The Hiding Place(32)

Short, hard and miserable, I think. That’s what most people’s lives were like in the nineteenth century. We romanticize the past, with our period dramas and glossy film adaptations. A bit like we do with nature. Nature isn’t beautiful. Nature is violent, unpredictable and unforgiving. Eat or be eaten. That’s nature. However much Attenborough and Coldplay you wrap it up in.

“Most people had hard lives back then,” I say to Marcus.

He nods, suddenly enthused. “I know. Do you know the average age people lived to in the nineteenth century?”

I hold up my hands. “English, not history.”

“Forty-six, if you were lucky. And Arnhill was an industrial village. Lower-class, manual workers died younger. Lung infections, mine accidents and, of course, all the usual diseases—smallpox, typhoid, et cetera.”

“Not the best time to be born.”

His eyes light up. I sense we have found his chosen subject. “That’s the other thing. In the eighteen hundreds women had an average of eight or ten children. But many would die in infancy or before they reached their teens.” He pauses to let this sink in. “Ever noticed something weird about this place?”

I look around. “You mean, aside from all the dead people?”

His face closes again. He thinks I’m making fun of him.

“Sorry. Flippancy. Bad habit of mine. Tell me?”

“What’s missing from the graveyard?”

I look around. There is something. Something obvious. Something I should have noticed before. I can feel it at the back of my mind, but I can’t quite grasp it.

I shake my head. “Go on—”

“There’s not one baby or young person buried here.” He stares at me triumphantly. “Where are all the children?”





14





When Annie was about three, she asked me: “Where are all the snowmen?”

It wasn’t quite so random. It was November and it had snowed quite heavily a couple of days before. All the kids in the village had run outside, chucking snowballs around and rolling them into huge misshapen lumps that looked nothing like the snowmen you see in films or on Christmas cards. Real snowmen never do. They’re usually far from round and the snow is never white, mixed in with a fair bit of mud, grass and, occasionally, dog shit.

Still, that weekend there were lots of these oddly formed, ugly snowmen leaning lopsidedly around. In every park, garden and yard. From Annie’s window, you could see quite a few outside other people’s houses. We made one of our own, of course, and although it was small, it wasn’t that bad. It had coal for its eyes and mouth, and an old woolen hat of mine perched on its head. The arms I made from two school rulers—there weren’t any trees or twigs around on our street.

Annie loved our snowman and would get up excitedly in the morning to peer out of her window and check he was still there. Then, on day three, the temperature rose, it started to rain and, overnight, the snow and all the snowmen pretty much disappeared.

Annie rushed to look out of her window and her face fell at the sight of the scattered lumps of coal, sodden hats and dismembered makeshift limbs.

“Where are all the snowmen?”

“Well, the snow has gone,” I said.

She looked at me impatiently. “Yes, but where are all the snowmen? Where did they go?”

She couldn’t understand that, when the snow melted, the snowmen went too. To her, they were a separate thing. Real, solid, substantial. Snowmen. Once created, they couldn’t just disappear. They had to go somewhere.

I tried to explain. I told her we could make another snowman when it snowed again. But she just said: “It won’t be the same. It won’t be my snowman.”

She was right. Some things are like that—unique, transient. You can copy, re-create, but you can never bring them back. Not the same.

I just wish Annie hadn’t had to die for me to realize that.


—



I sit on the sofa in my coat, the mysterious package on the coffee table in front of me. I didn’t have a chance to open it at school. When I got back I was already late for my next class. I had to use the break to catch up on grading, and by the time I made it through the last period I just wanted to get out of the building.

I even declined the offer of a Friday-night drink with Beth, Susan and James in the Fox. Something I’m now regretting. Good company and a cold pint in a warm pub, even if it is the Fox, suddenly seems a much better option than a cold cottage with no TV and the only company my skittering, chittering bathroom buddies.

I stare at the package. Then I pick up the scissors I found in a kitchen drawer and carefully slit open the plastic bag. Inside is a folder bulging with papers and held together with two elastic bands.

Scribbled on the front in black ink, just one word: “Arnhill.”

I reach for my drink and take a large gulp.

Every town, village and city has a history. Often more than one. There’s the official history. The bone-dry version collated in textbooks and census reports, repeated verbatim in the classroom.

Then there’s the history that is passed down through generations. The stories exchanged in the pub, over cups of tea while babies squirm in buggies, in the work cafeteria and the playground.

The secret history.

In 1949 a cave-in at Arnhill Colliery buried eighteen miners beneath several tons of rubble and suffocating dust. It became known as the Arnhill Colliery Disaster. Only fifteen bodies were ever recovered.