The miners felt differently. To them, God had been extra kind, because just below all this beauty He had placed seams of coal, anything from eighteen inches to eighteen feet wide, and beds of fireclay and iron ore. But for Doris, man had come and defiled the beauty. Man had blackened nature with his meddling, and she hated the coal. She hated the constant threats of pneumoconiosis, ‘black lungs’, and nystagmus, the wandering eyes, that the men lived under, their poor, bent knees and ‘beat’ elbows. Doris had good reason to hate the mines — she had been widowed by them. Her treasured wedding gown was still kept in tissue paper. Her neat house was scrubbed every day and the gleaming brass in the rarely used kitchen dazzled the eye. The brass candlesticks, the strip of brass on the mantel, even the brass rod above the grate shone. The tiny, immaculate house seemed held in suspense, waiting for the warmth of a family, waiting to come alive, for life to breathe through the flower-papered walls. The big tub hung at the kitchen door ready for her man, even his tools were cleaned and polished, but Walter Evans was never coming home. The house remained a glittering monument.

Doris threaded her way through the dark streets, hearing the odd murmur of greeting from the young men who remembered her teaching. She kept her head

down, her nose wrinkled against the slight wind that stirred the coal dust. In some of the back yards she could see washing still hanging. The kind of household that left its washing out was the kind that didn’t care. Only on certain days could the washing be done, for unless the wind blew from the north-east it would quickly be covered in coal dust. Windows were always closed unless the north-east wind blew. The cries of the miners’ wives were often heard as they belted their daughters either for not putting out the washing in time or for not bringing it in.

The men were coming off from the day shift. As Doris passed them she could hardly tell one from another. With their blackened faces and clothes they looked much like the coal they mined. Many would need to get the dust from their throats with a few pints before departing homeward for their baths. Doris made a small detour around the pub to avoid the ones who had already downed a few too many.