Suddenly David roused himself.
“You’re very quiet, dad. There’s something bothering you.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Davey. It’s pretty good up here!” He paused. “Better than down the Scupper Flats.”
Understanding broke on David; he said slowly:
“So that’s where you’re cutting now?”
“It is. We’re in the Scupper Flats at last. We started to strip the Dyke three months since.”
“You did.”
“We did.”
“Is it wet?”
“It is!” Robert puffed quietly. “Near up to the ear holes in my stall. It’s that put me badly last week.”
The placidity in his father’s voice made David suddenly sad. He said:
“You fought pretty hard to keep out Scupper Flats, dad.”
“Maybe I did. We got beat though, diddent we? We’d ’a gone back in the Scupper right away if Barras hadn’t lost his contract. Well, he’s gotten another contract now, so here we are again, right where we begun. Life’s just like a wheel, man, round it comes if you wait long enough.”
A short silence came; then Robert went on:
“Mind ye, as I said afore, I don’t mind the wet. All my time I’ve worked in wet places and worse and worse places as my time had gone on. It’s the water in the waste that bothers me. You see, Davey, it’s like this.” He paused and placed his hand edgeways upon the ground. “Here’s the Dyke, the Universal Dyke, that’s the barrier, a down throw fault that runs due north and south. On the one side of the Dyke you’ve got all the old workings, the waste of all the old Neptune sinkings that run down from the Snook. All the low levels of the waste are full of water, they’re bound to be, bung full of water. Well, man, on the other side of the Dyke, the west side, is Scupper Flats where we’re working now. And what are we doing? We’re stripping coal off the Dyke, we’re weakening the barrier.”
He began to smoke again.
David said:
“I’ve always heard that the Dyke would stop anything, it’s a natural barrier in itself.”
“Maybe,” Robert said, “but I just can’t help thinking what would happen if we stripped too near the old waterlogged workings. Their natural barrier might look pretty thin then.”
Robert spoke reasonably, almost musingly; he seemed to have lost his old bitterness completely.
“But, dad, they know what they’re doing, they’re bound to know if they’re near the old workings, they’re bound to have the plans.”
Robert shook his head:
“They have no plans of the Old Neptune workings.”
“They must have plans. You ought to go to the inspector, you ought to go to Jennings.”
“What’s the use?” Robert said quietly. “He can’t do nothing. He can’t enforce a law that doesn’t exist. There’s no law about mines abandoned afore 1872, and these old Neptune workings was abandoned long afore that. They wasn’t made to keep a record of the plans then. So the plans have just got lost. That water might be right on the other side of the Dyke for all they know or it might be half a mile away.” He yawned suddenly as though tired of the subject, then he smiled at David. He added: “I hope it’s the half mile.”
“But, dad…” David paused, worried by his father’s attitude. Robert seemed weary, enveloped by a sort of fatalism.
Robert saw the expression and smiled again. He said:
“No, I’m not makin’ a song about it this time, Davey. They’d none of them believe me, none of the lads, ’twas only the chance of a halfpenny raise what brought them out the last time. I’m not bothering… not bothering my head.” He broke off, looked at the sky. “I think I’ll come here next Sunday. You better come too. It’s the right time of year for the Wansbeck.” He coughed, his soft yet booming cough.
David said quickly:
“You ought to get out oftener with that cough of yours.”
Robert smiled:
“I’m going to retire here one of these days.” He tapped his chest with his pipe. “But that’s nothing, that cough. It and me are old friends now. It’ll never kill me.”
David looked at his father with a silent anxiety. His nerves, all on edge these days, resented the intolerable situation: Robert’s cough, his cheerfulness, his apathy under the hardships of Scupper Flats. And suppose there really was danger in the Flats? David’s heart contracted. With a sudden determination he thought: I must speak to Barras about Scupper Flats. I’ll speak to him this week.
NINETEEN
Meanwhile Joe was having a splendid time; he described it frequently to himself as “a high old time,” or “this is the life.” He liked Shiphead, a friendly sort of town with good pubs, two handy billiard saloons, a dance hall and a regular Saturday night boxing show. He liked the change, his lodgings, his office — a single room across from the Fountain Hotel, complete with telephone, two chairs, a desk for his feet, a safe, a racing calendar and walls pasted with cut-outs of everybody from Jack Johnson to Vesta Victoria. He liked his new light brown suit, his new watch-chain worn between the top pockets of his waistcoat. He liked his finger-nails — cultivated with a pen-knife while his hat sat on the back of his head and his feet rested on the top of his desk — he liked the way he was getting off with the nice little pusher who glittered in the pay box of the new picture palace. And above all he liked his work. The work was a pinch, nothing to do but collect the slips and the money, ’phone the slips through to Dick Jobey in Tynecastle and hold the money till Saturday night when Dick came over himself to collect it. Dick had thought him the right man for the job, the right man to open this new branch in Shiphead, a likely lad, a good mixer, open and hearty, able to get in with the boys, steer clear of the police, run things smart and lively. Dick hadn’t wanted a figgering-machine, no, by gum! not no kind of a clerk to sit mopey in the office till business came. Dick wanted a smart lad, a likely, honest lad with a head on his shoulders…
And had Dick been wrong? Joe smiled genially towards the lady in the tights who seemed in the act of “la savatting” the White-eyed Kaffir on the opposite wall. A smart lad, with a head on his shoulders… Had Joe a head on his shoulders? Joe could have laughed, split himself, it was too easy, too, too easy, it was money for jam. It was all the front you put on; doing the other fellow before he did you. He shifted the toothpick, slid his hand into his inside pocket, pulled out a thin, mottle-covered book. The book pleased Joe. The book said between the red ruled lines two hundred and two pounds ten shillings and sixpence to the credit of Mr. Joe Gowlan, 7 Brown Street, Shiphead. The book proved that Joe was a considerable success.
The ’phone rang, Joe lifted the receiver.
“Hello! Yes, Mr. Carr, yes. Certainly. The two-thirty. Ten shillings Slider, any to come Blackbird in the four o’clock. You’re on, Mr. Carr.”
Carr, the chemist in Bank Street that was, Joe ruminated; funny the people what bet you never think would bet. Carr looked as though he thought of nothing but jalap and titties, went to chapel every Sunday with his wife and had ten bob on regular twice a week. Won, too. Won a packet often. You could pretty well tell the ones what won, they were cautious and up to the game, never showed it when they won. And the losers, you could tell them just the same. Take Tracy, now, that young Tracy who had come to Shiphead last month, there was a born loser for you, if you like. With mug written all over his silly dial. From the minute young Tracy had made up to him in Markey’s Billiard-room over a game of pin-pool and put a quid on Sally Sloper, finished last in a field of fourteen, he had taken young Tracy’s number. Young Tracy was anybody’s meat, thin, sloppy, fade-away chin, woodbine and laugh. And for all the woodbine young Tracy had money to play the horses, a matter of twenty quid straight he’d had on in the month and lost it all, lost every blinking time. Young Tracy had stopped being anybody’s meat, he was Joe’s meat now, and don’t you make no mistake, thought Joe.