Chapter 1, page 1.
John Derrington was the first to reach the top of the hill. Arms akimbo,
legs wide apart, he stood there insensitive to the cold; eyes moist, mouth
set hard.
He had returned.
The mist rose from the lower ground to swirl about his feet and spray gentle
upon the gorse and brambles, with it the dank perfumes that seep from the
soil on winter mornings: a blend of mine sweat and the perspiration of genteel
lace.
If one listened close the screams of labouring boys still echoed from the
incarcerating tombs and men wept deep below as waiting women did above. Scents
and sounds are transient phenomena, for when the sun pulls on its worn out
boots to trudge five miles to do a twelve hour day and then trudge six miles
back, they steal away as though in shame. If one listened close there was
intermingled with that anguish a plaintive lamentation of spinner and weaver
and stocking-maker and of the guts enchained to the godhead of machinery.
Ay, the guts.
His mother used to tell him that Nottingham was famous for its pretty girls.
There had always been work for girls in the factories, he had soon learned;
they were cheap. His mother must have been very pretty when she was a young
shop assistant in one of the Boots cash chemists, before she became a fine
lady in the colonies.
His Nottingham. The Lawrentian dreamland, where colliers worked the gin-pits
and donkeys drew coal to the surface, and the countryside was dotted with
small mines and farms and the cottages of miners and stockingers. The birthplace
of his forbears. Centre-stage of Luddite frame-breakers, of men who took courage
in their hands and, fearful, smashed the machines that threatened their livelihood.
Had his Grandad's great grandad been one? Was he descended from a Luddite?
