Third Shift

His lamp stayed on me for a long time.

I didn't count it. For once I didn't want the number. I just dug, and kept my face where it was, and let the light sit on it.

Then the miner on the far side of the cart leaned his weight in, and the cart rolled on, and Tobin went with it. His lamp went last. It came off my face slowly, the way you take your hand off a dog you're not sure about.

A few minutes later he came back the other way with an empty, and it happened again.

"Iven," said Ansel. He was digging on my other side, and he said it low, into the coal. "That's how the one on the ladders started."

I knew what he meant. The miner at crib with its tin still open, looking at Tobin while he worked. Following him up the air road. Going slow in the clean air at the top, and coming for him.

"It's Tobin," I said.

"That one was somebody too, once."

I kept digging.

"If he follows you off," said Ansel, "away from the whistle, into fresh air, he goes slow. And then there's only one thing you can do about him."

He didn't say what. He didn't need to. I'd done it myself, on the fifth landing, with Tobin's little pick.

"Let's move up the face a bit," said Pim. "Just a bit. Just so he's not..."

"No."

"Iven."

"He's not going anywhere. He's pushing a cart."

That was true. It wasn't the reason. The reason was simpler and stupider. I didn't want to leave him there on his own.

At eleven, Bea put Gus's shovel down, opened her bag, and took out a needle.

"Arm," she said.

"It's fine," said Gus.

"It's open to the bone, Gus, and it's been open for hours. Crib's three hours off. I'm not waiting three hours."

"We're working."

"I'll be working." She held up the needle. "Hands."

Gus looked at Ansel, as if Ansel might rule against it.

"Ask any pit wife," said Ansel.

So Gus had to shovel. He took his own shovel back off the floor, for once without anyone handing it to him. It was the only way it worked. Bea held his bad arm out straight along the side of the cart we were filling and sewed it, and Gus dug one-handed with the other, half a shovel at a time. Every time he threw, his whole body moved, and the arm moved with it.

"Hold still," said Bea.

"I can't hold still. If I hold still, I die."

"Then move less."

He moved less. He went very white, and then a sort of green, and he swore at the coal in a long, quiet stream, words I'd only ever heard from men on the harbour wall. Bea didn't blink. She'd been a nurse. I don't think there was a word left that could get to her.

Mags was shovelling on his other side. After a while she said, "You're doing it wrong," and showed him how to brace the handle against his hip so it didn't pull at his shoulder. He stared at her. Then he did it. It was better. He didn't say thank you, and she didn't wait for him to.

Fourteen stitches. By the end Gus was counting them out loud through his teeth. Nobody said who he sounded like.

When she'd tied off, Bea took his shovel off him again to carry it. This time he let her.

A few yards off, Tamsin shovelled, and stopped for a second at a time to write, and didn't look at me. I didn't look at her either. We were both very good at it.

"My mum did that," said Ansel, "most Fridays."

Bea was tying off. "Did what?"

"Sewed my dad up. Kitchen table. He'd come home with something open, and she'd get the needle out, and he'd sit there with his tea and tell her all the gossip from the pit while she did it. He never once made a noise." He looked sideways at Gus. "Not like some."

Gus told him what he could do with that.

Ansel dug for a bit.

"Then one Friday she didn't have to," he said. "There was a fall at the Dunmore Deep, eleven in the morning, and he was under it. Took two days to dig him out." He threw a shovel of coal into the cart. "The company sent his wages round in an envelope. For the half shift. They'd stopped his pay at eleven, because that's when he'd stopped working."

Bea's hands went still on the bandage.

"My mum's still got the envelope," said Ansel. "She says it's the only thing anybody ever gave her that says what time he died."

Pim asked how old he'd been.

"Nine," said Ansel. Then he didn't say anything else for a long time, and none of us made him.

Later, Pim worked next to me. Closer than he needed to.

"I nearly told him to shut up," he said. "On the ladders. The counting. Every rung, out loud. I had it all ready. Tobin, shut up. I was going to say it at the next landing." He scraped at the coal. "Then the thing came up the ladder, and I never did."

"He'd have told you to shut up back."

"He'd have counted louder."

"Yeah."

Tobin's cart came past again with a load on. The lamp found me and stayed, and Pim watched it stay, and then it moved on with the cart.

"Does it hurt?" said Pim. "When it looks at you?"

"No," I said. "It's warm."

At twenty to twelve, Bea finished checking Gus's bandage and turned to me with the roll of it in her hand, holding the loose end out.

"Can you, er..."

She stopped. She looked at me with a small, friendly frown, like someone at a party who's been introduced to too many people.

"Sorry," she said. "I've gone completely blank. What's..."

Then she laughed, and put her hand over her eyes.

"Iven. Iven. God. I've been awake since two this morning."

I laughed too. I took the end of the bandage and held it.

Pim didn't laugh.

People forget my name. Clerks. Dora at the desk. Men in the queue. It's my face. I've got a very forgettable face, and I've made that joke so many times it's stopped being one.

Bea had been looking at my face since before four this morning, on the platform at Merriton Central. She'd shared her bread with me. She'd closed my hands round a shovel.

I held the bandage, and didn't say anything, and neither did she.

"A quarter to twelve," said Bea.

"Lamp room," said Ansel. "If we're going, we go now. I want one of those lamps in my hand before crib, the ones that never go out. And time to think."

"Not the haulage," said Gus.

Nobody argued with him about that.

At the far end of the gallery the rails stopped at a wooden buffer, and there was a stack of props against the wall. We took one each and put them on our shoulders. Carrying props counts. Pim's lamp swung across the bricks above the stack, and I read the writing before I'd decided to. LAMP ROOM, in white paint, with an arrow pointing into a low black hole in the wall.

Next to the hole there was a wooden notice board with two enamel signs on it, black with sixty years of dust.

"Pim. Hold your light there."

He stood under the board shifting his prop from shoulder to shoulder with his lamp tipped up, and I read them out.

A MAN PAID OFF IS STRUCK FROM THE BOOKS.

THE WAGES OF A MAN UNABLE TO ATTEND MAY BE COLLECTED BY A MATE ON PRESENTATION OF HIS TALLY.

"So if you're paid off," said Pim slowly, "you're off the books."

"And a mate can collect for you," I said. "If he's got your tally."

"What's a tally?"

"Brass," said Ansel. "A little round disc with your number on it. You hang it on the board when you go down, so the company knows who's in the pit."

I looked at my palm. The only tally I'd ever seen was burned into it.

"Why does that matter?" said Gus.

Nobody knew. Mags wedged her prop against the wall with her hip and wrote them both down anyway, word for word, fast.

We went toward the hole.

Behind me, Tobin had just pushed his cart up to the buffer and was starting back along the rails with it. I felt the lamp before I saw it, warm on the back of my neck. I turned round.

He was pushing, and his lamp was on me. As I walked, it stayed on me. The cart went away along the face, and his head turned the other way on his shoulders, keeping me in the light.

He didn't let go of the cart.

He didn't follow. Not then.

I could have stopped. I could have gone back and dug next to him until six in the morning, and the mine would set, and I'd be one of them, and at least he wouldn't be on his own. I thought about it for longer than I'd like to say.

Pim put his hand on my arm. He didn't pull. He just left it there.

I walked into the old road. At the bend, I looked back once. The lamp was still on me. Then the wall got in the way.

The old road had no rails and no miners. It was low enough that Gus had to stoop, and the props holding up the roof were old and grey, and some of them had split down the middle and bulged out like a broken finger. Ansel tapped one with his shovel as he went past, and listened, and didn't say anything, and walked faster.

After fifty yards with nobody to see us, we stopped. Nobody said we should. We just stopped, and leaned on the walls, and breathed. Tamsin stopped a little way back toward the bend, where she could see all of us.

I got the notebook out. Pim held his lamp for me.

Third shift. About midnight.

Tobin is T. Ashe now. A letter and a name. He still counts on his fingers.

A man paid off is struck from the books.

A mate can collect a man's wages, with his tally.

Bea forgot my name for a second. She was tired.

I read the last line twice. Then I put a question mark after it.

Behind us, back the way we'd come, something creaked.

Everybody heard it. A long, slow sound, wood taking more than it was built for.

Ansel had his hand flat on the nearest prop. I watched his face change.

In Tamsin's lamp, dust began to fall from the roof behind her, back toward the bend. A thin stream, then a thicker one. Then a prop near the bend folded in the middle and split with a crack that went right through my teeth.

"Run," said Ansel.

The roof behind us started to come down. It didn't stop at the bend. It came after us.