A Time for Courage by Margaret Graham Page B

choked until at last the noise ceased. Then there was just dust and darkness but no drilling, no rumbling of trolleys, and miners running to them and shielding their candles with their hands against the draught. He had never heard such quiet in the mine before.
    The man-engine was a godsend. His ribs still ached and his limbs trembled as he stepped on to the moving rod on its upstroke, fitting his hands and feet into the holds cut into it, stepping off at each platform as the rod went down again, then catching the other as it came down from above and then moved up again. Sam was coming up slowly behind, his pipe broken and in his pocket now. Harry’s head ached and he shook it but his ears still felt strange. He didn’t yet feel part of the world. He was still back there, tensed and waiting, and now the joy came flooding through him because, God damn it, he had guessed right. He stepped off the rod on to the platform. Damnation – he had guessed right and he wanted to shout but he remembered the feel of Sam’s hand on his shoulder as he had dusted himself off, taking his hat from the outstretched hand of a wizened miner.
    I owe you, lad, Sam had said. I’d not have been quick enough. He looked at him closely, a thoughtful expression in his eyes. You’re blooded now, Harry. Harry set his shoulders back. By God, and so he was. He’d beaten the mine, he’d known it was coming for him and he’d bloody beaten it. Wait until he told Arthur. He jumped on to the upward rod and called down to Sam.
    ‘Don’t tell Hannah, or the family.’ He listened, leaping on to the rod, straining to hear Sam’s reply.
    ‘She’ll have to be told, Harry. She’ll have heard the noise, seen the dust and even if she hasn’t, the men who came down to help will have told her.’
    Harry shook his head. ‘God, I hope she keeps quiet about it.’
    ‘She’s bound to, isn’t she?’ Sam called up. ‘She’ll have to if you want to be allowed down the mine again.’
    Harry did want to, now more than ever.
    Hannah had moved from the bank soon after Sam and Harry had disappeared. The wind had grown cooler up there with no shelter and she had walked about Penhallon, seeing the piles of ore, the sheds, the stables which housed the ponies. Watching the shift that changed while her uncle and Harry were below.
    She had seen the grimed men walk unsteadily from the moving rod, their faces drawn with tiredness, black blood from a cut ran down the cheek of one and she wondered where they would go when age took their livelihood away from them. To the workhouse too, to be separated from their wives for the rest of their lives? It was too dreadful to think about but she must. Joe had said she must.
    She had taken baskets with Mother one Harvest Festival to the workhouse which served the area lying to the back of the Crescents. When they had entered the green-tiled room which lay at the end of a cold stone corridor she had thought it was empty, but then the small grey-clothed women sitting in chairs set against the walls had moved to see what the disturbance was before settling back again into their stillness. There had been a smell, not of dirt but of age and carbolic soap, and as she passed the Michaelmas daisies the hands that reached for them were gnarled and big-veined. But she hadn’t felt sad; she hadn’t wondered then where these people had come from, hadn’t felt this confusion that was tearing at her now.
    Then as she stood there, she had heard the noise, a muted roaring, and felt the earth shudder; had seen the men so tired and bowed turn and run back to the shaft. Dust had wafted up from the blackness and she knew what had happened. But who was hurt? Was it Harry? Or Sam?
    She called to the men. ‘What is it?’ Wanting to clutch their arms.
    ‘A fall,’ one called, his tiredness gone, his voice urgent. He had not turned to speak to her but waited impatiently in the queue which was moving quickly back down the ladder. There had been no