“If you say so,” I agreed. Serried ranks, a serried rank of workess men queued outside the Miner’s Arms waiting for Ted Harrods the Landlord to open up, each in their clean freshly laundered white shirts, dark trousers and flat caps, a uniform dress if ever there was one, jobless lads, lads thrown on the scrap heap, spending the kiddies charity money on ale, what a waste. The serried rows of houses looked unaccustomedly clean, pristine almost, shorn of their cloak of smoke and their dusting of smoke dust now the Mill had fallen silent and the coal mine worked only one shaft on one shift and that half manned. My beautiful but flawed darling, so graceful, elegant, charming but cold, icily cold, frigid, she knew I married her for her money, she didn’t love me and neither did I love her, and while I spent Sunday night through Saturday morning working in Leeds or London, going down on sleeping car train of a Sunday and back of a Saturday on the Pullman so it was just
