The Black Diamond

by Francis Brett Young

A mile or more from that inhospitable inn he saw the kind of building for which he was looking standing in a field on the left of the road. It was a red-brick barn, half-timbered like the houses of the neighbourhood. A group of cows lay ruminating in their sleep on the far side of it and Abner picked his way between their shadowy shapes to a doorway with an oak beam for lintel. A rough door closed the aperture. At first he thought that it was locked or bolted but it yielded to his pressure. He half expected to find some animal inside, for when he first came to the door he had heard a noise like a calf turning in straw. He struck a match carefully. The place was clean and dry, half filled with hay of the last season’s harvest that had evidently been placed there for winter fodder. He decided that the rustling that he had heard must have been made by rats. Well, rats wouldn’t worry him in his present degree of tiredness. He closed the door and sank down easily into a soft, sweet-smelling bed.

He lay still on his back with his eyes wide open staring into the darkness above him, thinking of the extraordinary variety of adventures that had filled the last twenty-four hours. This time last night, he reflected, he must have been dozing in the corner of the tram-car between Dulston and Mawne. Now he had nothing left to remind him of his old life except the clothes he was wearing . . . not even Tiger. He wondered what his father was feeling like now; wondered what had happened to Alice. He had never before thought so tenderly of her. She had shown what she was made of when she slipped the two sovereigns into his pocket. When he got work in Wales, he decided, he would send her money . . . not that she would really need it, for now sheer necessity would compel John Fellows to go back to the pit, unless indeed he had any of the money left that he had stolen from Abner. The thought of his savings suddenly reminded him what a fool he had been not to search his father’s pockets before he left the house. On the whole he wasn’t sorry that he had left him undisturbed. He didn’t feel unkindly toward him, for he recognised that no man is responsible for what he says or does when he is drunk. In the black-country people who know the rougher side of life are always ready to condone crimes of passion or liquor. ‘The old chap’s welcome to the money,’ Abner thought, ‘leastwise if any of it comes our Alice’s way.’

His mind was still too crowded for sleep. He thought he would have a smoke and began to fill his pipe with the tobacco he had bought earlier in the evening. Again he heard a rustling noise in the hay. When he lit his pipe he would try to see what caused it. He waited, listening, and when next he heard it struck a match and peered in the direction from which it came.

‘Douse that light, mate,’ said a voice, almost at his elbow, ‘and take your bloody feet off my chest. You’ll be afther settin’ the place alight and sending the both of us to hell before our time!’

Abner dropped his match with astonishment. The other, suddenly materialising, put his foot on the glowing fragment.

‘I reckon you give me a bit of a start,’ said Abner, laughing.

‘Start, is it? It’s finished we’ll be if you go throwing match-sticks that way into a heap of tinder.’ The turn of speech amused Abner.

‘It’s easy to see that you don’t know the way to travel, or you wouldn’t be doing the like of that,’ said his unseen companion. ‘I may well be stranded to the world, but it’s not burning I want this night of our lord, I’m tellin’ you.’

He settled down into the hay again, this time at some distance from Abner. Abner had never yet caught a glimpse of him. He could not tell whether he was old or young, pleasant-looking or villainous, but he knew that the stranger was the first person who had accepted him without question since his wanderings began. He no longer felt sleepy and was indeed glad of a chance to talk with another human being. In this at any rate his shadowy companion was ready to oblige him, taking the conversation into his own hands without the least hesitation. He asked Abner where he had come from and how long he had been on the road.

‘God help me!’ he said, ‘you’re not born yet!’ Then he asked Abner if he could spare him a gorm. Abner had not the least idea what a gorm was, but the voice explained that it meant a little weeny dooney bit of tobacco—‘for to chew,’ he explained, ‘we don’t want anny more fireworks. “Anny more for Annimore,” as the guard says.’