The Black Diamond

by Francis Brett Young

His companion only laughed. ‘That’s all you know about it,’ he said, ‘and the both of us eat with hayseeds. I’m after telling you somethin’. Never choose hay to sleep in if you can fin’ straw. It’s worse than a houseful of bugs.’

Abner was curious to see the owner of last night’s voice and the teller of stories. He found it difficult to fit in the man with his narration. It was impossible to guess his age, but his hair was slightly touched with gray and stood up in a frizzy mass that made him look wilder than he was. He was of middle height, thin and very wiry, with a small head, bright eyes like a bird and a bony face in which the skin over the cheekbones was netted with red veins. His eyes were blue, and humorous or savage as the occasion took him. At this hour of the morning he did not appear anxious to talk and his voice that had been soft and persuasive in the darkness, was rough and short. They left the barn together. The cows were still sleeping outside and a dew was on the grass, but the moisture had not fallen on the road, which seemed as baked and dusty as ever.

‘Which ways are you going?’ the Irishman asked.

‘Going to Wales,’ said Abner.

‘Then the two of us had better travel together,’ he said, and Abner consented.

They walked for some miles in silence. Mick, at this hour of the morning was not disposed to talk. He went on ahead with a long, loping gait, very different from the tramp’s habitual shuffle. They came to a brick bridge that proclaimed itself unsuitable for traction engines, and here he suddenly climbed the hedge and started to wash himself in a bed of cresses. He took out the broken end of a comb and smoothed his wet hair close to his head like a picture of the Madonna. The water took the gray out of it so that he looked almost young. Abner also washed, and when he had picked the irritating hayseeds out of his shirt, he offered his companion half of a piece of bread that remained in his pocket. Mick took it without a word and dipped it in the water. Without this soaking he could not have tackled it, for though his bristling moustache concealed the fact, he had scarcely any teeth.

Eating this breakfast together they sprawled on the bank of the stream among rushes, with which Abner amused himself by stripping the pith with his nails. His silent and melancholy companion broke the silence by asking him if he had any money. Immediately Abner was suspicious. His second sovereign and all his silver were secreted in his waistcoat pocket. He had placed them there in the night as soon as he realised that he was not sleeping alone. In answer to his friend’s question he produced a handful of coppers. ‘Tenpence ha’penny,’ he said. ‘That won’t go far.’

‘Houly sufferings!’ said the other, ‘is it carry ten-pence halfpenny three miles?’

He spoke no more, and they set off again. During the rest of the day Mick Connor maintained his attitude of detachment, striding on ahead of Abner as though he had nothing to do with him. They bought a stale loaf in a small market town and the Irishman produced from the treacle tin that he carried three eggs and some rashers of bacon. They lit a fire on the edge of a wood and made a good meal. Toward evening they crossed a wide river flowing silently between high banks. Mick, who appeared to know the country, told Abner that this was the last bridge for twenty miles. Beyond the stream a little town lay smoking under the hill-side. They drank a pint of beer together and pushed on. The evening light seemed to awaken Mick. He became talkative and profane at once, disclosing to Abner the fact that he knew where good work was to be had. He scoffed at the idea of Abner’s working underground while there was a chance of earning his living in the open air. ‘I can put you in the way of a job will make your teeth water,’ he said. At first he kept up an atmosphere of mystery of the kind that particularly pleased him, but when Abner pressed him he disclosed the fact that he had learned from a tramp near Bromsgrove how the corporation of North Bromwich were engaged in relaying a defective piece of piping ten miles long in their Welsh water scheme, and that casual labour was hard to get in those parts. With the combination of his own wit and Abner’s strength they should find a comfortable job to last them for six months. He reckoned that three days’ walking would bring them easily to the site of the work, and gave Abner to understand that he was lucky to have met him. Abner was ready to acknowledge this. ‘That’s all right then,’ said Mick, ‘and now about that tenpence halfpenny. Do you think I’d be after sleeping wud you and not know of the gold sovereign that’s in your waistcoat pocket this moment? It’s on the table the cards should be if we’re travelling together.’

At this Abner was really angry. He didn’t like the idea of any one, friend or no, rummaging in his pockets at night. They stopped in the road quarrelling, and Abner took off his coat, preparing to settle the matter with blows before parting company. The Irishman seemed surprised that he took it so roughly; pointed out that when he had the chance of stealing Abner’s money he hadn’t taken it, said that he didn’t want a penny of it. Little by little, with soft and humorous words he cooled Abner’s anger. At the next inn they split the sovereign over two quarts of beer, and by the time he had finished drinking Abner was ready to go shares with the change, an offer that Mick was too generous to accept. ‘What for would I want money?’ he said, ‘as long as I’d have the price of a naggin in my pockut?’ A man must be a fool, he added, if he couldn’t travel in a fat country the likes of England without money. In Ireland, it was true, one had to use one’s wits, for every one else was doing the same thing. He searched in his pockets and laid out a yellow piece of paper among the beer-spills on the inn table. An Irishman’s passport, he called it. Actually it was an eviction order, which seemed to Abner an unusual type of letter of credit. Not a bit of it, said Mick. In Ireland all you had to do was to carry this along with you and tell a tale about the little children was starving on you, and you could kick a shillun out of every priest you come across. In the old days there was many a toff that’d give you half a crown to be rid of you. They had another drink, and Mick became rhapsodical on the subject of money. What good had money ever done him? Money . . . in his day he’d had the money would buy the two sides of Grafton Street. He recalled his great double on Winkfield’s Pride and Manifesto for the Lincoln and National. Three hundred pounds in his pocket . . . but it went away like wather. Porther would have supplied a better simile. When once he began to talk about horses there was no stopping him. The lust of the born gambler shone in his small blue eyes. ‘Take away racing and I’m gone,’ he said. ‘It’s the only thing that keeps the life in me!’ He went on talking until he saw that Abner was nearly asleep over the table, then he plucked at his arm. ‘Come along,’ he said, ‘let’s be getting a move on before we’re threw out.’