A Place Called Freedom (1995)

He stepped out onto the deck and tore the waterproof wrappings off his bundle. Inside was a big torch made of dry sticks and rags, a ball of string, and a large version of the hemispheric candle-holder the miners used, fixed to a flat wooden base so that it could not fall over. Mack stuck the torch firmly in the holder, tied the string to the base, and lit the torch with his candle. It blazed up immediately. Here it would burn safely, for the lighter-than-air gas could not gather at the bottom of the shaft. But his next task was to get the burning torch into the tunnel.

He took another moment to lower himself into the drainage pool at the bottom of the shaft, soaking his clothes and hair in the icy water to give him a little extra protection from burns. Then he hurried back along the tunnel unwinding the ball of string, at the same time scrutinizing the floor, removing large stones and other objects that might obstruct the movement of the blazing torch as it was drawn into the tunnel.

When he reached Esther and Annie, he saw by the light of the one candle on the floor that all was ready. The trench was dug. Esther was dipping a blanket into the drainage ditch, and now she quickly wrapped it around Mack. Shivering, he lay down in the trench, still holding the end of the string. Annie knelt beside him and, somewhat to his surprise, kissed him full on the lips. Then she covered the trench with a heavy board, closing him in.

There was a sloshing sound as they poured more water on the board, in a further attempt to protect him from the flames he was about to ignite. Then one of them tapped three times, the sign that they were leaving.

He counted to one hundred, to give them time to get out of the tunnel.

Then, with his heart full of dread, he started to pull on the string, drawing the blazing torch into the mine, toward where he lay, in a tunnel half full of explosive gas.

Jay carried Lizzie to the top of the stairs and set her down on the icy mud at the pithead.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“I’m so glad to be above ground again,” she said gratefully. “I can’t thank you enough for carrying me. You must be exhausted.”

“You weigh a good deal less than a corf full of coal,” he said with a smile.

He talked as if her weight were nothing, but he looked a little unsteady on his legs as they walked away from the shaft. However, he had never faltered on the way up.

Daybreak was still hours away, and it had started to snow, not in gently drifting flakes but in driving icy pellets that blew into Lizzie’s eyes. As the last of the miners and bearers came out of the shaft, Lizzie noticed the young woman whose child had been christened on Sunday—Jen, her name was. Although her child was only a week or so old, the poor woman was carrying a full corf. Surely she should have taken a rest after giving birth? She emptied the basket on the dump and handed the tallyman a wooden marker: Lizzie guessed the markers were used to calculate the wages at the end of the week. Perhaps Jen was too much in need of money to have time off.

Lizzie continued to watch because Jen looked distressed. With her candle raised above her head she darted among the crowd of seventy or eighty mine workers, peering through the falling snow, calling: “Wullie! Wullie!” It seemed she was searching for a child. She found her husband and had a rapid, frightened conversation with him. Then she screamed “No!” She ran to the pithead and started back down the stairs.

The husband went to the edge of the shaft then came back and looked around the crowd again, visibly distressed and bewildered. Lizzie said to him: “What’s the matter?”

He replied in a shaky voice. “We can’t find our laddie, and she thinks he’s still down the pit.”

“Oh, no!” Lizzie looked over the edge. She could see some kind of torch blazing at the bottom of the shaft. But as she looked it moved and disappeared into the tunnel.

Mack had done this on three previous occasions, but this time it was much more frightening. Formerly the concentration of firedamp had been much lower, a slow seep rather than a sudden buildup. His father had dealt with major gas leaks, of course—and his father’s body, as he washed himself in front of the fire on Saturday nights, had been covered with the marks of old burns.

Mack shivered in his blanket sodden with icy water. As he steadily wound in the string, pulling the blazing torch closer to himself and to the gas, he tried to calm his fear by thinking about Annie. They had grown up together and had always been fond of one another. Annie had a wild soul and a muscular body. She had never kissed him in public before, but she had often done it secretly. They had explored one another’s bodies and taught each other how to give pleasure. They had tried all sorts of things together, only stopping short of what Annie called “making bairns.” And they had almost done that.…