The threshold between the work trench and the tram kitchen cellar was marked by a double fire-door of four-inch white pine, sheeted on both sides with riveted boiler-plate.
Len shoved the right leaf open with the flat of his sounding pole.
The wall of heat that met them was not the dry, choking blast of spark channels or the chemical chill of the hospital ward. It was the thick, humid, living warmth of three massive brick stonework cooking ranges fired with dense northern peat. The air was rich with the dense, comforting odors of peasant survival. Stewed yellow turnips, boiled marrow bones, dried marrowfat peas. The sweet, yeasty tang of two hundred loaves of sourdough rye crusting in the brick bake-ovens.
Overhead, dozens of hemp drying lines crisscrossed the timber floor beams, hung with white cotton dishcloths, wool socks, and flannel infant wraps that fluttered in the steady updraft from the hearths. Down the center of the sixty-foot cellar, twelve women and six teenage boys worked along three heavy pine butcher tables, their knives rhythmically chopping salt pork, winter cabbage, and dried onions into wooden wash-troughs.
The rhythmic thud of cleavers stopped the instant the iron fire-door swung wide.
Every face in the cellar turned toward the entrance. Women with flour dusted across their foreheads and gray wool shawls pinned at their breasts lowered their paring knives. Boys carrying buckets of peeled parsnips froze on the flat stone slabs. In Rookvale, an opening iron door always carried the terror of…
