The Black Mountains Read Free

would have finished blasting, and the yards that were alive throughout the daylight hours with busy men calling to one another, with hauliers’ horses and carts queuing at the screens for their loads of coal and tubs shunting on the sidings, would be silent and ghost like in the white light of the moon.
    This, she recalled, was almost exactly the way she remembered first seeing Hillsbridge, and to her had seemed to be endowed with a special kind of romance.
    She had been seventeen years old, and too much in love to feel outrage at the cancerous black growth on the green Somerset countryside. Twenty-five pits, the coal veins had thrown up, and around them had grown the mining villages, clusters of small, grimy houses obtruding into rich, undulating farmland and overlooked by those mountainous mounds of coal waste, the batches.
    Hillsbridge was the largest of these villages, centre of the coal field and even dirtier than the rest. But to her it had been a magic place.
    The batches had looked like black mountains, girdled with fir trees on their lower slopes and rising round and sombre or long and ridge-like against the violet sky. They were, she had thought, like guardian hills of an enchanted valley, and a trickle of warm excitement had made her tighten her grip on the arm of the young man beside her.
    â€œOh, James,” she said. “ I think it’s wonderful!”
    Charlotte Morris was the daughter of a regular soldier, but Hillsbridge was quite unlike any other place she had know. Since her mother had died, three years earlier, she had lived with an elderly aunt in Bath. But nine miles of open countryside separated the city from Hillsbridge, which had a bad name with the people of Bath. The miners, they reckoned, were a ‘rough lot’. And they kept as far away from them as possible.
    One night in the autumn of 1891, Charlotte had to stay later than usual at the draper’s shop where she worked. They had been stock-taking, and it was past nine when she finally escaped, tired and footsore. But her relief was short-lived. As the door closed after her, she saw a gang of youths coming up the street towards her, and from the way they were dressed and their rowdy milling about she recognized them instantly as Hillsbridge miners.
    Alarmed, she drew back into the shop doorway, but it had been locked behind her, and offered no escape.
    The gang of youths was getting closer, shouting and singing ribald songs. A nauseous knot of panic formed in her throat, but she knew that to show fear was the worst thing she could do and she made herself leave the trap of the doorway and walk firmly towards them.
    The first group parted to let her through, and, heart thumping, she passed them. But the following group fanned out across the pavement, blocking her way, and as she moved to one side they moved too, cheering and jeering.
    â€œHey-ey! Look what we’ve got here, lads!”
    â€œNot bad, eh?”
    â€œDon’t be in such a hurry, sweetheart!”
    Charlotte drew herself up tight. Fear was making her tremble, but the last thing she wanted was for them to see it.
    â€œLet me pass!” she said.
    But they only laughed, closing in around her. Even the first group had come back now to join in the fun.
    â€œI like your hair, sweetheart. That’s all right, that is!” The tallest of the lads made a grab for one of her combs, and before she could stop them, thick honey-coloured curls had tumbled down one side of her heads.
    â€œHow dare you!” she cried, angry now as well as frightened. “ If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll call a policeman!”
    The lads laughed in delight.
    â€œThat won’t do you much good. They’re all in a fight down by the railway station,” one told her, and the tall lad who had pulled out her comb reached down to tweak at her skirt.
    â€œGot pretty ankles, too, have you?” he leered.
    Tears of panic pricked at Charlotte’s