“It is with the women as with us,” he replied. “Her husband was John Smith, loader. We reckoned him as a loader, he reckoned himself as a loader, and so she knew he represented his job. Marriage and home is a little side-show.

“The women know it right enough, and take it for what it's worth. One man or another, it doesn't matter all the world. The pit matters. Round the pit there will always be the sideshows, plenty of 'em.”

He looked round at the red chaos, the rigid, amorphous confusion of Wiggiston.

“Every man his own little side-show, his home, but the pit owns every man.

The women have what is left. What's left of this man, or what is left of that — it doesn't matter altogether. The pit takes all that really matters.”