Chapter 5
Roll Call
He had a clean face.
That's a strange thing to be frightened of. But after an hour of miners with only coal dust where their faces should be, a clean face was the worst thing I'd seen all day.
It was long and thin and pale, as if he hadn't been in the sun for a long time, which I suppose he hadn't. A neat grey moustache. Small round glasses. A high white collar. He stood like a man who had never once been late in his life.
The Foreman. I'd read his name on the wages sign. I'd have known him anyway. You can always tell who's in charge.
"Albert Hoyle," he read.
Across the gallery, a miner raised his hand.
"Here," said the miner.
I hadn't heard one of them speak before. The voice came out of that smooth black nothing, low and grinding, like coal going down a chute.
The Foreman made a small mark in the ledger.
"Samuel Kett."
"Here."
"Walter Bryce."
"Here."
So that was the books.
We'd stopped at the mouth of the gallery with our cart. We were still pushing it a few inches forward and a few inches back, so we'd look like we were working. My arms were shaking.
Tamsin was a little way behind us, scraping at the drift wall. She'd followed us all the way down and never once come close.
The gallery was huge. My lamp couldn't find the roof. Coal faces ran along both sides, cut into steps, with miners standing on every step, maybe fifty of them, their tools on their shoulders, their lamps pointed at the Foreman.
Behind his desk was a gate.
A big iron gate, the full width of the tunnel that ran on past it. Past it, the rails dropped steeply into the dark. There was an enamel sign bolted to the top bar.
NO MAN NOT ON THE BOOKS PAST THIS GATE.
As each name was read, the miner who answered walked to the gate. It swung open for him on its own, without a sound. He went through, and it closed behind him.
"That's the way down," I said quietly. "To the lamp room."
"And you have to be on the books to go through," said Bea.
"We aren't," said Pim.
"No."
"So what do we do?"
I didn't know. I pushed the cart forward an inch, and back an inch.
"Frederick Wren."
"Here."
He read thirty-one names. I counted. He only read out the ones going down past the gate. The other twenty or so stayed on the steps to work the gallery face. Thirty-one men went through the gate, and it closed behind each of them. Then the Foreman shut his ledger with a soft thump that went round the gallery.
He hadn't read our names. Some stupid part of me had been waiting for it. As if our names might be in there somewhere.
The Foreman took the watch from his waistcoat, checked it, and put it back. He tucked the ledger under his arm and walked away through a small wooden door in the side of the gallery.
The miners who were left, twenty or so, turned back to the coal and lifted their picks.
One of them, high on the second step, put down his pick and took something else from his belt. A short brown stick with a long string coming out of one end.
He pushed it into a hole in the coal.
"Oh no," said Tobin.
"What?"
"My uncle worked the quarries. That's a shot."
The miner pulled a little brass cap off the end of the string. It hissed and caught. A small red spark began to move along it.
From somewhere inside that smooth black face, he shouted:
"FIRING."
Every miner in the gallery stopped work.
They didn't hurry, exactly. They dropped their tools and turned and walked, fast and in order, to the gate. It swung open for every one of them, because every one of them was on the books.
We weren't.
"Back up the drift," said Bea. "Run."
"If we stop working..."
"They're not looking at us, Iven. They're leaving."
She was right. Every lamp was on the gate. The spark was eating its way along the string.
How far up the drift would be far enough? I didn't know. I didn't know how big a shot was. But I could see how the miners were walking. They weren't going a little way off. They were going through the gate, all of them, and not looking back.
The last one went through. The gate started to swing shut.
I let go of the cart and ran at it.
I didn't decide to. If I'd stopped to decide, I'd have run the other way. Bea and Pim and Tobin came after me, and the gate was swinging, and it was iron and it was heavy, and it slammed shut right in front of my face.
The sign caught my lamp.
NO MAN NOT ON THE BOOKS PAST THIS GATE.
Behind us, the spark had a foot of string left. Maybe less.
I put my hand on the bars. The iron was freezing.
"That isn't true," I said.
Nothing happened.
That's what usually happens. It only works one time in five. Most of the time I say it and nothing notices.
"That isn't true."
Nothing.
"Iven," said Pim. His voice had gone high.
It works better when I mean it. I've known that for years. Knowing it has never once helped.
I shut my eyes. I thought about the gate and the rule in it. I thought about how stupid the rule was. It was a gate. Gates open. That's what they're for. The sign was just a sign, a lie somebody had screwed to a bit of iron, and I'd been fining people for lies since I was nineteen.
"That," I said, "isn't true."
The sign flickered.
The white letters on the red went soft and blurred, like wet ink, and for one heartbeat they didn't say anything at all.
And the gate forgot it was locked.
I felt it go loose under my hand. I shoved. It swung, and I fell through onto the slope beyond, and Bea fell on top of me, and Pim on top of her, and Tobin came last, tripped over all of us, and went rolling down the rails. Right behind him, before the gate could swing back, Tamsin stepped through the gap.
Behind us the gate clanged shut.
Behind that, the gallery blew up.
I don't know how long we lay there. I couldn't hear anything except a high ringing. Dust came through the bars in a grey wall and rolled over us, and I couldn't see and couldn't breathe, and somebody was coughing very hard right next to my ear. I think it was me.
When it cleared, I was on my back on the rails, looking up at the roof, which was still there.
"Everyone alive?" said Bea.
"No," said Pim.
"Tobin?"
"Here," said Tobin from further down the slope. His voice was shaking. "I'm here."
Pim crawled over and sat next to me. He was grey with dust from head to foot.
"It worked," he said. "Iven. That was one of the one times."
"I know."
"Third go. That's better than one in five."
"I know."
He didn't say anything else. He just sat there next to me and breathed, and so did I.
A little way up the slope, just inside the gate, a tall figure stood in the settling dust. Black coat. A shovel in one hand and a small book in the other.
She'd seen everything.
Tamsin looked down the slope at me. She didn't write anything. After a moment she put the book away.
We sat on the rails and drank our water and coughed.
"When we get out," said Pim, "I'm buying you a pie. From Hobb's. Two pies."
I looked at him.
"Who's Hobb?"
Pim stopped with his flask halfway to his mouth.
"Hobb's," he said. "On Canal Street. Meat pies. You walk past it every night. You talk about it all the time."
"I don't like meat pies."
"You love meat pies."
"I like fried fish."
He looked at me. I knew that look. It's the look people give me afterwards.
I took out my notebook. My hands were black. I wiped them on my trousers and found the page.
7. Favourite food: Hobb's meat pies, Canal Street.
My handwriting. Neat, the way I write things I want to keep.
I read it twice.
Hobb's. Canal Street. I tried to see it. A shop, a window, a smell. Nothing came. There was a space where it should be, and the space was the shape of a shop, and there was no shop in it.
And I like fried fish. I know I do. Hot oil and vinegar and salt, wrapped in newspaper, eaten on the harbour wall. That's my favourite food. It always has been.
It always has been.
I crossed out line seven. I pressed hard.
7. Favourite food: Hobb's meat pies, Canal Street.
Under it I wrote:
7. Favourite food: fried fish. (The old line said pies. Pim says pies too. I don't remember any pies. I like fish.)
"What did it take?" Bea asked gently.
"Something small. It's fine. That's what it does."
"Is it always food?"
"No."
She didn't ask what else it had been. She put a hand on my shoulder for a second, and then took it away.
That was when the Foreman came back.
Not through the gate. Above us, a wooden walkway ran along the wall of the tunnel, high up. A small door opened onto it, and the Foreman stepped out with the ledger under his arm. He walked slowly along the planks, looking down at the rails, a man checking that the work had been done.
We all went still.
He walked until he was right above us. Then he stopped and looked down.
Not at Bea. Not at Pim. Not at Tobin, who was closest.
At me.
His eyes behind the round glasses were grey and tired.
"Don't look," he said.
His voice was dry and quiet and exact. The voice of a man reading out a rule.
Then he stopped. He frowned. He looked like someone who'd walked into a room and forgotten why.
He opened the ledger and ran one long finger down the page. He turned to the next page and did it again. Then he went back to the first page and checked it one more time.
He closed the ledger, looked at me once more, and went on along the walkway and through another small door, and was gone.
Nobody spoke for a while.
"Don't look," said Tobin at last. "Don't look at what?"
Nobody had an answer.
I was looking at my notebook. I'd been about to put it away, and my thumb had slipped, and it had fallen open near the back. The old pages. The second-hand ones, full of somebody else's writing in faded brown ink. The ones I'd never read.
I read them now.
Most of it was too faded. Numbers. Lists. Half a sentence here and there, worn away along the folds. The page my thumb had found was torn along the bottom, and stained, and the brown ink had gone almost the colour of the paper.
In the middle of it, on their own, were two words. Written hard, as if whoever wrote them had wanted them to last.
Don't look.
I knew the handwriting.
It was mine. The way I make my D, with the little hook at the top. The way my k leans over. I've written like that my whole life.
I don't remember writing it.