‘Wheesht, Faither,’ said Mrs MacGibney. ‘Dinnae upset yourself.’
‘I dinnae care for me,’ said her father. ‘But what about the young lads, eh?’
‘Me and Mattie are no’ exactly carrying the torch,’ said John.
His father did not look at him, but spoke very firmly.
‘You might be on the surface now, lad, but you’re still a miner. You’ve nothing to be shamed for.’ There was just the slightest emphasis but it was enough to make Mattie’s head drop low.
There was a long silence. The MacGibneys were sunk in gloom, Alec was smoking steadily and looking sympathetic, but I writhed. My early training at tea parties, my instruction at finishing school, my two decades of adult life: all had instilled in me a horror of silence in any social setting.
‘The German element is shocking,’ I said. ‘Talk about insult to injury. But…’
Alec took his pipe out of his mouth and stared at me. All the MacGibneys looked towards me too.
‘But what?’ said John.
‘But,’ I said, swallowing hard, ‘if their coal is cheaper than ours then ours has to come down too and everyone must just pull their belts in.’ I was quoting Hugh to a certain extent, but this part of his philosophy had always seemed above argument to me. Mrs MacGibney spoke up from the sink, without turning.
‘Everyone?’ she said. ‘You think Old Man Mair’s pulling his belt in to live off two pounds a week? You think if he said no he’d be down to five shillings strike pay?’
‘Two pounds?’ I said. ‘Two pounds a week? But it says in the papers…’
Now she did turn to look at me and she was almost laughing.
‘What papers have you been reading then?’ she said. ‘Tatler, is it?’
All the men laughed out loud at that. I did not mind; at least we were talking again.
‘You’re from another world, hen,’ said Grandad. ‘You need a wee lesson.’
Mattie and John groaned.
‘Oh, here we go,’ said their father.
The old man took his pipe out of his mouth and gestured to where his grandsons were sitting. ‘Turn they chairs round and show the lassie, boys.’ Mattie and John rolled their eyes but stood up. John leaned against the wall – his crutch was out of reach – while Mattie set the two chairs close by each other, sideways on to Alec and me. ‘See that here,’ said Grandad, pointing again, at the chair legs. ‘Could you fit yourself through there, hen?’
I looked at the gap between the front and back legs, below the seats, wondering where this parlour game might be leading to.
‘I daresay,’ I said. ‘It would be a bit of a squeeze, but I think so.’
‘Try it for a mile and a half,’ Grandad thundered, ‘pitch black but for a candle on your helmet and sweat running off you with the heat. Not a stitch on your body and scraped red with the rock and when you get to the end where you left off, there you’ve seven hours chipping out wee lumps wi’ a hammer and pushing them past you to your laddie to drag to the shaft for you and then a mile and a half back again and the same again the next day and the next day and-’
‘Dinnae upset yourself, Faither,’ said Mrs MacGibney again, ‘and let they boys sit back doon.’
‘I always imagined caves,’ I said, and the smiles showed me that I was not the first to have said so. ‘And was that what it was like when the roof collapsed on you two?’ I said to Mattie and John.
‘Not so bad,’ said John. ‘That tunnel was high enough to sit up in.’
I could think of no adequate response to this, and indeed spent the rest of the visit in near silence. The others talked until shortly after four o’clock, when Mattie’s mother asked him when he had to be getting back again. We could have stayed longer – Mattie certainly could have – but we could not in conscience take another meal from the woman so I did not demur, and Alec and I left Mattie to his goodbyes. (I noticed Alec’s baccy pouch tucked discreetly down beside the chair where he had been sitting.)
There was just one more vignette of pithead life for us to be treated to, unexpected, unlooked for and – whatever Alec’s frame of mind might have been after the hours in the little cottage kitchen – quite unnecessary to me. As we were making our careful way over the ash lane which led away to the road, with a wave for Mattie’s father who was back at the picket now, we heard the sound of another engine and a large motorcar of a type I could not name came along the lane towards us. It was driven by a chauffeur in uniform who drew up in front of us blocking our path. Almost before the motorcar had halted one of the back doors opened and a bulky man in a striped suit stepped down. I felt Mattie freeze at my side.
‘Are you the one that’s been driving in and out of here all day?’ said the man, striding towards the car and treating Alec to a glare. He caught sight of Bunty and Millie and stopped in his tacks. ‘Dogs?’ he said. ‘Dogs, is it now? Who the hell are you? Who’s that in there with you?’
He had arrived at our side now and was looking at us with angry puzzlement. Mattie seemed to puzzle him more than anything.
‘You’re not from the union,’ he said to Alec, ‘driving around with women and children. Who are you?’
‘I can’t see that it’s any of your business,’ replied Alec. ‘Who are you? You start and I’ll see if I feel like joining in.’ Beside me, Mattie was shaking.
‘I? I?’ said the man. ‘I’m the boss and I’m not going to be spoken to that way by some bloody do-gooder coming causing mischief on private land. Now get out of it before I call the police on you.’
‘Ah, Mr Mair, the manager,’ said Alec, making it sound as though he were playing Happy Families. ‘My name is Alec Osborne and I am neither a union representative nor a do-gooder. So we have that much in common, sir, but nothing else. I, unlike you, am a friend of the MacGibneys and have been visiting them in their time of need, as friends do.’
‘MacGibneys?’ said the man. ‘Matt MacGibney and those useless sons of his?’ Mattie let out a whimper, and I put my arm around him. ‘Five of them living in the lap of comfort in a good cottage and only one of them doing a man’s work for it. You have strange taste in friends, whoever you are. Now get off this land.’
As Alec stared back at him, breathing like a bull and struggling for a response, help came from the most unlikely quarter. Bunty – quite out of character and driven by who knew what noxious cocktail of terror, shock and cold fury rising from the three human occupants of the car – suddenly leapt, baying, for the open window and made a creditable attempt to take Mr Mair by his fleshy neck, snarling like a hound of hell. Alec stamped on the accelerator and got us away before she could actually connect with him, which was just as well, and Mattie, amazingly enough, was not further petrified by this latest turn but was unaccountably delighted, whooping and clapping and lunging over the front seat to hug Bunty hard.
‘My God,’ said Alec, laughing as well once he had recovered himself. ‘Dandy, what on earth? Has she ever done that before?’
‘Never!’ I squeaked, feeling weak from the parade of extreme emotions. ‘Whoever heard of an attack Dalmatian? Oh, why couldn’t Hugh have been here to see it? He’ll never believe me!’
Mattie had stopped laughing and was now hugging Millie, who had pushed her head in between him and Bunty when she felt that her friend had hogged the limelight for long enough.
‘Who’s Hugh?’ he said. ‘And why did you call Miss Rossiter Dandy, Mr Osborne?’
Thankfully, though, there was too much else going on for him to pursue such points, and after just one panicked glance between Alec and me in the driving mirror the questions sank without reply.