The Stone Book Quartet (8 page)

Robert stood up. ‘Cush-cush,’ he said. ‘Cush-a-cush.’ The pigeons watched him, but didn’t fly. He took a step on the floor, and paused, another, to the ladder. He put his hand out for a rung. A pigeon dabbed at him with its beak, but he didn’t flinch. ‘Cush-cush.’ He took hold of another rung and set his weight on the ladder. ‘Cush-cush. Cush-a-cush.’ A pigeon fluttered, and above him he heard others go. He held still until they were still. Then he began again.

In the high cave of the pinnacle Robert climbed the ladder of birds. Sometimes their voices and wings would swirl, brushing him, making shadows in shadows, and he would stop until the ladder was quiet again. Then he would climb, careful with feet and hands to ease between the birds. And the birds made space for him.

The wall closed. He could see every facet of the spire tapering around. Through the crockets there were small pictures of land. He climbed.

Robert came to the beam. From the ladder he grasped the capstone iron and stepped onto the beam. It was slippery with droppings. Below him the white ladder rustled.

‘Cush-cush. Cush-a-cush,’ said Robert.

He looked up into the black point. Some of the stone showed. He stretched, and reached on tip-toe to see if he had grown. He hadn’t. The iron bar was long.

In all his secret, the capstone was the only part that Robert couldn’t reach.

He felt the bar. It was rusty, but not sharp. And it was thick. Robert spat on his hands and took hold. He hitched himself off the beam, drew his knees up and gripped the bar with his feet. The rust held him. He stretched hand over hand, brought up his feet, gripped, hand over hand, feet; gripped. He was there. His head fitted under the capstone and his shoulders filled the spire.

Robert looked down at the birds.

The inside of the spire was rough. He put out one hand and found a hold to push against. He found another. He pressed his head to the capstone. He was firm.

Arms out, head up, Robert uncrossed his feet and let them hang. He was wearing the steeple. It fitted like a hat. He was wearing the steeple all the way to the earth, a stone dunce’s cap.

‘Dunce, dunce, double-D,

Can’t learn his ABC!’

Robert sang, and waved his legs.

The ladder fluttered. He stopped. He took hold of the bar, and found nooks for his feet. There was nothing else.

There was nothing else. His own and private place was only this, and he felt it leave him. In all the years, there had been the last part waiting. Now he was there, and he was alone all at once, high above beam, birds, clock and no more secrets.

Robert scratched the stone with his finger. He picked at mortar and it fell. Some birds went out through the crockets. He put the flat of his hand on the top course, banged it: and stopped. He couldn’t see, but his hand could feel. There was a mark on the stone, cut deep. His fingers fitted. It was a mark like an arrow. He tried to see, but there wasn’t enough light.

Robert nudged his head to be more comfortable against the capstone, and felt again. It was an arrow cut into stone dressed smooth as Faddock Allman’s jackacre rocks. Robert’s hand was against his face, and he walked his fingers along the course.

Right at the top of the spire, where no one could tell, the stone had been worked. Something had mattered. There was no rough rag, patched with brick. The stone was true though it would never be seen.

Robert’s fingers touched a mark. It was cut as deep as the arrow, but was straight and round lines together. It was writing. Real writing. And Robert shouted so that all the birds winged and filled the steeple and beat around him. His hands were reading over and over the carved letters, over and over they read his own name.

Robert slid down the bar to beam and ladder, clattered down among buffeting wings and fear. He took no care. The droppings were slime.

He jumped his own height from the ladder to the floor and shoved the hatch open, fell through to the cross-beam of the clock, rolled, hung, let go and landed on the edge of the platform.

‘By heck!’ Father had been oiling the clock, but he banged the case shut against the dust and feathers that came down with Robert. ‘What are you at?’

Robert ran round to the other side of the clock.

‘And what have you been rolling in?’ said Father. ‘Your mother’ll play the dickens. By heck! Don’t come no nearer. We could take a nest of wasps with you!’

‘There’s been someone up there,’ said Robert.

‘Never,’ said Father. ‘Only you’s daft enough.’

‘And they’ve carved me name,’ said Robert. ‘My name! Me own full name. Why?’

‘Where’s this?’ said Father.

‘Up top,’ said Robert. ‘Right under the capstone.’

‘What do you mean, “your” name?’ said Father.

‘Me name. My name. Spelt proper,’ said Robert.

‘Oh,’ said Father. ‘And I’ll lay you a wager it was beautifully done, too.’

‘I felt it,’ said Robert. ‘My name.’

‘And every inch of stone smooth as butter,’ said Father. ‘By God, ay.’

‘Was it you?’ said Robert.

‘Me?’ said Father. ‘No, youth. That must’ve been cut fifty-three years or more.’

‘But me name!’ said Robert.

‘It’s not your name,’ said Father. ‘It’s my grandfathers Ay. Old Robert. He was a proud, bazzil-arsed devil. But he was a good un.’

Robert came from behind the clock. Father sat down on his heel and opened the baggin.

‘I knew he’d capped the steeple, same as he did at Saint Philip’s. But I didn’t ever know him to put his name to anything. His mark, yes: never his name. Happen it mattered.’

‘There was a mark,’ said Robert. ‘An arrow.’

‘That’s him,’ said Father. ‘Now you’ll see his mark all over. But you have to look. He was a beggar, and he did like to tease. Well, well.’

‘And am I called after him?’ said Robert.

‘Ay, but not to much purpose yet, seemingly,’ said Father. He ate an onion.

‘He was everywhere, all over,’ said Father. ‘But I got aback of him. A smith’s aback of everyone, you see. You can’t make nothing without you’ve a smith for your tools. But I don’t know what there is for you to get aback of, youth.’

‘I’m going up top again,’ said Robert.

‘Well, see as you close that hatch,’ said Father. ‘I want no feathers in me baggin, nor in the clock, neither.’

Robert climbed back into the pinnacle, and closed the hatch. The birds had nearly all left the steeple in fright. A few fluttered, no longer knowing him.

His secret room for years. And, at the top, a secret. Robert took hold of the ladder.

He reached the beam, the bar, and up. When his head touched the capstone he found good bracing for his feet, and let his hands lie on the top course of stone.

In the dark his hands could read. And in the dark his hands could hear. There was a long sound in the stone. It was no sound unless Robert heard it, and meant nothing unless he gave it meaning. His chosen place had chosen him. Its end was the beginning.

Robert went down, slowly. He was gentle with the hatch. Father had the clock open and was oiling it.

‘That’s put a quietness on you,’ he said.

‘Ay.’

‘What is it most?’ said Father.

‘He knew it wouldn’t be seen,’ said Robert. ‘But he did it good as any.’

‘Ay,’ said Father.

The clock hung in an iron frame. It was all rods cogs and wheels. It kept time twice. There was a drive to the hours and minutes and the pendulum, and a drive to the bell hammer. The bell was fixed, and the hour was struck on it. Both drives were weights held by two cables, each wound to a drum. The weights fitted in slots that ran down to the base of the tower.

Every week Father cleaned and oiled the clock, and wound the weights back up. It took them a week to drop the height of the tower. He wound the cables with a key like a crank handle.

‘She’s getting two minutes,’ said Father. ‘It’s this dry weather.’ He reached into the clock, among the wheels and cogs and the governor that kept all steady, and he turned a small brass plate to the right. The plate was the top of the pendulum sweeping the bay below. ‘Just a toucher,’ said Father. He did it by feel. The rhythm of the pendulum sounded the same, but Father had made it swing a little further, a little longer, and the clock would slow to the right time, until the weather changed.

‘Give us a pound on the windlass, youth,’ said Father.

Robert liked this part of the job. It was better than turning the mangle at home, lumpy and wet.

The drums took up the cable.

‘What makes wheels go round?’ said Robert.

Father looked at him from the other side of the clock, through the cogs and gears.

‘You, you swedgel,’ said Father.

‘I mean wheels,’ said Robert. ‘What makes them turn?’

‘You shove them,’ said Father.

‘But why do they go round?’ said Robert.

‘Come here,’ said Father. ‘This side.’

Robert left the winding.

‘Now see at these; these wheels here,’ said Father. ‘All different sorts and sizes, aren’t they, and all act according to each other?’

‘Ay,’ said Robert.

‘And if that little un there should stop, so would that big un yonder. It’s all according, do you see?’

‘Ay.’

‘Well, now,’ said Father, ‘have you ever asked yourself what makes this clock go? Have you the foggiest idea?’ Robert shook his head.

‘It’s this wheel,’ said Father. ‘It’s the escapement.’

In the middle of the clock there was a brass wheel, with pegs set on the rim of the face. Two iron teeth rocked in and out from either side by turns, holding and releasing the pegs, and the wheel came round. The teeth on the pegs were the tick of the clock.

‘You wouldn’t think so small a thing could make so great a sound,’ said Father.

‘But that’s escapement. And the tick goes into the pendulum. You couldn’t have time without you had escapement.’

‘Could you not?’ said Robert.

‘That weight you’re winding must try to get back to the ground, mustn’t it?’ said Father. ‘So it’s pulling on that cable. And the cable turns the wheels. But them teeth, see at them. That comes in and catches the peg, and stops the wheel, stops the whole clock: but the pendulum’s swinging, see, and in comes the other and pushes the peg forwards, and out pops the other tooth, and the pendulum swings, and back comes the tooth. Stop. Start. Day and night, for evermore: regular. It’s the escapement.’

‘I only asked why wheels go round,’ said Robert.

‘And I’m telling you. It’s escapement,’ said Father. ‘Why do you think them weights drop at all? You could say as you weren’t winding weights up, you were winding chapel down. It comes to the same. It’s all according, gears and cogs. We’re going at that much of a rattle, the whole blooming earth, moon and stars, we need escapement to hold us together.’

‘I must go help me Uncle Charlie,’ said Robert, and stepped onto the ladder, into the pendulum bay.

‘That’s right,’ said Father. ‘l knew I could’ve saved me breath.’

Robert went.

‘By, it’s a day’s work to watch you put the kettle on,’ said Father.

Robert went.

‘Hey!’ Father called after him.

‘What?’ said Robert.

‘Was it you as took the extension off the wall and reared it up?’

‘Ay!’

‘By yourself?’

‘Ay!’

‘You’re shaping, youth,’ said Father.

Robert untied Wicked Winnie, and ran with her along the road. ‘What’s he on at?’ he said. ‘“Escapement”? That’s not escapement. It’s fine oil.’

He was able to ride a little under the wood, but he had to keep running to push.

‘Who-whoop! Wo-whoop! Wo-o-o-o!’

‘Who—whoop! Wo-whoop! Wo-o-o-o!’

Robert heard the distant cry of the summer fields go up on Leah’s Hill.

The men were excited. ‘Who-whoop! Wo-whoop! Wo-o-o-o! Who-whoop! Wo-whoop! Wo-o-o-o!’

Then Robert heard a shot. It was hard, not like a gun. There was another. And four quickly after that. And silence. Robert listened. There was no sound. The heat was pressing the day flat, and the air thick with it.

Robert left Wicked Winnie at the gate and ran into the house. He could hear Mother making the beds. ‘Father’s fettling the clock!’ he called up the bent stairs. ‘I’m off up Leah’s!’

But first Robert cleaned Wicked Winnie again, and rubbed linseed into her wood. Then he put the kettle on the fire for Faddock Allman’s brew, and went out.

The bottom field was cut, neat with kivvers. The men and women were eating their food under the hedge. Uncle Charlie was leaving for the road. He had his rifle slung on one shoulder and Faddock Allman over the other.

‘Dick-Richard! I want you!’ he shouted.

‘What for?’ said Robert.

‘Never mind what for. Let’s be having you. The tooter the sweeter.’

Robert ran to where Uncle Charlie stood by the gate.

‘Gently does it, Starie Chelevek,’ said Uncle Charlie. And he carefully set Faddock Allman down in Wicked Winnie.

‘Where’s he going? said Robert.

‘He’s having his dinner with me,’ said Uncle Charlie.

‘At our house?’ said Robert.

‘Where else?’ said Uncle Charlie.

‘Has Father said?’

‘He’s not been asked,’ said Uncle Charlie. He bent down to Faddock Allman’s helmet. It had slipped over one ear.

‘I’ll have me brew same as usual,’ said Faddock Allman. ‘Young un fetches for me.’

‘Eyes front,’ said Uncle Charlie. ‘Straighten your pith pot. Get on parade, me old Toby.’

‘Was that you shooting? said Robert.

‘Ay,’ said Uncle Charlie. ‘I’m back at work Tuesday: so I might as good practise.’

‘I’ll not come in,’ said Faddock Allman. ‘I’ll not disturb your dinners.’

They had reached the house.

‘Who’s having their dinners disturbed?’ said Uncle Charlie.

‘I’d sooner not,’ said Faddock Allman.

‘What must I do?’ said Robert.

‘Bung him round the back,’ said Uncle Charlie. ‘He can sun hisself, and I’ll feed him through the window.’ Robert took Faddock Allman round the side of the house and put him against the white limewash, under the thatch.

‘Shan’t you be too hot, Mister Allman? said Robert.

‘Champion,’ said Faddock Allman. ‘Grand.’ He watched the sun.