The Loom by Sandra van Arend

he ran, the sweat streaming out of every pore, his hair plastered to his head, for by now the rain was coming down in sheets.
    When he reached the outskirts of Blackburn he stopped once to ask a passerby the way to the hospital.
    ‘ Just go straight down t’street and at the end turn left and it’s there, lad.’
    The man looked at the drenched, heaving boy curiously. Before the sentence was finished Darkie was off again. Following the directions he saw the hospital in the distance. As he reached the main entrance Shamus and Mara O’Shea walked down the steps and behind them Leah and Janey; they were all crying.
    ‘ It’s no use Darkie, lad, she’s gone, she’s gone,’
    Shamus said, lifting his tear-stained face to the gasping, drenched boy standing in front of him.
    Darkie gazed for a moment at the grief-stricken people before him. The words seared through his brain. Without a word he turned and walked slowly away. He was unaware of the people passing by, of the cries from Leah and Janey, of his face wet with tears and mixing with the teeming rain.
    He was aware of nothing except his pain, his anguish and his despair.
     
    ***********
     
    It had been four weeks since Kitty’s death. Darkie felt as though he’d aged forty years in that time. When he looked at his surroundings they seemed cloaked in a gray haze. Harwood had never been a particularly bright place. Now it seemed thoroughly dismal and depressing.
    He had not gone to the Mass for Kitty. He couldn’t. Neither could he talk about it. Not like the O’Shea’s, who seemed to get relief from sharing their grief. He wished he could. He avoided walking to the mine with Paddy because of this. Paddy was hurt, but said nothing.
    Darkie walked towards the pit, bait tin in hand. The grayness of the day, the bleak surroundings of the pit, the slag heaps and stark bareness of it added to his depression. Bloody horrible place, he thought. I’m going to be out of this soon. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll be out of it. He could see the men gathering at the shaft head where the cage took them deep into the bowels of the earth. Paddy was there and he lifted his hand when he saw Darkie. Darkie returned the wave half-heartedly.
    Ed Beasely, his pale, weasel face settled into its usual irritable scowl, called out.
    ‘ All right you lot, get a move on. We haven’t got all day.’
    There were a few disparaging remarks, kept in low key because Ed was in charge of the shift and he could be a nasty bugger. They crowded into the cage and it began its descent. Most were used to this daily ritual, but Darkie still couldn’t rid himself of the sickening sensation as his stomach seemed to lift almost out of his body as the train dropped like a train into hell.
    Darkie hated the claustrophobic work. The hard grind and back breaking toil, day in and day out. Yet, listening to some of the old timers and their stories, he realized he was well off. How children as young as three would be used in the mines to lift the trap doors, sitting in darkness for hours on end. Of women and young girls used as beasts of burden and worse. He had been horrified as he listened. How could people treat others like that, he had wondered? It had been the strikes and agitation for reforms, over many years, which had gradually changed conditions for the better.
     
     
    Darkie lay wedged in a narrow tunnel. Sweat poured out of him. He wielded his pick at the jet mass above, which shone blue-black in the light of his lamp. The colour of Kitty’s hair, he thought. Everything he did he equated with Kitty. Her face flashed through his brain a hundred times a day, smiling, laughing, teasing, serious. Like the silent movies, he thought, giving a continual repeat performance. It was driving him mad!
    He glanced across at Paddy working a few feet away. His hair was the same colour as Kitty’s. Stop it! He swung his pick viciously and shifted his position as huge chunks dislodged from the rock face. The