The White Horse of Zennor Read Free Page A

little to do it on. She does her best. You mustn’t keep on at her so. It upsets her. She does her best.’
    â€˜So she does, lad, so she does. And so for that matter do I, but that don’t stop her moaning at me and it’ll not stop me moaning at her. If we didn’t moan at each other, lad, we’d have precious little else to talk about, and that’sa fact. She expects of it me, lad, and I expects it of her.’
    â€˜Excuse me,’ Cherry said tentatively. She felt she had eavesdropped for long enough. She approached them slowly. ‘Excuse me, but I’ve got a bit lost. I climbed the cliff, you see, ’cos I was cut off from the Cove. I was trying to get back, but I couldn’t and I saw this light and so I climbed up. I want to get home and I wondered if you could help me get to the top?’
    â€˜Top?’ said the older one, peering into the dark. ‘Come closer, lad, where we can see you.’
    â€˜She’s not a lad, Father. Are you blind? Can you not see ’tis a filly. ’Tis a young filly, all wet through from the sea. Come,’ the young man said, standing up and beckoning Cherry in. ‘Don’t be afeared, little girl, we shan’t harm you. Come on, you can have some of my tea if you like.’
    They spoke their words in a manner Cherry had never heard before. It was not the usual Cornish burr, but heavier and rougher in tone, more old-fashioned somehow. There were so many questions in her mind.
    â€˜But I thought the mine was closed a hundred years ago,’ she said nervously. ‘That’s what I was told, anyway.’
    â€˜Well, you was told wrong,’ said the old man, whom Cherry could see more clearly now under his candle. His eyes were white and set far back in his head, unnaturally so, she thought, and his lips and mouth seemed a vivid red in the candlelight.
    â€˜Closed, closed indeed, does it look closed to you? D’you think we’re digging for worms? Over four thousand tons of tin last year and nine thousand of copper ore, and you ask is the mine closed? Over twenty fathoms below the sea this mine goes. We’ll dig right out under the ocean, halfway to ’Merica afore we close down this mine.’
    He spoke passionately now, almost angrily, so that Cherry felt she had offended him.
    â€˜Hush, Father,’ said the young man taking off his jacket and wrapping it round Cherry’s shoulders. ‘She doesn’t want to hear all about that. She’s cold and wet. Can’t you see? Now let’s make a little fire to warm her through. She’s shivered right through to her bones. You can see she is.’
    â€˜They all are,’ said the old tinner pulling himself to his feet. ‘They all are.’ And he shuffled past her into thedark. ‘I’ll fetch the wood,’ he muttered, and then added, ‘for all the good it’ll do.’
    â€˜What does he mean?’ Cherry asked the young man, for whom she felt an instant liking. ‘What did he mean by that?’
    â€˜Oh pay him no heed, little girl,’ he said. ‘He’s an old man now and tired of the mine. We’re both tired of it, but we’re proud of it see, and we’ve nowhere else to go, nothing else to do.’
    He had a kind voice that was reassuring to Cherry. He seemed somehow to know the questions she wanted to ask, for he answered them now without her ever asking.
    â€˜Sit down by me while you listen, girl,’ he said. ‘Father will make a fire to warm you and I shall tell you how we come to be here. You won’t be afeared now, will you?’
    Cherry looked up into his face which was younger than she had expected from his voice; but like his father’s, the eyes seemed sad and deep set, yet they smiled at her gently and she smiled back.
    â€˜That’s my girl. It was a new mine this, promisingeveryone said. The best tin in Cornwall and that means the best tin in the world.