The Stone Book Quartet Page 6

  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 h
atch, 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.

  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.