be lost.’

They stared at each other for a moment, grim faced. Don dropped his eyes first, and strode on to find the engine winder and the banksman. There’d be officials here within the hour, asking questions, piecing together what had gone wrong, and Don Manvers needed to be a few steps ahead.

Amos, who had been close enough to the advancing cage to see the stricken faces of the men trapped inside, bent double where he stood and vomited.

The Duchess of Abberley peered closely at the plate of tiny offerings being presented to her on a silver platter by an immaculately liveried footman.

‘Clarissa,’ she said, calling across the terrace in her customary strident manner, ‘what on earth?’

Lady Hoyland sashayed towards her. She was in the best possible mood for a number of reasons. First, her gown was superb and up-to-the-minute – a daring, clingy Fortuny silk in lustrous green satin; second, her latest flirtation, Robin Campbell-Chievely, was eyeing her up deliciously often while pretending to attend to his dreary wife; third, the warm weather had held, so they were able to hold the
soirée
outdoors overlooking Daniel’s masterpiece of a garden; and fourth, her divine footmen, specially hired for their height and dashing good looks, were touting platters of highly amusing working-class canapés. The duchess was, at this moment, peering through her lorgnettes at an arrangement of tiny steak puddings. Such fun, when everyone had expected the usual fare of shrimp toasts,
foie gras
and mousselines.

‘Are these suet puddings?’ the duchess said.

‘Indeed,’ said Lady Hoyland. ‘Aren’t they the darlingest things?’

Clarissa took one from the proffered plate and popped it whole into her mouth, by way of demonstration. The taste was extraordinary; steak puddings, reduced to their very essence. Eve had pounded shin of beef to a fine pulp with the pestle and mortar, then cooked it long and slow until the meat and its juices had become an unctuous, flavourful filling for the suet-lined thimble basins. Polly Pargiter, the mouselike kitchen girl she’d been loaned, had turned out to be adept with her fingers, and had managed where Eve could not to tie wax-paper lids on each thimble before they steamed in their pan of barely simmering water.

The duchess, sorely tempted and – though she would die rather than confess it – intrigued, followed Clarissa’s example and found that the little pudding was easily the most delicious thing she’d eaten since – well, she couldn’t remember when.
Some long-ago supper in the nursery, she presumed, because the taste reminded her of childhood. Extraordinary. Carefree days with Nurse, before duty and obligation reared up and bit her. How wonderful that those memories could be unlocked by a steak pudding. Without really meaning to, she picked up a second and ate that too. Then a third. Then she looked up sheepishly from her feeding frenzy.

‘I can’t seem to stop,’ she said. ‘They are simply divine.’ She had the merest fleck of gravy on the corner of her mouth, which only added to Clarissa’s triumph. The countess took a gulp of her gin sling and felt a frisson of internal pleasure as it slid down her throat and made her, momentarily, swimmy-headed. Robin, in deep conversation with Totty Fitzherbert and Dickie, risked a lascivious wink in her direction. Then Teddy, red-faced and large-bellied, boomed across the assembled company.

‘Don’t be hogging the steak puddings, Clarissa.’

She laughed merrily but thought him awfully boorish. If anyone was hogging anything, it was the Duchess of Abberley, who snuck a fourth pudding before the footman was able to make a dignified dash for the earl. But everyone was in ecstasies over the food; the little veal-and-ham pies had them swooning, too. The countess knew there was more to come, but she was confident that, on the social battlefield, she had already made significant incursions into enemy territory this evening.

Munster appeared, stepping smartly on to the terrace from – apparently – nowhere.

‘Ambassador and Mrs Choate,’ he announced, ‘and Miss Dorothea Sterling.’

There was an audible ripple of interest as the Americans joined the gathering. The earl and countess were suddenly as one again as they converged on the honoured guests, Teddy all manly
bonhomie
and Clarissa his elegant female equivalent.
Joseph and Caroline Choate were an urbane and sociable pair, more than equal to the present company, and their attractive young companion seemed similarly at home. More at home, perhaps, than was entirely desirable. She stepped forwards when conventional etiquette dictated she should have hung back, and she shook Lord Hoyland’s hand heartily. Then, to the badly concealed amusement of all, she did the same to the countess, whose forearm looked about ready to snap under the strain.

‘I am so happy to be here,’ said Dorothea, wide-eyed with sincerity, wielding the countess’s fragile hand in time with her words, up and down like a piston. ‘It is so nice of you to have us over. Your garden is just beautiful.’

Mrs Choate, extremely well versed in the niceties of English society, stepped in.

‘Dorothea, dear,’ she said, taking her firmly by the elbow, forcing her to let go of the hostess. ‘Let’s go say hello to the young people.’

She steered her in the direction of Tobias, who had brightened up considerably at the sight of this charmingly brash new species. She had such a ready smile, and a sort of innate bounciness that reminded him strongly of his dairy maid back in Netherwood, though he doubted he’d get to know Dorothea quite so well on first meeting as he had Betty Cross. She was striking rather than pretty: small, slim, chin a little weak but eyes large and expressive, which went a long way to compensate for lesser attributes. Her brown hair was extremely modern, cut to shoulder length and not pinned up in the normal way, but held off her face with a rather exotic jewelled satin bandeau. Tobias unfolded himself from the stone balustrade on which he was artfully draped, and prepared to give her his full and undivided attention.

Lady Hoyland signalled discreetly to Henrietta, who promptly joined her in a brief, private huddle.

‘What do you make of Miss Sterling?’ said the countess.

‘Nothing yet,’ said Henrietta. ‘Haven’t had a chance to chat.’

‘Oh pish,’ said her mother. ‘No need to chat to take a first reading. She looks dangerous to me.’

‘By which, you mean, she’s talking to Toby,’ said Henrietta.

‘No, that’s not what I mean at all. Look at her. She has an extraordinarily bold manner, as if she already knows everyone. Oh, Henry, you don’t suppose she’s a suffragist?’

That her household might somehow fall under the influence of the appalling Votes For Women brigade was one of the countess’s deepest fears, along with premature ageing and running to fat round the middle. Dorothea Sterling’s individual style marked her out as deeply suspicious. The countess could quite see her waving a placard and shouting slogans.

‘I’m sure not, Mama,’ said Henrietta soothingly. ‘I really don’t think they have them in America.’