He went home, took off his wet clothes, lit the fire and got into bed. His immersion in the drainage pool had made him dirtier than usual, for the water was thick with coal dust, but the blankets on his bed were so black that a little more made no difference. Like most of the men, he bathed once a week, on Saturday night.
The other miners had gone back to work after the explosion. Esther had stayed at the pit, with Annie, to fetch the coal Mack had hewed and bring it up to the surface: she would not let hard work go to waste.
As he drifted off to sleep he wondered why men got weary more quickly than women. The hewers, all men, worked ten hours, from midnight until ten o’clock in the morning; the bearers, mostly women, worked from two A.M. until five P.M.—fifteen hours. The women’s work was harder, climbing those stairs again and again with huge baskets of coal on their bent backs, yet they kept going long after their men had stumbled home and fallen into bed. Women sometimes became hewers, but it was rare: when wielding the pick or hammer most women could not hit hard enough, and it took them too long to win the coal from the face.
The men always took a nap when they came home. They would get up after an hour or so. Most would prepare dinner for their wives and children. Some spent the afternoon drinking at Mrs. Wheighel’s: their wives were much pitied, for it was hard for a woman to come home, after fifteen hours of bearing coal, to find no fire, no food and a drunk husband. Life was hard for miners, but it was harder for their wives.
When Mack woke up he knew it was a momentous day but he could not remember why. Then it came back to him: he was leaving the glen.
He would not get far if he looked like an escaped coal miner, so the first thing he had to do was get clean. He built up the fire then made several trips to the stream with the water barrel. He heated the water on the fire and brought in the tin tub that hung outside the back door. The little room became steamy. He filled the bath then got in with a piece of soap and a stiff brush and scrubbed himself.
He began to feel good. This was the last time he would ever wash coal dust off his skin: he would never have to go down a mine again. Slavery was behind him. In front of him he had Edinburgh, London, the world. He would meet people who had never heard of Heugh pit. His destiny was a blank sheet of paper on which he could write anything he liked.
While he was in the bath, Annie came in.
She hesitated just inside the door, looking troubled and uncertain.
Mack smiled, offered her the brush, and said: “Would you do my back?”
She came forward and took it from him, but stood looking at him with the same unhappy expression.
“Go on,” he said.
She began to scrub his back.
“They say a miner shouldn’t wash his back,” she said. “It’s supposed to be weakening.”
“I’m not a miner anymore.”
She stopped. “Don’t go, Mack,” she pleaded. “Don’t leave me here.”
He had been afraid of something like this: that kiss on the lips had been a forewarning. He felt guilty. He was fond of his cousin, and he had enjoyed the fun and games they had had together last summer, rolling in the heather on warm Sunday afternoons; but he did not want to spend his life with her, especially if it meant staying in Heugh. Could he explain that without crucifying her? There were tears in her eyes, and he saw how she longed for him to promise he would stay. But he was determined to leave: he wanted it more than he had ever wanted anything. “I must go away,” he said. “I’ll miss you, Annie, but I have to go.”
“You think you’re better than the rest of us, don’t you?” she said resentfully. “Your mother had ideas above her station and you’re the same. You’re too good for me, is that it? You’re going to London to marry a fine lady, I suppose!”
His mother had certainly had ideas above her station, but he was not going to London to marry a fine lady. Was he better than the rest of them? Did he think he was too good for Annie? There was a grain of truth in what she said, and he felt embarrassed. “We’re all too good for slavery,” he said.
She knelt beside the tub and put her hand on his knee above the water. “Don’t you love me, Mack?”
To his shame he began to feel aroused. He longed to embrace her and make her feel all right again, but he hardened his heart. “You’re dear to me, Annie, but I never said ‘I love you,’ no more than you did.”
She slipped her hand under the water and between his legs. She smiled when she felt how stiff he was.
He said: “Where’s Esther?”
“Playing with Jen’s new baby. She’ll be away for a while.”
Annie had asked her to stay away, Mack inferred: otherwise Esther would have hurried home to talk to him about his plans.
“Stay here and let’s get married,” Annie said, caressing him. The sensation was exquisite. He had taught her how to do it, last summer, and then he had made her show him how she pleasured herself. As he remembered that, he became more inflamed. “We could do anything we liked, all the time,” she said.
“If I get married I’m stuck here for life,” Mack said, but he felt his resistance weakening.
Annie stood up and pulled off her dress. She wore nothing else: underwear was reserved for Sundays. Her body was lean and hard, with small, flat breasts and a mass of dense black hair at the groin. Her skin all over was gray with coal dust, like Mack’s. To his astonishment she climbed into the tub with him, kneeling astride his legs. “It’s your turn to wash me,” she said, giving him the soap.
He rubbed the soap slowly, working up a lather, then he put his hands on her breasts. Her nipples were small and stiff. She moaned deep in her throat, then she grasped his wrists and pushed his hands down, across her hard, flat belly, to her groin. His soapy fingers supped between her thighs and he felt the coarse curls of her thick pubic hair and the firm, soft flesh beneath it.
“Say you’ll stay,” she pleaded. “Let’s do it. I want to feel you inside me.”
He knew that if he gave in his fate was sealed. There was something dreamily unreal about the scene. “No,” he said, but his voice was a whisper.
She came closer, pulling his face to her breasts, then lowered herself until she was poised over him, her sexual lips just touching the swollen end of his cock where it stuck up out of the water. “Say yes,” she said.
He groaned and gave up the struggle. “Yes,” he said. “Please. Quickly.”
There was a terrific crash and the door flew open.
Annie screamed.
Four men burst in, filling the little room: Robert Jamisson, Harry Ratchett and two of the Jamissons’ keepers. Robert wore a sword and a pair of pistols, and one of the keepers carried a musket.
Annie got off Mack and stepped out of the bath. Dazed and frightened, Mack stood up shakily.
The keeper with the musket looked at Annie. “Cozy cousins,” he said with a leer. Mack knew the man: his name was McAlistair. He recognized the other one, a big bully called Tanner.
Robert laughed harshly. “Is that what she is—his cousin? I suppose incest is nothing to coal miners.”
Mack’s fear and bewilderment gave way to fury at this invasion of his home. He suppressed his anger and struggled to remain controlled. He was in grave danger, and there was a chance Annie would suffer too. He had to keep his wits about him, not give in to outrage. He looked at Robert. “I’m a free man and I’ve broken no laws,” he said. “What are you doing in my house?”
McAlistair was still staring at Annie’s body, damp and steaming. “What a pretty sight,” he said thickly.
Mack turned to him. In a low, even voice he said: “If you touch her I’ll tear the head off your neck with my hands.”
McAlistair looked at Mack’s bare shoulders and realized he could do what he threatened. He paled and took a step back, even though he held a gun.
But Tanner was bigger and more reckless, and he reached out and grasped Annie’s wet breast
Mack acted without forethought. A second later he was out of the tub and grasping Tanner by the wrist. Before anyone else could move he had thrust Tanner’s hand into the fire.
Tanner screamed and writhed, but he could not escape from Mack’s grip. “Let me go!” he screeched. “Please, please!”
Mack held the man’s hand in the burning coals and yelled: “Run, Annie!”
Annie snatched up her dress and flew out the back door.
The butt of a musket cracked into the back of Mack’s head.
The blow enraged him, and with Annie gone he became heedless. He released Tanner, then grabbed McAlistair by the coat and butted him in the face, smashing the man’s nose. Blood spurted and McAlistair roared
