The Stone Book Quartet

‘That’s done,’ he said. He sat quietly in his chair. He was always quiet when the work was over, church or wall or garden.

After tea, Father went to see Mother. They talked, and he played his ophicleide to her. He played gentle tunes, not the ones for Sunday.

Mary cleared the table and washed the dishes. And when she’d finished she cleaned the stones from the field. Old William smoked half a pipe of tobacco before going back to the loom.

‘Is he playing?’ said Old William.

‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘But not Chapel. Why are we Chapel?’

‘You’d better ask him,’ said Old William. ‘I’m Chapel because it’s near. I do enough walking, without Sunday.’

Father came down from playing his music. He sat at the table with Mary and sorted the stones she had picked that day with little Esther. Most pickers left their stones on the dump at the field end, but Mary brought the best of hers home and cleaned the dirt off, and Father looked at them. In the field they were dull and heavy, and could break a scythe; but on the table each one was something different. They were different colours and different shapes, different in size and feel and weight. They were all smooth cobbles.

‘Why are we Chapel?’ said Mary.

‘We’re buried Church,’ said Father.

‘But why?’

‘There’s more call on music in Chapel,’ said Father.

‘Why?’

‘Because people aren’t content with raunging theirselves to death from Monday to Saturday, but they must go bawling and praying and fasting on Sundays too.’

‘What’s the difference between Church and Chapel?’ said Mary.

‘Church is Lord Stanley.’

‘Is that all?’

‘It’s enough,’ said Father. ‘When you cut stone, you see more than the parson does, Church or Chapel.’

‘Same as what?’

‘Same as this.’ Father took a stone and broke it. He broke it cleanly. The inside was green and grey. He took one half and turned so that Mary couldn’t see how he rubbed it. Mary had tried to polish stone, but a whole day of rubbing did no good. It was a stone-cutter’s secret, one of the last taught. Father held the pebble inside his waistcoat, and whatever it was that he did was simple; a way of holding, or twisting. And the pebble came out with its broken face green and white flakes, shining like wet.

He gave the pebble to Mary.

‘Tell me how those flakes were put together and what they are,’ he said. ‘And who made them into pebbles on a hill, and where that was a rock and when.’ He rummaged in the pile on the table, found a round, grey stone, broke it, turned away, held, twisted, rubbed. ‘There.’

Mary cried out. It was wonderful. Father had polished the stone. It was black and full of light, and its heart was a golden, bursting sun.

‘What is it?’ said Mary.

‘Ask the parson,’ said Father.

‘But what is it really?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ said Father. ‘Once, when I was prenticed, we had us a holiday, and I walked to the sea. I left home at two in the morning. I had nothing but half an hour there. And I stood and watched all that water, and all the weeds and shells and creatures; and then I walked back again. And I’ve seen the like of what’s in that pebble only in the sea. They call them urchins. Now you tell me how that urchin got in that flint, and how that flint got on that hill.’

‘Was it Noah’s flood?’ said Mary.

‘I’m not saying. But parsons will tell you, if you ask them, that Heaven and Earth, centre and circumference, were created all together in the same instant, four thousand and four years before Christ, on October the twenty-third, at nine o’clock in the morning. They’ve got it written. And I’m asking parsons, if it was Noah’s flood, where was the urchin before? How long do stones take to grow? And how do urchins get in stones? It’s time and arithmetic I want to know. Time and arithmetic and sense.’

‘That’s what comes of reading,’ said Old William. ‘You’re all povertiness and discontent, and you’ll wake Mother.’

‘And what are you but a little master?’ said Father. ‘Weaving till all hours and nothing to show for what you’ve spent.’

‘I’m still a man with a watch in his pocket,’ said Old William. ‘I don’t keep my britches up with string.’

Mary slid under the table and held on to the flint. There was going to be a row. Father thought shouting would make Old William hear, and Old William didn’t have Father’s words. Old William’s clogs began to move as if he was working the loom, and Father’s boots became still as if there was a great stone in his lap. Although he shouted, anger made him calm. When he was so still he frightened Mary. It was worse when the stillness came from himself and his thoughts, without a row. Sometimes it lasted for days. Then he would go out and play his ophicleide around the farms, and sing, and ring his handbells, and use all his music for beer, and only Mother could fetch him home. That was what Mary feared the most, because beer took Father beyond himself and left someone looking through his eyes.

‘And what about the cost of candles?’ said Old William. ‘Books are dear reading when you’ve bought them.’

Mary held the flint and tried to imagine such a golden apple that was once a star beneath the sea.

‘Get weaving,’ said Father, ‘or it’s you’ll be the poverty-knocker.’

Old William’s clogs went out. Father sat at the table, not even moving the stones. Then he stood up and walked into the garden. Mary waited. She heard him rattling the hoe and rake, and Old William started up his loom, but she could tell he was upset, because of the slow beat, ‘Plenty-of-time, plenty-of-time’. She crawled from under the table and went out to the garden. Father was hoeing next to the rhubarb.

‘If I can’t learn to read, will you give me something instead?’ said Mary.

‘If it’s not too much,’ said Father. ‘The trouble with him is,’ he said, and jutted his clay pipe at Old William’s weaving room, ‘he’s as good as me, but can’t ever see the end of his work. And I make it worse by building houses for the big masters who’ve taken his living. That’s what it is, but we never say.’

‘If I can’t read, can I have a book?’

Father opened his mouth and the clay pipe fell to the ground and didn’t break. He looked at the pipe. ‘I have not seen a Macclesfield dandy that has fallen to the ground and not broken,’ he said. ‘And they don’t last more than a threeweek.’ He turned the soil gently with his hoe and buried the pipe.

‘What’ve you done that for?’ said Mary. ‘They cost a farthing!’

‘Well,’ said Father, ‘I reckon, what with all the stone, if I can’t give a bit back, it’s a poor do. Why a book?’

‘I want a prayer book to carry to Chapel,’ said Mary. ‘Lizzie Allman and Annie Leah have them.’

‘Can they read?’

‘No. They use them to press flowers.’

‘Well, then,’ said Father.

‘But they can laugh,’ said Mary.

‘Ay,’ said Father. He leant on the hoe and looked at Glaze Hill. ‘Go fetch a bobbin of bad ends; two boxes of lucifer matches and a bundle of candles – a whole fresh bundle. We’re going for a walk. And tell nobody.’

Mary went into the house to Old William’s room. In a corner by the door he kept the bad ends wound on bobbins. They were lengths of thread that came to him knotted or too thick or that broke on the loom. He tied them together and wove them for Mother to make clothes from. Mary lifted a bobbin and took it out. She found the candles and the lucifer matches.

Father had put his tools away.