The Black Diamond

by Francis Brett Young

‘I don’t want to go,’ she said.

A feeling of joy swept over him, a curious, almost physical exultation. He had brutally broken through the veil in which she hid herself. He had seen herself at last. Now, with the blood tingling in his fingers, he would assert himself triumphantly as the man by whose labour she lived. She could despise him no longer. He wanted to tell her so, to make himself strong before her, but when he looked at her and saw her humility, he could do nothing. His words withered on his lips. He scarcely knew what he was saying.

‘Give us a spot of tea, then,’ he said roughly, and she turned from him without another word.

The Seventeenth Chapter

She stayed at Wolfpits. The iron of winter lay heavy on the land. The hills were leagued with winter to hem them in and isolate them. It was as though Wolfpits were besieged. For many years there had been no such winter in the Powys march, and old men who divined portents of weather from the berries of holly and the conduct of birds, foretold that there was worse to come. By the end of January the cloggers, as sensitive to sky-change as any feathered migrants, had struck their tents in the Wolfpits valley, leaving half their harvest of alder ungathered, and set off north for Lancashire where, in a country parched with fire and warmed with millions of huddled houses, they might finish the shaping of their wood for market. In any case they had stayed in the country later than usual, and when old Mrs Malpas, shocked by Wigan Joe’s attempts to put life into her husband, bundled them out of their lodging at the Buffalo, they had no choice but to go, for the tenting that flapped miserably by the banks of the Folly Brook was no shelter for men in that bitter weather.

‘We’ll be back to hear the cuckoo, lad,’ said Wigan Joe. ‘You’ll none get rid of bad pennies like uz.’ And Abner, walking down the valley to work, heard no longer the echoing of their axes nor the crack of rending wood. Where the trim piles of billets had stood covered in tarpaulin he now saw nothing but squares of withered grass, and charred circles where they had made their fires among the birches by the river. Their departure made Wolfpits seem more distant and desolate than ever. Little by little the constriction of winter was crushing all life out of the valley. Only Wolfpits was alive, and it seemed a miracle that even Wolfpits should live.

For a few days at the latter end of February there came a mockery of sunshine, sad, like the suns of autumn. Abner sang as he walked down the valley; the labourers sang at their work. In a moment, such is the indomitable hope of living things, the birds broke their silence, the purple hedges were flushed, the bare twigs of hazel trembled as though they would shake their pale catkins out; one could feel the sap of life secretly stirring. But on the third day March came in howling like a lion with a dry wind from the northwest, sweeping brown leaves along, and the branches of the trees that bowed before it rattled dryly like dead bones. Once more the floods arose and drowned the land, and there was no more thought of spring.

Through all this season the excavations under Callow Hill went on, and this was fortunate for Mary and her children, since Abner’s wages came in steadily through many weeks when snow and flood made it impossible for men to work on the farms. Sometimes old Drew would be weatherbound at Wolfpits for two days at a time, and this was a misery to him, for he had no life but his work, and his employer knew better than to pay him for anything less than he performed. On these days he would shut himself up in his rooms leading the life of a hibernating animal, lighting no fire and cooking no food, simply lying wrapped up in the blankets on his bed with door and windows closed against the cold. At night he would drink himself warm with his turnip-wine, and keep Mrs Mamble awake by singing.

Fair or foul, the work of the pipe-track never slackened, and Mary was kept busy scraping the caked mud from Abner’s clothes. The rain ceased and the floods fell. There followed a hushed season in which the note of the chiff-chaff was heard sounding faintly, timorously. The trees whispered together in the night. The valley was silent, and yet, beneath the silence, one felt a secret battle of blind forces. Moment by moment, cell by cell, the creatures of earth were breaking free from the heavy lethargy that had sealed them. Even in the dull members of men the slow flame quickened, the numb fibres stirred. As yet on the surface of the earth few changes might be seen. Over the fields flights of peewits wheeled and screamed, with flapping, tumbling wings. Only the bloom of purple on the hedgerows flushed to a warmer brown, only tassels of elm-blossom in bud softened the stark outline of their branches: only, on the fringe of the woodland, the green of dog-mercury appeared.

Then, with a sudden fervour unknown in more temperate climes, spring came. The sloes were sprayed with light; the hue of hawthorn twigs paled; in the space of a single week the whole earth broke in a green flame. Nor was it only green things that were born. White lambs appeared as by magic in the fields, seeming as little dependent on the agency of men as the white daisies. At evening, when Abner came home from work, they leapt into the air and twisted their heads sideways in the leap. The valley was full of tender bleatings. He laughed at them, striding homewards. His mates laughed and whistled at their work. Even the sad, disfigured face of Munn grew blandly, childishly happy.