He began to work at another prop with the iron lever he was holding, conscious of Walter some feet behind him as his brother coughed and spat before saying, ‘Easy, man, easy. You’re going at that like a bull in a china shop, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘I do mind.’ He heard Walter mutter something that finished with ‘. . . miserable blighter,’ but didn’t respond. He wanted no truck with Walt, or Fred or Pete either. The three of them had ruined his life and even looking at them made him want to strike out. The number of times he’d told the three of them to leave him alone in the last couple of years must run into the hundreds, but still they persisted in keeping up the brotherly facade, especially Walt. But then they probably hadn’t got the sense to believe what he said. Gormless, the three of them. Gormless and as thick as two short planks.

He should have gone down south. Even without Ruby he should have cleared off when Olive told him she was pregnant. Instead he’d let himself be bullied into marrying her, thereby saddling himself for life with Ruby’s sister and her child. He never thought of their daughter as part of him – she was wholly Olive’s – and this was apparent in his day-to-day dealings with the infant. He had never taken to her from the moment she was born, and he made no effort to hide his resentment at her coming, totally blaming the child and her mother for his present circumstances.

Telling himself to work and not think, he continued with the job in hand. Moving the conveyor belt towards the new face was always precarious for the miners withdrawing the old props, but the whole shift were working flat out as always, some men cleaning the conveyor itself, some hauling sections of it inch by inch in the confined space and others spreading stone dust to dampen down the danger of the coal dust exploding. No one needed to be told what to do; they worked as a team and each miner prided himself on doing the task in hand to the best of his ability. Lives depended on it.