asked Adam. He was enthralled by the conversation and didn’t want it to stop. It was the first time in his life that a clever and educated man had spoken to him in this way, treating him as though he was an equal.
‘I don’t know,’ said the parson. ‘I have to say I fear the worst – although whether it will be the Irish or the trades unions or the ridiculous German Kaiser with his dreadnoughts who pushes us over the edge I don’t know.’
‘I saw him,’ said Adam.
‘Did you? When?’
‘At the old king’s funeral. It was only for a minute.’
‘And what did you think?’
‘I thought he seemed wound up, like he could get angry and make some terrible mistake,’ said Adam slowly, groping for the right words. He had thought of the encounter many times since it happened but he still remained unsure what to make of it.
‘He wants every day to be his birthday. That’s what Bismarck said about him and it’s certainly a dangerous trait,’ said the parson, finishing his tea and getting up to go. ‘I’ve enjoyed our talk,’ he added. ‘Perhaps you would like to come to the Parsonage some time. I have some books about Rome that you might like to look at and it would do me good to discuss antiquity with a fellow enthusiast.’
‘I’d love to. I mean I’d like to very much,’ said Adam, trying not to sound too childishly enthusiastic. Not only would he be able to talk about Rome with the parson; he would also be able to see Miriam again and there was nothing he wanted more than that.
At the door they met Daniel coming in. He was excited, telling his news in a rush as he shook the parson’s hand. ‘I persuaded Sir John to reinstate Whalen,’ he said. ‘And not only that – he’ll invest more money in pit safety. There’s new breathing apparatus and protective clothing Hardcastle can buy, and he’s going to give instructions to water down the dust more between shifts. I must say he was very reasonable, although it was hard to get him to change his mind about Dawes …’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said the parson. ‘Sir John’s a good man at heart and he wants to do the right thing. But he’s also a traditionalist, a dyed-in the-wool Tory, and property rights are a religion to him. And Dawes knows that. He’s no fool. He knew exactly what he was doing when he sat in Sir John’s pew – he couldn’t have chosen a better symbol to attack.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Daniel. ‘Is that why you’re here, Mr Vale? I don’t think Dawes’ll do it again, if that’s what you’re worried about. He’s got what he wants from the church; the mine’s where he’ll be directing his attention from now on.’
‘No, I agree with you,’ said the parson. ‘I came to thank you for your help. I don’t know how we would have managed without you. And I also wanted to thank your son for helping my daughter when she was distressed. He was very kind and considerate – you should be proud of him.’
‘I am,’ said Daniel warmly. ‘Sometimes I wonder about my future here – Dawes wants my job and he wants a strike and he may well end up getting both, the way we’re going. But as soon as I’m about to get miserable I look at Adam and I feel better. I think he’s going to go far, make a name for himself in this world.’
The parson looked at Daniel carefully for a moment before he answered. ‘I think so too – Adam’s a good lad and he certainly deserves to do well,’ he said. ‘But you must look after yourself as well, Mr Raine. You look pale and careworn, if you don’t mind me saying so. Adam needs you too – you should remember that. Come to church – I should like to see you there.’
‘I’ll try,’ said Daniel, shaking the parson’s hand and watching with Adam as Mr Vale got on his bicycle and rode away up the hill. The rain had stopped but the wind was still blowing and the parson’s billowing cape made him a strange, spectral figure in the twilight.
‘He means well,’ said Daniel. ‘But he doesn’t know what it’s like for us. It’s the same with all the gentlemen – none of them do.’
Daniel’s agreement with Sir John got the men back to work but it didn’t stop the grumbling and it did little to enhance his standing with them either. Below ground, Whalen and his allies harped constantly on the checkweighman’s close relationship with the owner. ‘’E’s spendin’ too much time up at the Hall bein’ wined and dined; ’e’s gettin’ a taste for the high life; ’e’s sellin’ us down the river.’ It didn’t matter that none of this was true; the constant drip of innuendo had a cumulative effect which Daniel was powerless to counteract. And Whalen was preaching to an increasingly receptive audience. All over the country there was a new mood of militancy among the miners. The talk everywhere was of the minimum wage, guaranteed to be paid regardless of fluctuations in profit. It was a principle that the employers could not or would not accept and as the year came to an end it became clear that a national strike was inevitable. The miners came out en masse on 26 February 1912 – a date they soon had cause to regret as it was still cold in the north and they quickly began to miss their free ration of coal. In Scarsdale they took their children’s prams up to the slag heap and picked through the shale in the rain, looking for lumps of coal in the grey waste to wheel home, and the more enterprising sank a pit outside the town, going down in turns to dig for coal by candlelight while the others used a pulley suspended from an old penny farthing bicycle wheel to bring what they could find up to the surface. By mid-March everyone was feeling the pinch and the union opened up a soup kitchen on the green.
But it was hard for Adam to share the general sense of despondency. Throughout the week he was away in Gratton where the school provided meals and the teachers lauded his academic prowess. And on Sundays after church he would go over to the Parsonage and drink a glass of sherry with the parson in his study. Soon this became the highlight of Adam’s week. To begin with they talked about Greece and Rome, looking over the books that Mr Vale had kept from his university days. Adam had always loved books, associating them with the magical childhood world that he had shared with his mother when she read to him in the house in Islington, and he was flattered by the way that the parson seemed genuinely interested in what he had to say when they sat talking on either side of the fire in Mr Vale’s study with the carefully tended lawn glistening silvery green in the winter sunlight outside the bow window.
And later, as they got to know each other better, the parson would talk to him about the present as well as the past. It was a frightening world that they lived in, he said. Everywhere there was conflict – not just between the miners and the mine owners but between all the workers and their employers. There was talk of the trades unions banding together to threaten a general strike, while in London the prison authorities were force-feeding the suffragettes through tubes thrust into their nostrils, and the Ulstermen in Ireland were openly preparing for rebellion. And beyond the shores of England the great powers jostled against each other, defining and redefining their competing spheres of influence.
‘One spark could set it all off,’ said the parson. ‘And once a war has begun they won’t be able to stop it even if they want to.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the continent of Europe has become like a house of cards. Once one falls, they all do. The countries are prisoners of their alliances and the armies are too big to call back once they have begun to mobilize. And yet everywhere the rich and powerful go on as if they haven’t a care in the world, spending money like water, living only for pleasure. Perhaps they sense the end is near. I fear for our future, Adam. Truly I do.’
‘What can we do?’
‘We
