Georgina

GEORGINA - Chapter 4: Down the Mine

The following morning Georgina was awoken from her exhausted slumber by a kick in the ribs as a thin faced but muscular woman said "Wake up, the bell rang ages ago.  If you're off to the pit you'd better get a move on!"  She hurried downstairs where Mary had been handing out pieces of  dry bread to her tenants who wrapped them in pieces of cloth or rag before hurrying to the pit head.  Ben was waiting outside in the first light of the summer dawn with a young boy and girl.

"So you are coming then" he scowled at her as he hurried towards the colliery.  They filed past the manager, who made a note in his book, before queuing at the top of the shaft.  To Georgina’s horror and amazement the two colliers waiting in front of Ben’s children stripped off all their clothes, nonchalantly handing them to a bent old woman who folded them and placed them in a small low shelter behind her, before they pulled the iron bar swinging over the shaft towards them and climbed onto it, to sit facing each other stark naked, holding onto the thick cable by which it was wound up and down.   The two children stripped off their shirts and handed them over to the old woman before their turn to be lowered down the shaft clasping each other tightly.

When it was Georgina and Ben's turn to descend she was relieved that he only removed his shirt,  keeping on his ragged trousers.  Georgina reached up and tightly grasped the thick fraying cable, with shock she felt Ben embrace her chest and grasp her rib cage through her thin shirt.  She saw he was grinning at her as they descended and she quickly looked away.   She was relieved as it quickly became pitch black so he could no longer stare at her embarrassment but he then moved his hands up and down her back crushing her tighter against his bare chest as the cable parted her breasts.  She took a deep breath but then realised it would be useless to scream,  indeed it would more likely make things worse for her.   As she screwed her eyes tight shut she heard him speak to her in a quiet trembling voice "My lass was being hauled up on her own last Saturday, I can't understand it, she must have been almost to the top when she fell."  He paused before continuing "She must have dozed off.   I was waiting at the bottom with my son, 'cos little Agnes was off work with her breathing problem again."  His voice sounded tearful as he added "I'll never forget her screams as she fell till the day I die, getting louder and louder till the thud at our feet and her blood splashing over us..."

At the bottom of the shaft sat a thin old man with an oilcloth bag containing a ledger, behind him in a holder fixed to one of the wooden props flickered a tallow candle.  He handed Ben three candles from a wooden box by his side, making a note in his book as he did so.  Ben lit one of these candles from the fixed one and placed it in a battered open fronted tin box.  He then motioned Georgina across to one of several empty low tubs with wooden runners saying to his daughter "Put the gurl belt on the lass and hook her up," The little girl fastened a stiff broad leather belt with a rusty chain around Georgina's slim waist and passed the chain between her legs hooking it onto the tub behind her. 

"Pull the corve into this tunnel and follow me, Agnes will follow behind but she won't need to help thrust it from behind till it's filled." Georgina obediently tried to follow, the hard edge of the leather belt cut into her hips and the cold rough links of the chain rubbed against her thighs as she strained, but the tub hardly moved. 

The flickering light of Ben's candle receded into the low damp tunnel and  Agnes started shouting from behind "Get a move on, yer lazy weedy strumpet!"  Georgina shut her eyes and angrily heaved herself forward, her heels slipping up out of her shoes, the edge of the belt painfully cutting into her flesh above her pelvis, the chain abrading the coarse cloth of her trousers against her thighs as the tub gathered momentum.  With a sickening thud her forehead struck a jagged piece of roof rock and she sprawled face down on the wet floor.  "Yer 'ad enough then, yer skinny whore" shouted Agnes from behind, prompting Georgina to lift her body from the floor and wipe away the blood running down her face, she felt up and realised the tunnel ahead was only just over two foot high and sloping gently downwards.  She was now reduced to little more than crawling, her trousers quickly ripping open at  the knees while her back and buttocks scraped the dripping uneven roof  at regular intervals.  As she realised with consternation that when the tub was filled with the heavy coal  it would have to be pulled uphill on the return journey her knees and thighs were now splashing through deep puddles.

It seemed to take forever to reach the coal face where, to the right of the tunnel, Ben had already retrieved his pick and, lying on his side started hewing at the wet shiny black coal.  Exhausted Georgina crawled clear of the running water which ran away on down the diminishing tunnel and flopped to the ground hoping he would take a while to fill the tub.  Almost immediately she felt Agnes's coarse tiny hands pulling her sodden hair back off her face and roughly tying it into a knot.  "Get that hammer and break up the big lumps and I'll fill the corve" commanded Agnes as she unhooked the chain from the empty tub then started pushing the smaller pieces of loosened coal through the narrow gap between the top of it and the mine roof.  Georgina's nose became dry and blocked from the dust while her arms soon ached so much from trying to wield the heavy short handled hammer in such a confined space that it was with a momentary sense of relief that on Agnes's command she finally turned away and allowed herself to be chained to the tub again.

The agony of the first uphill journey dragging the full tub of coal over the rough tunnel floor exceeded even Georgina's worst expectations.  The sole of her loose fitting right shoe snapped so that she lost it altogether in a deep rivulet of water.  To ease the abrasion on her knees, and now her bare foot, she clawed at the tunnel sides with her hands until her fingernails bled, while Agnes cursed and shouted from where she was pushing behind the tub that she seemed to be doing all the work.  Without Ben's candle in front Georgina had little idea how far there was to go in the pitch black.  Despite the water and sweat soaking her thin shirt and heavy trousers she began to feel unbearably hot as she strained her battered half starved body beyond limits she would never previously have dreamed of.  She decided that when, or indeed if, she reached the bottom of the shaft she would tell Agnes and that disgusting little man with his ledger and candles that she wanted to be hoisted to the surface and take her chance with the workhouse!

With relief she saw the glimmer of candles ahead and soon found herself in the larger tunnel at the foot of the shaft.  A short muscular woman, bare from the waist up, pushed her way in front of Georgina to get her tub to the shaft first.  The other woman tipped her tub onto its side and started shovelling the coal into the bucket to be hoisted to the surface.  As the bucket started to lift away towards the world of light and fresh air many dozens of yards above the woman looked back at Georgina for the first time, stared for several long seconds before exclaiming "Bloody hell, your first day innit!  You're back with a loaded corve damned quick for a soft bellied whore" adding with a toothless grin "Well done lass!"

Agnes quickly retorted "I've done all the shitty work thrusting back up!"

The woman replied "I'm sure she'd have had trouble without you, kid, but you know you couldn't even start to move a full tub on your own" then looking around she asked "By the way,where is your little brother today?"

"Trapper on the four foot mine again now" replied Agnes. 

"Well lass" continued the toothless woman staring again at Georgina. "You may not look much but I bet Ben will be relieved not to have to stop hewing to help the kids get the corves back up each time.  He must've lost a lot of pay the last few days" she added as she righted her tub and hooked her chain back on to it.

Georgina followed the other woman's example and filled the bucket with the coal from her tub.  Reasoning that there was no way they would stop raising coal to return her to the surface she pulled the empty tub back towards the coal face.  After the effort exerted pulling up the laden tub this now seemed light work in comparison.  Remembering the other woman's comments with a certain amount of pride she went on to wonder what creatures Agnes's brother had to trap.  "Are there rats down here?" she asked.

"No, why?" replied the little girl.

"What is your brother trapping then?" Georgina enquired.  At which Agnes started giggling, and didn't stop until they reached Ben, who had already built up a considerable pile of fresh hewn coal.

"Something's  amused you" he said to his daughter.

"She asked if Tom's trapping rats" she replied laughing.

Georgina was dismayed that Ben then started laughing at her too.  "He's working one of the doors that shuts off the four foot mine so some of the fresh air gets diverted here to the half yard mine." After pausing to laugh again at her mistake he added "If it wasn't for that fresh air the damp would build up and blow us to hell," Reaching for the flickering candle lamp he lifted it to the roof in front of Georgina "If that flame turned blue at the top we'd have to quickly snuff it and get ourselves back to the pit eye sharpish."

The next journey with a loaded tub to the pit eye was no easier than the first, she wasn't even sure where in the flow of gritty water she lost her other shoe.  After heaving four more loads of coal to the bottom of the shaft she returned with the empty tub to find Ben eating from the hunk of dry bread he had brought with him.  He tore off a large hunk and silently passed it to Agnes.  He then paused staring at Georgina.  "You're doing better than I expected, I s'pose you could do with a bite as you didn't have any porridge this morning" he mumbled as he broke off a small piece and offered it to her.

"Thank you Mr Hopkins" she gratefully replied before she stuffed the dirty hard handful of bread into her mouth.

"Mr Hopkins!" mimicked Agnes "and I hope you will address me as Miss Hopkins too" she giggled.

At the end of their shift at six o'clock Georgina struggled to keep awake as they were hoisted to the surface, grasping Ben's bare muscular torso tightly to her with her stiff bleeding and blistered fingers, all the time visualising his wife, or mistress, falling down, down through the darkness.  Perhaps waking only a fraction of a second too late to regain her hold on the cable.

As they walked away from the pit head Georgina uncertainly asked "Was it only last night that Mrs ... err ... Mary said I could stay if I hadn't paid?"

"I'll have a word with her now you've shown you can work despite your delicate build" he replied, adding "If you can promise me you'll not give up on me now." 

Georgina paused, taking in the import of his words before replying with perturbation "I'll try my best, at least until I've paid back anything I owe."

Agnes chipped in "She's hardly made it through today, I bet you she'll chicken out of going back down tomorrow morning."

Looking Georgina in the eye Ben replied "I hope you won't let me down but I reckon you're an honest lass" pausing, with a look of pity in his eyes "probably too honest for this hellish shit hole, but the way everyone else is losing jobs these days I s'pose it's this or thieving or whoring."

"If I had her body I'd rather be a whore" Agnes cheekily added, but she failed to duck quick enough to avoid her father's fist cuffing her ear.

That second night Georgina felt she had no option but to strip off her wet, coal dust impregnated clothes before lying down exhausted to sleep naked on the bare wooden boards.  She tossed and turned during the night trying to change position each time the pressure of her bony body on the hard boards became uncomfortable.  When she was woken in the morning she was at first horrified to realise she had been lying on her back with her hands behind her head and her knees spread to expose herself in the most licentious way to the two women looking down at her.  Embarrassed she pulled her gritty torn clothes back on and hurried downstairs.

At the end of the week when Ben got paid he explained how he had paid her outstanding rent and given Mary an advance for the next week sufficient for her to get porridge at breakfast as well.  

On Sunday the pit workers were given a day off.   Agnes explained that the surveyors went down the pit on Sundays to measure the amount of coal extracted and compare it with the clerk's records and to assess which faces should be worked the following week.

Despite Agnes's  previous antagonism towards her Georgina got the impression that she was now becoming her confidant.  Careful to avoid any mention of her mother's accident Georgina tried to enquire more about the working of the colliery,  but Agnes kept replying by quizzing Georgina as to where she had come from.

She watched some of the other women washing their filthy black dust laden clothes in the little brook below the village, despite it being Sunday.  She envied them for something else to wear other than the clothes on their backs.  But then she saw a waif like young woman with dark sunken eyes and uneven straggly hair hanging lank about the almost bald scarred top of her head sit down at the side of the stream and shamelessly strip naked to wash her tattered rags in the shallow slow moving water.  Was that the state that Georgina was destined to soon be reduced to?

When she returned to the shared hovel which was now her home Agnes presented her with a dirty shapeless hessian sack containing some straw to serve as a mattress, quickly explaining that her father had given her a new one because this one had been making her itch something awful at night.  Mumbling uncertain thanks Georgina couldn't help wishing that it had been a blanket that Agnes had found surplus.

The next week the unremitting toil continued, the woollen trousers the gamekeeper had given her were made for warmth not strength and she soon tore away the loose sodden material below the ripped knees, keeping it to use as a pillow at night.  The sweat from her hot straining body soaked into her thin shirt, rotting the seams so that it started falling apart at the top of the sleeves exposing the bare flesh of her shoulders while the hard leather belt had torn off several buttons so it fell loose way from her belly.  Towards the end of that week, her mind numb from exhaustion and tiredness, Georgina tried breaking the monotony of the repetitive drudgery by thrusting her pelvis down and forward as she pulled so the chain between her legs rubbed up between her thighs against her crotch.  After half pleasuring herself in this way over several journeys up from the coal face she realised with dismay that the cold rusty chain was now directly against her bare labia having worn through the moist wool serge.  That evening she shamefully shuffled back to her lodgings trying to keep her legs together acutely aware of the cool breeze around her sex if she moved her legs apart.  With silent amusement the other women watched her sat on her mattress unsuccessfully fumbling with pieces from the discarded lower trouser legs trying to arrange them inside the worn hole.