Read A Million Tears for Free Online Page A

building. Nothing.
    After a few minutes of useless scrabbling at slag I was pushed aside and one of the miners took my place. Unable to help I stood and watched sickened by the hopelessness of what they were trying to do. There was hardly a person without a tear-stained face. This was all the more shocking in a community hardened to mine accidents and sudden death. People normally grieved in private.
    In every situation I suppose someone rises to the occasion and this was no exception. It was surprising who it was – the vicar! Suddenly he was among us screaming at us to stop.
    ‘Get back, get back, all of you,’ he yelled in a stentorian voice. He took hold of men and women alike and pushed them to one side. Slowly they began to take notice, all except one or two, too distraught to heed the vicar and still clawing at the slag. With a furious gesture he pointed at Lewis Lewis, the acknowledged leader of our community.
    ‘You man, get to the mine. Tell them what’s happened and tell them we need all the men down here. Tell them we want shovels, axes, picks, buckets. The Devil take it, Lewis Lewis, you know better than I do what we need. Take Llewelyn and Thomas with you,’ he pointed at the two men. ‘Thomas, when you reach the mine, get to the shaft and tell them what’s happened. They’ll get the cages ready and spread the word. Llewelyn go to the time shack. Get them to sound the alarm. If they refuse . . .’ his voice trailed off. If they refused? It was unthinkable, but the rules were explicit. Nobody less than a foreman could sound the alarm, certainly not the timekeepers. And how long would it take to find a foreman? The alarm would bring the whole mine out and production would stop. What would the owners’ reaction be to that?
    ‘I’ll ring the alarm vicar, don’t you worry none.’ Llewelyn was over 6′6″tall and as wide across. The walking mountain he was often called (behind his back).
    ‘Away with you and quickly,’ said the vicar. ‘In the meantime you women run home and bring back all the shovels and buckets you have. You men . . . Away with you, you women.’ he screamed at them. They scurried as though the dogs of Hell were yapping at their heels. ‘You men concentrate on getting a passage into the doorway and then through to the classrooms. Davis Jones, Lloyd, Huw Jones, go and find planking. Tear down the wooden fence by the river, the one on this side. We need to hold back the rest of this Devil’s concoction from filling in where we dig.’
    Six of the men formed into a squad using their hands to drag the mud to one side. It was soul-destroying work. As they pulled the black sludge away more oozed down to take its place. They were up to their waists in the filth, the one in front pushing the slag to the one behind. It looked ineffective but after a few minutes I thought I could see that they were making slow progress. They inched towards the door, over fifty yards away across the playground.
    I had no idea what to do. I just stood there, the only non-grown up on the scene. All I could think of was Sion and Sian. They had to be alive, I told myself, they just had to be. The silence was because they were all sitting quietly, preserving their air, waiting for us to rescue them. It had to be that way. It had to be.
    Some of the women returned carrying buckets and shovels. Some had brought blankets, to keep the survivors warm I heard. Mam was back with our coalscuttle and the grate shovel. I think it was the futility of this that suddenly came home to me the fact that the rescue attempt was pathetic, and it was the hope on the faces of the villagers that brought me to further tears. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see old Mr Price.
    ‘Have a good cry Dai, but don’t give up praying. There’s always,’ he stumbled over the words, ‘there’s always hope. If the windows on the other side didn’t break then most . . . at least a lot of the sludge will have been kept out.’