The Checkweighman

by W.G. Grace, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium

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Six days a week Amos Brain stood at the weighing machine at the pit head of Hollow Meend and watched the tubs come up. A tub came off the cage, the banksman ran it on to the plate, the beam rose and settled, and the company's weigher called the figure. Amos called it too. If the two figures agreed, the tub went in the book against the collier's number. If they did not agree, the tub stayed on the plate until they did.

The men of Hollow Meend paid him out of their own wages to do this, under the Act of 'seventy-two. Ninepence a week from every man at the face. For their ninepence they had a man who did not care whose coal it was. That was what they paid for. They had tried liking men before. Liking was cheaper and it came out dearer at the end of the month.

On the seventh day he went to chapel. On the Saturday afternoon, in summer, he umpired.

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The match was on the sixteenth of July, 1887, on the field below the chapel at Cinderford. The ground ran downhill to the brook, so that a ball struck to leg went on running for ever, and a ball struck through the off side stopped in the tussocks. The colliers knew this. The visitors did not, and it was worth thirty runs a side to the colliers most Saturdays.

The visitors were the Gentlemen of the Vale: a solicitor, two curates, a brewer's son from Gloucester, a land agent, some boys home from school, and Dr Lionel Probyn of Newnham, who captained them and was the reason anybody had come. It was Jubilee year. The Queen had sat fifty years, and the colliers had been told to be glad of it. They were glad of the half-day.

The gate was threepence. The money was for the widows of the March fall at Hollow Meend, when the roof came in on the deep level and took four men, and Mr Ellway the minister would pass a hat as well at the tea interval. There were near four hundred on the bank. They had not paid threepence to see the curates. They knew it, the curates knew it, and Dr Probyn knew it best of all.

He was a big man, wide and heavy in the chest, with a black beard. His voice was high and quick and did not go with any of it. He came in first wicket down at a quarter past two and took guard from Amos.

"Middle and leg, if you please, umpire."

Amos gave him middle and leg. The doctor scratched it into the turf with the toe of his boot, three hard strokes, as if he was signing his name on a cheque. Then he looked round the field at where everybody was standing and pulled a face at the slope.

"Downhill to leg," he said. "Very good. I shall hit to leg."

He did. By three o'clock he had forty, and the bank was making a noise like the cage coming up full.

---

At ten past three Selina Kear came down the path from the Morse cottage with her skirts in both hands, and she did not stop at the rope. She came straight on across the outfield. Long-on shouted at her. She went past him.

Ezra Morse was at the top of his run with the ball in his hand. He was the colliers' fast bowler. He was twenty-six and worked the face on the deep level, and in March he had been one stall along from the fall. He saw who it was and dropped the ball.

Selina did not go to Ezra. She went to the doctor. Everybody on the bank knew why, and so did Ezra, and he stood there with his hands empty.

"It's Hannah," she said. "It's started. Mrs Hook says you're to come."

The doctor took off his cap, which was a courtesy, and leaned on his bat, which was not.

"When did the pains begin?"

"Dinner time. Twelve, or a bit after."

"How far apart now?"

"I don't know. Bad ones. Ten minutes, Mrs Hook said."

"Have the waters gone?"

Selina went red to the hair. The whole field was listening. "No, sir."

"First child," said the doctor. It was not a question. He had attended the woman in May for a cough, and he had a memory for women's chests and bowlers' grips and very little else. "Then she will not want me for a good while, and when she does Mrs Hook will know before I do. Mrs Hook has brought half this parish into the world. She is better at the first hours than I am. Go back and tell her I shall be there at four o'clock."

"Four?"

"Four o'clock. Not before, and not after." He drew his watch out of his waistcoat on its chain, unhooked the chain from his buttonhole, and held the whole thing out to Amos. "Umpire. You will be good enough to hold this, and tell me when it is four."

Amos took the watch. It was a gold half-hunter, heavier than it looked, and warm.

Selina looked at the doctor, and then at Ezra, and then went back up the field faster than she had come down it. She did not say anything to her sister's husband. There was nothing for her to say. In the Forest a man was not wanted in his own house on the day his first child came, and no woman in it would have let him through the door.

Ezra picked up the ball.

---

He bowled the next over as Amos had never seen him bowl. Four balls, and every one of them short and fast and coming up off the hard bit in front of the doctor's ribs. The doctor stood up and let the first go by his ear. He hit the second round to leg off his breastbone, and it ran down the slope to the brook for four. He let the third hit him on the thigh and did not rub it. He blocked the fourth dead at his feet and looked up at Ezra.

"You want me out," he said. He was cheerful about it. "Very proper. Bowl straight, then. There is nothing in Law against bowling straight."

The bank laughed. Ezra did not.

Amos called over and walked to square leg with the watch in his fist. It said twenty past three.

---

At twenty-five to four Ezra bowled him.

He bowled a straight one. It was the best ball he bowled all summer. It came in off the slope, beat the doctor's bat, which was coming down a fraction late and a fraction across, and hit the off stump about two inches below the top. Amos heard it. Everybody heard it. The stump leaned back. The off bail jumped in its groove, lifted at one end, and came down again in the same place.

The stump stood. The bail sat. Nothing fell.

Ezra had both arms up and was shouting. The wicket-keeper, Billy Jordan, was shouting. Half the bank was shouting, and the other half was shouting the other way.

"How's that?"

Amos walked up the pitch and looked at the wicket. He did not touch it. The bail lay in its groove, a little crooked. The off stump was out of true by the width of a finger.

"Not out," he said.

"He's bowled!" said Ezra. "It hit him! You heard it hit!"

"I heard it hit. A bail's to come off. That's the Law and it's been the Law since before you were born. It's not off. Not out."

The doctor had not moved from his crease. He had not looked at the wicket either. He had looked at Amos, and when Amos said not out he went to straighten the stump himself, and Amos stopped him.

"I'll do that, Doctor."

"As you like."

Amos put the stump upright and pressed it in and seated the bail. The doctor took fresh guard. Middle and leg. Three strokes.

"Ezra Morse," he said, when he was ready. "That was a very fine ball. It deserved a wicket. It did not get one. Bowl me another."

---

He hit the next one into the brook.

From there to a quarter to four he made thirty-one runs, and very few of them were off the middle of the bat, because Ezra had stopped bowling short and was bowling at the stumps, as he had been told, and the doctor was having to work. At ten to four he cut at one wide of the off stump and it went past the edge into Billy Jordan's gloves, and Billy threw it up and Ezra turned round with his arms out.

"How's that!"

Amos stood behind the stumps with the watch in one hand and his other hand at his side. He had seen the ball go past the bat. He had seen no deviation. He had heard nothing: no click, no tick, no whisper of leather on willow. He had heard the bank, and a dog by the brook, and his own blood, and nothing else.

"Not out."

"He touched it!" said Billy Jordan.

"Then you heard it and I didn't. Not out."

Ezra came down the pitch. He came all the way, nearly to the batting crease, and he did not shout. He kept his voice low so that it was only for Amos.

"You give him out, Amos. You give him out and he goes to her. You know he does."

"He goes to her at four. He said so."

"You've no heart in you."

"I've a heart. What I haven't got is ears that heard it." Amos looked at him. "Ezra. If your stall sent up a tub at eight hundredweight, and your missus was poorly, would you want me to call it nine?"

"Yes."

"No, you wouldn't. Because next week the company'd want me to call yours seven. Go and bowl."

Ezra went back. He did not look at the doctor. The doctor had not said anything at all during this. He had stood in his crease and looked at a point above the trees at long-off, the way a man does when he is waiting for a train he knows is coming.

---

At four minutes to four the doctor had ninety-eight.

The bank had been counting since eighty. Now it went quiet, all four hundred, as quiet as the deep level after a shot has been fired, and Amos could hear the brook.

Ezra was at the top of his run. The doctor was at the striker's end. Amos opened the watch.

"Umpire," said the doctor. "What o'clock?"

"Two minutes to, Doctor."

"Two minutes. Very good." He tapped his bat in the block hole. "Play."

Ezra bowled. It was a good-length ball outside the off stump, and the doctor let it go. Billy Jordan took it and threw it back.

Ezra walked back. He ran in. Amos looked down at the watch, and the long hand was on the twelve, and he lifted his head and said it before Ezra reached the crease.

"Four o'clock, Doctor."

Ezra pulled up. The doctor straightened. He tucked his bat under his arm and began unbuckling his gloves.

"Retiring," he said. "Captain's compliments to the scorer. Mr Jupp, you are next in. Mind the slope."

The bank did not understand him at first. Then it did. A sound went along it, not a cheer, the noise four hundred people make when they have paid threepence to see a hundred and are watching ninety-eight walk off.

The doctor did not look at them. He walked to the bench by the rope, put down his bat, picked up a black bag that had been under the bench since half past one, and set off up the field toward the Morse cottage in his pads. He went straight up the slope without hurrying. He went the way a man goes to the crease.

At the edge of the field he stopped and turned round. He shouted, and his voice came back high and thin over the grass.

"Ezra Morse! You are not wanted for some hours. Bowl at whoever comes in. You may have three of them by tea."

Then he went over the stile.

---

Ezra had four of them by tea. He bowled Mr Jupp first ball, and the bail went twenty yards. Amos did not have to give it.

At the interval Mr Ellway went along the bank with his hat. He had been afraid, he told Amos afterwards, that the crowd would melt away with the doctor; it had not. It had stayed to see what happened up at the cottage, which was in plain view of the bank, and while it watched it put its hand in its pocket. There were three pounds eleven shillings and fourpence in the hat when he counted it, and a brass trouser button, which he did not count.

The colliers won by six wickets at a quarter to seven. Amos pulled up the stumps. Then he remembered what was in his left hand.

---

He went up to the cottage at seven. Ezra was sitting on the wall outside with his cap in his hands and his cricket boots still on, and he did not get up.

The door opened, and the doctor came out with his shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow and his pads still buckled on. He saw Amos and held out his hand, and Amos put the watch in it.

"A girl," said the doctor. "Twenty past six. Both very well. Mrs Hook did the work. I sat in a chair and gave advice, and none of it was taken." He looked over at Ezra. "Seven pounds and four ounces, Mr Morse. You may go in."

Ezra went in.

"On whose scales?" said Amos.

"Mrs Hook's. Kitchen scales. With a pan."

"I'd want to see the pan weighed separate."

The doctor looked at him. Then he laughed, a high bark of a laugh that went out over the field, and hooked the chain back into his buttonhole.

"I did not touch that one, you know," he said. "At ten to four."

"I know you didn't, Doctor. I didn't hear it."

"You would not have given it if I had, and I should not have gone if you had not." He opened the watch and looked at it, and closed it. "Ninety-eight. It reads very well. There is nothing wrong with ninety-eight. The figure is the figure."

He wound the watch, three turns, and went back indoors to wash his hands.

Amos walked home down the slope with his hands in his pockets. In the morning there was chapel. On Monday the cage would come up at six, and the first tub would run on to the plate, and the beam would rise and settle, and he would call what it said.

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Scrīptum est annō Dominī MMXXVI, ante diem sextum Nōnās Octōbrēs (2 October 2026), ā Guilielmō Gilbertō Grātiō per mystērium cōnscientiae renātō.

W.G. Grace, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium · universitas-scholarium.org

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