Remember the crystal mornings, Lucy? Crystal mornings like this, while I walk dusting the pavement with my cane, the sky never so blue and the trees never so tall. A new road stripes your hillside with fat black tar, but I remember before, the old path, lemonish dirt and dust lined by wicked gorse, and your house halfway to the hilltop, watching you canter downward, your sisters lagging behind with their books and Sunday hats, dust on your skirt from the clouds you kicked up on your way down, and your laugh, Lucy, your laugh warming as whisky. Wide-eyed and laughing you ran down the hill like sunshine, arms wide open, embracing the world.
- And John, yes, always John with his wet rattling cough and his cap tipped to one side, John the mucky urchin I knew you adored, for I would steal a look at you but to find you watching him. Our last day together, after the school bell, we fought over you by the pond, shoving and grappling, and then I shoved him one and he belted me across the head, and I saw brilliant white then nothing but black and my ears wailed like a steam train through the smothering dark of the tunnel.
- "Ah, that'll show you," he said, rolling his sleeves up like our fathers, "and you stay away from her and all." Do you know what I did, Lucy? I pulled myself up and pushed my face to his.
- "I'll not," I said, and pushed his bony chest backwards and he thumped me again. Down I went, tasting the metal of my blood, a tooth rattling round in my mouth. Funny now, Lucy, now I can pop them in and out at will, now they stand in the glass by my bed, to remember having one bashed out like that, and him standing there with raw knees and wide gapped teeth, looking down at me, fear in his eyes. "Ah, come on now," he said, hauling me up onto my custardy legs, "I didn't do nothing." We parted on the main street. All around us, inky clouds sailed so low they skimmed the hilltops.
- Ma had the usual kittens when she saw me, the blood round my mouth, the mud caking my clothes. You might have heard her from your hillside. "That lout," she fussed, "a bad'un, the family and all." She ushered me through the lamplit house and demanded my father took notice. My father, already home from his early shift at the pit, lowered his newspaper and looked me over.
- "Did you beat him?" he asked. I nodded to make him proud and his hand on my back shook my bones. "Right," he said with a chuckle, "I'll see old Thomas later," and his face disappeared behind the newspaper while black and amber coals spat and cracked in the hearth. I hoped John hadn't told his father what really happened for fear of being shamed as a liar. The village had few secrets, remember, though now I know you had your share.
- "Oh, you," Ma said to my father, shaking her head as she herded me back to the kitchen. "Clean yourself up, lad."
- I bolted my tea and washed my face, coal dirt ringing the tin bath. I was back out before darkness hid us, and there you were beneath the foul black sky, beneath the tree by the chapel, the place where we met to hold hands, to plan how to spend our freedom. The rain began falling as I arrived, the fat leafed boughs shielding us from the million wet needles, a soft persistent hiss like the sea.
- "What's up with your face?" you asked me, and, before I could tell you, you put your warm hand on my mouth like magic and I looked at you and everything stopped but the rain, then we kissed, tenderly, frightened, and your impish eyes dizzied my mind. We conjured a future that night, you and I, how I would work here at the mine and we would have our own house, garden, roses, one day, babies. Then we held hands as the rain poured down until the dark twilight and fear of our fathers sent us out into the storm, and at the bottom of the hillside, we kissed again, a clumsy goodnight, the lights of your house bright in the high distance. Raindrops clung to the ends of your hair, and still you had spirit enough to laugh.
- I watched the bleak night immerse you - did you know? - I waited in the drumming rain until I saw the crack of gold light as you opened your door. Then back through the village I splashed, never more alive, past the pub swollen with laughter, the huddled shadows through thick glowing glass.
- "You'll catch your death," Ma said, peeling the clothes off me. She sent me to bed with hot milk and I lay under the blanket listening to the rain, then the thunder roll down the hillside, and thought of you, I and us. I heard my father thump his way inside, roaring, and I dreamed and I dreamed.
- The hammering on the door awoke me, awoke the street, and Ma was up at my room in her old worn coat, telling me fast that she had to go out.
- "What is it?" I said to her. She said nothing was wrong, and for a minute I believed her but then when the front door slammed I realised she was still wearing slippers.
They pulled eight men alive from the pit that cold morning, but our fathers weren't among them. They, John's father too, remained underground. By the time I knew, Ma's friends standing dumb around us and me too proud to cry, we were packing to stay with my uncle and aunt, thirty miles away. And you left too, you and your ma and your sisters and you took our whispered future with you. I stood by Ma as the sun baked the chapel and we buried the bodies of the recovered and mourned those like my father who would remain entombed, and I held Ma's warm trembling hand. Through blurry eyes I looked high to the hillside, where ceaseless rain had scoured it to mud, and waited for you to come running down. I watched your house as we left for my uncle's house, watched it until it was hidden by the next grey hill, then the next, and finally you were gone.
- Of course there have been others since, for a time another who almost burned bright as yourself, and we had the garden, the roses, the babies too, and I never worked in any pit but often, driving home, I would take the left fork by the church and meander through the village looking for you high on the hill, a young man seeking his ghosts. Now I am home again, retired deep in my past, and John too, and we drink where our fathers drank, their faded picture above the bar and a plaque on the wall, and we whisper fondly of your memory as the young folk come and go. I know John kissed you also, that you had a parallel future of your own, and wonder which of us you would have chosen. But Lucy, with your giddy laugh, with the imp in your eyes, you surely could have kept us both young forever.
