They climbed the long bank from the canal up to the Manor Farm, at which
high point their roads diverged, one path leading direct to Bleakridge
where Orgreave lived, and the other zigzagging down through neglected
pasturage into Bursley proper. Usually they parted here without a word,
taking pride in such Spartan taciturnity, and they would doubtless have
done the same this morning also, though it were fifty-fold their last
walk together as two schoolboys. But an incident intervened.
"Hold on!" cried the Sunday.
To the south of them, a mile and a half off, in the wreathing mist of
the Cauldon Bar Ironworks, there was a yellow gleam that even the
capricious sunlight could not kill, and then two rivers of fire sprang
from the gleam and ran in a thousand delicate and lovely hues down the
side of a mountain of refuse. They were emptying a few tons of molten
slag at the Cauldon Bar Ironworks. The two rivers hung slowly dying in
the mists of smoke. They reddened and faded, and you thought they had
vanished, and you could see them yet, and then they escaped the baffled
eye, unless a cloud aided them for a moment against the sun; and their
ephemeral but enchanting beauty had expired for ever.
"Now!" said Edwin sharply.
"One minute ten seconds," said the Sunday, who had snatched out his
watch, an inestimable contrivance with a centre-seconds hand. "By Jove!
That was a good 'un."
A moment later two smaller boys, both laden with satchels, appeared over
the brow from the canal.
"Let's wait a jiff," said the Sunday to Edwin, and as the smaller boys
showed no hurry he bawled out to them across the intervening
cinder-waste: "Run!" They ran. They were his younger brothers, Johnnie
and Jimmie. "Take this and hook it!" he commanded, passing the strap of
his satchel over his head as they came up. In fatalistic silence they
obeyed the smiling tyrant.
"What are you going to do?" Edwin asked.
"I'm coming down your way a bit."
"But I thought you said you were peckish."
"I shall eat three slices of beef instead of my usual brace," said the
Sunday carelessly.
Edwin was touched. And the Sunday was touched, because he knew he had
touched Edwin. After all, this was a solemn occasion. But neither
would overtly admit that its solemnity had affected him. Hence, first
one and then the other began to skim stones with vicious force over the
surface of the largest of the three ponds that gave interest to the
Manor Farm. When they had thus proved to themselves that the day
differed in no manner from any other breaking-up day, they went forward.
On their left were two pitheads whose double wheels revolved rapidly in
smooth silence, and the puffing engine-house and all the trucks and gear
of a large ironstone mine. On their right was the astonishing farm,
with barns and ricks and cornfields complete, seemingly quite unaware of
its forlorn oddness in that foul arena of manufacture. In front, on a
little hill in the vast valley, was spread out the Indian-red
architecture of Bursley--tall chimneys and rounded ovens, schools, the
new scarlet market, the grey tower of the old church, the high spire of
the evangelical church, the low spire of the church of genuflexions, and
the crimson chapels, and rows of little red houses with amber
chimney-pots, and the gold angel of the blackened Town Hall topping the
whole. The sedate reddish browns and reds of the composition, all
netted in flowing scarves of smoke, harmonised exquisitely with the
chill blues of the chequered sky. Beauty was achieved, and none saw it.
The boys descended without a word through the brick-strewn pastures,
where a horse or two cropped the short grass. At the railway bridge,
which carried a branch mineral line over the path, they exchanged a
brief volley of words with the working-lads who always played
pitch-and-toss there in the dinner-hour; and the Sunday added to the
collection of shawds and stones lodged on the under ledges of the low
iron girders. A strange boy, he had sworn to put ten thousand stones on
those ledges before he died, or perish in the attempt. Hence Edwin
sometimes called him "Old Perish-in-the-attempt." A little farther on
the open gates of a manufactory disclosed six men playing the noble game
of rinkers on a smooth patch of ground near the weighing machine. These
six men were Messieurs Ford, Carter, and Udall, the three partners
owning the works, and three of their employees. They were celebrated
marble-players, and the boys stayed to watch them as, bending with one
knee almost touching the earth, they shot the rinkers from their stubby
thumbs with a canon-like force and precision that no boy could ever hope
to equal. "By gum!" mumbled Edwin involuntarily, when an impossible
shot was accomplished; and the bearded shooter, pleased by this tribute
from youth, twisted his white apron into a still narrower ring round his
waist. Yet Edwin was not thinking about the game. He was thinking
about a battle that lay before him, and how he would be weakened in the
fight by the fact that in the last school examination, Charlie Orgreave,
younger than himself by a year, had ousted him from the second place in
the school. The report in his pocket said: "Position in class next
term: third;" whereas he had been second since the beginning of the
year. There would of course be no "next term" for him, but the report
remained. A youth who has come to grips with that powerful enemy, his
father, cannot afford to be handicapped by even such a trifle as a
report entirely irrelevant to the struggle.
Suddenly Charlie Orgreave gave a curt nod, and departed, in nonchalant
good-humour, doubtless considering that to accompany his chum any
farther would be to be guilty of girlish sentimentality. And Edwin
nodded with equal curtness and made off slowly into the maze of Bursley.
The thought in his heart was: "I'm on my own, now. I've got to face it
now, by myself." And he felt that not merely his father, but the
leagued universe, was against him.