Mine-Shift

He was running through a mist, dodging frantically between the yellow flowers of gorse and lace edged May. Ahead of him a white hare loped, veering left and right, while at his back he heard pounding feet. He knew what was following. His pursuer was a black mastiff dog and in his head voices screamed of carnage and destruction.

The dog was gaining now. He could feel its breath, hot on his back. Then the ground gave way, and he was falling - down, down, and deeper down, to the bowels of the earth. He was in a mine - not the mine where he worked. This mine was curiously lit, with a steady, unnatural light. All around him there was chaos. Water cascaded in from the sea. Broken pieces of the mine's ruins floated by, and there were bodies – shining faced boys lying face up, arms and legs spread. He grabbed at one, hoping to save him from drowning. Then he let the creature go. It wasn't human. The shape was human but its flesh was cold, formed of wax. All the bodies appeared to be effigies of human kind, floating helplessly, nudging each other like boats in a storm.

Pushing through the water, he ran. Behind him now, he heard the ringing bark of the black dog again. It echoed through the shafts and levels, until, in some weird transformation, it began sounding his name, “Joel, Joel.” The barks reverberated in his head. Then… “Come on, Joel, boy.” He was being shaken and the sound had changed to his mother's voice. “Joel. Come on, boy.”

Slowly he looked around.

His mother was leaning over him, her hands gripping his arm. Behind her he could see the anxious face of his younger brother, Obadiah, peering over her shoulder. He pushed himself so he was standing, and he stared. The peats in the fire were glowing, with traces of smoke curling to the chimney, while the trivet straddling the peats carried a steaming kettle. There was a wooden table and scattered, roughly hewn chairs. In the flickering of the tallow candle he could see the pallet where his mother and father slept, but, today, nothing seemed real. A few seconds ago he'd been looking at the strange, floating effigies and the weird level with its unnatural light. And he'd seen the white hare and the black mastiff dog.

He hadn't been asleep, but what he'd been looking at had blocked out the room. It was as if he'd been seeing a vision. It scared him. He knew what the hare and the dog meant. Running together they foretold the most terrible of disasters. His father had told him only a week ago about Zeph Hosking, a fisherman down at St Ives. He'd seen the hare and the dog. Yet he'd insisted on taking his boat out. From nowhere a storm had blown up. The boat had been smashed to pieces up by Hell's Mouth. Not one of the crew had survived, and there were other stories, scores of them, where the sighting of the white hare running with the black dog had foreshadowed catastrophe.

His mother was shaking him again, slapping his cheeks, because he was still in a trance. “It was like, you was in a faint, boy. You wouldn't come to, and your eyes was wide open. Your father's gone to the mine. He couldn't afford to stay, but I never knowed you out like that. You wasn't here with us.”

He shook himself, still unsure of reality. “I'm all right, mother,” he said. Then he went to the table, scooping cold water from a bowl, dousing his face and shocking himself back to the present.

His mother grabbed his croust bag. She slipped it onto his shoulder. “Here, boy,” she said. “Now you'm with us again, you best get over to the mine. Cap'm Bolitho won't put up with no lateness. Your pasty's in your bag, so get out there, quick.”

*

He shuddered as he adjusted the croust bag and closed the cottage door. A mist had rolled in off the sea. The whole moors was blanketed in an opaque darkness, with barely a sound except for the whisper of air off the downs. But he breathed deeply. Even the dank of a Cornish autumn was a relief after what he'd seen.

Then, as he stumbled over the broken barrier to the next field, a tingling dread danced on his skin. Coming from behind him was a rustling, as if a spirit was parting the grasses. He didn't have time to turn, either, before he saw what it was, and seeing it made him stagger to a halt. Shooting past him, ghostly, almost as if the fine droplets had sucked themselves into an animal form, was the white hare he'd seen in his trance, darting and zigzagging, its ears thrown back. Now there was the other sound, stronger, more urgent. His instincts told him not to look. But he had no choice as, lurching through the grass in pursuit, he watched the form of the black dog, muscular, with slavering jaws, and limbs flying.

He couldn’t move. He just stared while the mist swallowed the two creatures. It was as if he was still locked in the trance – as if his mother, Obadiah, and the cottage room he'd just left, were all part of the dreadful vision… Yet, the feel of the mist, the penetrating wetness of autumn that soaked into his shoes and britches, that mist and that wetness were real. The darkness that draped the downs, the air that moved on his face, they were in the real world. He hurried through the field again, listening to the whisper of his feet pushing through the grass… What he'd just seen wasn't part of any vision. The hare and the dog that had passed him a moment ago were genuine omens of real disaster, and his father and the others were already preparing to go down the mine.

He broke into a run. He had to warn them, but it would be hard. Even to mention the white hare and the black dog threatened bad luck. Perhaps he should say something to Walter Bolitho, the underground captain, although it was well known the underground captain had gone Methodist. He'd have no time for superstitions.

As he stumbled on across the fields, the outlines of hedges and cottages loomed. There were shadowy figures, cloaked in the fog, moving towards the mine. He could hear the chatter of men assembling at the pithead, along with the rumble of the pump, and the engine house with its great beam engine, booming and hissing. He could see the mist yellowed with smoke and flames, as the shape of the mine buildings glimmered through the fog.

Quickly he scrambled into his mining smock, leaving his britches and shirt in a neat pile. Then he shuffled through the slow-moving queue until he reached his father.

“What happened to you then, boy?” his father snapped.

“I don't know, Father. It was like I was in a trance. I couldn't free myself.” He pushed closer and spoke in a low voice. “But, Father, you know that thing what you told us, about Zeph Hosking?”

His father nodded. “Tragic story. Don’t go talking about it here, though.”

“But you got to hear me out, Father. On the downs, when I left home – I seen it – the white hare and the black dog. It wasn't part of no trance, neither. They was both there, in the mist, and they was real.”

His father’s lips tightened. “Not here, boy. Tell me later, back home.”

Several of the others clicked their tongues. A couple swore under their breath, aiming kicks at him. “Hush your tongue,” one of them said. “Careless talk. We don’t want none of that.”

“But Zeph Hosking… and all them other things what have happened,” Joel said. “You got to listen to me.”

They were moving towards the shaft now, and his father snapped, “Just hold your tongue, boy.”

It was what he'd feared. As they went into to the pit, it felt as though the men were clambering towards some kind of calamity. Worse, he was going with them, down to the confines of the rock face, where there'd be a disaster, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

*

The miners peeled away as they climbed down, some heading off at the first level, some at the second. All the time the heat grew and the spaces became more enclosed. They clambered from wooden ladder to wooden ladder as the shaft followed the seams of ore. Eventually they reached the third level, where he and his father worked. By now the heat was stifling. The air felt heavy with the rancid smell of sea-salt, the reek of old stone and the floor's saturated wetness. But hovering over it all was the sickly-sweet stench of the gunpowder used to blow open the gangue where the seams of ore were.

It was the gunpowder smell that made Joel shudder. Today, setting gunpowder in shot-holes was the task of his father's team, and he knew, it was the gunpowder that was likely to trigger the disaster.

Candles spluttered reluctantly. Sometimes the air was so putrid it could hardly support the flames. Then one of the boys would be told to sit over them, fanning them back to life so the men could see to work. But, today the flickering light was just enough. He watched as his father took the tapers, one at a time, setting them in balls of clay, pushing the clay into the floor so that they stood free. Finally he handed one to Joel. “Set this up there by the face, boy,” he said.

Joel's own job didn’t require much exertion, but it did need courage. He had to hold a bar at the rock face while the others hit it with heavy mallets. A jumping bar they called it. All the time, as the blows rained down, he had to turn it, screwing it into the rock. He knew he mustn’t flinch. One false blow and his fist would be shattered. It had happened to another boy. Now his hand was nothing but a useless pulp of smashed and fused bones.

The men teased him as they worked. “That Joel Penberthy, Billy,” someone said. “I heard tell he been seeing your daughter. Did you know that? Hand in hand up round the back of Tehidy, so I heard.” All the time the blows thudded down, sending ringing reverberations into the pit and shuddering against his grip. “Think we should teach him a lesson do you? Give that hand a bit of a tap so he won’t be so keen to grab your girl’s hand no more?” The men laughed and winked; even his father laughed. Joel knew his face was on fire.

“It could easily be done, boy,” Billy Jewell said. “Aren’t you scared, holding that bar?”

He was scared. He was always scared. But it wouldn’t do to let the men know. “That’s all right, Mr Jewell, I do know your aim is good, and you know I never took your daughter around the back of Tehidy.”

It was the truth. In fact he’d never taken anyone’s daughter anywhere, even though other boys of his age were married; but that was another thing he wouldn’t want to share with the men.

All morning the heat grew and the sett became more airless. They were gouging out a series of shot-holes. This afternoon they would clean the holes, dry them with clay, then set the gunpowder and fuses, and all the time Joel’s thoughts hovered around the white hare and the black dog. It was as if fate hung, waiting for the moment when the fuses were lit... and then… what?

At lunch time they took a break.

The miners ate together; often up at the second level, where the air was less stale. But Joel hardly ever sat with the rest. He felt uncomfortable with the banter and the teasing. It was known he kept himself to himself. He would wander off with his croust, and find some place alone, where he could be with his thoughts - let his imagination roam free.

He didn’t go far. He could still see the yellow glimmer of light where the others ate. He could still hear their raucous laughter.

Today he was particularly careful eating through his pasty. The disaster was in his head. He needed to make a special effort to appease the knockers. The old ones had told him that little men lived in the mine – Bucca, they called themselves. They were reckoned to be the souls of those who crucified Jesus. They'd been cursed to live in the mines for eternity. If you kept on the right side of them they were good creatures, but they were very bad if you didn't treat them right. Every day the knockers demanded their morsel – their didjan from the miners’ croust, and every miner would leave them the crust of his pasty. No one doubted that if you cheated the Bucca and ate the crust you would take ill and die.

He clutched the crimped crust as he ate, so he wouldn’t touch a crumb of it. Then he laid it beside him, still with some potato and gravy clinging to it. When he'd done, he whispered: “I left you some extra didjan, Bucca, so keep us safe tonight, because I seen the white hare and the black dog.”

Then he collected his croust bag, making his way back to the others. He kept his eye on the flickering glow of their candle, but, as he stumbled on, groping against the walls, the light seemed to change. It became more a white haze and steadier. It struck him as odd. He felt that he was climbing. The smell had changed, too. There was a hint of clean saltiness, the air had a greater age to it, as if the passage he groped along was ancient. He was aware of rubble and rock falls lying in his way. Sometimes he had to clamber over great piles of boulders.

He wasn't in a level any more. Behind him the darkness had thickened, with no hint of candle light where his fellow workers should have been, no sound of laughter. The whole place seemed gripped in a silence that was near death. It was as if all his workmates were gone, swallowed into an eternity, and he was the only one who remained with any kind of a living heartbeat. It scared him.

He'd never been in such a place before. He knew he was lost. He must have wandered into an uncharted shaft or part of a disused stope, one of the large caves the miners dug to extract a seam of ore. It felt abandoned. He had no idea where he was, but pressing on had to be the best option. If the stope led to ground level, there would be landmarks he'd recognise. He’d be able to find his way back to the pithead. If he found that, he could go down the main shaft again and get back to his father.

He struggled over the heaps of broken earth and stones, scratching his arms and legs on sharp granite edges. He slipped on loose shale until, breathing heavily, he came to the surface. But, as he emerged, he stared around him, stunned.

Nothing was right.

A white mist still drove in from the sea. It had a different smell though. This morning the mist had been heavy with the flames of furnaces and the reek of smoke. There’d been the sweeter smell of hot oil from the steam pump. Now the air was clean, fresher than he was used to.

Then, as he looked around, his blood ran cold.

Surrounding him, glimmering through the mist, were the gorse bushes he'd seen in his vision, in full yellow bloom, while the trees, the hawthorn trees, were white with May. This morning he had gone down the mine in the thick of autumn – Now he had come up to this, a late spring and the landscape of his nightmare.

His thoughts rocked.

Nothing made sense and he staggered, collapsing helplessly onto a grassy bank.

Chapter 2

For a few minutes he didn't move.

How could time have shifted like this? Was it the work of the knockers – their way to protect him from the disaster? Had they pushed time forward to next spring, so he would be completely clear of whatever was going to happen in the mine – or had they pushed the time back?

He looked at his arms and hands, dusted by rock fragments, then at his feet and shoes. Everything looked much as it had when he’d set out for work, nothing bigger, nothing smaller. There was no half-year of growth, nor was there a half year of shrinkage. He knew he’d had a big growth-spurt through the summer. He didn’t seem to have lost any of that.

He stood up and looked around him. But there was no comfort in what he saw. He seemed to be in a world that had shifted away from everything he knew.