LITMIR.BIZ

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who has acted very properly. An unavoidable explosion was followed by an outbreak of fire, which cut off the men’s egress and prevented a rescue party from reaching them. I understand that a number of brave men, led in an exemplary manner by the shift manager, tried to get down there. Thank you for that.’ He smiled, intending a grave, consoling gesture that at the same time took in Nick’s clean face and clothes. The smile looked to Nick like the split in a pumpkin.

      ‘The intake?’ Nick asked him again, trying to swallow the loathing that was rising inside him as if he was about to vomit.

      ‘An unfortunate aspect of the accident is the failure of the reversing mechanism,’ Peris added. ‘The trapped men were subject to a negative airflow.’

      The redness in front of Nick’s eyes swirled and threatened to blot everything out. He would have reached out to Peris and torn his starched shirt front, and tightened the absurd black bow around his neck until the man’s eyes popped and his tongue swelled between his lips. But Jim Abraham stepped smartly up behind him and locked his arms behind his back. Nick heard his own roaring voice filling his head, the force of it rasping at his throat.

      ‘They suffocated, man. Why don’t you use the proper words? Make your mouth taste nasty, do they? If the explosion didn’t get them, they suffocated to death, because your safety mechanism never worked. John Wyn told me himself. He said the installation was never completed. You didn’t want to spend the money on it, did you?’

      Cut off from the normal air supply by the fire, the trapped men should have been kept alive by a simple switch which would pump in fresh air through the exhaust system. When it had failed, they had been left to die.

      Nick twisted to free himself, but Jim Abraham’s grip was like iron.

      ‘We all know it, Peris. Every man here. It’s your negligence. You murdered forty-four men tonight. You are a common murderer.’

      Even as he shouted, Nick knew that his words were a pathetically useless weapon against Lloyd Peris. The owner was already at the powerhouse door.

      ‘You will have a chance to present your unfounded accusations through the proper channels, Penry. Mr Cruickshank has the duty to inform the relatives of the dead men, with my deepest sympathy. He also has my orders to cap the down air supply. The pit will remain closed until the fire is out and we are sure of its safety. Good night.’

      ‘Your sympathy?’ Nick was shouting at the closing door, knowing that he sounded like a madman and unable to control himself. ‘Your only sympathy is with yourself because this has disturbed your bloody dinner.’

      The heavy door was shut.

      Jim Abraham released Nick’s arms. Briefly the older man hugged him, leaving black marks on Nick’s Sunday coat.

      ‘I know, lad,’ he said gently. ‘We all know. It’s like you want to kill them for it, and not even that would be enough. I was at Senghenydd, remember? Four hundred and thirty-nine men, that day.’

      ‘I know how many,’ Nick said bitterly. He was suddenly limp, and as defeated with the ebbing of his terrible anger as the ring of men watching him. ‘Forty-four or four hundred, it’s all the same, isn’t it? His fault, and his friends.’

      Cruickshank had gone away up the gallery stairs. He had been turning heavy, polished wheels and watching the dials as the pointers flicked and sank back. Now he came to the master switch. He eased it up and the even hum of the generators faltered, dropped in pitch and died away into silence. Outside the searchlights blinked out and the pithead was lit only by the cold, feeble circles of the emergency lights.

      Nick had no idea whether it was real or inside his head, but he heard the terrible low cry from the crowd at the gates. There had been no official announcement, but the news would have reached them long ago. They would all know what the sudden dark and quiet meant.

      One by one, not looking at each other, the rescue party filed out of the powerhouse. They would go to the families of the dead men, and try to reassure them that they had done all they could.

      Nick found himself standing alone in the shadows with the useless machinery towering around him. Wordlessly, numbed by anger that hadn’t yet given way to grief, he made a promise to the men buried in Nantlas No. 1. He promised them that he would fight the greed and callousness and cruelty that had killed them.

      Nick shivered. He realized that he had no idea how long he had been standing there. Slowly, moving stiffly, he walked out of the powerhouse and across to the railings. The coal dust crunched with gritty familiarity under his feet. The crowd that had pressed against the railings was gone, taking its grief with it up to the little houses on the hillside. Nick was on his way up too when he saw that not quite everyone was gone. A little way off someone was standing staring back at the pithead. From the torn shirt showing the white glimmer of skin, Nick recognized Bryn Jones. He remembered that he had promised this morning to have a word with Dicky Goch for him. No one would have any more words for Dicky now.

      Coming up beside him, Nick saw that Bryn was crying, silent involuntary tears that ran down his face and dripped on to his hopeless chest.

      ‘All of them, is it?’ Bryn asked.

      ‘Yes.’ Nick’s arm came briefly around his thin shoulders, hugging him as Jim Abraham had hugged Nick himself. ‘You didn’t get down in time, then? You were lucky today, Bryn.’

      ‘Call it luck, do you?’ The bitterness was not against Nick, but against all the things that they both knew.

      ‘Come on,’ Nick told him gently. ‘Don’t stand out in this damp air.’

      They turned their backs on the darkened pit and went on up the hill together.

       Three

       Biarritz, August 1924

      Two days after the explosion in Nantlas No. 1, Adeline Lovell was lying on the sun terrace of the Hotel du Palais, Biarritz. There was enough of a cooling breeze to stir the flags on the tall white flagpoles guarding the sea edge of the terrace, and the strong blue light was softening to dove grey around the curve of the bay.

      A waiter had brought Adeline a cocktail on a silver tray, but it was untouched on the table beside her white wicker lounge seat. The frosting on the rim of the glass had melted long ago. The English papers, neatly folded, lay close at hand but she didn’t pick them up either. Instead she was staring south, to where the sea and sky melted together over the coast of Spain, but without seeing any of the beauty of the afternoon.

      The terrace had been almost deserted when Adeline wandered out in search of company, and she had sunk into the wicker chair with only her own thoughts for entertainment. But now it was the cheerful hour when teacups were replaced with the first drinks of the evening. Svelte women in tennis dresses, their bobbed hair held in place with white bandeaux, were flooding out of the long terrace doors to greet other women in fluttering tea-dresses and the first sprinkling of evening gowns. The colours wove patterns in front of Adeline’s unfocused eyes, eau-de-nil and palest peach, cream and rose-pink and gold. Escorting the women were sun-flushed men in white flannels, blazers or linen jackets and panama hats. Amongst them those who had already changed were like sleek, discreet shadows.

      Inside the hotel, under the cream and gilt rococo ceilings of Napoleon and Josephine’s summer palace, the plum-coated barmen were falling into a rhythm with their silver cocktail shakers. And already, from the vast ballroom, there was music. Couples were one-stepping to the band. There would be dancing all evening and late into the night, and sometimes Adeline would wake up in the dawn and still hear the jazz playing.

      It was what one came to Biarritz for, she reminded herself now, sitting upright against the cushions. To dance and drink cocktails, to lose money at the Casino and to enjoy oneself.

      Adeline reached out for her drink and drained it in one gulp, making a wry face at its temperature. She snapped her fingers at a passing waiter. ‘Encore, garçon.’

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