The Legacy by Lynda La Plante Read Free Book Online

Evans came by today and said I could have private lessons.’
    Hugh swayed and stumbled as she helped him dress. He hadn’t even bathed the night before, he had got so drunk coming back from work.
    ‘You do as you wish, Evie … where’s Dicken? Dicken!’
    Hugh left the house with his eldest son. Evelyne went back and began to clear up the kitchen, the broken beer bottles. The new lodger arrived back from his night shift, looked in for only a moment, then went into Dicken’s bed in what used to be Davey’s room, the little lad now sleeping with Evelyne. They’d had to take a lodger as lately the household was always short of money - the tin on the mantel always empty. Evelyne owed money at the baker’s, the pie shop, the hardware store. Things had most certainly changed. The Jones family had never been in debt before. With them being such a big family, and mostly men, there had always been wages coming in.
    Hugh still worked the mines along with Dicken and Will, but Will needed his wages for Lizzie-Ann, and they were saving as best they could. But Hugh was getting a bad reputation as a drunkard. Poor Dicken not only did his own job of shovelling, but he hacked the coal face too, his father’s job. Hugh was perpetually drunk, but Dicken never confronted him - he worked without a word of complaint. He went to the pub with his father, watched him waste the hardearned money that rightly belonged to Dicken, but he could say nothing. The Old Lion was losing his roar, his shoulders were bent and his face was always filthy. At night he staggered home, leaning on his eldest son for support.
    Dicken was worn to a frazzle, and he knew the managers were beginning to talk. The ‘measurers’ had been round - the men who counted the coal trams and picked over the contents to see if there were any stones or clay clods making up extra weight. The miners were paid by the tram-load so if the loads were down so were the wages. The wage for boys under fifteen was one shilling and sixpence a day, and over fifteen it climbed up by a few pennies a day. A twenty-one-year-old boy, even when married like Will, still only received three shillings a day.
    The miners’ wages were scaled according to the job. There were truck-weighers, coal tram-weighers, engineers, stokers, tenders, strikers, lampmen, cogmen, banksmiths, rubbish-tippers, greasers, screeners, trimmers, labourers, small-coal pickers, doorboys, hitchers, hauliers, firemen … but the elite, who worked the big veins of the mines, were the colliers, the men who hacked and chipped away at the coal. They worked in teams of two, and were completely dependent on each other. One hacked and chipped, one shovelled and filled the trams behind them, as they burrowed like moles deeper and deeper into the face. If the shoveller sat down, too lazy or too tired, then the chipper would have to lay off too. Dicken had been working for both himself and his Da. He knew it would be found out and could not continue. That night, as they came up from the cradle, the manager called them over. They went into the office and stood, caps in hand, like guilty schoolboys. The manager, Benjamin Howells, was sorry - he didn’t like doing what he was going to do. He had known Hugh Jones since he was a boy, he’d been at Dicken’s christening in the chapel.
    Ben spoke in Welsh - maybe he thought it would soften the blow - but it hammered down anyway. Hugh was given his employment cards and Dicken, of course, stood by his father and wanted his. Ben tried to reason with him, but Dicken was adamant so Ben handed them their cards and the week’s wages kept in hand, and the two men walked out. Ben sighed. What a waste to see a man like Hugh go to pieces; it was tragic. And the worst of it was, it looked like he was dragging that fine boy down with him.
    Dicken and his Da were both getting drunk, drowning their sorrows. They called for drinks all round, banging on the bar for their pints. Dicken rose to his feet,