4

Bob Evert had made Itch feel he would be absolutely the most useful member of his team at South-West Mines. Itch assumed he spoke to everyone like that. As for inviting anyone, well, he didn’t exactly have a long list of friends to choose from. The only person he could suggest was cousin Jack, so he had called her after lunch on Sunday. She was unsure to start with, but had agreed, assuming her parents gave their permission, as she had nothing planned for the break.

Work experience—or “volunteer job,” as they were going to have to call it—wasn’t something Itch had been planning on. Getting hold of some replacement phosphorus, some mercury, and maybe some cobalt would be more fun, but the Provincetown mine did sound intriguing. They had had lessons on mining in Cornwall, of course, but Itch had never seen a mine for real. He found he was looking forward to it. They would be picked up on Monday morning by the chief engineer, Jolyon Barth, who lived not far from the Loftes.

When the doorbell rang at 7:30 a.m., Itch was dressed and ready. It was Jack, who stood at the door wearing jeans and a large I CORNWALL ACADEMY sweatshirt.

“I could never quite bring myself to wear one of those,” said Itch, and invited her in. She had just shut the door when the bell rang again. An unsmiling red-haired man stood on the porch.

“You must be Itchingham Lofte. I’m Jolyon Barth, the engineer at Provincetown. How do you do?”

They shook hands rather formally, and Itch introduced Jack. Barth was about forty, strongly built, with freckles on his face and forearms. He opened the rear door of his Mercedes, and both cousins got in. This felt a bit weird—as though Barth were a taxi driver taking them to the station. They sat in embarrassed silence. It was a relief when Barth put the radio on.

“Your dad left this morning, right?” Jack asked.

“Yes,” said Itch gloomily. “Off at six. He was getting the first flight from Newquay. Not sure when he’ll be back—he took some leave after hearing about our fun in the greenhouse.”

“Did you see the video of Flowerdew with puke all over him!” laughed Jack. “It’s so cool!”

“Yeah, Dart’s going to go crazy when she sees it.” Itch was smiling now. “She’ll probably get it taken down, but it’s on twenty thousand hits or something. My favorite bit is where you can see her trying not to smile when Craig’s apologizing to Flowerdew and wiping down his suit with his hand!”

They were laughing so hard that Barth looked up at them in his mirror. They lowered their voices.

“Apparently,” whispered Jack, “Ian Steele now has the sound of Craig puking as his ring tone!” That set them off again, and Barth turned up the radio.

They were heading south but had to travel east and inland to pick up the road to Provincetown. It had once been a busy tin-mining community right on the coast, high above the cliffs, but now almost everybody had left.

The old, unused winding tower came into view first, still an impressive hundred feet high, an iconic image of mining the world over. Not much else from the past had survived. A few houses looked lived in and loved; most were dilapidated or derelict. Two of the old miners’ cottages had been turned into an arts and crafts exhibition, and a third told the story of mining in the area. Set back from the cliffs, new buildings that housed the Visitor Center and company offices had sprung up around the edges of the site. In contrast, the old mine works stretched to the very edge.

Barth drove the cousins straight to the office, another converted miner’s house, the one nearest the works. It was slate gray like all the others, but had been given a new roof and an extension at the side. A small brass plaque on the door said: south-west mines. Barth parked his car next to six others, a new 5-Series BMW standing out from the pack.

“Must be Evert’s,” said Jack as they got out and Barth took them into the house/office.

They were told to sit and wait for Evert in a room that had once been the hallway and kitchen area but now housed two sofas, a long, low table, and a coffee machine. A series of framed photos hung on the walls. Most were old black and whites of miners posing without smiling—as seemed to be the custom back then. Maybe they didn’t have much to smile about, thought Itch. The last three photos, by contrast, were in color and featured a beaming Bob Evert in every one. Bob Evert shaking hands with the mayor; Bob Evert underground with a large, bright yellow digger; and Bob Evert looking thoughtful while studying maps.

“Don’t tell me,” said Jack. “My guess is that’s Bob Evert.”

“Yup, that’s him,” said Itch, and they sat and waited for his arrival.

“Do we come in with Barth every day?” said Jack. “Couldn’t we get the bus?”

“I was thinking that too. But wouldn’t it take forever?”

“Probably,” said Jack.

Somewhere in the house a door opened, and the booming tones of Bob Evert’s voice filtered through to them.

“Here he comes,” said Itch. “And I think he always talks that loudly.” They listened as the voice got closer and louder.

Evert strode in, finishing a call and putting his BlackBerry away. “Itch! Hello! Welcome to South-West Mines! And who is your friend?”

“This is Jack Lofte, my cousin.”

“Another Lofte! Very good news! You are both welcome, of course. Let me quickly show you around before it gets busy.”

He led them out toward the mine works. There was a stiff breeze blowing off the Atlantic and it lifted Bob Evert’s carefully positioned comb-over away from his head so that it stood at a right angle to his scalp. He took a SW MINES baseball cap out of his pocket and put it on, flattening his hair back underneath.

“The last tin mine in Provincetown closed in 1950—it was the end of an industry that stretched back hundreds of years. But in 1981 the council asked me to look into opening it up again as a tourist attraction. I took it on and realized I could go one better than that. I could open it to the public and keep it alive, so that if the price of tin rose enough, we could resume mining in Provincetown.” He beamed.

He took them through some of the old mine works. Crumbling, fenced-off chimneys stood alongside rusting shaft-drilling equipment. They came to the entrance to the new operation—a few smaller modern buildings and one of blue corrugated metal—the elevator—to take tourists and, if needed, miners down into the ground.

“We don’t produce a lot of tin, but enough to be able to say that the South-West Mines have brought mining back to Cornwall!” Evert got a small lump of rock out of his pocket and handed it to Itch. “One of the first bits of ore that we mined here. Dug it myself too!”

Itch held it up to catch the light. It was a piece of shiny dark granite, with a few lines of a lighter substance flecked down one side.

“Cornish tin, that is! Doesn’t it make you proud?” Evert took the ore back and pocketed it. “We produce just enough for tourists to buy in our shop, but if we needed to, we could increase production within a month. We keep everything ready to go, so you’ll see a lot of maintenance folk around this week; they’re making sure everything is safe.”

“Do you get any help from the students at West Ridge School of Mining?” asked Itch. The nearby college had an international reputation in mining, geology, and environmental science; it seemed obvious that their students would work with South-West Mines. Mr. Watkins was always enthusing about the college.

“Ah, yes …” said Evert, pausing slightly. “Not really. We haven’t seen any of them for a while now.” He turned to look at the cousins. “And you know what? That’s fine with me! Don’t need ’em! We are fine on our own, thank you very much!” He smiled at them. “Now let’s introduce you to Mrs. Lee, and she can get you settled.”

As Evert came in, Mrs. Lee stood up. She was, it turned out, in charge of the shop and exhibition. She was a large lady with graying hair tied back with a black ribbon. She wore a green SW MINES sweatshirt, which, Itch and Jack agreed, was a cruel punishment to inflict on her. It really didn’t fit any part of her upper body, which seemed to be fighting to escape.

“Don’t get up, Enid! Good morning to you! This is Itchingham and Jack Lofte—they are doing a bit of volunteer work with us this week. I think a uniform might be in order …” He made a show of winking at Mrs. Lee and left.

She called them over to a drawer behind her desk and offered them a cap and a sweatshirt each. “You’ll like these, I think.” She spoke with a strong Cornish accent. “Just the one color and just the one size. See what you think.” Itch and Jack exchanged glances and removed their own sweatshirts. They pulled on their new ones. Mrs. Lee put baseball caps on their heads and stepped back to admire them. “Lovely. Quite lovely,” she declared.

“You never told me we were going to end up looking like we work at Burger King,” whispered Jack. “I hope no one we know comes here this week!”

Mrs. Lee demonstrated how to work the cash register and welcome visitors to the museum. A slow but steady stream of interested grown-ups and bored children wandered through during the morning. If people had questions, they were to be referred to the guide, whose name was Alice and who turned out to be Bob Evert’s daughter. Years ago, according to Mrs. Lee, they had employed former miners to lead the tour.

“They were lovely men,” she said. “They’d worked here for years. But they were let go; none of them has been near the place for years. Shame, really. I imagine …” Mrs. Lee broke off and looked around in case she was being overheard. “I imagine Alice is cheaper. Nice girl, though,” she added in case she sounded too disloyal.

Alice was in her early twenties and made the South-West Mines uniform about as glamorous as it could get by customizing it with bangles, designer jeans, and UGG boots. “Traditional mining gear!” whispered Itch to Jack.

Tours left whenever there were a dozen visitors ready to go, which happened three times that morning. Itch and Jack were offered a twenty-minute break at midday and took their sandwiches outside. They walked to the edge of the mine works, just a few feet from the cliff face, and sat on some rocks.

“Odd place,” said Jack.

“Odd people,” said Itch.

“Mainly I sold postcards,” said Jack. “And the Americans bought all the toffee.”

“The Japanese tourists seemed most interested in the Cornish tin pixies,” said Itch.

“Classy,” said Jack. “I saw those. Looked like trolls. But at least they’re made from tin. So it’s slightly Cornish, I suppose.”

“Except they’re made out of recycled aluminium from Indonesia. I checked.”

They both laughed at that.

As they ate their lunch, they watched the Atlantic roll in and smash itself against the rocks far below. This was one of the stretches of coastline with no beach, the high and low tides marked by a rising and falling sea level. They fed the remaining bread, cheese-and-onion potato chips, and Twix crumbs to the seagulls and walked back in the direction of the gift shop. Jack pointed at another series of buildings beyond the mine works that they hadn’t noticed before. Surrounded by equipment and outhouses, the buildings had their own road and parking lot. Itch and Jack wandered over to take a closer look. It was similar to the new mineshaft building they had seen earlier—a gray cabin sixty feet above the ground surrounded by steel frames, with a conveyer angling down into a corrugated iron shed. The parking lot was empty apart from the Mercedes they had arrived in—Jolyon Barth’s car. As they approached, the driver’s door opened and Barth got out. They hadn’t noticed he was inside.

“Can I help you guys?” he said, walking over.

“We were just looking around. We hadn’t noticed this bit before,” said Itch.

“Well, it’s kind of out of bounds, really. It’s just for maintenance.” Barth sounded a little irritated. “We need to keep the mine at operational levels of performance at all times, and this is where the teams go in. That’s all you need to know. Now I expect Mrs. Lee needs you—off you go.”

Itch and Jack turned around and headed back. Itch looked over his shoulder and saw Barth was watching them leave.

“We were definitely being warned off there, Jack.”

“And he wasn’t exactly fun to be with in the car this morning, either. We should definitely explore the option of getting here by bus. After all, we’re taking it home at the end of the day anyway.”

“Agreed,” said Itch as they re-entered the world of Mrs. Lee and mining toffee.

The highlight of their week came after a conversation with UGG-booted Alice, the tour guide. Itch and Jack both wanted to go down the mine and asked her how that could be arranged. It turned out that only Mr. Evert or Mr. Barth could arrange it, but she said she would see what she could do. Then, late on Thursday, just as they were preparing to pack up for the day, Evert put his head around the door.

“Shaft entrance elevator in ten minutes—leave your phones with Mrs. Lee.”

Jolyon Barth was standing at the entrance to the elevator shaft when the cousins arrived with Evert. Barth handed them jackets and scratched-up white hard-hats. Next came heavy battery packs that strapped around their waists, each with a cable that looped over the shoulder to power a bright electric lamp. Barth pulled open the elevator grille for them to enter, and they stooped as Evert, behind them, bellowed, “Welcome to my world!”

They shuffled forward into the “cage,” as everyone called it. There was room for six, according to the sign, but even four was quite a squeeze. Barth closed the outer and inner grille doors and pressed one of the many buttons on a brass-colored panel. With a lurch, the elevator shuddered and then suddenly dropped. The cousins gasped and reached for the metal sides. The men laughed as the elevator slowed to a more leisurely rate of descent.

“It’s tradition!” yelled Evert. “All first-timers get that! You won’t forget your first trip in a hurry!” He and Barth looked thoroughly pleased with themselves; both Loftes looked distinctly shaken.

“Right. On with the tour. It’s one hundred thirty feet down and it’ll take about a minute to get there,” said Evert. “We’ll need to fix the lighting, but you should get a pretty good idea of life underground.”

Unlike an ordinary elevator, you could see through the gate and watch the different levels of rock they were descending through. This was Barth’s cue to speak.

“Once we are through the layers of topsoil and the building foundation, it’s pretty much granite all the way. It’s straight granite at first with nothing else to see, but now”—he pointed to some vertical brown stripes appearing in the black stone—“you can see the tin veins or lodes appearing.”

They trundled their way down farther, watching the changing colors and hues in the rock face. Over the din they heard running water, and then saw gleaming wet rock shining back at them.

“What happened here during the earthquake in December?” asked Itch. “No one was down here at the time, right? That would have been scary.”

“We had to shut down for forty-eight hours to check that everything was safe, of course,” said Evert, “but no, there was no one underground at 4:00 a.m. The safety and maintenance teams spent a long time studying all the cracks and fissures, but they gave us the OK eventually.” He had started to frown now, and fell silent until the elevator stopped with a clatter. Then his face assumed its usual jovial appearance. “Right, here we are! Not exactly a journey to the center of the Earth, but as close as you’re getting!”

Jolyon Barth pulled open the elevator doors. Itch and Jack were glad that they had jackets on as the temperature had dropped noticeably. Their four lamps bobbed and shook as they ducked out of the elevator, sending wild, dancing spotlights into the dark. Barth walked on ahead into the gloom and turned on some strip lighting. It revealed entrances to two large tunnels with metal tracks on the ground and a tangle of wires running the length of the low ceiling. Barth, stooping slightly, led the way down the left-hand tunnel, passing a series of alcoves and dark side passages.

“Nearly there!” shouted Evert, his voice louder than ever in the enclosed passage. They came to an opening with a high ceiling, where an imposing yellow excavator was parked. Behind it loomed a black wall with great grooves cut out of it; piles of rock lay on the ground. They recognized the excavator from the photographs outside the office. It was surprisingly long and flat, with huge tractor-size tires and a large rock bucket pointing up at the front.

“These are the exposed lodes that we’re working on—they’re the ones that will be mined when the price of tin rises,” said Evert. “Climb aboard—see what it feels like!”

Itch and Jack took turns sitting in the cabin, feeling like kids on a ride at an amusement park. They looked at the control panel. It had two joysticks set in a keyboard and a computer screen with digital clocks and symbols. Both felt a bit out of their depth, and neither dared touch a thing.

Evert crouched down, picking up the loose rocks, sifting them through his fingers, and letting them fall. “This is what it’s all about.” For once he was speaking quietly, almost reverently. “This could change us all, you know. There’s power in these rocks. Don’t you feel it?”

He wasn’t expecting an answer, but Itch said, “I do, yes. They’re beautiful.”

Jack looked at him in puzzlement. “Really? Are we looking at the same thing?”

“Yup,” said Itch. “Cassiterite. SnO₂. Tin ore.”

Evert and Barth exchanged a look. “Dead right,” said Barth, “and if we had more of it we’d be in business again.”

They spent a few more minutes looking around, but Evert was now standing by the elevator, clearly anxious to get back to the surface. He opened the doors and the cousins joined him. Jack wondered aloud why Barth wasn’t coming back up with them.

“Things to check, Jack, many things to check,” came the reply.

As they waited for their bus home, Jack put her hand in her pocket. “Got something for you, Itch. Here.” Her fingers were clasped around something and Itch held out his hand. Jack dropped a lump of tin ore in it. He gasped. “What the …? How did you …? It’s beautiful.”

“If you say so, Itch. I was annoyed they didn’t give you one down there; times can’t be that hard. Evert has a Beemer and Barth has a Merc, after all. So I just, well, helped myself when they weren’t looking. Do you have tin in your collection?”

“I do, yes, but nothing like this.” He angled the rock to catch the light. It was heavy in his hand—about the size and weight of a billiard ball, but square, with jagged edges that had crystallized points. At first it had looked completely black, but brown showed clearly in the sunlight. Itch examined it minutely.

“You like it, then?”

Itch didn’t reply; he hadn’t heard.

“Should have kept it for your birthday,” Jack added.

“But it’s stolen,” said Itch, coming out of his tin-induced trance. “I should give it back.”

“You should,” agreed Jack, “but my guess is you won’t. You’re in love. With a rock.” Again, Itch didn’t reply. She continued, “Anyway, it’s pretty common, isn’t it? Especially in Cornwall.”

“Tin foil isn’t tin,” said Itch. “Tin cans aren’t tin. A lot of things called tin aren’t. But this most certainly is.” He was speaking quietly, as if in church. “Wow. Element number fifty.”

“Have you got fifty now?” asked Jack.

“No, pea-brain, it’s number fifty on the Table of Elements, in the same column as silicon, carbon, and lead.”

“Would now be a good time to remind you that I don’t really know what an element is?”

Itch gave a little sigh. “I can’t believe you keep saying that! It’s pure stuff, OK? It’s the most basic stuff you can get. It’s stuff that can’t be broken down, can’t be made any simpler.”

“Like Darcy Campbell?” said Jack.

Itch laughed. “Yeah, OK, exactly like Darcy Campbell!”

They sat for another thirty minutes, with Itch talking tin and Jack wondering where their bus was. They were normally on their way back by now, but the trip underground had delayed their departure by long enough to miss the number 32 bus, which took them most of the way home. The parking lot was almost empty now. It looked as though only Evert, Barth, and a couple of others were still there.

“I suppose we could always go back with Barth if we’re stuck,” said Jack.

“Let’s hang on a bit longer,” said Itch. “I’m sure there’s a later bus. I’d rather that than another trip with Mr. Happy.” They sat on the bus stop bench, watching the road for a sign of the next bus.

“I was on Facebook Chat with Debbie last night,” said Jack. “She seems fine now and says that the others are doing OK too. Ms. Glenacre had it worst, apparently, but maybe that’s an age thing.”

Itch felt himself flush and he looked intently at the tin ore in his hand again. The subject of the greenhouse hadn’t come up for a couple of days, and he was feeling increasingly uncomfortable about not telling Jack what had happened.

“Anyway, the greenhouse is being taken apart. Apparently they are going through all the plants one by one to see what happened, but so far they haven’t found anything. They’ll all be gone by the time we go back on Monday.”

Itch was just about to explain about the arsenic when four large unmarked white trucks drove past in close convoy and turned into the mine works. They didn’t go to the main parking lot but continued on to the other one at the back, out of sight of the road.

“Maintenance?” said Itch. “They’ve all gone around to the area that Barth turned us away from. Seems a bit late to be starting work.”

“Must be shift work or something,” said Jack. “Easier to do when there’s no one around?”

Suddenly Itch spotted a bus coming down the hill. “Looks like we don’t need to ask Barth for a lift after all. Hooray for the number 32. Come on, Jack, I’ve got something to tell you.”