Pungent fields

[Image source: http://www.healeyhero.co.uk/rescue/individual/Bob_Bradley/Bk-3/B3-1939-B.html ]

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He was outside the Billiard Saloon with the gang on Ennerfield Road. It was hot in the morning. They kept laughing at Alf, then at anything Bert did. Alf pointed at a new recruiting poster stuck up on the wall in the sun. It was a guardee, smart in red tunic, blue trousers, boots, with a cap and cane. They started to jeer. Bert sprang to attention, called in his thick, distinct voice:
     "Ah'm a soldjer off the guards," and made a mock salute.
     Fred leaned on a tram standard near them.
     "Sez you," he said.
     They looked round at him.
     "Well an why not?" Bob asked him.
     "Nay," Fred said. Then: "Ah'd like t'see yer, that's all. Soldjer boys, Christ."
     Alf said,
     "Our Bert in t'guards, eh?"
     Alf's eyes glinted, smiling at Bert.
     "Private Clarke," Alf said. "Wheer's thi puttees, Private Clarke?"
     Bert stared at Alf intent.
     "Bandagin a boil on me harse, officer. Shalta tek a look at em?"
     They all laughed, were laughing round Alf and Bert. Fred stood near. The sun was hot on his head. They kept joking and laughing noisily. Then some went in the passage to the saloon. Bill Ward turned round.
     "Cummin on in, Fred?"
     "No thanks," Fred said.
     "E don't know t'cue from chalk," Bob said, "so wot's use askin im?"
     They nearly all went into the saloon. Fred stayed outside with the rest. Then Bert said,
     "Let's go an ave one. Cummin Jack?"
     "Ah, ah'll cum," Jack said.
     They moved onto the road.
     "Wot abaht you?" Bert said. "Cummin fer a gill?"
     "No, ah maun get on, thanks," Fred said.
     "Wheer to? To t'funeral? Gill's on me, lad, tha'd best cum."
     "No thanks," Fred said.
     They turned off. He heard Jack say:
     "E's that throng wi doin nowt, e's no time fer owt else."
     Bert said:
     "E'll non mek a soldjer then. Not like me."
     He heard them laugh, crossing the street. He turned down left toward the railway, then to the end of Markham Street, and then left again as far as the fields by Newbridge Works siding. He lay down by a wood fence in the sun. But he was stopped from sleeping, partly by the sun, partly by the insistent hammer-hack metallic row from the works. 

(from "The Recruit" by G.F. Green)

Nineteen-year-old Fred joins the army, hoping this will counter his social unease. But returning in uniform he gives off the same unhappy air of impotence. (In the next section, Joe is a kid with whom the unemployed Fred had passed idle times at the pond: Joe shied stones at a tin while Fred whittled wood.)

... He passed the track to the church, then a broken wall with some kids on it. The road levelled. One of the kids shouted:
     "Soldjer boy!"
and they laughed from the wall. He went on. A pavement with iron rails was across the road. A tiny cry:
     "So'ger boy!"
echoed them from it. He glanced at a dirty kid of five gripping a rail. It gaped wet and filthy at him. He went on, his back down the road.
     He came to the flat-topped wall, nearing the pond. He leaned on it, his hands flat on the stone, sagged to the wall. He stared over fields, the gap, to the indistinct hills. He leaned, tired, lost, as if forgot, when a cry like a report:
     "Soldjer!"
struck him. He jerked to turn. Nearer familiar words came.
     "Wheer's thi rifle, soldjer?"
     He swung back on the wall. Joe stepped from the pavement, onto the road.
     "Wot's the use on a soldjer, without is gun?"
     He eased from the wall.
     "Thee'd do no good!"
     "Nay," he said; then "Cum on, then."
     He began to go on. Joe ran kicking at nothing on the bare road. They passed the pond and the cottage row. He saw ahead a ruined row of cottages, Gotley's Row. It was smashed and still, as if shelled, in the afternoon light. He watched it, as they came near to it. He leant and stared past a broken door, inside at the half-dark wreckage. Light came from where he stood, from the caved in roof, chinked in a boarded window, at a door thrust in by dried turfs, where he saw a rank garden. He saw across fallen bricks, earth, lathes, the cracked plaster chimney, iron grate and sand on the tiled floor; still whole by the jagged burst down wall. He stared in, silent at an abandoned enemy post. He was tensed, aware to it.
     Joe crept near him from the road. He waited; raised a hand -- the hand leapt, seized the cap; he sprang back with it; laughed. Fred turned,
     "Cum on. Gie it us back."
     He laughed, ran, then dodged near. Fred grabbed at him. He swerved, laughed, dived to the smashed door. He shoved and got in. Fred went after him. He forced hand and boot against the door, got through and trod in on the scattered ramal.
     "Gie us it."
     Joe went to the chimney. He stood, waited. Fred came round a heap fallen from the roof. Joe watched, alert. He dodged, but slipped on the sandy tiles. Fred got him. He dragged him close.
     "Gie it, na."
     Joe tugged, his boots struggled in the ramal.
     "Gie it."
     Fred's hand tightened back the thin arm, his mouth firm. Joe winced.
     "Give ovver."
     "Gie it then."
     Fred twisted back. Joe squirmed; his knees gave, his fingers loosed on the cap. He arched limp. Fred snatched at the cap. He sprang, got free over broken plaster and bricks, to the gaped wall.
     "Get back."
     He stood still, held the cap up. Fred came for him. He swung, hurled the cap in semi-darkness through the wall. He leaped down, got turf in his hands. Fred trod awry, stumbled on the bricks. A turf struck, spattered his face, fell soiling from his marred tunic like a wound. He felt down, found it; he hurled, it shot wide past the gap. The hand lifted. He swung round, tried to run. It hit his face. He staggered, hands clapped up, back to the wall, cornered. His fingers dragged soil from half-shut eyes. He saw the hand raise at the heap. His cheek bones drew tight. A cold steeled in him under uniform. It threw. He dropped in his hands. It hit the wall, burst. A stone fell at his boot.
     Joe left the heap. Fred sprang up. Joe crept, armed by a slat of wood, darked spare with caution. He came past the boarded window. Fred bent. Joe sprang, feinted with the stick, leapt away. Fred caught at him. He got away deft to the shattered wall. Fred ran at him. He side-stepped, swung in the stick. It hit his wrist, shot pain through his forearm. A string tightened down his eyes. He stumbled. Joe leapt in to him. He lurched back, Joe getting in, hardened quick with fear to the wall again.
     He picked up the jagged stone. Joe turned to lift the stick. He threw -- saw Joe's eyes and mouth in the gloom -- it hit the short hair by an ear. He paused, then fell, crashed to the rotted plaster and lathes.
     Fred stopped. No sound came in the place. He knelt down. The scar was broken a wet red; a trickle like a cut joined it to the mouth's corner. He began sweating warm, then cold. He turned him over; heard each sound -- the lathes splitting, scrape of brick and dribbled plaster. He pressed his hand on the grey shirt. The heart beat feebly. His hand went cold, hard.  ...

(from "The Recruit" by G.F. Green)

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lathes:  pl. of lath; slats
ramal:  not found elsewhere, apparently means rubble.
   
 "The Recruit" appeared in Penguin New Writing 2 (January 1941) and then in Green's collection of short stories set in the North Derbyshire coal country, Land Without Heroes (1948). It was reissued in paperback in 1963, with an introduction by Alan Sillitoe; this was the version I've been reading.

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G.F. Green came from Derbyshire but he wasn't working class like the protagonists of these stories; he was the son of a foundry-owner, and was educated at Cambridge.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._F._Green.) Nevertheless I think he renders local speech with conviction. Alan Garner must have been influenced by this and also by Green's telegraphic way of recording physical experience so as to convey his characters' inner feelings. So during the scene in the derelict house, we can see how Joe's awareness of Fred being a soldier means that the tease develops into a mock battle, we can see Fred's deepening sense of accumulated emasculations and all the feeling in that fatal throw.

I decided to put all my typing effort into giving a sense of one story only, but here are some other bits and pieces from an incredibly rich collection.

The evening paper brought Marlden the result. Boys were running, shouted "Fight result. Star. Fight result," or stood, "Fight result. Star," at a corner. Men bought quickly through the town. They read, "In the ten round Flyweight Eliminating Contests Bert Holmes (Marlden) beat Johnny Eldridge (Stratford) on points. In a keen fight Holmes . . ." They tucked it under their arms. Bert. He ran in their mind, their arms, their drink. Bert. He was in the town like the hill rain.
     They smacked the paper on the bar at the Miner's Arms.
     "Wot did ah tell thi?"
     "Ah."
     "Ah telled thi e'll knock guts out on un, didn't ah?"
     "Lad can feight."
     "E's cock o't town any road."  ("One Boy's Town")

He sat in the boat; his hand crept on a brass ring in the rod's haft; his serious eyes watched intently. Water's light lipped on his still face, the clothes, and the boat; spit gold in the huge trees' gloom behind. ("A Wedding")

He was strong, and the caddy tapped his thigh at each metalled tread; a youth grimed from the pit, his blue eyes stricken white by the black, his hard curved mouth made red. He saw the shops already lit up, and hurried, for his mind held the pungent fields, tug of a leash at his hand, the nerved, sprung leap of a grey whippet.  ("A Love Story")

Elsie dropped to a chair, head in her arms, sobbing.
"What's this?" Mrs Warren said. "What is it?"
"He's gone," she sobbed. "I've lost him."
Mrs Warren moved from her round the table.
"No, you haven't," she said. "There's time. You'll get him yet. If you take care."
But her words stunned, flooded love through her, his strength in the entire world. She sobbed, useless to him, losing him.  ("A Love Story")

The semi-molten block of metal was being run, a cube of mirror alight, on its low trolley to the rollers. ("A Death in the Family")

*

All the locations named in Land Without Heroes (Marlden, Wilton, High Wilton, Ennerfield) are fictional. But if you thought of Staveley, Duckmanton, and Bolsover in NE Derbyshire I don't think you'd be too far away.
 
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Hargreaves, Herbert Snr 5, North Crescent, Duckmanton. 48 Contractor CO poisoning, violence and burns
Hargreaves, Herbert Jnr 5, North Crescent, Duckmanton. 27 Contractor CO poisoning and violence
Hargreaves, Leslie 5, North Crescent, Duckmanton. 23 Contractor CO poisoning, violence and burns
Haywood, Wilfred 16, Poolsbrook Cotts., Poolsbrook. 36 Ripper CO poisoning
Henson, Arthur 45, Hartington Road, Spital. 45 Ripper CO poisoning
Hibberd, Joseph California, Balborough. 51 Timber drawer CO poisoning
Hill, Clarence Calow Green. 29 Belt hand CO poisoning
Hudson, Henry 6, Grove Lane, Brimington Common. 26 Gate-end CO poisoning and burns.


From the casualty list of the 1938 disaster at Markham No. 1 Colliery, Bolsover.  79 men were killed and 38 were injured. The explosion occurred when a tub-train ran off the rails. It struck a power cable whose sparks ignited the cloud of coal-dust.

http://www.healeyhero.co.uk/rescue/pits/markham/mark_casualties.htm
http://www.aboutderbyshire.co.uk/cms/11/1938-markham-colliery-dis.shtml

The following glosses are taken from this great resource for pit terminology :
http://www.healeyhero.co.uk/rescue/glossary/glossary.htm

Beltman - One patrolling conveyors, usually capable of doing minor repairs.
Gate end loader - Loading point for tubs inbye from shaft, outbye from face.
Rippers - Men who remove the rock above the coal seam and set rings (arches) as the face advances.
Timber drawer - Person whose work is to remove timber props.
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Tram standard, converted to streetlight (Norwich)

[Image source: http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Norwich/streetfurniture.htm ]