Poon-Lai jabbed an elbow so her sisters would make more space. The others grumbled but pushed the dog-eared magazine back towards the middle. A British film star grinned at the camera, draped in a five-strand lustre necklace. Black in daylight, lustre shone brighter than opals in the darkness. The most precious gemstone in the world.
“It’s just lying on the streets. Like stones!” Her youngest sister said. She reached dramatically for a handful of pebbles from their dirt floor, showering them on her legs. Poon-Lai coughed at the chalky dust, shaking her head even whilst she laughed.
“You’re so lucky!” her second sister said, tugging on Poon-Lai’s sleeve. Her face was as round as a full moon. “You should get a western boyfriend. One with a motorbike and a leather jacket.”
They fell about the floor laughing, the very notion so absurd, so beyond anything in their daily lives that the sisters could not help but laugh. Reverting to children. Poon-Lai was not so far from childhood. The softness of youth lingered around her eyes even though her hands were callused from working in the fields.
They lay in the dirt, holding the glossy magazine over their heads, admiring the sports cars set with lustre gear sticks and dials, the handbags with lustre clasps. Some of the elders in Poon-Lai’s village wore fake lustre jewellery: nothing more than obsidian shards.
“Promise you won’t forget us,” Poon-Lai’s quiet middle sister added as they fell into easy silence. “When you start your new life.”
Poon-Lai swore it, holding all three sisters in her arms. Promised to take them to a fancy department store. To the palace to see the queen. To collect for them all the lustre they desired. She struggled for the words that could fill the brimming well of their hopes and dreams. “Lustre gems as big as my hand.”
Their heads touched as she splayed out her tough tanned hands for them to examine. She was their big sister after all. She would look after them.
Robbie’s father looked at the bottle of stout Penny had brought, squinting at the label like a foreman at the lustre mines. She would’ve chosen with more care, had she known. They looked the sort of thing she’d seen them drink at the pub. It was all the same to her, the sour smell of hops lingering on her clothes alongside the cloying smoke.
“They water this stuff down,” he said in lieu of greeting. The joints of his fingers were swollen, stiff with the early signs of lustre calcification. Penny rubbed at her own knuckles self-consciously.
“Da, be nice,” Robbie said reaching for her hand. He had warned her of his salt of the earth father.
The older man huffed, giving her enough space to squeeze past into the family home. Penny breathed in deeply before the door closed behind. The clatter of cooking and yell of Robbie’s mother was familiar at least. The matronly woman presided over the narrow space, scraping roasties and carrots from a well-loved baking tray and barking orders to the younger children.
“Thank you for having me, Mrs Greenwood,” Penny squeaked, the basket of apples held out in front like an offering. A perfect attempt! She’d practised it over and over in the quiet of her cottage: as she brushed her teeth in the morning frost; as she waited for the kettle to whistle at the end of the day. Thank you for having me. Greenwood. Gureen. Uwood. The Rs that slipped into Ws, the two sounds so close together. It was like the fates wanted to make a fool out of her.
“Speak up, lovey,” Robbie’s mother said, not unkindly. Penny had whispered the words into her own feet. With two younger kids fighting over whose turn it was to set the table, her perfect enunciation was wasted. Every stumbling error, contracted syllable, backsliding as she winced and mangled the phrase on repetition.
“I’m surprised you understand a word she’s saying, Robbie!” the woman spoke over her head to her own son as she hefted the roast chicken out of the narrow gas oven. “Now Jenny Barker, on the other hand, why did you end things with her? Lovely local girl.”
“Ma!” Robbie said, face beetroot red as he ushered Penny to the table. “Just ignore her, ignore them both.” His hand patted her arm reassuringly.
She was not a fool. Not any more. Conversations dried up when she went into shops, eyes and heads swivelling to follow her. The sniggers when she opened her mouth, the parroting mockery of her accent. She’d been here long enough to understand the sentiment if not all the words.
Poon-Lai was excited about flying. The blue-eyed man sitting opposite had given her a curious but not unkind look from the top of his long nose before ruffling his newspaper, folding and unfolding the crinkled sheets. His fingers sparkled with lustre rings, even the face of his watch gave off the tell-tale iridescent glow.
“Move, you’re in economy,” the flight attendant snapped, shepherding Poon-Lai from the luxurious seats to the cramped rear. Poon-Lai had only a flitting moment to admire her bright lips, sparkling with lustre powder. She shrieked when the plane left the runway, stomach not best pleased with the sensation. Dared not move from her seat until her bladder was fit to bursting. Ordered the same meal as the gentleman next to her, down to the whisky from the drinks trolley. Her auntie had taught her that. Just nod and say “same”. The westerners know what they’re doing. She gagged at the foul tasting liquid. In the films the drinks came in crystal tumblers with fat ice cubes. Lustre liquor, her second cousin had said, was the popular new drink.
Uncle Four’s neighbour’s sister’s friend had told them of the wealth to be made in the west. That they were desperate for people to work in the lustre mines. Gemstones as plentiful as grains of rice. Too wealthy to pick up jewels from the ground, that’s what she’d heard. And was Poon-Lai not a hard worker, someone used to dealing with the long hours on the paddy fields? It wasn’t much different, not at all. The promise came easily, sliding from her tongue as soon as the question was posed. Of course she could do it: pay off the debt that bought a one way ticket; earn enough to bring the rest of the family over. She flipped the pages of the long contract, the complicated English she could barely read. It was fine, the recruiter assured them, just standard stuff. It’s a better life over there! She scrawled her name on the stern black line. Living for a few months amongst the British sounded exciting. She’d have sandwiches and tea from dainty tea cups. Buy herself a mink fur coat.
The excitement deflated like a slow puncture by the time they landed in the smoggy capital city. As her luggage limped round on the baggage reclaims and the man checking her passport shouted incomprehensible questions louder and louder until tears sprang to her eyes. The phone booth swallowed her coins, one after another whilst beeping irately in her ear. Until finally a woman in the toilets took her by the elbow, looking at the instructions the recruiter had written for her and shepherded her onto the right coach. A dull panic thudded in Poon-Lai’s chest like a bird who’d smacked into the window. As the city flickered past, she scoured the pavements for gemstones but there was nothing except cigarette butts, discarded gum and litter. The new arrival closed her eyes against the vibrant neon. Shivered in her thickest, warmest clothes that were definitely not warm enough. It would be different at the journey’s end.
It had to be.
The small Yorkshire town was grey. Drab as the bobbled fingerless gloves of her gruff landlord. The bare bulb of the miner’s cottage buzzed from the low ceiling beams as he flicked it on.
“Someone here,” she said in halting English. Pointed at the dishes in the drying rack; the battered walking boots by the hearth; the filled drawers in the cramped bedroom.
“They’re not coming back. It’s yours. Use it. Chuck it. I don’t care.” Poon-Lai was unsure if all Englishmen looked so annoyed. Like he’d breakfasted on rusted nails, face contorting. The landlord fiddled with the gold-linked bracelet around his wrist, the single lustre gem winking before he tucked it under his sleeve. He looked like he’d add something but instead dry swallowed, tossed the keys onto the armchair.
Poon-Lai longed to sink into the sagging single bed, but it felt all wrong. Someone else’s house. Someone else’s things. Her hands touched the ornaments on the mantelpiece: a pair of ceramic dogs; a brass carriage clock, hands frozen at eight and four; a chipped vase, flowers withered to bony fingers. She could not sleep in a bed that felt like it would still be warm.
Instead, she crouched by the hearth to light the fire. A task that she did every night back home and yet now her tired limbs fumbled and the tinder refused to spark. It mattered not. One night in the cold would not kill her. She sat on the armchair, seat frayed to loose threads, and slipped her feet into someone else’s worn walking boots. Tentatively. Her toes wiggled in the oversized boots but they were better than those she had brought.
She could grow into them.
The Yorkshire pudding slid from the heap of food, spilling gravy over the embroidered tablecloth. Penny hoped no one had noticed as she tweaked it clumsily back onto her plate. When she looked up the whole family were staring. Resigned, she laughed. “Should’ve brought chopsticks!”
“Is that how you get gems? With eating sticks?” Robbie’s precocious younger brother asked.
Penny was glad to engage his friendly face. “Maybe I teach you sometime.”
Mr Greenwood dropped his knife and fork with a loud clatter. “Absolutely not. No mine talk at this table. Especially not about working in that hell hole.” His tone was absolute. Mrs Greenwood crammed another roast potato into her mouth, eyes bulging. The lustre mine was the main industry in the remote town. Gem cutting, polishing, setting, transportation all relied on the mines. And yet . . .
“My two older sisters were miners. Died in an accident a few years back,” Robbie said quietly as he bent over her ear. He drew circles on the tablecloth with his finger. It would’ve been useful to have this information before the family meal. He’d not mentioned it during their brief courtship, not spoken of his family at all.
“And your cousin. Your uncle too,” Mr Greenwood added, breaking his own rule. He glared at Penny like it was her fault. That she’d held a gun to each of their heads, these nameless, faceless people she’d only just heard of.
The room was expectant, waiting for her response. Penny licked her lower lip, sluggish and stalling. Hesitant least of all because she didn’t know they wanted from her. “It’s . . . dangerous down there.”
Grief lingered in the house like the smell of tobacco smoke, permeating the very foundations of the family. Mr Greenwood made a noise. A thick growling sound that said dangerous didn’t begin to describe it.
“It’s why we got Robbie out. An apprenticeship instead, mechanic is a useful skill,” Mrs Greenwood added, attempting to divert the subject. “The money isn’t worth it, love. It never was.” Behind her a long sideboard was lined with gold framed photos. One where Robbie was just a boy, his mother’s stomach swollen in late pregnancy. Two older girls sat on either side of him, young women really. Heads tilted back laughing as they tickled him. The same rosy complexion. One sister hid her free hand behind her back but the edges of bandages could be seen wrapped around her forearm.
A handful of others, mostly women, spread themselves across the rows of miner cottages. Disparate groups like spots of oil in water. Eyeing each other with a wariness born of different tongues, different foods and cultures and skin colours, uncertain if this way lay mutual support or competition. They’d come to earn. To make the promised fortune. And in those calculations it was unclear if there was time for anything else. The two women in the next cottage had been there awhile. They gave Poon-Lai a hesitant smile each morning, walking a few steps ahead of her towards the mine entrance. On her first day, they’d shared a meagre meal in the darkness of the mines, drawn by Poon-Lai’s hiccupped weeping when no one had told her the shifts were twelve hours long and they couldn’t return to the surface for food. Sisters she guessed, by the way the older prodded the younger, critically examining the ends of her tight braids; absent-mindedly playing with the coin amulet around her neck. Their shared language was foreign and yet familiar at the same time. The older sister’s right foot dragged on the dirt track, stiff as slate. Her left hand and arm were bandaged tightly as well.
Poon-Lai removed her clean clothes with great reluctance, the moth-eaten wool jumper and padded coat. Fingers shivered as she shrugged into the overalls on the dirty side. She understood the precautions. Had heard the hacking coughs reverberating from the other cottages during the night, the ones that echoed like hungry ghosts. No matter how many layers she wore, she was never warm. Water trickled down the mine walls, dripping on her forehead and the back of her neck with an incessant tap. Easy enough to ignore at first, squatted over with the tools they’d been given, eyes focussing on the narrow veins that glimmered in the lamplight. But the chill congealed. She could no longer feel her toes when she walked home after a shift.
The huge rattling cage that plunged them down into the mine shaft could easily have fitted fifty, sixty people. It was disquieting with only two dozen of them, like children wearing their parents’ clothes. Mostly women or young men, slight of build and statue. Lustre mining favoured those who could squeeze into tight spaces, dexterous hands and sharp eyes. The mines were labyrinthine, the deputy sending them off like ants on the railed trolley to their allocated section, never in groups of more than two or three.
In their first week Poon-Lai had uncovered a handful of lustre gems, clustered together like teeth. The glow of her success kept her warm for days. If she worked seven days a week, she could earn more. Get the rest of the family over in five months rather than six. But the good fortune slipped between her cupped fingers. Opalescent lustre winked in seams through the dim light but it was too fine, broke as she cut around it. Resigned to panning through the silt for scattered fragments, her fingers shook as she held scraps to be inspected. The foreman pinched one of her fingers hard. Pushed down on her nail where the skin had darkened, deadened despite the gloves they’d been given. Shook his head.
There was a cave in. Everyone squinted into the grey midday sky as they waited for the head count. No piercing sirens of fire engines or ambulances. No talk of rescue attempts at all. Poon-Lai shaded her eyes against the glare of the light, quite unaccustomed to it. She clenched and unclenched her fingers, frozen as icicles as she blew on them. In the monotony of the job, she’d nearly taken a chip out of her own hand.
They were all given a day off.
It took Poon-Lai a few more days to realise the murmur of the sisters’ chatter no longer soothed her evenings through the walls. That they had not walked back up the dirt path to their cottage that day.
It was the stout. Or perhaps the four bottles of ale before, but as he popped the cap on the stout, it was as if someone fanned the flames of his simmering rage. Mr Greenwood rested the bottle on his belly, pointing at her with two fingers. “Penny? Is that even your name? Take our jobs, our names, our sons.”
“Richard Greenwood!” Robbie’s mother interjected but did not stop him. Instead she turned the dial on the TV higher to drown out his cursing. The younger boys barely reacted, accustomed to the outbursts.
“We’re all thinking it. Flocking over here.”
“They needed workers.” Poon-Lai did not understand the outrage. The bitterness that pre-dated her, like opening a jar of pickles to find a layer of fine mould on the surface. She shoved her cold hands under her armpits. Her heart a sharp staccato in her chest. The fireplace crackled but Poon-Lai remained cold, impervious to the touch of the warmth.
“Working these goddamn forsaken hours at that goddamn forsaken place. You cross the picket line! Months we striked for. Months!” His face was red, capillaries like a fine spider’s web across his nose and cheeks, his spit-inflected words showered the snug living room.
Poon-Lai waited for the words to fall to rest: scattering on the circular rug on the floor; on the tasselled side lamps and the coal scuttle by the side of the fire; the smiling family photos on the mantelpiece. There was not a single piece of lustre on them. Not in the photos or on the people in front of her. No pendant tucked beneath a shirt, glitzy watch on a wrist or lustre set knickknacks on the shelf. “What is picket line? I don’t know this word.”
“Da, the strike was over before she even arrived.”
Mr Greenwood didn’t hear his son’s word. Continued on, a train set on one track. “That’s the problem with foreigners. Just out for yourselves.”
Robbie hung his head in his hands, shaking it as if to convey all his embarrassment and regret in that one small touch. The walls were being build up brick by brick around her. Cement drying as she realised there was no door, no window, no air. Robbie at least was her alcove. A place she could breath, gulped down the air. “You haven’t given her a chance.”
“They didn’t give our Joan a chance. Our Annie either.”
Even Robbie had no words.
“I should go,” Poon-Lai brushed imagined crumbs from her lap and stood. Extended her hand. She had practised handshakes with her sisters before she’d left home. Skipping around and curtseying to each other gleefully. Singsong words spilling between peels of laughter. “It was lovely to meet you.”
Her stone coloured fingers trembled as she waited for someone, anyone, to reach out.
But it was just a cave. As soon as the words left her mouth, Robbie’s face fell like the crisp autumnal leaves spiralling down around them. Poon-Lai hastened to correct her remark, using her broken English as a cover for her lack of excitement. He was consistent at least in his enthusiasm. Since he’d started a conversation in the local grocery shop, his oil-stained hands offering to carry her weekly shop. Since he’d bought her a mug of overbrewed tea and a very nice bacon roll at the caff the following week. Since he kept asking to see her on her rest day, to step out, he would say with a boyish wink. She didn’t get it at first. She did lots of steps. Walking from the cottage to the mines, along the endless underground tunnels, especially when the trolley broke down and it was the only way to get out. Why would she need more steps? But even she understood in time. The way he shoved his hands in his pockets and when he offered to pick her up in the fancy red car he’d been working on at the garage. Lustre gear stick and dials, Poon-Lai thought, but refused the offer all the same.
“But have you ever seen this!” Robbie said, tugging her hand towards the steady dripping of water. A hulking rock jutted over a deep pool of water. A steady trickle of water slipped over the bare surface like a sluice. But what drew the eye was not a picturesque waterfall or woods they’d traipsed through, but long strings like firecrackers dangling in the water. Festooned with small teddy bears, dolls, shoes hung up by the laces and even an old saucepan. Barely recognisable by shape, the objects were various shades of grey and crusted through like dipped in slurry.
Poon-Lai shuddered. Since stepping off the plane, she’d never felt warm. Not in the black mould of the cottage, not in the dark damp mines and certainly not as they looked upon the sodden faces of petrified teddy bears. No matter how many layers she wore, the wet seeped through. Finding spaces at her collar and sleeves, soaking up through the borrowed boots.
“Our petrifying well! When I was a boy we’d tie up our old shoes in the water. Ma was so angry at us. They don’t like coming here no more.”
“I don’t like it. It’s . . . ” Poon-Lai struggled to articulate the words in English. The dread that stood on her windpipe. The numbness in her feet spreading up through her legs, rooting her quite on the spot.
“Witchcraft! That’s what they used to believe.”
Poon-Lai shook her head, gripping his arm tightly. She wanted him to move. To take her back to the warm chippy shop or even the foul-smelling pub with its leering patrons. Away from the dripping, the invisible grip choking the breath from her lungs.
“Damn, I meant to bring something,” Robbie said. He turned out his pockets, scraps of paper and a chewed pencil end.” Poon-Lai realised at last why they were lingering. Offered the work gloves she found pushed deep into her pocket.
“Won’t you get in trouble?”
She shrugged. There was at least one more pair in the cottage. Anything to be done with this place. She struggled to tie the gloves to a loose string, the dripping water running onto her own fingers and hands, trickling up her loose sleeves.
No boyfriends. No distractions. The payments for the debt were due monthly. But Robbie had filled a silence where her siblings used to be. His irrepressible smile was the only thing that thawed her. Melt her brittle limbs. The warmth of a candle flame in the snow. He in turn liked to hear of her home. The sticky humidity. The water buffalo in the fields. So different from here, he had said dreamily.
Her English improved in leaps and bounds. And he had access to a car! They would drive to Leeds, he said, go to the pictures and eat at one of those buffet places. The England she’d imagined on the aeroplane lingered just out of reach, bursting with colour whilst her day to day was layered in monochrome.
“Let me help Penny,” Robbie said, voice thick as he reached around her and tied the knot her shaking fingers couldn’t manage. He stayed like that, head in her hair. “Do you mind? If I call you Penny? I keep messing up with your Chinese name, I thought this would be easier. For my folks too. You’re still coming right, next week for Sunday lunch?”
She wouldn’t have cared if he called her by the name of his dog. Anything to be free of this place. Of the penetrating cold that had worked into her stiffened bones. She closed her eyes as the water seeped through her. Robbie kissed her cold lips, mistaking the stiffness in her body for something else.
Robbie walked her back to the cottage, lamp swinging in the free hand that was not holding hers. “I wasn’t expecting it to go quite so badly. I’m sorry, Penny.”
She could not answer. Her focus pinpointed entirely on the fingers that were entwined with hers. He did not appear to notice. The leather of her skin. The rock bed that had crusted her fingers. Those hands which dug deeper and deeper into a pit that had claimed two of his siblings. She did not want this for him. Not after everything his parents had done to save him. She saw that now. Saw the sacrifice they’d made. Echoes of the letters that arrived at her door. Translucent aerogrammes that said the same thing but louder and louder with each envelope. Hadn’t she promise to pay them back? The lustre she must be finding on a daily basis. Had she simply forgotten about her family? Her obligations? Her home? They were, the scrawled calligraphy continued, all relying on her. The money lenders were unhappy. Very unhappy.
Poon-Lai had re-read the letters until the folds in the aerogramme split. It was easy, right? It should’ve been easy. She’d heard the stories. Of someone or other’s son working three jobs, earning enough to buy a shop within a year. Or that cousin’s friend who’d retrained as a doctor, or a lawyer, or was it an accountant? Who gave out red envelopes to strangers on the street he was that wealthy.
It was easy.
They had all said it was easy.
“I hate this town.” Robbie dropped her hand suddenly, exclaiming the words into the starlit sky. His words echoed in the silence. His face smooth of the scowls that had scarred it under his parents’ scrutiny. He blinked as he turned to her. “Come away with me, Penny.”
“What?”
“Let’s elope. Move to the city. I can’t breathe here. I can’t live!”
“What about your parents? My parents?”
“We can’t live our lives for them. What about us?” Robbie reclaimed her hands, earnest in his impulsive decision. “I just want to be free. I know you do too, deep down. It must be better there, somewhere, anywhere but here.”
Machines could only do so much when it came to lustre. More likely to crack a gem as find one. People were softer, hands more likely to bruise and blister than cause damage to the goods. Cheaper also.
When the others were not looking, Penny doubled back around the no-entry sign, the haphazard tape which blocked the way. The sound of their chatter and tools grew distant. The site of the cave-in was clear, the loose rock and soil easier to move than the hardened walls she’d grown accustomed to.
She could not feel the rock beneath the work gloves, which she removed as they all did, contravening regulation. Running her hands along the rough walls to find where it yielded like softer sponge, calling to her in the dim light. Coaxing it out of the walls. Cajoling. Her palms were grey now. Grey as the dust which settled on everything. Grey as the rare glimpse of the sky. Grey as the townsfolk, trudging through their days half-dead.
Robbie would still be waiting. At the bus stop as he’d vowed, worldly possessions in a holdall, hopes and dreams shoved in there with clean socks and underwear. Or had he gone home already, the hours ticking past and Penny, Poon-Lai, had not appeared.
She saw it first, fingers no longer feeling as they once had. The smooth facets like marble beneath the dirt. Dug with broken fingernails now, gouging into the earth with a hunger beyond satiation. A lump of raw lustre, rough as a hailstone, peered with black pupils out at her. Its twin only centimetres away. Poon-Lai wept with relief. Enough to pay off the moneylenders, enough to keep her family fed. Salt ran into her mouth as she prised the first loose, holding the weight of it in the palm of her hand. The size of an eyeball.
Her heart banged against her ribcage. Knew that if she scraped a little lower, below the twin lustre gems, she would find an amulet. Petrified as the two women who’d been reclaimed by the mine.
They could not pay back any debts they owed. But she could.
She could not feel the water on her. Could not hear the dripping of the well. But all the same, the cold cocooned her. Petrified her. Reclaiming her as it had done so many before.
Penny kept digging.
She would be fast.
Faster than the others.
She had to be.
Originally published in Parsec, Spring 2023, Issue 7.
