towards the two men with a friendly grin on his face.
‘Hello, Mr Satterthwaite, sir,’ he said. ‘And I know you too, don’t I? You’re that journalist I dumped through the shop window.’
‘That’s right, Mr Farr. Monty Boyle’s the name,’ said the stout man, returning the grin. ‘Let me buy you a drink to show there are no hard feelings.’
‘Thanks, Mr Boyle, but no, thanks. I think I was right about you first time we met. You come near me or my mam asking any of your nasty little questions and it’ll be a brick wall I throw you through next time.’
‘You hear that, Peter? Do you still say he shouldn’t be banned, threatening members’ guests like that?’ demanded Satterthwaite.
Pedley, who’d come from behind the bar, put a restraining hand on the young man’s arm. He shook it off and said, ‘No sweat, Pedro, I’m not threatening this gent, just giving him some local colour, that’s what newspapers like, isn’t it? As for you, Mr Satterthwaite, sir. I’d not dream of threatening you because I just don’t have the time to wait in the queue. But I’ll tell you this for nothing. Sure as eggs, you’ll be standing on your ownsome deep in-bye some shift, with nothing but the mice for company, or so you’ll think, only someone will be creeping up behind you with a shovel to bash your thick skull in and toss you into the gob with all the rest of the shit!’
‘You heard that?’ exclaimed Satterthwaite looking round. ‘All of you here heard that: By God, you’ll not get away with threats like that, Farr!’
‘Threats? Who’s making threats?’ said Farr all injured. ‘I went out of my way to say I weren’t threatening you, didn’t I? No, it’s all right, Pedro, I’m just going. Mustn’t be late for shift, must I? Best sup up, Mr Satterthwaite, sir. Up to you important officials to set an example in timekeeping.’
Shaking himself loose from Pedley’s renewed grip, he turned and walked out of the bar.
In the fresh air he took several deep breaths. Ahead stretched the road which led up to the top of the valley and the pit. There were men walking along it to clock on. He didn’t feel ready for company and on impulse he turned off the road into the unmetalled driveway which ran up the side of the Welfare. This was the nearest way from the village up into Gratterley Wood. It was up this driveway, which became a lane and then a track, that Billy Farr and Tracey Pedley and Billy’s dog, Jacko, had walked to go brambling that bright autumn afternoon.
And presumably too it was up here that Billy Farr had made his own last journey, that crisp Boxing Day morning three months later. The ridge was honeycombed with workings, their entrances sealed off by anxious man and heartless nature. There’d been many accidents over the years, the last during the Strike when shortage of fuel (and the irony was that the striking miners were the only people in the country short of fuel that winter) had led a team of youths to open an old drift. There’d been a roof fall which had almost killed one of them and for the rest of the Strike the ridge and woods had been more sternly policed than they had since the eighteenth century. Such was progress.
The subsequent sealing-off process had been declared comprehensive and foolproof. But there still remained entrances to that dark world which childhood memory and adult ingenuity made accessible, and Colin Farr’s ramblings, which so disturbed his mother, had not been all overground.
But today it was peace and oblivion he sought. Soon after the lane became a track, it unravelled into half a dozen green paths and he chose the one which led him into the heart of the wood. Here there was a large outcrop of creamy limestone, known simply as the White Rock. It had been a popular trysting-place long before the locals penetrated the earth any further than a ploughshare’s depth, and the surrounding area provided any number of nooks and dells where a man and a maid could lie, safe from casual gaze.
Colin Farr settled beneath the White Rock and recalled those days when, a schoolboy still, he had first come here hand in hand with a girl. He’d felt little of the usual adolescent awkwardness in his relationship with girls. In fact, all of life had seemd easy in those days. You did what you wanted and if you wanted to do something else, you did that instead. No one made your choices for you. It was only later that he began to realize how much ignoring other people’s choices limited your own.
He pushed the darkening thought away from him and tried to focus on brighter things. Mrs Pascoe, for instance. He couldn’t make his mind up how he felt about her. It was different being with her, that was certain, she made him feel livelier somehow, sent bubbles streaming through his imagination. But at the same time she made him feel uncertain of himself, as if that adolescent awkwardness he’d never experienced had merely been lying in wait for him. He didn’t like that. He found he was scowling again.
‘Stupid cow,’ he said out loud in an attempt to exorcize the image.
Suddenly he sat up. He had a feeling that he had been heard, as if someone stealthy enough to stalk him unobserved had been startled into movement by his unexpected outburst. And now he felt watched also, but his eyes gave him no support for the feeling.
He rose. It was time to go anyway. He set off along the crest of the ridge so that he remained in the world of trees and leaves and earth and sky for as long as possible, but all too soon he emerged at the head of the valley where the ground fell away to the road, then rose up again to the north ridge. Here they were, graffiti on the blue sky, the dark tower of the winding gear, the conveyor like a ramp into the bowels of a convict ship, the scatter of low sullen buildings all squatting amid mounds of their own waste. The pit-head, whose ugliness only hinted at the vileness of the organism beneath.
One of these buildings was the Deployment Centre where men coming on shift went to report for work. It was still impossible for Colin Farr to come in here and not see his father. This was where Billy had been put after his accident. This was the last place they had seen each other at the end of the young merchant seaman’s final leave.
They’d said goodbye the previous night as Billy would have to be up at five to go on shift, but after breakfast Colin had been overcome by an urge to see his father again and had made his way up to the Deployment Centre. Spotting his father through one of the hatches, he called, ‘Hey, mister, can you set a young lad on?’
His father had looked up anxiously and said, ‘Is something wrong at home?’
‘No. I just thought I’d see if this place had improved with age.’
‘You needn’t have bothered. It’ll improve wi’ nowt short of bombing.’
‘Well, I’ll say cheerio, then.’
‘Right. Take care of yourself, son.’
‘You too, Dad.’
They’d regarded each other for a moment, then turned away in unison. As he strode back down the hill he was full of anger with himself. He was far from clear what he’d hoped to do by going up to the pit, but he knew he hadn’t done it.
Four months later as his ship wallowed in the Bay of Biscay against a Force Five which had stopped them from getting home for Christmas, the news had come over the ship’s radio. His father was dead.
It was his last voyage. The pressures to stay in Burrthorpe were great. His mother was breaking under the strain. He was engaged to Stella Gibson. Neil Wardle had told him he’d got management agreement that Farr’s old job would be available. Good will, it was called. Guilt, was what Farr called it. So he stayed. Within weeks his engagement was off. Within months his mother was improving and his pay was stopped
