The people of Eyam had done much the same thing when the Black Death hit their village, hadn’t they? Battened down the hatches, stayed indoors waiting out the storm, until the fallout cleared, emerging only to bury their dead. He imagined Mompesson’s parishioners peering out of their cottage windows, praying that it was safe, that the holocaust was finally over. But wondering, all the same, whose turn it was to die today.

Chapter Thirty-six

Journal of 1968

WELL, THEN CAME the time for Les to die. He might have been number one, but he had to take his turn. Nature stepped in, struck him down with a heart attack. And I couldn’t say I was sorry.

Since then, there have been some days when I would just go down there and think. For a while, we still had the folding chairs, the wooden cupboard, a set of drawers that came out of Les’s kitchen. Now and then, I would light one of the tommy cookers at the bottom of the shaft, though it would take twenty minutes to boil a kettle, the way it always did.

For a few minutes, I’d sit and remember the foul air, the cold of the concrete that crept into flesh and bone. We wore two of everything back then, because once the cold got into your bones, you would never get warm again. There was always an icy draught across your feet as you sat there waiting for the messages, filling in the log, baling out the sump. The only thing you could do was go for a walk or run round upstairs. We were pretty numb by the end of the night.

Of course, the pit was long since derelict and overgrown. When we were active, we were given an allowance to keep it tidy. Twenty-five pounds a year, I think it was. The grass wasn’t allowed to grow then, not a single weed or thistle was allowed.

In the real old days, we spent our time watching the sky for rats. But it was all different when the 1960s came round. Instead of the sky, we had a concrete ceiling and a pair of metal-framed bunk beds. Some blokes sneaked in a comfy chair or two, curtains, or an office desk. Once we took down some carpet pieces. Years afterwards, they still lay there, half-rotted.

I don’t know what would have happened if it had really all kicked off one time. I reckon it would have been a bit like musical chairs, a matter of luck who found themselves down below. We talked a lot about what would happen to our families. You wanted to be sure they were looked after, if you were one of the crew underground.