Read Online Black Diamonds by Kim Kelly - Free Book Online

accent making flat words flatter. And I think I see him stalk across the room as I’ve seen him do thousands of times. Well, he’s not in any heaven, that’s certain. He’s on the face of a cheque and on my face and in the shape of my body and in my dreams and in the dust in the mine and in this room. And in this bloody payout.
    Evan, who’s come home with Mum, says: ‘Connolly told me he wanted to make it more, but three hundred was all he could afford each split between all of you. It’s come out of his own pocket. How about that? Says this is all very “ unofficial ”. Can you believe it?’
    Out of his own pocket? I can’t hold anything else Evan’s saying for a minute. Connolly, as well as his daughter, must be dippy. But I’m not complaining on either count.
    Evan’s going on: ‘If only there were men of his sort filling the parliament, to make it official, eh. It’s only commonsense — that such payouts force better safety all round; and better safety means men stay on; men who stay on are better at what they do, and so it goes. Better for everyone.’
    I hear that all right. And so it doesn’t go. Dad was the best, the safest, the most reliable, and no act of parliament could stop the coal from killing him or anyone else one way or another. I’ve made a decision: I’m not going back in. Not ever.
    â€˜You deserve every penny of that,’ Evan says to us both, and his Taffy accent rolls out the words as much as Dad’s would have squashed them. ‘Harry was champion, he was.’
    Amen. But I’m not going back in.

 
    FRANCINE
    By the time I get home I have regained my wits, sort of. Of course I cannot have an acquaintance with a miner. That’s plain ridiculous. What would we possibly talk about? How black was the coal today? Oh, quite black. That’s good. Anyone killed or maimed today? No, not today. We have nothing in common. I shan’t see him again, and he won’t really expect me to.
    The garden fellow, a Mr Saunders, arrives promptly and we roam around the backyard discussing magnolias and rhododendrons and all things frost-hardy, since the frosts are bitter and it snows once or twice in winter, sometimes heavily. He suggests massed bulbs: daffodils and irises. Ornamental maples. Dwarfed conifers. Box hedge at the verandah edge leading out to … it all floats about in my head, unframed and nonsensical, and I say: ‘And an apple — over there, in the very centre.’
    â€˜An apple tree?’ he asks, flummoxed by my interruption upon his vision.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Just one, on its own?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜It might appear … perhaps … a little out of place there. A little common. Ordinary.’ And he doesn’t care how rude and patronising that sounds.
    â€˜Well, make it two then,’ I tell him.
    And I know then that I am not quite recovered from my incident with The Lad. I want red bobbles to remember him always and this is not a higher thought — it is nauseatingly romantic and daft. But when this Mr Saunders from Bathurst persists with, ‘It’s not the most attractive tree, for a formal garden, Miss Connolly. A pair of maples, I’m sure, will be better there, as a subtle focal point. Shall we let your father have a say too?’, he speaks as if to a child and that steels me.
    â€˜I want two apples trees,’ I say. ‘Red ones.’ And that’s final. ‘My father would not know the difference between an apple and a maple if it hit him across the face. But by all means, ask him if you think it’s for the best.’
    â€˜Very well,’ he says, cowed and surprised. ‘We’ll include these apples, if you wish.’ I do wish, and I’m delighted. But it’s a hollow victory. I’m not altogether certain what an apple tree looks like. Apples, they are such a staple, but where do they grow? How