Forty-Nine

He passed down the pit shaft quickly, fending himself from the pit sides with his free hand. With him alone on the rope, he fell like Icarus, wings burned. He could hear the rush of the water when he was still a hundred feet up. He looked up, then, to the pinprick of light above him that was the outside world. He fumbled in his pocket for the matches for the candle, whose flame had been drenched. He found them, and circled his fingers around them. God knew if he would ever light them. But they were a talisman against the pit bottom, a charm to ward off water.

In the dark, his body bumped hard on the rock of the shaft side. Stone at a hundred and thirty feet. Pennant stone for paving blocks. He thought, wildly, briefly, almost his last thought in life, of the feet that would tread on the stones in the city long after this haunted year.

There were a crowd of colliers at the bottom. They were standing among the wooden tubs. The boys still wore the leather straps—straps that went around the tubs as they pulled them on their hands and knees from the narrow seams.

The Egyptian grabbed the first boy to hand. ‘Get on,’ he said, shoving the lad. He pushed the nearest man. ‘Get on any way you can.’ The rope began to move. There was no panic. They moved forward smoothly, grabbing the slipping guides, pulling boys after them where they could, disappearing upwards.

One of the last caught hold of the Egyptian’s sleeve. ‘Get on yourself,’ he said.

‘I shall go down the twinway.’

‘You’ll not,’ the man said. ‘They are all drowned down there.’

He saw it was the same man who had struck him in the lane four months ago.

‘Get on the rope,’ the Egyptian said.

He sprinted down into the track, down the incline. Candles still guttered in their makeshift holders along the walls. He stopped himself with a prayer, forced himself to take out the matches, take off his cap. He tried to set the candle in the little half-moon metal holder. His fingers shook. The match scraped, gave a blue spark. Died. He tried another. There was nothing at all from the next—they were damp. Everything was damp. The wet ran down the pit sides, ran under his feet.

He gave up the light, and ran on, his feet now sloshing through water. To either side, a quarter of a mile along, puttways—the little roads on to the coal faces—sloped steeply away. On the left they were dry. On the right they were wet.

It was as he came to the last long drop to the last face that he ran straight into a river.

The Styx flowed here. Dark water rising.

He stopped. Got to his knees.

‘God greater than the heavens,’ he began. ‘God greater than the stars, save us this day, break this stream, close Thou Thy hand against this force. Forgive us our sins against those who made this land sacred, who were buried here. Forgive us our sins of greed against creation that have brought us to this destruction …’

There was a grinding, muffled roar.

Down one of the side seams, the pit props gave way. The horses, tethered in the side entry, still chained to the tubs, began to scream.

‘I stand in the Gate as Thy sentry and servant …’

For a moment, the water seemed to stop. It receded. There was no sound.

He opened his eyes to the pitch silence.

In time to see eternity, before he fell.