Read Online Reach for Tomorrow by Rita Bradshaw - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Rita Bradshaw
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to fight the desire to run and run and keep running until he left Sunderland and the nightmare of the pits far behind him.
By, he felt odd, queer. He lifted his hand to his brow and it came away damp with sweat despite the freezing cold. There’d been a moment down there today, more than one if he was being honest, when he thought he was going to have to give the distress signal and get out as this feeling had engulfed him. He couldn’t take it, he couldn’t stomach going down into that black hell every day for the rest of his life.
The panic threatened to take him over and he turned off the main street, entering a cut between two houses known as Bog Alley that led to a small patch of waste ground which was used by the surrounding neighbourhood as a dumping site. Once he was out of sight of the street he leant against an old stack of rusty corrugated tin, drawing in deep gulps of the icy air as he willed himself to calm down. Damn it. Damn it. What was he going to do? This feeling, this terrifying, acrid blind fear that turned his bowels to water and made him sweat like a pig wasn’t getting better as he’d hoped - it was worse if anything.
Every time he went down he could see the bodies, or bits of bodies in some cases, strewn about in the grotesque mayhem of death. Some of them had been unrecognizable, and that was bad enough, but it was the ones that still bore some resemblance to human beings that had affected him the most.
Old Frank Carter in the last section where the roof hadn’t come down sitting with his bait tin in his hand for all the world as though he was going to eat his fill, but with all of his clothes burnt and melted into his blackened skin. And young Peter Fowler, it had been the poisoned air that had got him right enough; the look on his face . . .
Stop it. Stop it. ‘That’s enough.’ He said the words out loud with his eyes closed, but the picture was carved into the screen of his mind and there was no getting away from it. He had been fifteen, young Peter. Fifteen. And Rosie’s brother Phil, still nothing more than a young lad. He was glad he hadn’t been there when they had come to Sam. He couldn’t have taken that and remained half sane. He snatched his cap off his head and tilted his face upwards.
There was an emotion threatening to burst out of his chest that was indescribable but he knew he dare not let it have free rein. Once out in the open he didn’t know where the pain and anguish would take him, and he couldn’t afford the luxury of letting go. And all this talk of what he was going to do - he shook his head at himself, his eyes springing open and his upper lip curling in self-contempt - he knew what he was going to do all right, what he had to do. He had to get over this, and damn quick too, there was nowt else for it. He was a miner.
He shivered, but it was the storm within that was causing his blood to run like liquid ice. Aye, he was a miner, and his da had been a miner, and his grandda and his grandda’s da afore him. And the pit had taken each one of them in its own way. His grandda and his great-grandda had died of the coal dust eating into their lungs - silicosis they called it, according to one of Sam’s books, but all he’d known as a bairn was that his grandda fought and gasped for each breath, his eyes wild at times as he’d died inch by inch. His own da had bought it in a mine disaster the year before Davey had first gone down. He had been one of three miners buried alive in a fall of side from a wet slip in the area where they had been working. They had brought him home that same day, almost to the time he would have returned from his shift, and his mam had taken hours laying his da out. When he’d gone into the front room to see him he had found it difficult to believe the scrubbed white figure lying so still and serene was his da. He had been so clean, even his fingernails . . .
He levered himself off the mound of tin and shook
By, he felt odd, queer. He lifted his hand to his brow and it came away damp with sweat despite the freezing cold. There’d been a moment down there today, more than one if he was being honest, when he thought he was going to have to give the distress signal and get out as this feeling had engulfed him. He couldn’t take it, he couldn’t stomach going down into that black hell every day for the rest of his life.
The panic threatened to take him over and he turned off the main street, entering a cut between two houses known as Bog Alley that led to a small patch of waste ground which was used by the surrounding neighbourhood as a dumping site. Once he was out of sight of the street he leant against an old stack of rusty corrugated tin, drawing in deep gulps of the icy air as he willed himself to calm down. Damn it. Damn it. What was he going to do? This feeling, this terrifying, acrid blind fear that turned his bowels to water and made him sweat like a pig wasn’t getting better as he’d hoped - it was worse if anything.
Every time he went down he could see the bodies, or bits of bodies in some cases, strewn about in the grotesque mayhem of death. Some of them had been unrecognizable, and that was bad enough, but it was the ones that still bore some resemblance to human beings that had affected him the most.
Old Frank Carter in the last section where the roof hadn’t come down sitting with his bait tin in his hand for all the world as though he was going to eat his fill, but with all of his clothes burnt and melted into his blackened skin. And young Peter Fowler, it had been the poisoned air that had got him right enough; the look on his face . . .
Stop it. Stop it. ‘That’s enough.’ He said the words out loud with his eyes closed, but the picture was carved into the screen of his mind and there was no getting away from it. He had been fifteen, young Peter. Fifteen. And Rosie’s brother Phil, still nothing more than a young lad. He was glad he hadn’t been there when they had come to Sam. He couldn’t have taken that and remained half sane. He snatched his cap off his head and tilted his face upwards.
There was an emotion threatening to burst out of his chest that was indescribable but he knew he dare not let it have free rein. Once out in the open he didn’t know where the pain and anguish would take him, and he couldn’t afford the luxury of letting go. And all this talk of what he was going to do - he shook his head at himself, his eyes springing open and his upper lip curling in self-contempt - he knew what he was going to do all right, what he had to do. He had to get over this, and damn quick too, there was nowt else for it. He was a miner.
He shivered, but it was the storm within that was causing his blood to run like liquid ice. Aye, he was a miner, and his da had been a miner, and his grandda and his grandda’s da afore him. And the pit had taken each one of them in its own way. His grandda and his great-grandda had died of the coal dust eating into their lungs - silicosis they called it, according to one of Sam’s books, but all he’d known as a bairn was that his grandda fought and gasped for each breath, his eyes wild at times as he’d died inch by inch. His own da had bought it in a mine disaster the year before Davey had first gone down. He had been one of three miners buried alive in a fall of side from a wet slip in the area where they had been working. They had brought him home that same day, almost to the time he would have returned from his shift, and his mam had taken hours laying his da out. When he’d gone into the front room to see him he had found it difficult to believe the scrubbed white figure lying so still and serene was his da. He had been so clean, even his fingernails . . .
He levered himself off the mound of tin and shook
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