The Black Mountains Read Free Page B

to the steep street.
    â€œThis is it,” she said, excitement making her bold. “ This is where you can find me.”
    â€œThen I can see you again?”
    â€œIf my aunt allows it. But I expect I can get round her,” she added.
    â€œI should do something about this if I were you.” He pointed to the hair she had quite forgotten to re-pin. “I don’t want to get the blame for something that isn’t my fault. And no more wandering about the streets on your own, do you hear? From now on, I’ll take care of you, all right?”
    He had been as good as his word. He had courted her with a gentleness that had surprised her, and when he proposed marriage, her father had reluctantly agreed. He hadn’t much cared for the idea of his only daughter becoming the wife of a miner, but for all that; he liked the quiet pitman well enough.
    So Charlotte and James were married, and she moved into a world that seemed to have a romance of its own. She was fascinated by the dark and dusty workings that were reached by means of leafy lanes, and the black batches rising out of the green fields had, she thought, a regal dignity. As for the men who worked in the unknown places beneath the earth, they were her heroes, and when she watched them walk in twos and threes across the colliery yard, sinews hard and taut beneath their working shirts and rushyduck trousers, she was proud to be the wife of one of them.
    She had closed her eyes to the bent shoulders and stooping posture of the older men, ignored their phlegmy coughs and turned her head as they spat into the gutter. To her, the lung disease meant nothing. Even the pit accidents she heard about seemed more romantic than tragic, on a par with soldiers’ lives lost in battle.
    When she first began to learn of the indignities a miner could suffer, she had refused to believe. She had actually laughed when James told her about the duties of a carting boy, for it was beyond her comprehension that anyone could expect a lad to pull a sleigh fill of coal by means of a circle of tarred rope around his waist, while crawling on his hands and knees along the narrow and sometimes steep seams.
    â€œJust because I don’t know anything about it, you think you can make a fool of me,” she had said, and to convince her, James had called in a young lad from further down the rank who had called in young lad from further down the rank who had recently started work as a carting boy.
    She had stared in horror when he had pulled up his shirt to reveal a raw and bleeding band of flesh around his waist where the rope had cut into it.
    â€œThat’s terrible” she cried, outraged. “They shouldn’t allow it! If the roadways aren’t big enough for tubs then they should make them big enough!”
    But to her surprise, James had merely shrugged.
    â€œIf they spent too much money, the pit wouldn’t pay, and we’d all be out of a job,” he told her calmly. “Besides, the lads soon get used to it.”
    â€œI don’t believe it!” she said harshly sickened, yet unable to tear her eyes away from the red raw flesh. “Look at his poor back! You can’t tell me he’ll ever get used to that!”
    â€œIt’ll harden. We’ve all been through it.” James turned to the lad, pulling his shirt across the sore. “Bathing it with urine, are you, son? That’s the best way. But I expect your father has already told you that.”
    Charlotte had been as shocked by James’ easy acceptance as she had been by the boy’s raw back, and that night as they prepared for bed in the small room above the parlour, she found herself looking closely at James’ waist. To her surprise, she saw that there was no circular scar. But for the first time she took notice of the blue veinings that stood out places, one short, thick and ridged along side his left shoulder blade, one longer and shaped like a curled rope