face went bright scarlet. Conscious suddenly of the inquisitive faces around them, she whispered, ‘Will we have babies? Would you like that?’
For once, his grey-green eyes were neither opaque nor seeing beyond her. She was fully there, in the centre of his gaze, and she thought it was the happiest moment she had ever known.
‘Yes,’ Nick said. ‘Oh yes, I would like that. And I’d like to be able to give them something too. Something more than just enough to eat, and boots for their feet.’
‘We’ll do it,’ she promised him. She rested her head against his shoulder and he kissed the top of it protectively.
‘I wish,’ he murmured against her hair, ‘I wish we were married already. I want to take you home with me now, to my own bed. No sand. Just you and me, under the covers in the dark. Or no, in the light. So I can see you.’
‘Nick.’ Mari was stifling her laughter. ‘Hush, now. People can hear.’
Their arms were still wrapped round each other when they stepped off the train at Maerdy. Because they didn’t have eyes for anyone else, they didn’t see the shocked and anxious faces on the platform, nor did they hear the buzz of subdued talk that greeted the other passengers.
Nick surrendered their return tickets to the collector at the barrier without a glance, and they began the walk up the valley, still insulated by their happiness. Later, Mari tried to remember what they had talked about, and couldn’t remember any of it except Nick’s low voice, for no one but herself to hear, his arm around her, and his hand over her breast in the safe cover of darkness.
Then they came to the curve of the road, the point where they had started to run for the train only this morning, and they saw the lights.
All the lights were blazing at the Nantlas No. 1 pithead, even though the night shift should have been safely down long ago. If all was well, the only lights showing would be in the winding house where the night surface team manned the lifting gear, and in the little square window of the shift manager’s office. Yet tonight every single window was lit up, and there were other lights too, hand-held because they were bobbing about in the blackness.
In the moment that Nick and Mari stood together at the bend in the valley road, two huge searchlights came on and snuffed out the torches.
Nick had seen those lights before. They were brought to the pithead and erected on hastily assembled scaffolding to assist the rescue workers. He was already running.
Mari’s bewilderment lasted only a split second longer. ‘Explosion.’ She caught the word that Nick shouted back at her over his shoulder as no more than an echo of her own shrill scream. She began to run too, slipping and stumbling in the darkness on the rough road.
Nick was way ahead of her, moving much faster, and then she lost sight of him. But when she came gasping up to the silent crowd waiting at the colliery gates she saw him immediately, right up against the gates, his fists clamped on the bars.
He was shouting, and kicking against the solid ironwork. ‘Let me in. Let me in. Cruickshank, is that you? Open these bloody gates. Do you hear? Open them, you bastard.’
Mari elbowed and jostled her way through the crowd and reached Nick’s side just as Cruickshank, the pit manager, appeared beyond the gates.
‘Ah. Nick Penry, is it? Well then, you’d better come in and add your two penn’orth, for all the difference it’ll make.’
The gates creaked open and Mari slipped in behind Nick before they clanged shut again. Neither of the men paid any attention to her whatsoever, and she moved quickly into the shadow of a low wall.
‘How many?’ Nick said.
Cruickshank shrugged awkwardly. ‘Thirty, from the night book. Maybe one or two more, unofficial.’
Even Mari knew what ‘unofficial’ meant. For safety reasons, only an agreed number of men was allowed to work any given seam at any given time. But if extra men were willing to go in, working the awkward places unacknowledged and for less money than their official counterparts, the managers were glad to let them do it and to keep their names off the books. It meant more coal for less money in less time, after all. It was one of the things that Nick was trying to stop, through the Federation, even though his sympathy was with the often desperate men who were forced to do it.
‘One or two?’ Nick’s voice was harsh.
Cruickshank’s was level in response. ‘Well. Forty-four, we’re almost certain, although we haven’t got all the names yet.’
‘When did it happen?’
‘Just before six. Right at the shift end.’
‘Whose gang?’
‘Dicky Goch’s.’
In the shelter of her wall, Mari shivered. Dicky Goch, a red-haired giant with a turbulent family of red-haired children, was a popular figure in Nantlas. He had a fine singing voice, in the Rest on Saturday nights and in chapel on Sundays.
Nick was looking away from Cruickshank, back to the silent, waiting crowd at the gates. Mari knew that he was counting up the friends, fathers of families and boys of thirteen or fourteen, who worked with Dicky Goch. Then he turned sharply towards the pit-top.
‘Who’s gone down for them?’ he asked. ‘I want to go.’
‘Nick …’ Terror clutched at Mari, and her cry came out as a whisper.
Cruickshank said quietly, ‘It isn’t quite that easy. There’s a fire near the friction gear. The men are in number two district, the Penmor seam. The fire’s blocking the road to them.’
‘In Christ’s name, Cruickshank. Why are you standing here? Are the firemen down there?’ Nick loomed over the pit manager who stepped back quickly.
‘Be careful, Penry. This isn’t your pit. We’ve done everything we can. The shift manager went down right away with some men, but the fire was blocking the road. It’s a damp seam, that. There’s every chance of another explosion. I’ve ordered the pit closed.’
‘Closed?’
Mari shivered again at the cold fury in Nick’s face.
‘Closed. Do you want to risk more lives, man? There’s … there’s a problem with the reverse intake.’
Mari didn’t hear Nick’s muttered words, but she saw his fist swing. The manager scuttled backwards to avoid the blow, hands to his mouth. For a moment Nick stood looking at him, his face full of disgust. Then, awkwardly, he rubbed his knuckles although they hadn’t so much as grazed Cruickshank’s face.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said in a low voice. ‘You’re only the manager. What can you do, except what Peris tells you? How does that make you feel, tonight?’ Without waiting to hear if Cruickshank had any more to say Nick swung away towards the pit buildings.
Keeping to the protective shadows, Mari followed him. She felt a smothering sense of relief that the pit was closed and Nick would not be allowed to go down and be swallowed up by the fire.
At the
