The Mining Village

Prologue

I originally thought about publishing this piece at Christmas time. I guess, because there is snow on the ground in the Welsh mining village where it is set. It seemed the right time to do it. Then I demurred. I thought this is just a piece of sentimental hallmarkian claptrap so I thought better of publishing it at all. (Although how one can be sentimental about the mortality of mothers in childbirth and the premature dreadful deaths of their husbands in the dark depths of a coal mine, I don’t know.) So this wee tale which I heard many years ago and have now rewritten in my own words, I decided, was never going to see the light of day. But something happened. Tragedy struck in the shape of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. Amidst all the devastation and death that we have seen on our TV screens I was profoundly moved, as I am sure you were, by the plucking of a child alive from under the rubble, even more so by the birth of a baby to a dead mother. Little fragments of life which had been in the dark and alone for so many hours and days. And, grieving people, traumatised people, people who had lost everything, suddenly with tears of joy, clapping and cheering and all wanting to celebrate these little lives, bairns with so much ahead of them. Something of life in so much of death; a pulling of the heart strings. So, rightly or wrongly, I saw a connection between the following story of hardship and a little morsel of joy. I was foolish for not realising the real point then. I think that now I do.

The snow lay thick on the ground. The low hills that surrounded the village glistened in the early morning sunshine. The street was silent. The children were at school. Occasionally the front door of one of the terraced houses would open and a woman would appear. She would be wrapped in a head scarf with a shopping bag in hand. It would not be the time to stop and chat on the streets, too frigid for that. Any gloves that she wore were hand knitted. Her skirts and coats were long and substantial but they were not made for winter cold. There would be conversation in the local shop but soon she was hurrying home to be ready for the children’s return.

In contrast to the white blanket and sunlight of the village, the men were in the dark depths of the coal mine, working with pick and shovel, gleaning the black gold from the face of a seam that was hewn day and night. They were breathing in the coal dust which would shorten their lives. They were strong and tough, hardened by the  physical hardship of the work; used to the daily monotony; their ears accustomed to the sound of the trundle of rail trucks back and forth; the endless artificial light; the unremitting heat. No office greenery to be watered here; no piped music; no coffee machine; no water cooler; no carpeted floors; no room with a view. Just the smell of sweat; the wielding of picks; the scraping of shovels; the dust in the eyes; on the faces, a world of black soot in an ocean of dusty darkness. They were dwarves in the mines of Mordor except that this was not some elfin fantasy, it was as real as love and life and leaky roofs and grinding poverty and soul destroying monotony. It was a grim dusty existence leading to a premature choking death.

There was humour among the work force; there were smiles. It was all restrained, however, rarely a belly laugh. Occasionally there were fist fights, hardly fought but always settled, rarely a grudge. After work there were the men’s choir, the men’s pint of ale in the men’s working club, the men’s sport, the chapel. These were pleasures but they were the pleasures of routine, the leisure of the known. It was a world within a world, a part yet apart. It was a man’s world. Of its time and place, we shall not look upon its like again.

The  worker’s shift came to a close. They clocked off and trudged home down the cobbled streets, the hooter at the mine had signalled the shift’s end, the tramp down the street could be heard by the wives within the terraced houses. Gradually the crowd diminished as they disappeared into their homes as they walked, marching soldiers silently deserting.  Their wives would have a bath waiting for them in the front room and the day or night would come to a close only to be repeated again and again.

There was a code amongst the men who worked underground. They were undemonstrative, not given to huge gestures of joy or sadness. They were hardened by the work that they did, left with little energy to spare on frivolity and fluff. They were stalwart and stolid, their right and honour were clear, their moral code and concepts of dishonour were never wavering. There were unspoken gestures of kindness. There were few shades of grey. But occasionally something happened that caused them to stop and wonder and something would bubble up within them, an unexpected ripple from their hearts and souls, a pebble troubling the waters. This was such a day.

The horn went for the end of the shift. There was an extra jauntiness in their steps as they signed off and made their way home. They were unusually expectant, smiles were broader, white teeth in sharp contrast to sooty faces. They walked down the street. On this day, nobody was going home. They came to a particular house and stood expectantly outside the window where a light shone and the curtains were drawn back. They waited and suddenly what they had come to see appeared. A young woman in her early twenties, looking tired but happy, appeared from the back, carrying a small blanket. She stopped when she reached the window, unwrapped the shawl revealing the wiggling, squirming hands and beatific face of her new born child. She held the baby up for all to see. At the sight the men’s smiles became broader, the conversation sparkled and someone amongst their number was being slapped on the back. And nobody would admit it and nobody would dare reach for a handkerchief and nobody would allow an exuberant show of emotion, but as they left the scene a shrewd observer, a ‘watcher behind a fan’, might just have noticed a silent tear ploughing its furrow through a sooty cheek before quickly and self-consciously being wiped away and replaced with the bravado that was their way. But all would know and none would speak. The wives would note the change as they came through the front door. They would know where he had been. But nothing, even in the comfort of his own home with his family around him, would be acknowledged about that special moment. But maybe, just maybe, the sight of new life, new hope, a whole world still to come, this was a balm to a people who lived hard lives and suffered hard deaths so that that very brief encounter on that snowy day was a sparkle, a piece of tinsel in the stark bleakness.

“One joy dispels a thousand cares.” Chinese proverb.

Thanks for reading.

*Looking up the average life expectancy for a miner in the early 20^th Century it is quoted as being 58.9 years for a surface worker and 49.23 years for those who worked underground.  Mortality rates for their wives in childbirth could be as high as 85 per 1000. Obviously those 85 women would be dying much younger than their menfolk. Also quoted in the articles that I read was the statistic that miners between ages 35 to 50 years were often categorised as old or disabled, mostly because of the ‘scourge of silicosis’ also known as ‘black lung’.

Information about the life expectancy of miners was taken from:-

“This is the country of premature old men.’ Ageing and aged miners in the South Wales coalfield c. 1880-1947

By Ben Curtis and Steven Thomson.

Information about maternal mortality was taken from:-

“Maternal Mortality” By Max Rour and Hannah Ritchie.