Look Busy

They came out of the tunnels slowly, like men with a long day ahead of them.

On the train I'd thought I knew what to expect. Dead miners. Grey faces, empty eyes, maybe a skeleton. Something out of a ghost story.

They were just men. Working men in heavy jackets, with their trousers tied at the knee with string, the way it was done sixty years ago. Flat caps under their helmets. A tin box hanging from each belt. Boots worn round at the toes. They carried their picks and shovels on their shoulders and walked without hurrying.

The only wrong thing was their faces.

They didn't have any. Where a face should be there was coal dust. Not smudges. A thick, smooth layer of it, black from the hairline to the chin. No eyes. No mouth. Only the lamp on the helmet above it, burning yellow, pointing wherever the man was looking.

They were looking at us.

"Work," said Ansel quietly. "Now."

He already was. He'd turned to a full coal cart and was shovelling from it into the empty cart beside it, steady and even, as if he'd done it ten thousand times. Hester was next to him, shovelling much too fast.

The rest of us stood there for one more second. Then we all started at once.

I shovelled coal from one side of a cart into the other side of the same cart. Bea scraped at the brick wall with the edge of her shovel. Tobin hacked at a lump of coal on the floor with his little pick.

Pim was shovelling air.

He'd grabbed a shovel off the rack and dropped his pick, and he was digging into nothing and throwing it over his shoulder. Scoop. Throw. Scoop. Throw.

"Pim," I whispered.

"I'm working."

The nearest miner was about ten feet away. His lamp was pointed straight at Pim, and it stayed there.

I didn't breathe.

Then the lamp moved on. It slid across Bea, and across Tobin, and across me, and away. The miner turned, took hold of an empty cart, and pushed it off into the dark.

All down the tunnels, the lamps were turning away. They'd seen us working. That was enough.

The Shift had gone back to its day. That's what Ansel called them, the Shift, as if all of them together were one thing.

"Put some coal on that," said Ansel, without looking round.

Pim looked at his empty shovel. Slowly, he dug it into the cart and came up with a real load. He held it like it had betrayed him.

"They're not stupid," said Ansel. "They're miners."

Across the room, by the far wall, the trial warden was shovelling too.

I'd thought Wardens would have some trick, some Law that let them stand around taking notes while everyone else worked. But Tamsin had a shovel, and she was moving coal from one heap to another as steadily as Ansel. Every few scoops she stopped for one second, wrote something in her book, and went back to work before a lamp could settle on her.

She caught me watching. I looked away and shovelled harder.

Ansel didn't explain much. He just worked, and every so often he'd nod at something and say a word for it, the way you'd point things out to a child on a walk.

"Don't stand under that face," he said once, and when Pim said "What face?" he pointed his shovel at the wall the miners were digging. "That. Where they cut. It comes down sometimes." Pim moved about ten feet.

When Bea looked at the box hanging from the nearest miner's belt, Ansel said, "Crib tin. Your lunch. You eat it at crib. That's your break, middle of the shift. Every one of them has one. My dad had one the same."

"Your dad was a miner?" said Bea.

"Yes," said Ansel. He didn't say anything more about it.

"Where's the lamp room?" I said.

"Bottom of the main drift. A long way down." He tipped his head at the widest tunnel, the one with rails running into it. "That's the drift. A drift's just a tunnel that slopes. I got close, last time."

"What happened?"

He looked at Hester, shovelling beside him, white as paper.

"I'll take the east side," he said. "Too many of us in one place and they look harder. You four follow the rails. Keep your hands moving."

He and Hester went off into the right-hand tunnel together, scraping at the walls as they walked. I watched their lamps get smaller until I couldn't see them.

At the Rumour Desk you learn a few things about people. One of them is this: if you walk into a building carrying a ladder, nobody stops you. You've got a ladder. You must be meant to be there.

"We need a cart," I said.

"We've got a cart," said Pim.

"No. We need to push one. Down the rails, all the way to the bottom. If we're pushing a cart, we're working the whole time."

Bea thought about it. "That's clever," she said.

So we pushed a full coal cart down the main drift, two on each side, leaning into it. The wheels shrieked on the old rails. It was very heavy, and very slow.

The miners moved round us. Their lamps touched us and slid away. Touched us and slid away.

"I'm working," Tobin whispered every time one came near. "I'm working. I'm working."

Nobody told him to stop.

There were signs on the walls of the main drift.

Old enamel signs, white letters on red, screwed into the brick. Most were filthy. Some had rusted half away. I read them all. It's a habit. If there's writing on a wall, I've read it before I've decided to.

SAFETY FIRST. A CAREFUL MAN GOES HOME TO HIS SUPPER.

NO SMOKING BELOW THE GATE.

NO MAN TO LEAVE BEFORE THE WHISTLE.

That one was cleaner than the others. Saul had told us to read it. I read it twice.

Further down there was a long one in smaller letters. I leaned in as we pushed past.

WAGES PAID AT THE END OF EACH SHIFT TO MEN ON THE BOOKS.

THE FOREMAN MAY NOT WITHHOLD A MAN'S PAY.

Only if you're on the books, son.

So it hadn't just been a joke. Or it had been a joke, and Saul had known what it was a joke about. There were books down here, somewhere. Somebody kept them. Some men were on them.

We weren't.

I took out my notebook while Pim and Tobin pushed, and wrote at the bottom of the page: Books. Wages. Foreman. Who keeps the books?

"You're writing," said Pim.

"I'm thinking."

"Think while you push."

I put the notebook away and pushed.

It got colder further down. The drift sloped gently, and the brick walls gave way to bare black coal that glittered where the lamps touched it.

We passed miners working faces, swinging picks into the wall with slow, even strokes. Their tins swung at their belts.

One of them had his tin open, hanging by its hinge. Bea saw it first. She leaned to look as we went past, then went quiet.

"It's bread," she said. "Bread and cheese. And an apple."

"So?"

"It's fresh, Iven. The bread's soft."

Sixty years down here, and somebody was still packing his lunch.

We pushed the cart on without talking.

At some point, Tobin stopped pushing.

I didn't notice when. I was watching the rails. Then the cart got heavier on his side, and I looked up, and Tobin was standing in the middle of the drift with his hands hanging at his sides, looking down a side tunnel.

His lips were moving. He was counting.

There was a gallery down that side tunnel, a big open space where they cut the coal, full of miners, all working, all their lamps bobbing. He'd seen them, and he'd started counting, and he hadn't been able to stop.

"Tobin," I said.

"Thirty-eight," said Tobin. "Thirty-nine."

A lamp turned toward him. It stayed.

I count when I'm scared. So I counted.

One.

The miner who owned the lamp put down his pick.

Two. Three.

He turned his whole body toward Tobin. The black nothing where his face should be.

Four.

Five.

Other lamps were turning. Another, and another, four of them, coming to rest on Tobin one after another.

Six.

"Tobin," said Bea.

He didn't hear her. He was still counting.

Seven.

The first miner took a step toward him. Then another.

Eight.

I let go of the cart, grabbed my shovel, and shoved it into Tobin's hands so hard it knocked the breath out of him.

Nine.

"Dig," I said.

He dug. He jammed the shovel into the floor and threw coal dust at the wall, and did it again, and again. His face was white.

The miner stood there.

Then his lamp moved away. He went back and picked up his pick. One by one, the other lamps turned away too.

I bent and took Tobin's little pick off the ground. My hands were shaking. I put them back on the cart so nobody would see.

Tobin was still digging. He didn't stop for a long time. Then he did, and leaned on the shovel, and looked at me.

"How long was that?"

"Nine. Heartbeats."

He swallowed.

"I was at forty-one," he said. "Lamps. I couldn't stop."

"Count in your head next time."

"I was counting in my head."

"Then with your mouth shut."

"I don't know how to do that," said Tobin. He didn't say it like a joke. He said it like it was true, and like he was sorry.

Then, quieter: "You came and got me."

"You were in the way of the cart."

"No, I wasn't," said Tobin.

He picked up the shovel and went back to pushing. He didn't say anything else about it. But every time a lamp came near us for the rest of that drift, he looked at me first.

We kept going down. Nobody talked.

The drift got wider and taller and colder. Then, up ahead, for the first time since we'd come down the shaft, there was a light that wasn't a lamp.

White and steady. An electric bulb, hanging on a wire from the roof of a huge gallery. The only electric light in the mine.

Under it stood a tall wooden desk, the kind a clerk stands at. At the desk, very straight, stood a tall, thin man in a long company coat.

He had a pocket watch on a chain across his waistcoat. He had a big leather ledger open in front of him. He was reading out names, one at a time, in a dry, careful voice that carried all the way down the drift.

He turned a page, and the light fell across him, and I saw his face.

He was the only man in Pit Nine who had one.