The Stone Book Quartet (7 page)

He chopped with the edge of his heel irons at the biggest lump. He kept kicking. The grass came away in tufts, not strong enough to peel, but snagged with white roots. Robert chopped the roots until he reached sand. In the sand there was a corner of stone. He pulled at it but it didn’t move. He stamped on it but it didn’t break. He got his hand to it, and wrenched. The stone raggled like a tooth, enough to show between it and its own shape in the ground.

Robert tried to lift it straight out, but his hands wouldn’t grip and he fell over. He knelt and scooped the sandy earth away, digging along the stone.

It was a properstone, worked and dressed, and he had hold of one corner. The sides went away from the squared corner and there was nothing for him to grip. The stone went back into the hill.

Robert tugged sideways again. More space showed, and he felt the stone move. He scooped more sand. The stone was yellow white. Now it wagged but wouldn’t come. He felt each swing jolt, and had to stop for breath. The grip was going from his fingers; so he spat on his hands, rubbed them together and tugged straight.

The stone sighed out, and he held it. It was a stone clear as a brick, but bigger.

‘What the heck?’ said Robert.

Now that the hill was open he could reach inside. There was more stone, all the same yellow white, a lot of it cob-ends of rubble, but every piece true. They came more easily the more he got. If a big piece stuck he took the smaller pieces from around and beneath it. Wicked Winnie was soon filled and she was a weight.

Robert held her at full stretch of the sashcord, using himself as a brake, and let her down the hill to Faddock Allman.

‘Whet!’ shouted Ozzie.

Every step jarred, and he had to stab at the ground with his heels to hold Wicked Winnie from running away with him. He went down the cleared ground of the swarfs.

Then he slipped. The stubble was too polished. Robert sat down hard and slid. Wicked Winnie was trying to pull him forwards, but he lay back, holding the sash-cord, lay back, pressing his shoulders against the hill, his heels furrowing. He didn’t want to be dragged face down through that stubble.

Kivvers were all about him. Robert heaved at the sash cord and rolled his body to steer. And Wicked Winnie swung close but didn’t hit. The last kivver went by, and Robert, Wicked Winnie and the stones all landed in the quickthorn hedge.

‘Yon’s a grand lot,’ said Faddock Allman.

‘Whet!’ shouted Ozzie.

Up and down the field Robert went. He had never had such a day. When he got stones for Faddock Allman he had to find them one by one, all sorts, in lanes and hedge cops and at the ends of fields, every kind and size. Now, though, it seemed the hill was giving them to him.

‘Is that enough, Mister Allman?’ said Robert. He had made a pile that would last till winter.

‘Is it heck as like!’ said Faddock Allman. ‘Raunge the beggars out!’ So Robert did.

And the scythes went round the field, cutting a square spiral to the centre. The rows of kivvers grew under the heat of the day.

‘Baggin!’ shouted Ozzie Leah.

The field stopped. Men and women went to the shaded edge, where food and beer were kept. The scythes were sharpened and laid against trees.

‘Eh up, Starie Chelevek! Fancy a wet?’ Uncle Charlie had left the others and come down to be with Faddock Allman. He’d brought baggin of bread and onion and cheese and a stone bottle of beer, a full gallon. He crouched on one heel and swigged from the bottle. ‘And what have you been at, Dick-Richard,’ he said, ‘mauling guts out of jackacres?’

‘It’s all cut stone,’ said Robert, ‘same as a quarry bank!’

‘It is that,’ said Faddock Allman. He took the bottle from Uncle Charlie and drank. ‘See at it!’ He hit a finished, squared perfect block and it broke into rough road Hints. ‘Grand,’ said Faddock Allman.

‘What’s it doing there?’ said Robert.

‘Nowt,’ said Faddock Allman. ‘Grand!’ He split another.

‘Are all jackacres cut stone?’ said Robert.

‘Happen,’ said Faddock Allman. ‘Number One! Fire!’ He smashed a stone. ‘Number Two! Fire!’ He smashed another.

Uncle Charlie uncovered his rifle and polished the stock. He smiled.

‘Number Three!’ shouted Faddock Allman.

‘Cease firing and get your baggin,’ said Uncle Charlie.

‘Cease firing! Scatter homeward!’ shouted Faddock Allman, and bit into an onion, and chewed. He laughed at Robert.

‘I was twitting you, youth,’ he said. ‘You see, I recollect as how, at one time of day, there was a house stood yonder. And I recollect as how, when they fetched it down, I did enjoy chucking cob-ends through windows.’

‘All in!’ shouted Ozzie.

‘It was good,’ said Faddock Allman, ‘chucking cob-ends.’ He pulled the peak of his helmet over his eyes. ‘Number Three! Fire! Number Four! Fire!’ He laughed at the rock.

Robert emptied Wicked Winnie, and went to take Father his baggin.

Father was a smith. He was tinsmith, locksmith and blacksmith: and every Monday morning he wound the chapel clock. But now his time went on making horseshoes for the war.

Robert swept Wicked Winnie clean and oiled her again. He oiled the hubs specially, with Uncle Charlie’s fine oil.

He set her in the middle of the road, at the top of the camber, and eased himself in, holding the sashcord. Wicked Winnie wanted to go, but Robert put his boots down. He took his balance, waited for stillness, and gently lifted his boots, not pushing. Nothing happened. He tried not to twitch. Then Wicked Winnie began to move. Robert sat in a crouch, and steered.

The first part of the road was steep and easy, and Wicked Winnie went fast. At the bottom of the hill the road turned upwards and then down again past Long Croft field and under the wood to Chorley. Robert kept to the top of the camber, crouched as small as Faddock Allman.

At the other end of the wood the road ran to a crest that was so low and long that it could be felt more than seen. This was the worst part. Wicked Winnie lost all her speed, coasted, crept, and reached the top. And at the top she always stopped. But today there was no wind. Robert had taken Uncle Charlie’s fine oil to the hubs, the very best. She was still going. Another yard was all she needed.

Wicked Winnie crept. Her wheels were turning. Robert held his breath. His chest was tight. His tongue stuck to his teeth. But he wouldn’t breathe.

His eyes started to see rainbows and his head buzzed. Rainbows round everything; boots, wheels, spokes, hubs. The hubs were still. He looked at the rims. They moved, just moved. There was a noise in his ears like a brook. But he didn’t breathe. The hard tyres had flecks on them from the road, and the flecks were still moving. They were moving. They were moving faster. Robert let in a sip of air. Wicked Winnie didn’t stop. Robert breathed.

Uncle Charlie’s oil had done it.

Now it was a straight run to the smithy: a measured mile from home to the smithy, and Wicked Winnie had broken her record, with Uncle Charlie’s oil.

‘She did it!’ Robert shouted, and sat up. ‘She did it, she did it, she did it!’

Wicked Winnie rolled along under the chapel clock and across the main road to the smithy and lodged against the kerb. Robert ran into the smithy with Father’s baggin. It was noise at the forge, dark and red. The men were making horseshoes, and the apprentice worked the bellows. It was cutting and snapping, heating, sledging, twisting and breaking. Father wasn’t there.

Robert ran out again. He pulled Wicked Winnie behind him, swirling her track in patterns in the dust. He hitched her to the chapel gate and went in. He opened the tower door. The clock struck ten. Robert knew where Father was. Every day, at ten o’clock, the time was sent from London along the telegraph wires, and the signalman opened the window of the signalbox and rang the shining bell that hung outside. And each Monday, Father went to the railway bridge and stood with his fob watch in his hand to check the time, and when the bell rang he set his watch to ten o’clock and walked down the village to the chapel to set the clock.

He was on the bridge now, waiting for that brass bell. If it rang a lot sooner or a lot later than the chapel, Father would be vexed all day. He had looked after the clock ever since he had finished being an apprentice.

The station bell rang. The clock was fast, but not much. Robert dragged a thick square of coconut matting across the tiles and put it in the middle of the floor. There was an extending ladder hanging on the wall in the corner. Father would lift it and swing it in one move down to the mat, and push the extension up to the high platform under the roof of the first bay of the tower. Robert had often seen him do it. It was easy.

Robert took hold of the rungs, and lifted straight upwards. The ladder was heavy, but it came off its hook. Robert turned to put the ladder on the mat, but the ladder kept on turning, and took Robert with it and fell back against the wall, next to its hook. It was too heavy to lift and too heavy to put down. Robert was stuck. He turned again, and stopped as soon as the ladder moved. The ladder turned past him, but he was able to drop the end on the mat, so that it wouldn’t skid.

Now Robert had the ladder in the middle of the tower, upright, wobbling, but it couldn’t reach the high plat form without its extension. The extension slid over the bottom half of the ladder and its own weight on hooks kept it clamped to the rungs.

Robert got his shoulder to the ladder, his legs either side of it, and lifted the extension off its first rung. The extension slid upwards, past two more rungs. Robert’s grip trembled. The ladder began to lean, and with its leaning it was heavier all at once, too heavy, and the hooks were between rungs and he couldn’t lock them. The ladder fell away from him, and the extension bent like a stalk.

Robert was losing his strength, as he had with the jackacre stone on the hill.

He bent and pushed again, and stuck. He felt as though he had no muscles, only a hot sharp ache, and a sharp sweet taste in his mouth. He let the hooks down on the rung. The ladder was safe; firm against the matting. It wouldn’t skid. The top of the ladder was at the high platform.

Robert held the baggin cloth between his teeth, and climbed. It was a whippy ladder and it bounced under him.

From the platform there was a fixed set of steps, with iron handrails, to a trapdoor in the ceiling. The trap was lashed to a tread. Robert undid the lashing and pushed with his fingers. The trap opened, as if somebody was in the bay above, lifting. But the door had been counter weighted by Father with sashcord and bricks.

Robert went into the second bay of the tower. Here the clock did not tick. From the road, the gentle noise could be heard, but in the second bay the pendulum swung its arc, and the clock spoke. It spoke with the same beat, but no whispered tick. The whole dark bay was the sound. Sunlight criss-crossed the floor through stained glass with marks like coloured chalks, and the air above thudded the pendulum.

A twenty-nine stave ladder led to the clock chamber above. The ladder had its own rhythm, no whip or bend, no clattering extension.

Robert always stopped to watch when he was on the ladder. The pendulum came and went in the dim light, came and went. Through the trapdoor and past the platform the floor tiles were a long way off.

He climbed up, stepped sideways from the ladder to the planks of the chamber and put the baggin against the clock.

Here, everything was different again, and open. The clock case was like a hen coop, covered with tarred felt, and out of holes in the roof and sides rods connected the gears of its four faces, wires ran over pulleys to the weights that drove the clock, and a chain held the striker of the bell.

The slanted louvers filled each wall, and Robert could see the village, across to the station and Saint Philip’s church. Saint Philip’s had a gilded weathercock, but nothing that could tell the time. The wind and hours in Chorley were at different ends.

Robert watched the hands move on the faces of the clock. The faces held white glass in metal frames, and Father had made the hands. From inside the chamber the time was back to front.

Robert wedged himself up the wall and reached for the cross-beam that held the frame of the clock. He hung, pulled, swung one leg over, then the other, and sat on top of the beam. He squirmed along the beam, close under the chamber roof. There was a small hatch in the roof, without hinges. He pushed at it, and it lifted and dropped back hard. It was heavy for a small square of wood. He tried again, lifting with his shoulders, and the hatch opened enough for him to jam his elbow through, then his arm, and to work the hatch sideways and clear.

Above him was darkness. But it wasn’t quiet. He listened to the sound. It was no sound of clocks or of anything made. It was as if the wind had a voice and was flying in the steeple. The sound moved, never still, and under the sound was a high roaring.

Robert lifted himself on his arms through the hatch way, his legs clear of the beam. He rolled backwards and was in. He lifted the hatch, biting his lip with the heaviness, and settled it in its place. He moved gently over the floor to the wall of the steeple and sat down, hugging his knees.

The floor was smooth, covered with lead. There was lead on the hatch, and that was the weight. Robert sat in the darkness and listened to the voices above him. It was his special place. No one else came here, to the lead-floored room in the pinnacle. No one else heard the sound.

He sat and waited for the sweeping in the air to clear. It softened, was quiet, then still. It was not all dark in the steeple. There were holes, crockets of decoration on the spire, and through them came enough light for him to see.

The room rose to a point far above, to the very cap stone, and an iron bar came down through the capstone to a short beam that spanned the walls, and the bar was bolted through the beam.

A ladder went up to the beam. And on the ladder, the beam and every rough stone and brick end there were pigeons. They had flown when the hatch moved, but now the last of them was settling back, or hovering under the crockets. That had been the sound.

Beam, ladder and floor were white with droppings. It was Robert’s secret cave in the air, which only pigeons knew. But the soft floor was covered with footprints, shoes and clogs and boots of every size, covered and filled with droppings, as though all the children from the village and the Moss and the Hough played here. But Robert was every one. It had been his room and place for years, and nobody knew.