The Harrow Train

The 3:40 to Harrow leaves from platform nine at Merriton Central.

It was cold enough to see my breath. The station was mostly dark, a few gas lamps and a newspaper stand with its shutters down. Steam from the engine rolled along the platform at knee height.

Pim was already there. Pim is always early. He had a paper bag of boiled sweets and he'd been there long enough to have opinions about everyone.

"Don't turn round," he said, "but the tall one's a Pell."

I turned round.

"I said don't turn round."

"You always say that."

The tall one was standing apart from the rest of us. He was about my age, maybe a year older, in a good coat and good boots, with a long canvas case slung across his back. His hands were in his pockets. He looked like he was waiting for a better train.

"Augustin Pell," Pim said quietly. "Gus. His dad was Martin Pell. Hollow rank. Died in a Legend land up north. There's a statue of him in Pale Row."

Gus must have felt us looking. He looked back, at Pim, then at me, then at my boots.

"Those won't last the morning," he said.

"They've lasted two years."

"Not down there."

He didn't say it like a joke. He said it flatly. Then he looked away.

A big man came next, about thirty, with a beard and a limp. His left knee didn't bend properly. He nodded at the platform in general and went to stand by the edge, looking north down the line.

His hands were thick and scarred, and there was black in the lines of his palms that wouldn't ever wash out. I've seen hands like that on the men who unload the coal boats at the harbour.

"That's a miner," I said to Pim.

"How do you know?"

"His hands."

Then a woman in a grey nurse's cape came down the platform with a heavy bag, saw us, and came straight over.

"Are you for the trial?" she said. "I'm Bea."

She had a round, open face and a voice that made you want to tell her where it hurt. She'd brought a whole loaf of bread.

"I didn't know if anyone would have eaten," she said.

I hadn't. Neither had Pim. So we had bread.

At 3:38, running, with his scarf half off and one shoelace undone, came Tobin.

"I'm here," he said, out of breath. "I'm not late. It's thirty-eight. That's two minutes early."

"It's on time," said Pim.

"It's early if you've run."

He bent over with his hands on his knees. When he straightened up, he pointed at the train.

"Nine carriages," he said. "Platform nine. Pit Nine."

"Don't," I said.

He looked pleased with himself anyway.

The train was old and smelled of wet wool and smoke. We had a carriage to ourselves. Gus took the seat at the far end. The big man sat by the window and looked out at nothing. The rest of us sat together, because that's what you do at four in the morning when you're going somewhere bad.

Bea went down the carriage handing out bread. The big man took a piece and said, "Ansel," which was his name, and nothing else.

She held a piece out to Gus Pell.

"No, thank you."

"It's only bread."

"I've eaten."

"Then you can have it later," said Bea, and put it in his coat pocket before he'd decided how to be offended. He didn't take it out. He didn't throw it away either.

Tobin counted the stations. Pim ate his sweets. I watched the dark go past the window.

There's a Catastrophe memorial at Harrow Junction, like there is at every big station in the Union. A stone woman, three times as tall as a person, holding a lamp over her head. People leave flowers at her feet on Catastrophe Day.

As the train pulled out, a little boy in the next carriage leaned through the open connecting door to look.

"Is that where everybody died?" he said.

"That's where everybody lived, Tommy," his father said, without looking up from his paper. "Read the plaque."

The plaque says THEY ENDURED. Every memorial has one. We had a test on the Great Catastrophe at school when I was a boy. I got a B.

"So what actually happened?" said Bea, somewhere past the junction. "At Pit Nine."

Everyone looked at Ansel. He let out a breath through his nose.

"Collapse," he said. "Sixty years ago. Harrow Coal Company. A whole shift was down there when the roof came in. Forty men. They never got them out."

"And the story?"

"The company told the families something. Nobody remembers what. My gran knew some of the wives. She said it kept them quiet for years. By the time anybody thought to check, nobody could remember who'd started it."

That's how it always goes. It's the first thing they teach you at the Rumour Desk. The dangerous lies are the ones that get so old nobody remembers they were made up.

"What do people say now?" I said.

"The men of Pit Nine never came up," said Ansel, "because they're still working."

The train rattled. Tobin had stopped counting.

"So when the whistle blows," said Pim, "you look busy."

"That's the rule everyone knows."

"Is there one they don't?"

Ansel turned and looked at him for a long time. Then he turned back to the window.

"This is my third time," he said. "Thirty's the limit. I'm thirty in March."

He didn't answer the question.

Near the end of the line, Gus Pell spoke to the rest of us for the first time.

"Which of you are from the Sumps?"

We looked at each other. Tobin put his hand up, like at school. So did Pim. After a moment, so did I.

Gus nodded slowly.

"Go home," he said.

"Excuse me?" said Bea.

"I'm not being clever. Every year they take people from the Sumps because the Sumps needs the money. And every year I go to the funerals, because my family pays for them. I've been to eleven. You don't know what's down there."

"You've been to eleven funerals," said Pim, "and you think that makes you nice?"

"I think it makes me right."

"I've had four years of training," I said.

"Training's for classrooms," said Gus.

It went quiet. Bea looked like she wanted to hit him with what was left of the loaf.

I thought he was a snob. I still do. But he'd said eleven like a man who had counted every one.

Later, Bea leaned across to me.

"Can I ask what you can do? Your power."

Witnesses don't love that question. It's like asking someone how much money they have. But Bea asked it kindly, as if there wasn't a wrong answer.

"Contradiction," I said. "I say 'That isn't true,' and a rule stops working. For about a second."

From the far end of the carriage, Gus laughed, short and dry.

"How often does it work?" said Bea.

"About one time in five."

"Five times in five," said Tobin, loudly, "when it counts."

Everyone looked at him.

"That's not a rumour," he said to me, before I could say anything. "It's an opinion. Opinions are legal."

I didn't have anything clever to say back. He grinned, and I found I was smiling too.

We got off at a stop with no name on the sign. There was one platform, one Warden truck, and a cold wind coming off the hills.

"Eight on the list," said the Warden driving the truck, counting us. He frowned. "You're six. Other two are coming up from the east line."

The Harrow Hills are low and brown and rounded. The truck took us up a rutted road for twenty minutes, and then the road stopped, and there it was.

Pit Nine.

There isn't much to see from the top. A rusted iron winding wheel up on its frame. A brick engine house with no glass in the windows. A wooden shed. A chain fence, newer than the rest, with Warden notices hung along it. Off to one side, a big canvas tent with lamplight inside.

And the smell. Wet coal. It got into the back of my throat and stayed.

"It's quiet," said Bea.

Nobody answered her. Tobin was counting the spokes of the winding wheel under his breath. Gus had one hand on the strap of his canvas case. Ansel stood very still, looking at the wheel.

Then the whistle blew.

It came from the engine house. A long, high shriek, the sound a pit whistle makes before a shift. Every crow on the hillside went up at once.

There was nobody in the engine house. There hadn't been anybody in the engine house for sixty years.

The whistle stopped. The crows came back down. And from somewhere under our feet, very faintly, I heard what sounded like a lot of men picking up their tools.

"That's the first whistle," said Ansel. "One hour."