5 December 2018

Innocence

When I was a university student up in Scotland, I often rode upon the east coast railway that links Edinburgh with Newcastle and Yorkshire.

One dark winter evening, I was sitting in the buffet carriage of an east coast train when it pulled in to the station at Newcastle. The train was pretty full with seats at a premium. An older man bustled into the buffet car and asked if he might sit at my little table. Naturally, I consented.

I soon found myself in conversation with this newcomer. Communication was challenging simply because he spoke with such a broad north eastern accent. Many would have found that accent impenetrable but my step-grandfather Foster Morris had been born and raised in Newcastle so I was somewhat accustomed to the brand of English spoken by working people in the north eastern region.

My new companion was wearing a brown tweed coat with frayed cuffs and an old tartan scarf. His hands were like shovels and hardened through hard work. He told me that he had retired as a coal miner that very week having just reached his sixty fifth birthday. As I recall, he was from a coal mining area just south of Sunderland where many of the coal mines had tunnels that went right under The North Sea.

Clearly, the horizons of his life had been very limited. He told me he had never left the north east before and he had also never been on a train till that very evening after catching a bus into Newcastle. However, he had raised a family and he had laboured as a coal miner for fifty years.

I was warming to him. It was nice to be a twenty two year old university student talking to a man who had worked hard all of his life and I felt a kinship with him because of all the coal miners there had been on my mother's side of my family - including my maternal grandfather and great-grandfather.
"The Coal Face" by Alan Glasspool
Nosily, I asked him what he was doing on the train. Where was he going?

With pain in his eyes, he told me he was heading to Manchester. It seemed that one of his sons had been sent to Strangeways Prison after being sentenced that very day for burglary. "I warned him. I bloody warned him it'd end up like this!"

As soon as my companion had received the news he had headed for Newcastle, determined to visit his wayward son

We were half an hour into our journey south and at that point a man in British Rail uniform entered the buffet car. It was a rare ticket inspector. I showed him my student railcard and my ticket but the coal miner looked puzzled. He didn't have any sort of ticket.

He tried to explain himself to the inspector whose own English accent betrayed the fact that he was from the London area. It was like a Swahili-speaking herdsman meeting an Inuit - such was the success of their conversation.  I was obliged to intervene and quickly found myself playing the role of a translator.

The retired coal miner said he didn't know that he needed a ticket. He'd just walked onto the platform and onto the train. He had assumed that he could just pay on board the train and pulled a cheque from his inner pocket. As I recall it was a cheque for two thousand pounds - being the lump sum from his retirement package.

The inspector was unimpressed and showed not a single iota of sympathy or understanding. "That's no use to me! Why isn't it in your bank?"

"Because I don't have a bank account. Can't I use it like cash mate? You can give me the change."

I continued to translate, explaining to the ticket collector what I already knew about my fellow traveller.

I begged him to take the man's name and address and to bill him but this official was a jobsworthy and said he'd be phoning through to York to have the coal miner arrested for ticket dodging.

"Have a heart man!" I protested.

But at York where I needed to meet my own connecting train, the transport police were waiting. I interrupted the ticket inspector's explanation in defence of the coal miner and the lead policeman seemed to be listening with understanding. I shook the coal miner's hand and wished him all the best as he was led away. And that was the last that I ever saw of him though I have thought about him many times since that dark night heading south.

18 comments:

  1. Poor bugger! I wonder how his story...that particular story ended. I hope he met someone as generous and kind of heart as you to enable him to continue, uninterrupted, on his way to his misguided son.

    Having worked for four or so years in the coal-rich Bowen Basin in central Queensland, both in the towns of Glenden and Collinsville, I dealt with coal miners every day...and day long, it seemed...particularly when I was managing the Mess and single-men's accommodation for the miners employed by Collinsville Coal...a then subsidiary of Mount Isa Mines. Coal mining is not for the faint of heart, particularly underground mining.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I wish I could have followed him like an invisible man and witnessed how things turned out. He may not have even reached Strangeways.

      Delete
  2. What a sad story! I'm sure he appreciated the kindness you gave him.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was just young fellow of 22. I lent him my ear. That's all.

      Delete
  3. Oh, that's just heartbreaking.
    Why are people so very brutal to one another?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As Jefferson Airplane once sang - "We should be together - all you people standing round".

      Delete
  4. It's hard to believe that at that time thee were people who had led such a narrow life. Bullies would pick on them. I hope things were sorted out.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think that there are still a surprising number of people who lead very narrow lives but that does not mean that such people are without wisdom or dignity.

      Delete
  5. This story made me think about how much people like the unsympathetic inspector actually owe the hardworking poor. His life would have been a hell of a lot less comfortable without the services coalminers provided. That kind of class discrimination really makes me angry when I witness it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kindness and common sense did not appear to figure in a rail inspector's training.

      Delete
  6. Like Red, I find it hard to comprehend having such a limited life and it was not such a long time ago.
    I wonder if it was frightening for him to get on a train and go to somewhere foreign to him. His love for his son shines through.

    This story reduced me to tears. I hope he got a better run from that moment

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. To see him offering that retirement cheque to the inspector was heart-rending. He had worked fifty years and paid his dues for that cheque and yet he didn't really know what do with it. It was mysterious to him.

      Delete
  7. And therein lies an entire novel.
    Have you ever thought about sitting down and writing it using what you related here as the basis and making up the rest of it as you go? If you throw some love and romance in there, I think you'd have something worth sending to a publisher.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know what you mean. But frankly, at this point in my life, I am not ready to tackle a novel like that one. What do I know of the life that that man lived? Descending a deep mine shaft day after day and tending the racing pigeons in his loft? And living such a limited life. No. If I do create a novel after hundreds of hours of crafting words, it will be a different one Mary.

      Delete
  8. The ticket inspector has probably heard it too many times - "I didn't know I need a ticket...", and all the touching tales they told him to justify their getting on board the train without a ticket or enough money to buy one. Why would he believe this man was different from the ticket dodgers he encountered every day?
    I am sure you would have paid for the man's ticket yourself if you'd have had the possibility.
    As you know, I am currently reading "The Valley". There is of course a lot about coal mining and the lives of the miners and their families in it; your account could be straight out of that book.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It was 1974 or 1975. I didn't have enough money to pay for the ticket. I told that ticket inspector the truth but he would not listen. It was me telling him - not the apparent "offender". That itself must have been very unusual. Besides, you only had to look at this dignified and honest working man to see that he was no cheat.

      Delete
  9. That is heartrending. I'm glad you spoke up for him and hope it made some difference in the outcome. "Innocence" is such a fitting title.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Wow, what a crazy story. So much of the world's misery would be alleviated if people would just show each other a little compassion. At the same time, I see the predicament for the ticket takers. Not an easy situation!

    ReplyDelete

Mr Pudding welcomes all genuine comments - even those with which he disagrees. However, puerile or abusive comments from anonymous contributors will continue to be given the short shrift they deserve. Any spam comments that get through Google/Blogger defences will also be quickly deleted.

Most Visits