The Pull

"Bea," said Pim, gently. "Tom was a soldier."

She opened her eyes. She looked at him as if he'd said something rude in church.

"I know Tom was a soldier," she said. "I'm not stupid."

"You said..."

"I know what I said." She sat up a bit, and her face went tight when the leg moved. "He was a soldier. He marched up the north road, and the land came over it in the night, and he didn't come out. Six years ago, in March." She stopped. "And he came up the hill every night at half past six with his tin on his belt, and his face all black, and I had his tea on the table. Every night. I can see him."

Nobody said anything.

"I can see both," said Bea. "That's the thing. I can see him in his uniform on the platform with his kitbag. And I can see him at the gate with his tin." She held the watch tight in her lap. "I've got two of him now. I don't know which one to keep."

Her voice didn't crack.

I didn't know what to say to her. I've talked my way past more angry people than anyone I know. I've talked a man out of hitting me with a chair. And I sat on the floor of the tally office with my nice new lamp and couldn't think of one thing to say to Bea Marsh.

After a bit I got up and said I wanted a look at the lamp station.

It was a lie. I'm good at them. Mags looked up from her notebook as I went past, and I could see her decide not to say so.

I opened the second door.

Tamsin was out on the station, a few yards from the door, pushing an empty cart an inch forward and an inch back. Her shovel was across the top of it. Miners went past her both ways, and their lamps touched her moving hands and went on.

I don't know how long she'd been there. Long enough that her arms had a shake in them.

She saw the door open and saw it was me. Her face didn't do anything. She took her shovel off the cart and came in past me, scraping the floor with it as she walked, and went straight to the hooks without a word, and took down a tally and started polishing it on her sleeve, where the lamp-man could see her hands.

I shut the door behind her.

For a while it was quiet.

Then Bea said, "My Tom worked the haulage," the same fond voice, to nobody, and Pim shut his eyes.

Tamsin didn't look round. She went on polishing, and said, in the voice she'd used at the briefing to tell us the rules:

"Your husband was a soldier, Mrs. Marsh. Thomas Marsh. Sixth company of the Northern Rifles. He marched the north road out of Callan on the ninth of March, six years ago, and the road wasn't there in the morning. Eleven came out. He wasn't one of them."

She hung the tally back on its hook and took down the next one.

Bea looked at her back for a long time.

"The ninth of March," she said.

"Yes."

"He had a cold. He'd had it all week." Bea's hand came up and touched her own throat. "I'd forgotten that. I made him take a scarf."

"I don't know about the scarf," said Tamsin. "The rest is in your file."

Bea said it again, quietly, the ninth of March, and held on to it. She didn't say anything about the haulage after that. Not for an hour, anyway.

I watched Tamsin polish. She'd known it all, the regiment, the date, the town, without looking anything up. She'd read eight files before the trial, I suppose, and kept every word. I'd seen her book. I didn't think she'd needed it for that.

I didn't thank her. But I kept watching her after.

By four o'clock Ansel's hands wouldn't stop.

It had been the lump of coal at first. Then he'd put the coal down, and his fingers had gone on turning nothing. Then they started doing something else, both hands together, a short swing and a pull, again and again, in his lap. A pick. He was swinging a pick that wasn't there.

He saw me looking. He looked down at his hands as if they were somebody else's.

"That's my dad," he said. "That's how my dad's hands went, at the kitchen table. After a shift. He couldn't stop them either." He put them under his legs and sat on them. "I never once swung a pick in my life. I picked stone."

"It's the book," said Mags.

We all looked at her. She didn't look up from her notebook.

"We're down the pit," she said. "Ansel said it." She turned a page. "It's having us a bit at a time."

Pim had started humming again. He heard himself this time, halfway through, and stopped, and put his hand over his own mouth. Above his hand his eyes were frightened.

"I don't even like singing," he said, through his fingers.

Gus couldn't sit still. He'd get up and walk to the hooks, and walk back, and sit, and get up again. At half past four he picked up one of the short props from the stack by the door, and stood holding it, and looked round for somewhere to put it up.

"It's not right," he said. "Sitting. Not in a shift. It's not right."

"Gus," said Bea.

He looked at the prop in his hands. Then he put it down very carefully, as if it might bite, and sat on the floor and didn't get up again.

Mags was the only one of us who seemed the same. She sat with her back to the wall and wrote, the way she'd written all night, small and fast. No humming, no hands, no husband. I couldn't decide if that was good.

Tamsin was still at the hooks, on her third row.

And me.

I felt fine. I felt better than I had since the train. I had a lamp and a place on the wall and a name in the book, and nothing in Pit Nine was looking at me, and I felt fine.

"Five o'clock," said Bea, at last. She was looking at her watch. "Tom'll be..." She stopped, and shut her mouth, and opened it again. "Iven. It's five."

The shift ended at six. The wages were paid at the end of the shift. And at six, Pit Nine set, with every man who was down the pit still down it. To get to the desk we had to go through the air door, up the main road, round the curve, up the slope, through the gate. Half an hour, pushing Bea. Tamsin would have to go the long way again, alone.

We'd have to leave soon. I said so. Nobody moved yet.

I got my notebook out.

Mrs. Odell had taught me to do it. When things are going strange, she said, read your list. If your power takes something, Marlow, you'll want to know what it took. I hadn't used the power since Tobin. But Bea had two husbands and Ansel had his dad's hands, and I wanted to see my own list in my own writing.

So I read it, by my own lamp.

1. My name is Iven Marlow.

Yes.

8. I hate the smell of wet coal.

I'd been breathing wet coal for twenty-three hours. I still hated it. That was something.

19. When I'm scared I count things.

Forty steps, at crib. Yes.

30. If I forget something, it's in here. Trust the notebook.

They were all there. All thirty, and the old crossed-out line about the pies, and Monday's pages after them, in pencil, the bits I'd written at the change and by the bulb. I turned to the last page I'd used, the one where I'd written Tobin's line, to look at it, and stopped.

At the bottom of the page, under everything, there was one more line.

It was in my handwriting. The same lean, the same loops on the l's, the hand I use for fines.

I'll be home for supper.

I didn't remember writing it.