The Stone Book Quartet Read online

  And then Joseph knew.

  That great steeple, that great work. It was a pattern left on sand and air. The glint of the sun from the weathercock shimmered his gaze, and the gleam was about the stone right to the earth. He saw golden brushes, the track of combing chisels, every mark. The stone was only the finish of the blow. The church was the print of chisels in the sky.

  Joseph let go of the latch handle. Behind him was the step into the hall. In front of him was the step through the arch. Not even for his last day could he go to school. There was no time. He stood between stone and stone.

  ‘No back bargains!’ shouted Joseph, and did a standing leap through the arch. He fell over and rolled on the ground.

  Joseph breathed in. The weathercock raced the clouds.

  He walked away from the school, past the church, over the station bridge, towards the chapel clock. Nothing he saw or could think of went beyond the smith. Shoes on the horses, their bridles and brasses, the iron of the coach wheels, the planes, blades, adzes, axes, bradawls and bits led to the forge. Even the hands on the clock. Without that fire there was no time.

  Joseph went into the farrier’s yard and down to the cellar. The apprentice was working the bellows handle: up and down, and up and down. The cellar breathed.

  Joseph stood quietly, just looking.

  ‘What are you after, youth?’

  The smith was behind him, at the top of the steps in the yard.

  ‘Will you set me on?’ said Joseph. ‘I’ll be prenticed to you.’

  ‘Shall you?’ said the smith. ‘Come up, then.’

  He was a big man, in his shirt sleeves; a leather brat, tied round his waist, reached below his knees. He bent and put his arms under the farrier’s anvil, lifted it from its bed, carried it across the yard and set it down.

  ‘Now take it back,’ he said to Joseph.

  Joseph put his arms around the anvil and lifted. His chin jarred on the top. He tried again, firming his chin against the steel. Nothing moved. But it was not like stone; not like the rough dead weight that tore on Damper Latham’s planks.

  ‘I can’t shift it,’ said Joseph.

  ‘A smith carries his anvil.’

  ‘Well I can’t yet.’

  ‘You can’t shift an anvil,’ said the smith, ‘yet you want to join the generous, ingenious hammermen? You can’t shift an anvil, but you want your own sledge?’

  ‘I do,’ said Joseph.

  ‘Then give me one reason why I should set you on,’ said the smith. ‘Why should I take me another prentice for six years of no gain? You’re old Robert’s lad, aren’t you?’

  ‘Ay.’

  The granny reardun?’

  ‘But me mother’s coming up our house for her dinner.’

  ‘You’re still a granny reardun.’

  Joseph said nothing.

  ‘And what does Robert think?’

  ‘I’ve not told him,’ said Joseph,

  ‘Not told him? You’re a previous sort of a youth, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’ve not had chance,’ said Joseph.

  ‘Then you’d best make chance,’ said the smith. ‘And I’m still waiting to hear why I should put meself out to find sufficient meat, drink, apparel, washing and lodging for a prentice as can’t shift his anvil.’

  ‘Because a smith’s aback of everything,’ said Joseph.

  ‘He’s what did you say?’

  ‘Aback of everything. He’s master.’

  The smith went to a chest of drawers in the yard, opened the top drawer and took out a roll of parchment paper.

  ‘Can you tell me what this is?’ he said.

  ‘It’s called an Indenture,’ said Joseph.

  ‘And an Indenture is a legal document,’ said the smith.

  ‘I know,’ said Joseph.

  ‘Binding you and me.’

  Joseph nodded.

  ‘Can you read?’ said the smith.

  ‘Ay,’ said Joseph.

  ‘Write?’

  ‘Well, I’m beggared if I can,’ said the smith. ‘Anyroad: a prentice, it says here, is to be learned the art, craft and mystery of the forge.’

  Joseph felt as if everything around him had stopped but those words.

  ‘And he shall faithfully serve the hammerman, his secrets keep, his lawful commands everywhere gladly obey.’

  Joseph put his hands between his knees, and listened. ‘At cards, dice or any unlawful game he shall not play. He shall not absent himself, day or night, nor haunt ale houses, taverns or playhouses, commit fornication nor contract for matrimony.’

  ‘I’ll not,’ said Joseph.

  ‘You’ll be a rum un if you don’t,’ said the smith. ‘But that’s it. That’s what it says.’

  ‘I’ll go tell me Grandfather now,’ said Joseph.

  ‘When can you start?’ said the smith.

  ‘As soon as I’ve shifted this anvil,’ said Joseph.

  ‘Wait on, now!’ The smith laughed. ‘Robert and me must have us a proper weisening about you first.’ He picked up the anvil and firmed it back on its bed. ‘And that,’ he said, ‘you’ll lift just before you’re out of your time, because by then, youth, we’ll have put some muscle on you. Now get off up home and tell your Grandfather. And take this four-pounder Damper Latham asked for.’

  He gave Joseph a steel hammer-head, blunt at one end, and sharp for splitting at the other, with a hole through it for its haft.

  Joseph held it up. ‘See,’ he said. ‘It is aback of everything. ‘

  ‘Tell that to Robert!’ said the smith. ‘And think on: you can play wag from school, but you’ll not play wag from me.’

  Joseph walked below the chapel clock. He could hear its tick.

  When he reached the wood he climbed up the slope among the beech trees, so that Grandfather wouldn’t see him. He wanted to choose his moment. There was a lot of distant noise coming off Leah’s Bank.

  The road was empty. Grandfather was not at the wall, nor was he anywhere that Joseph could tell from the wood.

  Joseph strode, slack-kneed, down through the leaf mould of the hill. It was the way to move, even at night, so that roots and rocks wouldn’t catch the feet and he kept the rhythm of the ground.

  Grandfather’s bass was tucked behind the field hedge. All his tools were there. Joseph put the new hammerhead with them.

  ‘Where is he?’ he said.

  There was another load of stone dumped at the end of the run of wall, but it wasn’t rubbish: it was square-cut white dimension, weathered, good. A barrow-load only.

  ‘Grandfather!’

  Some of the stone was white with lime-wash on one side. Joseph touched it. The lime was still wet.

  ‘Grandfather!’

  ‘Who-whoop!’

  It was Grandfather’s shout. It carried a mile on the hill, and Grandmother always used it to call him home.

  ‘Wo-whoop! Wo-o-o-o!’ answered Joseph.

  ‘Who-whoop!’ cried Grandfather somewhere.

  ‘Wo-whoop! Wo-o-o-o!’

  ‘Who-whoop!’

  Grandfather was coming from the house. He appeared over the road crest a hundred yards away. He walked strongly.

  ‘ “Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall!” ‘

  Grandfather knew the Bible whenever he was drunk.

  ‘ “And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees! And I will make them a forest! And the beasts of the field shall eat them!” ‘

  His eyes were bright and his face was a good colour. That was all. He stood and inspected the work he had done, and he lifted his cap and rubbed his forehead with the knuckle of his thumb.

  ‘What a wall,’ said Grandfather. ‘Looks like it died in a fog.’

  Then he was splendid.

  He took the new stone, the square dimension, and he built. He smoothed and combed the blocks, and they fitted together with hardly a knife-space between them. Their weight was nothing for him, and Joseph watched the old man happy.

  The
wall was being built. No limewash showed, no donkey-stoning. ‘There,’ said Grandfather.

  ‘Why?’ shouted Joseph. ‘Why’ve you taken it? Why you?’

  ‘That’s a poser,’ said Grandfather. ‘Eh up. Here’s a new four-pounder in me little bass.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You fetched it, I reckon. Or Damper Latham.’

  ‘The stone! Allmans’ stone!’

  ‘So it is,’ said Grandfather. ‘Ay. Young Herbert wheeled me a barrow-load. I could do with another.’

  ‘I’ll not!’ shouted Joseph, and ran.

  He ran all the way home, up the garden path, through the doorway, up the bent stairs and fell on his bed under the limewash and the sloping thatch. He lay there, grasping the corner post of the house to hold the world. The lime flaked off the oak. It needed a new coat. And all the time there was the noise on Leah’s Bank, a swearing, tearing noise, and dust from it finely settled his tears.

  Joseph heard Mother come, and Charlie. The bassinet grated on the path. Charlie wanted his dinner, but Joseph couldn’t go down to see him. There was that noise.

  Grandmother and Mother went into the back garden to pick peas. Joseph waited until the inside of the downstairs was quiet, then he crept out.

  Charlie was parked under the thatch away from the sun. He laughed at Joseph, and Joseph played with him. The bassinet was lop-sided because a spring had broken. Mother had brought it for Grandfather to mend.

  Joseph helped shell the peas, and he gave the little ones to Charlie. Mother peeled the potatoes. It was going to be a big dinner.

  ‘Have you played wag?’ said Grandfather.

  Joseph didn’t answer.

  ‘Well, you can go help Damper Latham this after,’ said Grandfather. I’ve a flavour for to finish that wall.’

  ‘Where?’ said Joseph.

  ‘Long Croft, you pan-head.’

  ‘Where with Damper Latham?’

  ‘Leah’s Bank. Where else?’

  ‘I’ll not.’

  ‘And I’ll catch you a clinker if I hear any more of that,’ said Grandfather. ‘Where’s me dinner?’ he shouted, and poured himself more beer.

  Joseph fed Charlie, and played with him again. Grand» father fitted the haft to the new hammer-head and dropped it in the rain-butt to swell. Then he tied the bassinet together with rope.

  ‘Put that Charlie of yours down,’ Grandfather said to Joseph. ‘Play wag at end of schooling, and you’re half a day a man’s lad. Let’s be having you.’

  They went down the path together. The noise on the hill was no better.

  ‘You get yourself up them fields and tell Damper Latham I’ve sent you. I’ll ready the bank.’

  ‘Just why?’ said Joseph.

  Grandfather looked at him before he spoke. And when he did speak he was not drunk. There was no beer in him talking.

  ‘Why,’ he said. ‘Why. Must I cut me nose off to spite me face?’

  ‘But Allmans,’ said Joseph.

  ‘Is it me making that racket yonder?’ said Grandfather. ‘It is not. They’ve got allsorts there — men as couldn’t tell foxbench from malachite. So what must I do? Let it go? Let it all go? For a garden? Or shall I have a word with the Governor, and slip him a sixpence? Eh? That garden wall will never be nothing. But all your days you’ll pass the dimension by Long Croft, and you’ll say, “Ay, he was a bazzil-arsed old devil, but him and me, we built that!” ‘

  And Joseph couldn’t tell him.

  They went to their work.

  The house was terrible on Leah’s Bank. Its roof and the gable ends were off. The stone slates had been sent down and stacked by size, Princesses, Duchesses, Small Countesses, Ladies, wide Doubles and the neat Jenny-go-lightlies from under the ridge. The sheepbone pegs that had held them to the roof were scattered on the ground, as if the house was eaten.

  Timbers had been sorted; common rafters, purlins, joists, trusses, wind-braces and bearers.

  And Young Herbert Allman was day-labouring for the men.

  The house was down to its eaves. Only the bedroom window stood higher, showing sky from both sides through its glass.

  Young Herbert stopped his barrowing. He said nothing. He picked up Mrs Allman’s donkey-stone from beside the dirtied step, lifted his arm and winged the donkey-stone straight to the pane. Then he still said nothing, and got on with his load.

  Joseph took a lump of rubble from the wall-packing and watched the window. The broken pane was clean now.

  He let go. The rock lobbed over and over and hit. The window burst with a sound that Joseph felt in his stomach. It was so good he did it again.

  ‘And is that what a man’s lad thinks of his first half day?’ said Damper Latham.

  He was walking round the building to put his chalk mark on likely stone.

  ‘Has Robert sent you?’

  ‘He has,’ said Joseph.

  ‘To chuck cob-ends at windows? You’re a constructive sort of a youth, aren’t you?’

  ‘It’s… them!’ said Joseph.

  ‘It’s not,’ said Damper Latham. ‘It’s you.’

  ‘I’ve not ridded Allmans! I’ve not wrecked this!’

  ‘Give over gondering at what can’t be helped,’ said Damper Latham.

  Joseph pulled aside the stones that Damper Latham had marked. The noise around him was no less, and through it Young Herbert barrowed.

  The stone was as heavy as before. Joseph’s hands blistered.

  Yet the anvil was heavier than stone, and the forge louder than the hill. But he wanted them. He wanted metals that could be made and the sounds of making. He could not forget the limewashed walls of the morning. For this.

  ‘Tea up!’ shouted the Governor. The men stopped, and squatted on the grass. Damper Latham gave Joseph a drink from his bottle. The sweetness calmed him. The hill was quiet. He knew where he was once more on Leah’s Bank above his own house.

  The sun caught movement at Long Croft field, reflection on a chisel, and the sound of Grandfather’s hammer could just be heard, like a small bell.

  Even the ruin was gentle now. It had its place.

  ‘It was me,’ Joseph said to Damper Latham. ‘I was that upset.’

  ‘Ay.’

  ‘What’s to become of it all?’ said Joseph.

  ‘Oh, not much,’ said Damper Latham. ‘They’ll have the house down in the day. Then it’ll go to nettles, a ruck of stones, and cussing every time Jesse Leah catches his scythe on a bit of a doorstep. But at after, and before you know, there’ll be only meadow and a hump to it by a gate, and some damson tresses in a hedge without sense nor reason. And that’s all. Now hadn’t you ought go and tell him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your Grandfather.’

  ‘Tell him what?’

  ‘About old Jump setting you on.’

  Joseph startled, and couldn’t speak.

  ‘You’re gondering again, youth,’ said Damper Latham. ‘Well, is he or isn’t he?’

  ‘How did you hear?’ said Joseph.

  ‘Hear? Jump and me’s had us eye on you this twelvemonth and more. It’s in you.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Smithing, of course!’

  ‘In me,’ said Joseph.

  ‘And it’ll out, one road or the other,’ said Damper Latham. ‘Hinder, and you’ll turn sour as verjuice.’

  ‘Does me Grandfather know?’ said Joseph.

  ‘There’s not but one can face Robert with that news,’ said Damper Latham.

  ‘Me?’ said Joseph. Leah’s Bank was hushed. Men went back to work, but the noise no longer hurt. Pick-axes, pinch-bars, crows, wedges, sledges battered and prized the house. Dust shimmered Joseph’s gaze in the sun, and out of it he could remember before breakfast, and now see the track of picks, with stone the finish of the blow, and not all smithing was making.

  ‘Me,’ said Joseph. ‘Me.’

  ‘I’ll be along with the dimension in half an hour,’ said Damper Latham.

  ‘I’ll tell h
im I’ll tell him I’ll tell him!’ shouted Joseph, and ran down Leah’s Bank.

  ‘I’ll tell him I’ll tell him I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him I’ll tell him I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him. Tell him. I’ll tell him.’

  ‘Eh up!’ Grandfather called. ‘You! Charge of the Light Brigade! Balaclava’s that road!’

  Joseph stopped, breathless.

  ‘Ay,’ said Grandfather. ‘I recollect as how they lost their puff a bit, too. I was cutting bell-cot for the school at the time.’

  ‘Grandfather,’ said Joseph. He was leaning against the rock of the hill, in the shade of beeches. ‘I’ll not go with you.’

  ‘What?’ said Grandfather.

  Joseph stood straight. ‘I’ll not cut stone.’

  ‘You’ll not what?’ said Grandfather.

  ‘I can’t. You must prentice me to the smithy.’

  Grandfather laid his tools down.

  ‘Prentice to the smithy? Prentice to little Jump James?’

  ‘That’s what you must do,’ said Joseph. ‘I’ve to get me Indentures. I don’t want stone.’

  ‘You don’t want stone,’ said Grandfather.

  ‘No.’

  ‘And why don’t you want stone?’

  ‘Because,’ said Joseph.

  ‘Because?’ said Grandfather. ‘Because of what?’

  The words blurted out. ‘Because of you!’

  ‘Oh.’ Grandfather was still.

  ‘You’re all over!’ said Joseph. ‘I must get somewhere: somewhere aback of you. I must. It’s my time. Else I’ll never.’

  Grandfather took off his cap and threw it on the road.

  ‘By God!’

  He stamped on his cap, and turned around.

  ‘By God!’ He stamped again. ‘Joseph, I thought you’d never speak!’

  ‘Eh?’ said Joseph.

  ‘Smithing! By God, that’s aback, that is! That’s aback of behind!’

  ‘You’re not vexed?’

  ‘Vexed? Me?’ said Grandfather. ‘Who’ll make the brick-setter’s trowel, Joseph? Who’ll make the brickie’s trowel? Hey!’

  His beard danced and he held Joseph at arm’s length. ‘Who-whoop! Wo-whoop! Wo-o-o-o! Who’ll make the brickie’s trowel? Wo-whoop! Wo-o-o-o!’

  Damper Latham came over the crest at the top of Long Croft field.

  Grandfather pulled Joseph with him to the bank. ‘Act natural,’ he said. ‘Give us a thrutch with this,’ He was lifting a stone into its seat. Joseph eased the ends, and Grandfather tapped the stone sideways with the handle of his hammer. He could have managed it by himself, without help. ‘There,’ he said. ‘She’ll do. You’ll be able to say we built that one.’